“Thanks.” Quinn and Santana wandered to the bench and grabbed their water bottles. As Quinn threw her head back and took a long drink of sun-warmed water, she could still feel eyes on her from across the field. Finn and Puck had been staring at her for about ten minutes, and it made her feel good. Who didn’t appreciate the adoring gazes of two hot guys? Her father had doted on her since she was a little girl, and Quinn found herself craving male attention. It made her sit up straighter, smile more sweetly, and put everything she had into her flips.
“Puck cannot keep his eyes off me today,” Santana proclaimed as she waved at Puck flirtatiously, tilting her¾y, he hadg h hips to one side.
Are you delusional? Quinn wanted to say. He’s staring at me. Instead, she just made a noncommittal hmm sound. But maybe Santana was right—maybe Puck wasn’t watching Quinn after all. Santana was pretty, Quinn thought, but in an easy-girl kind of way. Everyone knew that Santana had made out with at least six guys last year. But, then, Puck was a player who was notorious for dating a girl for a week before dumping her and moving on to her best friend.
Why did Quinn even care what Puck thought about anything? He was one of those guys who skipped class and talked back to teachers and didn’t care about getting out of Lima. Ten years from now, he’d probably have flunked out of Lima Community College and would be drinking cheap beers and sleeping on his mom’s sofa. Total Lima loser material.
Well, Finn was certainly staring at her, anyway. And he was definitely a better catch. Maybe not the smartest guy in the world, but he was tall and handsome. That should be enough.
“He’s totally going to ask me to the homecoming dance.” Santana pushed up the strap of her sports bra.
“Who?”
“Puck, obviously.” Santana glanced over her shoulder at him. “I can just tell by the way he asked to cheat off my geometry homework this morning.”
“Really?” Quinn grabbed her ankle and pulled it toward her back to stretch out her quad. She glanced at the bleachers, not wanting Santana to see her face. A couple of trumpet players in the marching band were practicing for the homecoming game, but otherwise the bleachers were empty. The thought of Puck putting his hands on Santana’s waist as they made out and swayed back and forth to some lame soft-rock song suddenly made her feel ill.
“Definitely.” Santana nudged her in the ribs. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
“Dehydrated,” Quinn lied, dropping her ankle and grabbing her water bottle again.
“Oh.” Santana put her arm on Quinn’s shoulder. “I’m sure Finn’s going to ask you, you know. He’s been watching you for, like, an hour! And you’ll totally make the cutest couple.”
“We will.” Quinn smiled. She could picture Finn showing up at the door to her giant house, holding some kind of corsage in the wrong color, grinning his goofy grin. “We totally will.”
Later, when Coach Sylvester triple-tweeted her whistle, signaling the end of practice, Quinn tried not to watch as the football players headed to the locker room. Santana made a beeline for Puck, jogging over to him with her ponytail bouncing, and Quinn had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from running over there and keeping them apart.
She knew she was being ridiculous. What was it about Puck, anyway? Was she just attracted to him because he was the bad-boy type? That was so lame. She gathered her things slowly, savoring the feeling of having finished a hard practice successfully. She loved the way her calves trembled with fatigue and her shoulders ached. It was good pain. All the Cheerios had rushed back to the locker room to change, and it was nice to have a moment alone. Football and soccer practices had en
All of a sudden, someone grabbed her from behind and pulled her under the bleachers, into the alcove where all the upperclassmen made out during games. A tiny shriek escaped her lips before the strong hands turned her around and she saw who it was. Puck.
Her hazel eyes widened, and her stomach whooshed out from underneath her, the way it did at the top of the giant hill on the Iron Dragon roller coaster at Cedar Point. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Her bag slid off her arm and landed in the soft grass.
“What I’ve been thinking about doing all through practice. This.” Puck pinned her against a metal support beam and pressed his lips to hers before she could say or think anything. His mouth was warm and surprisingly soft, his lips salty, and the warmth seeped into Quinn’s body, starting at her own lips and spreading down to her fingertips and her toes. She was definitely going over the roller coaster hill.
