take me back to the start

Chapter 20: Fragmented Shards

"I have to talk to you about something first."

Rachel froze. With that short sentence all of her second guessing came rushing back.

I knew it. Something had to go wrong. Of course it would. He just wants what he can't have and now he's already over me. Or maybe he just realized everything he just said was cock waddle and he's seeing me clearly for the first time in his life. And what he sees is not beautiful whatsoever.

She searched his face, looking for something to reassure her that she was mentally overreacting as usual.

But he just looked worried, with his brow slightly furrowed and his lips slightly parted, as if he was trying to recover from the 'almost kiss' to gather his thoughts together.

She pulled her head back and crossed her arms, using her body language to tell him that she was waiting.

He kept opening his mouth to start speaking, and then closing it again. He always became verbally challenged when he was nervous. She was fed up.

"What do you mean? Just say whatever it is you have to say. I can handle it."

Her voice sounded blunt and harsh, but she just wanted to get the bad news out of the way so she could stop wondering if she had put her love and faith in the wrong boy again, the exact same wrong boy to be specific.

"Well it's not that big of a deal," he began cautiously, "It's just..." he rolled his eyes to the side before blurting out quickly, "My agent asked me and Melissa to pretend to still be in a relationship for a little while and I told her okay."

Finn blended all the words together with a rapid fluidity, as if he was speaking in double speed. To most people the sentence would have been totally unintelligible, but Rachel knew he used this tactic whenever he had to deliver unpleasant news, and had long ago learned how to decipher it.

She took a deep breath and tried to process the information with a cool head.

He expected her to date him secretly. To sneak around like they were doing something wrong. It would feel like Sophomore year all over again.

"Why?" she finally asked.

He breathed a small sigh of relief, obviously glad that she seemed to be taking this calmly.

"Because she's afraid we could both mess up our public images by getting together now. It'd look like I cheated on Melissa with you and that would be really bad publicity. But it'd only be for a little while, until a few months after the the My School Musical 2 dvd comes out."

"And when would that be?" her voice came out colder than she had intended it to be.

He frowned.

"I'm not sure, 6 or 8 months maybe?"

Rachel was silent.

This was too much.

"Rach- Janice thinks this could really ruin both of our careers."

"You mean she thinks I could ruin your career."

"No it's not like that, it's just, you know 'the other woman' always gets more flack than the guy, and even though it wasn't like that, and there's more to our story, that's what everyone would assume, and it would just really suck because we've both worked so hard to get where we are.."

The other woman. He had just called her the other woman. This was not happening. She couldn't hear anymore.

"I'm not some Hollywood movie star Finn!" she interrupted, "Actresses on Broadway are judged for their talent and talent alone. People don't come see my shows because they see me on the cover of Vogue Magazine or advertising lipstick for Maybelline. Publicity isn't as central to the careers of musical theatre actors because we're real artists who actually have to be able to sing well, act well and dance well to get where we are."