Serendipity

CHAPTER 2

The morning had dragged on for Quinn as she spent it holed up in her trailer, worrying about the meeting she would be having later that day. It was disconcerting to know that the object of each and every one of her desires was going to walk back into her life right when she was finally comfortable with it. It had taken her a long time to come to terms with her sexuality. Her father's incessant sermons about homosexuality being a sin were hard ones to eventually learn to ignore. But, after being immersed in the much more accepting culture of Southern California for a few years, she finally admitted to herself in her junior year of college that she was, in fact, gay. Not long after that, she'd met her ex-girlfriend in a small, off-campus bar. To this day, she had no idea how she ever gathered the courage to approach the brunette, but she had, and they ended up dating for two years until Jamie got her JD and accepted a position as an associate at one of the most prestigious law firms in Manhattan.

A part of her recognized the fact that it was more than a little ironic that she lost two women to the same city, while an even larger part of herself was glad that Jamie had left. Not because she didn't enjoy the brunette's company – she knew that Jamie had played a big part in her finally finding herself and she would always love her for that – but because the more secure she became with herself, the more she acknowledged the fact that the woman she held in her arms every night wasn't the one she wanted to be holding. So it was with a few tears and a general feeling of relief that she'd driven Jamie to the airport one afternoon, sealing her future with a quick, chaste kiss goodbye before driving off into the flowing traffic before the brunette had even disappeared inside the terminal.

She wasn't naïve enough to think that she would see Rachel and that the Broadway star would just fall into her arms, confessing her undying love, but she was hoping for a second chance. A second chance to show the brunette that she wasn't the she-devil she pretended to be in high school. A chance to show her that she had grown and matured, and that the woman she was now was nothing like the immature, scared little girl the brunette remembered. She took heart in the knowledge that Rachel had agreed to play the role of her onscreen lover because it meant that the brunette was comfortable with at least pretending to be gay. And a not-so-insignificant part of her hoped that, while the brunette had only dated men in the past – or so the tabloids reported – something might develop between them. The idea of Rachel loving her in return was a dream to be sure, but she figured that even she was allowed dream every now and again.

She flipped through the quickly rewritten script she had been handed a couple hours before and twirled her pen in her fingers as she read lines she'd already memorized, occasionally making a note in the margin or crossing out a pronoun that was missed when her costar's gender was hastily changed. Not that she'd make a mistake while filming, but she liked things to be perfect. Some habits were hard to break, and the habits ingrained by Coach Sylvester were the hardest to break of all.

After she'd finished the last page of the script, she pushed her headphones off the back of her head so that they were hanging from her neck and looked anxiously out the window of her trailer. She was nervous about what was going to happen when Rachel saw her, and her mind ran wild with dozens of questions about the brunette. Did Rachel even know that she was her costar? If Rachel did, and she signed on for the project, what did that mean? If she didn't know, how would she react? Would she demand Quinn be fired? Would she pull one of her patented storm-outs? Would she smile sweetly and...

Yeah, that's not going to happen, Quinn-my-girl, so don't even go there, she chastised herself as she glanced at the oversized chunky steel watch on her wrist and bit her lip as her heart beat an irregular staccato in her chest.

Rachel should be arriving on set any minute.

Sure enough, not even ten minutes later, there was a knock on her door. She dropped her pen onto her script that was lying open on the table and walked across the short expanse of her trailer, pulled it open, and arched a perfectly sculpted brow at the PA who had knocked. "What's up?"