Quinn pushed Puck away. She took a deep breath and straightened her practice skirt, trying to calm the butterflies in her stomach. The last boy she’d let kiss her was Andrew Atkinson, and that had been like kissing a gulping frog. Kissing Puck was… something different entirely. “Who said you could do that?” She tilted her chin toward him rebelliously.
“You.” Puck grinned confidently. He smelled like sweat, but somehow on him it smelled good. “I saw you staring back at me during practice. I thought I was going to miss my chance when Santana wouldn’t stop yapping at me.”
The butterflies in her stomach were doing karate now. She couldn’t believe he’d kissed her. “I thought you were into her,” Quinn said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You know I like you.” Puck stroked her bare arm with his finger, and Quinn could feel all the tiny arm hairs stand on end. “Don’t deny it, Quinn. You like me, too.”
She opened her mouth to tell him he was being ridiculous, but instead she found herself unable to think of anything but the way Puck’s lips had tasted. Before she knew what she was doing, she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth, and his lips opened eagerly. My God, she thought as he pressed her back against the support beam, his hand firmly on her waist. This is what a kiss is supposed to be. She felt like her brain was totally floating away and her body was completely taking over. She couldn’t believe those were her hands running down the back of Puck’s damp T-shirt, across his Mohawk—she’d always wondered what it felt like—as she pulled him closer. For some odd reason, he made her think of Juicy Fruit gum. She used to love the flavor so much, she wasn’t able to chew it for long before she had to—she couldn’t help it—swallow it. Puck was like Juicy Fruit. She just wanted to devour him.
“Oh, wait.” Quinn shoved Puck away suddenly. He stumbled backward. “What time is it? I’m supposed to run a Celibacy Club meeting.”
“Blow it off.” Puck grabbed Quinn’s arm and tried to pull her to him. Part of her wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the afternoon hiding under the bleachers with Puck, kissing his amazing lips. But the rest of her ½€e rest ofhe r ½€e rknew she had to get back to reality.
“I can’t.” She shook off Puck’s hand. He stepped toward her, and she felt herself falling under his spell again. That couldn’t happen. “Besides, I invited Finn out afterward.”
Puck stepped away. “But you’re not…” His voice trailed off.
“Can’t talk. I’m so late.” She grabbed her bag, threw it...
six
McKinley High hallway, Tuesday after school
With his hair still wet from his post-practice shower, Finn Hudson slung his backpack over his shoulder and strolled down the hallway on his way to the Celibacy Club meeting. It always felt good to be done with football for the day. During the school day, Finn often found himself pumping his right arm through the air as if he were throwing the football to a wide receiver in the end zone, something he had to do to psych himself up for practice. Football was okay, but it didn’t really excite him anymore. Maybe when he was a freshman and girls first started to pay attention to him whenever he wore his uniform. Seriously, they’d hang around outside the locker room after a game—even a terrible game—waiting to get a chance to talk to him. It was pretty cool.
It wasn’t like that anymore. He was always thinking about football. At home, he’d sometimes do his homework standing up so he could do calf raises and squats while he worked. When
he did his homework. He worked even harder on the field—he was always one of the first guys at practice. It wasn’t always fun, but he hoped all the work would pay off someday when a scout spotted him and offered him a free ride to a good school. It didn’t even matter what school, as long as it included a ticket out of Lima.
“Hey, Finn, are you ready to crush Central in the big game next weekend?” As Santana Lopez, in her short red-and-black Cheerios practice uniform, brushed past him, her long dark hair tickled his arm.
“Uh, yeah. I guess.”
“Quinn said you were coming to Celibacy Club today.” Santana’s sneakers squeaked as she walked down the hall next to him. “Is it your first time?”
That seemed like a strangely inappropriate question when talking about Celibacy Club. “Yeah, I’ve never been before.”
“Cool.” Finn followed Santana into room 212, his eyes mesmerized by the swish of her Cheerios skirt as she sashayed through the doorway. She wasn’t as pretty as Quinn, but she had this really hot body. It seemed so natural to think about how hot girls were. In Celibacy Club, would he be told not to?
