A New Beginning

“Well,” I finally broke the silence and our staring contest as I made my way to the sink, taking out my ponytail in the process, “you move on pretty quickly, don’t you?”

“That’s just how I roll, babe.” He leaned against the towel dispenser, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Like you care, anyway. You made it pretty damn clear that we weren’t a real couple.”

“Yeah, well, I do care.” Leaning down to put my sticky hair in the rushing water, I raised my voice so I could hear myself. “You moving on immediately after we broke up destroyed some of the status that we’ve worked hard to build.”

“Oh, please,” he scoffed.

I whipped my head up and gestured to my uniform. “’Oh please’? Look! I got slushied in the cafeteria. I bet Santana’s never gotten slushied.”

He stared off into the distance for a second. “I don’t remember.”

Rolling my eyes, I finished rinsing out my hair. “Can you hand me a paper towel?”

He did as I asked without saying a word. I mumbled a thank you and worked on ringing out my hair the best I could.

The silence was uncomfortable. I threw my paper towel in the trash and sighed as I turned to look at him. “Alright, you’ve driven me to say it: I’m sorry I freaked out on you yesterday.”

Puck put a smug smile on his face, probably feeling fantastic about the fact that he hadn’t been the first to say sorry. “And…?”

I gave him an evil glare before throwing every stall door open to make sure no one could eavesdrop. “I just kind of freaked out because I’ve never been that kind of…sensual with a guy. Okay?”

Puck grinned at me, but my attention was ripped from him when the door opened behind me. “What are you doing here?” I snapped at her.

The small girl with mousy brown hair and big eyes stumbled over her words. “I just, um, have to go…”

“Go somewhere else.” She kept eye contact with me for a second, so I made a shooing motion with my hand. “Seriously.”

After shooting a glance at Puck, who shrugged, she finally walked out, grumbling under her breath.

“That was bitchy of you,” he pointed out, almost like he was proud of me.

“Yeah, I know. If I’m going to take my status back, then I’m going to have to commit to the part fully.” Puck’s eyes lit up. “At least in the public eye.”

He sighed dramatically as he moved out of the way so I could get more paper towels to try dabbing some of the dye off my uniform. “So what does that mean?”

“It means,” I paused to run the paper towel under the running warm water, “that we’re fake-back together. And we can do the duet if we tone it down a little. We’ll come up with an actual concept after our practices today. Sound good?”

“Sure.” He stared at me for a second while the bell sounded loudly through the bathroom. “Oh, by the way, you’re never going to get that orange coloring out of your uniform that way. Trust me, I’m kind of an expert at slushying people.”

“You partook in this nonsense?!” I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.

He just smirked. “Want to borrow some of my clothes?”

“No.” I gnawed on my lip for a second. “Damn, I need to make more friends.”

“Newsflash, you don’t have any friends.”

“Funny,” I commented without humor. “You know I have Finn.”

“And that’s it. Well, unless you count me.”

“I don’t.” I gritted my teeth together before finally giving up on getting any orange out of my uniform. “And now I’m going to look ridiculous for the rest of the day.”

“Hey, Australia, my offer still stands.”

Giving him stink-eye, I replied, “Not only do I not want to wear your clothes, but I’m pretty sure that Coach Sylvester will kill me.”

Puck shrugged. “What will she kill you over more: staining your uniform or wearing clothes that aren’t your uniform?”

“I guess you have a point for the first time in your life.” After debating for another second, I finally looked over at him, kind of fed up. “Fine. What clothes do you have?”

“I have some sweatpants and a t-shirt that I brought for practice the other day.”

“Oh, ew!” I worked on putting my hair up in a ponytail as I gagged inwardly. “I’m not wearing your sweaty, gross clothes. Never mind.”

“I didn’t actually wear them, brainiac. I’ll be right back.”

“You realize that you’re missing class, right?”

He smirked at me. “So? I have math right now. I’m pretty sure that I’ve been taken off the attendance list because I haven’t shown up all year.”

“And you don’t get in trouble for that?”

“Hey, the Cheerios aren’t the only people who are basically royalty at this school.” He winked and departed.

I sighed, leaning up against the sink and brushing down my skirt. This meant that I would have to skip practice after school and ask Aunt Marisol to take me to get my uniform dry-cleaned.

Something told me that I was basically going to be crucified for skipping practice, especially so soon after I joined the squad. When I thought optimistically, I hoped that Coach Sylvester wouldn’t even notice I wasn’t there, but my common sense told me she would. After all, she was pretty hardcore about her routines. She can sense when one person is one millionth of a second off the beat. Of course she was going to realize that a whole human entity was missing.

However, if I showed up in Puck’s baggy clothes, I would probably get kicked off just the same. So…the choices were either skip and probably be kicked off or get kicked off.

Wasn’t that hard of a choice.

Puck finally came back and threw his clothes at me. “Wait outside,” I told him.

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious, perv! Go!”

He mumbled to himself as he walked back out the door.

It only took a second for me to get his clothes on, and they were super huge on me. Attempting to keep my pants from hitting the floor like that viral song from American Idol last year, I tied the drawstring as tightly as I could, but I still felt like they could fall down at any second.

“Puck, you’re fat,” I joked.

He took that as a cue to come back into the bathroom. “Me? Fat? Do you want me to show you what you just called fat?”

I rolled my eyes and shoved him.

“You wearing my clothes is so hot right now.”

“Calm your hormones.” I looked back in the mirror and struggled to keep from laughing out loud. “I look ridiculous.”

“Not really.”

“Maybe to you. Alright, I should probably get to class because my teacher is actually probably wondering where I am.”

“Your loss,” he shrugged. “I guess I’ll see you after practice, then.”

“You’ll see me at Glee Club, first, moron.”

“Oh, right.”

I grabbed my bag and walked out of the bathroom, but the slightest of smiles played on my lips. Was it possible that I was starting to tolerate Noah Puckerman?