love like fools ➙ glee

nine ; defying gravity.

Alicia knew that, when Finn Hudson and Quinn Fabray were getting slushies tossed in their faces, things were only going to go downhill from there.

Well, she wasn't wrong.

Time had been passing in a blur for her. She'd spent more time with Tina than Finn. She told herself she didn't want to risk her mother finding out the truth, but late at night, when honesty was all too easy to come by, she wondered if she had ulterior motives. Such as distancing herself from her closest friend selfishly.

No. That was ridiculous. She was giving him time to focus on Quinn and the baby, and she was growing other friendships while keeping her mother content. Everyone won. There was no selfishness here.

Really, there wasn't.

"Alicia!" 

She tensed when she heard Finn's voice, before scolding herself. They were still close. A few days  didn't change that. Just because she had been distant when Rachel dated Noah Puckerman and Quinn was thrown off the Cheerios last week meant nothing. Or that she'd been distant this week, too. They were all focusing on the bake sale for Artie. It was natural.

Finn caught her elbow, gently spinning her to face him. She hadn't realized she'd continued walking when he called her name. Awkward. "Did I-- is everything all right?"

Alicia blinked. "Of course. Why wouldn't it be?" Her bright tone sounded insincere to her own ears. She wasn't shocked when Finn caught on.

"I know everyone thinks I'm . . . not the smartest, but--"

"Not everyone," she mumbled.

"But I know you. I know that you wouldn't have been so, like, Mia--"

"MIA. It's an abbreviation for 'Missing in Action.'"

He shot her a dry look. She couldn't blame him. She was deflecting for unknown reasons. Why was she avoiding Finn so much? What had changed between now and two weeks ago, when they were practically attached at the hip? She hadn't even answered his phone calls every other night, only texting him to claim she was swamped in homework when she was actually watching RENT five times a week.

No need to judge. She'd always related to Mimi somehow.

Finn's original question finally slipped out. As soon as it did, Alicia felt the ground sway beneath her feet with guilt. "Did I do something wrong?" 

Her stinging eyes caught her off guard. Alicia wasn't the type to cry for a few years now. She only slipped up when she was preoccupied with suppressed emotions, but that hadn't occurred lately. Not since the incident with her old friends. Everything was going so well this year, with Tina and Rachel and Finn--

The stinging grew more persistent. She blinked. "What? No, no, of course not. I just . . . I figured you'd need a little distance to focus on Quinn and the baby while I focused on getting better in school. You know how I daydream during every class that isn't English or Spanish."

Both of which were AP classes for a reason. The ordinary freshman classes at McKinley were distressingly mediocre. She could easily daydream the entire hour and still manage a 3.5 GPA.

Finn laughed humorlessly. "Right. I-I love Quinn, I do, and I feel really bad for everything she's going through, but she's . . . she's getting so mean lately. She has all these hospital bills coming in and she keeps snapping at me to find some way to pay them, and I can't even afford new clothes, you know how hard my mom works and it's just us, I-I can't--"

He was panicking. Alicia had never seen Finn this anxious before. The guilt grew stronger as she latched onto his wrist, pulling into a deserted corner near an array of ignored lockers. She slid her hand down to take his, squeezing. "Hey, hey. I'll help you, okay? All you need is a -- a really good job. Easy."