With You, Without You

Chapter One

With a sigh, Rachel trudged up the stairs to her room. It had been a very long day. After barely over a week together she'd broken up with Noah. Exhaling a bitter laugh, Rachel hitched her pink dance bag higher on her shoulder. It shouldn't hurt this much. She hadn't lied when she'd told Noah that their relationship was built on a fantasy, both her's and his. Originally, she'd agreed to date him because he was the most experienced sixteen year old boy in Lima, probably in all of Ohio, and until his lips had first crashed against her own, Rachel had hardly any experience to speak of. Only that one clandestine kiss in the auditorium with Finn. In her mind, he made the perfect Finn-substitute. Noah was a way to gain more carnal experience so that when she finally was with the boy she really wanted Rachel wouldn't feel so out of her depth.

If Noah had remained the way he always was, which was crude at the very least, the plan might have been successful. Instead, he'd done something completely out of character and he'd been nice. He'd been attentive, and romantic. Not with flowers and chocolate, but in a way that was just simply Noah. He'd been more than a wonderful boyfriend and far more than she'd ever expect him to be. He'd given up football for her. He'd still been the same crude and unbelievable foul-mouthed boy she'd come to know through Glee. Still, Rachel hadn't missed the pride that was so evident on his face as he walked down the halls with her on his arm. In short, it took less than two days of their unlikely union for Rachel to nearly forget about Finn altogether and truly start to care for the handsome bad boy at her side.

Maybe, if she'd kept her attentions on Finn, Rachel wouldn't have noticed. Maybe, if she'd kept her attentions on Finn, she'd would have noticed and she wouldn't have cared. The problem was that she started to actually focus on Noah and she did notice, and she most certainly cared. He kept looking at Quinn...almost constantly. Rachel had become very much aware of where his attention was centered when it wasn't centered on her. It seemed like an involuntary reaction on his part, as if his eyes magnetically drifted in Quinn's direction whenever he wasn't forcing them elsewhere. She'd tried to ignore it, but every time it would happen her heart would clinch in a way that was unfamiliar and far too painful to bare. It would stutter in a way that terrified her in it's intensity. She had to make it stop.

Her acting skills had really been put to the test when she'd found him brooding on the bleachers that afternoon and casually ended their relationship. He didn't seem to notice how hard she had to fight to get the words out as he kept his back to her from a few rows below. Rachel had even almost taken it back when he'd told her he was going to break up with her anyway. It was a blatant lie. On some level she knew that he really had liked being with her, he genuinely did want her. It just wasn't as much as he wanted the blonde Cheerio who seemed to be the epitome of everything Rachel would never amount to. If they had continued, Rachel knew she would just be playing understudy to Quinn Fabray. After several months of chasing after Finn and never measuring up to the gorgeous and popular head cheerleader, Rachel had made a decision. She couldn't do it anymore. She couldn't play that role with Noah. It might actually kill a piece of her to do so.

Rachel hadn't been surprised at his defensive behavior. Noah had a prideful stubbornness that easily matched her own. Her supposedly easy dismissal of him had definitely wounded that pride. Still, her natural inclination toward eternal optimism had lead her to hope for a continuation of friendship between them. When he'd coldly said they hadn't ever been friends it had crushed that hope into tiny unrecognizable pieces. She'd been grateful when he'd stormed away because he missed the tears that built in her eyes at his hurtful words. It took twenty minutes for Rachel to regain control of her emotions enough to leave her spot on the freezing metal bleachers, but as she made her way across the parking lot toward her car, Rachel tried to regain her normally tenacious drive. She'd decided that she was going to throw herself into meeting her future dreams of fame and glory and not let herself dwell on the incredibly short-lived romance she'd shared with Noah Puckerman.

The task was far easier to plan than it was to execute. Rachel had pushed herself so hard in the dance class she attended after school that the instructor had to request that she slow down so that the other dancers could keep up. Slowing down her pace left her mind open to wander and that merely served to cause her more pain. The time she pent in a private studio afterward was mean to be spent pushing herself to the limit, to that place were she didn't think anymore, but simply moved to the music on her ipod. However, the music turned out to be a problem. Every song that blasted through the ceiling speakers taunted her, filled her with flashes of memory involving a mohawked boy with a lazy smirk and strong arms that had held her with amazing tenderness when his hands weren't traveling up her body in heated passion.

Her stubbornness was obvious when it took her four hours to give up and go home. Luckily, her dads were still away on business until Monday. If she couldn't ignore her feelings, Rachel had every intention of wallowing in them for just a little while. She fully intended to spend the weekend eating junk food and rededicating herself to her collection of Rogers and Hammerstein. By time school started again Rachel had no doubts that she would have flushed Noah completely out of her system.