“We separate boys and girls for the first half hour,” Santana instructed, hopping up onto a desk. “As soon as Quinn calls the meeting to order.”
Finn paused—he didn’t see Quinn’s silky blond hair anywhere. This meeting would be halfway tolerable only because he was going out with her afterward, and maybe she’d let him make out with her. Instead, the Celibacy Club meeting was populated with a handful of other Cheerios, whose arms Quinn must have twisted to get them there, as well as a bunch of dorky-looking guys who probably had the warped idea that being in the club would help them get laid. There were also a few freshman and sophomore girls in frumpy clothes who looked like they hated men.
Finn felt a headache developing. The room seemed overheated, and he couldn’t imagine what he was supposed to talk about with a bunch of guys for half an hour. A poster on the wall showed Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog in wedding wear with the slogan WORTH THE WAIT.
“Do you think Quinn’s okay?” a girl with mouse-brown hair asked Finn shyly. She was a freshman on the Cheerios squad. “She’s never late.”
“I don’t know,” Finn answered, glancing over his shoulder. He did know that if she didn’t show up, he was out of there. Then it hit him—this was the perfect excuse to leave. “But, uh, I’ll go look for her.” He quickly disappeared into the hallway, grateful for a few more moments of freedom.
Finn wandered halfheartedly through the now-empty hallways, glancing around for Quinn. He bent to take a drink from the fountain outside the auditorium. A piece of pink gum floated in the drain, but he ignored it. Just as the cold spray of water hit his lips, someone started to sing. Beautifully. He forgot to keep his mouth open, and the water splashed off his face.
Finn stood up and wiped his mouth. He walked toward the open auditorium door. A girl was singing an old-fashioned-sounding song, and it sounded beautiful.
He didn’t talk about it, ever, but Finn really loved to sing. In the shower at home—even in the locker room if there weren’t a lot of guys around—he was always singing. He tended to belt out early Springsteen songs while he lathered up with shampoo, and it was Air Supply as he rinsed off. When he was singing, he forgot about the muscle aches and cramps he got from being knocked around, like a bumper car, on the football field. When he sang, he felt like someone else.
Who was singing like that? It sounded almost like a record—the voice was so confident and skilled. Finn quietly stepped through the doorway and stood in the shadows of the auditorium.
In the middle of the stage, all alone, stood Rachel Berry.
Huh. She sat in the front row of his history class and always answered Mr. Tucker’s questions in a know-it-all voice, as though she was surprised he’d even bothered to ask. The football guys who clustered around Finn in class often flung bits of crumpled paper at her, trying to make it stick in her shiny hair. She always wore kneesocks and sweaters and plaid, as if she were attending a Catholic girls’ school and everyone else had forgotten the dress code.
This girl onstage seemed like a completely different person. Yeah, Finn had heard her on the morning announcements, and her voice had sounded pretty good, but he hadn’t actually put it together with the image of her yet. Finn was completely spellbound, watching as Rachel wove her way across the stage, singing her heÊ€€cementherart out as if the auditorium were full of thousands of awestruck fans. She sang as if the whole world were watching, and she looked like she was having the time of her life. Finn squinted, glancing around the auditorium to see if she really was singing to someone, but it was empty.
Rachel Berry looked really hot.
“What you are, what you do, what you say…” Rachel sang, stretching out her hand. Part of Finn wanted to reach out and take it. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he felt like his insides were shaking as he listened to Rachel—like he was, crazily, falling in love… with her?
Rachel stopped singing, but the song hung in the air like an echo. She was murmuring softly to herself now, maybe commenting on her performance. Finn shook himself out of his trance. It was just Rachel Berry up there again, the girl in his history class. But now that he’d heard her sing, it was hard to imagine her with that know-it-all voice again.
