These strange steps

15

She's okay.

She gets a new phone, and a new TV, and a new hangover that stops her from thinking at all, because everything hurts.

Everything hurts, but she's okay.

...

She's okay, until Wednesday afternoon.

Then, in the middle of rehearsal-and literally without warning-the urge to vomit is so overwhelming that she rushes off stage, lands on her knees in front of the toilet there, and finally just dry-heaves for long moments.

Puck follows her in, and kneels next to her and puts a hand on her back, and says, "Do you need a pi-"

"No," she snaps at him, and wonders why this won't just rip itself out of her. The sensation that she's fucking it all up, and wasting precious time she could be spending building-she has no idea. A foundation? What the hell kind of foundation would it even be?

It's so much more complicated than that, but also so much more simple. Her bedding doesn't smell like Quinn, and she misses her. Her text message inbox is full of messages that aren't from Quinn, and she misses her. She ate a salad for dinner yesterday, and somehow her order got fucked up and the salad came with egg, and she missed Quinn.

She misses her.

She doesn't know how to make it any simpler than that. She just misses her, and it's not even about the sex, because-the sex isn't the way the left corner of Quinn's mouth lifts first, when she starts to smile, or the way her eyes widen comically when Rachel blurts out something vulgar without hesitating, or the way her lips squeeze together when she's concentrating like a maniac on the seven letters on her board, or the way she compulsively tugs up the sleeves on her sweaters and yet seems fine with dress shirts being buttoned tightly around her wrists.

She misses a person.

There isn't anyway to explain that to Puck, though, and after another moment of resting her head on her forearms, where they're wrapped around the toilet seat, he sinks down onto his ass next to her and sighs deeply.

"You know, back in high school, everyone ... you all thought I fucked Quinn just because I could, you know, to prove that I was that big a stud, and she offered and I was just like, whatever. And I guess that was part of it, but... man, there has always been something about her," he finally says, softly.

They are not words she wants to be hearing, and she lifts her head blearily to stare him down. "Why are you-"

"Because... she told me I was an asshole, for letting you sink this deep. She told me I was a fucking asshole, and a useless friend, and like-she didn't even call me an asshole when I talked her into letting me do her without protection, and she had a baby because of that, Rach," Puck says, and then glances over with a small smile. "I know that... that probably doesn't like, change shit, or whatever, but I thought you should know."

She manages to reign it in to just watery eyes, really, and then just sighs and stares at the wall behind the toilet. "It ... why did this have to happen to me now, Noah? Why couldn't she... have shown back up in my life three years ago, before ... things got this bad? Why now?"

He squeezes her thigh after a second and then says, "You know-you waited around for it to be the right time with Finn for most of high school. And like, no offense, but I never really got why because you were so far out of that dude's league that it's like, y'know, Pluto."

She snorts a little, weakly, and then shifts, until she's curled up into his side, and he can sling an arm around her fully.

It doesn't really cure any of her immediate ailments, but it's nice anyway.