you belong with me

chapter 10

"Puckerman's so stupid for waiting so long to ask you to the dance," Santana commented as she searched through the small rack of available dresses left in Rachel's size. "The dance is next weekend, and he is seriously expecting you to find the perfect dress by that time?" Santana rolled her eyes, as she pulled a dress from its position on the rack. "How's this one?" She asked as she held the dress up for Rachel to see.

Rachel eyed the shiny material of the dress hanging from the hanger in Santana's hand. She shook her head and scrunched her nose, "Green's not my best color."

Santana shoved the dress back into its place before she started her search again. "What kind of color are you looking for?"

"Something light… like a pastel color," Rachel replied. "And I don't want anything really heavy either. I'd like to be able to breathe by the end of the night."

"Okay," Santana said mostly to herself as she skipped over a patch of darker colored dresses. She pulled out a light blue dress, only for it to get shot down by Rachel.

"Hey, Santana?" Rachel asked quietly, almost inaudibly. "I've been meaning to ask you something."

"Hmm?" Santana responded, her eyes not moving from the sea of dresses.

"I know that you and Puck don't associate with Finn anymore," Rachel began, her words causing Santana to look up from her task, "but I never understood why. I mean, what happened to make the two of you drop one of your best friends completely?"

Santana stepped back from the dresses and tapped her foot lightly against the ground. "It was shortly after Finn joined the football team. Puck and I were very supportive of his decision to join, even though we weren't very fond of his new teammates. Karofsky and his friends constantly tried to get him to leave us all together, but you know Finn, he wouldn't have just ditched us like that. He is… or was… a better person than that."

Rachel nodded, "I'm guessing he eventually slipped from your grasp."

"Yeah," Santana replied. "Not necessarily because he wanted to though, more because he had to. It happened at lunch one day. Puckerman and Karofsky got into a fight because of something stupid Karofsky said. Karofsky, of course, thought he had to get even somehow."

"What happened?" Rachel asked.

"He told Finn that if he didn't give Puck a slushie facial, they would do much worse to him," Santana said, the reason why the hatred between Puck and Finn existed finally became clear to Rachel.

"He didn't," Rachel said in disbelief.

"He did. Right in the hallway in front of the whole school," Santana said.

"What did Puck do?" Rachel asked, scared that they might have gotten into a huge fight.

"Nothing," Santana answered. "At first I thought he was going to kill him or something, but he didn't do anything. He just walked away, and they never spoke again."

"Did Finn even try to apologize for it?" Rachel asked.

Santana shook her head, "No. He just kind of avoided us after that, like none of it ever happened. Like they were never even friends."

"It's sad that a friendship like theirs had to end over something like that," Rachel said, shaking her head.

"Karofsky has Finn so brainwashed that he's not even reacting remotely like himself anymore. He's got that whole team wrapped so tightly around his finger, they don't even have their minds anymore."

Rachel nodded, "The first time he saw me after I got back he looked at me like I was a ghost. He had a slushie in his hand, like he was instructed to throw it at the new girl, and he just froze when he saw me."

"I'm sure that reaction came as a bit of a shock to you," Santana said, lightly chuckling to lighten the mood. "At least you two never did make it to a more than friends level, spares you more a heartbreak."

Rachel stood uneasily, "Well, I wouldn't say we never made it to that level…" She continued as soon as Santana's eyes snapped back to her. "He kissed me on the night that I left. He kissed me, told me that he really liked me, and promised we'd be together the second I got back. And this is the Finn that I came back to."

"Look, Rachel, Finn's chosen his path. He doesn't' deserve you, or any of us. Besides, you have Puckerman now! We can't let the people from our past keep us from having a brighter future."

"I suppose you're right," Rachel said. "Can we just get back to dress shopping?"

"Yeah, sure," Santana said, not attempting to push the issue at hand. She slowly searched through the endless amounts of dresses along the wall of the shop, letting the tips of her fingers graze across all the different materials. Suddenly, Santana felt an amazing silky material, and she pulled it out into her view.

Rachel turned to check on Santana's progress and stopped in her tracks once she saw the dress Santana was holding. "Santana," Rachel murmured, "it's perfect!" The dress was a light pink color, tight at the top and loose at the bottom. Rachel grabbed the dress from Santana's hands and admired its beauty for a moment. Maybe this dance would turn out to be a very, very good thing.

"I found a dress," Rachel told Kurt on the phone that evening. She smiled brightly as she waited for Kurt's response.

"Really?" Kurt exclaimed. "What does it look like? I imagine you being the pink type of girl. Is it pink?"

Rachel's smile widened, "How did you know?"

Kurt laughed, "I have a seventh sense."

"Seventh?" Rachel questioned.

"The seventh is my ability to spot fashion trends, and the sixth is my ability to tell when it comes from a bottle. I truly have a gift. Listen, my mom just made some of her homemade pizza and she's been bugging me to invite you over. You want to spend the evening over here?"

"Sure, I'll be over in 15 minutes," Rachel replied, not even thinking about a brother of Kurt's she might happen to run in to.