Rachel hummed a little to herself as she stared out at the empty auditorium. She’d nailed the song, which wasn’t surprising, as she’d been singing since she was in diapers. When she closed her eyes and sang, she wasn’t standing on the stage in the McKinley High auditorium. She was on the darkened stage of the biggest theater on Broadway, singing to thousands and thousands of mesmerized men and women with tears in their eyes (even the men!), and her name was the biggest one on the posters outside.
All she needed to do was whip the school’s lame Glee Club—ignored and rejected over the years as people rushed off to cooler activities, like cheerleading and math club—into fine fighting shape. How hard could that be?
She opened her eyes. She saw Finn Hudson right away, standing next to the side stairs that led off the stage, staring right at her.
Her heart thumped. Had he been watching her the entire time? Finn Hudson, with the broad shoulders, those dreamy brown eyes, and that tiny beauty mark on his left cheekbone that made Rachel long to kiss it. Had he been watching her? She hadn’t realized he even knew she existed, and now he had this strange look on his face like he… thought she was something special.
“Hi, Finn,” Rachel bubbled. She felt funny standing on the stage while he was down below. She stepped toward the stairs. “What are you doing here?”
Finn’s backpack banged against a drum set that was sitting, abandoned, in the orchestra pit. “I was at this, uh, Celibacy Club meeting… and, uh, I heard you from out in the hall.” He gestured toward the hallway.
“Oh?” Rachel smoothed the sides of her pink-and-white plaid skirt. Finn Hudson was actually talking to her! Her pulse raced. Even though just seconds ago she’d imagined thousands of people watching her, she felt nervous when it was him. Of course, the first time he talked to her, he had to be telling her she was too loud. That was it, right? “I’m done singing now. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. The meeting hasn’t started yet.” Finn fidgeted and looked up at her shyly. “I couldn’t help stopping. I mean, you have an incredible voice.”
“Oh.” Rachel sounde¥ Ra fidgeound relieved. “Thank you. I’ve been told that before.” She walked down the stage steps, moving closer to Finn. She might not ever get the chance to talk alone with Finn Hudson again—he was so busy playing football and being popular, he probably couldn’t afford to spend much time talking to people from Rachel’s social stratum—and she wanted to get a good look at those eyes of his. She could never tell if they were brown or hazel or somewhere in between.
It felt weird to talk to Rachel, but Finn couldn’t stop. “I think it’s really cool that you can just get
up there and, you know, sing like that.” He shrugged. “I could never do that.”
Rachel’s eyes widened. She was at the bottom of the stairs, but she stayed on the first step, because Finn was super-tall and she didn’t want him to think that her own five-foot-two frame was too diminutive for him. In case someday he grew tired of dating cookie-cutter blonds and wanted more of a challenge. “I don’t know. You go out every week on the football field and throw the ball at people, with everyone watching.”
“Yeah, but they all expect us to lose, anyway, so it’s no big deal.” He looked up at the stage lights, which were nearly blinding. “I guess there are bright lights on the field, too.”
Rachel inched closer to him. She could smell Irish Spring soap. She wondered what the boys’ locker room was like after a practice and how all those guys could stand to shower together. “Are you ready for the homecoming game?”
Finn groaned.
“It can’t be that bad,” Rachel said. She couldn’t believe her conversation with Finn Hudson was lasting this long. He’d already said, like, a hundred words to her.
“No, it’s just… I get tired of talking about football.” Finn kind of hated that everyone associated him with football, as if he were The Quarterback and nothing else. Football had its moments, but it wasn’t everything to him. There had to be more, right? “It’s just that it would, maybe, be nice to be good at something else. Something that means something. Like you and singing.”
Rachel shrugged, but her cheeks flushed with pleasure. She never got tired of compliments, but they seemed extra special coming from Finn. “I was just practicing for the music recital on Friday. We already had Glee practice after school, but I like the acoustics in here better.” Finn turned his head slightly, and the light caught his eyes—they were definitely brown, with tiny flecks of green in them. She opened her mouth to say something—what, she didn’t know. The way he was looking at her made her nervous….
Glee_ The Beginning_ An Original Novel (Glee Original Novels) - Sophia Lowell.mobi Page 4
