woe 🫱🐥 pavarotti be upon ye

“Here.”

Sam almost misses the quiet voice off to somewhere on his left, and it's a little bit intentional. He's got too much going on right now, and half his mind has been debating selling his guitar all day. Stacey and Stevie are beginning to get cabin fever from the abrupt transition from two-story house to one motel room, and with the money he could split it between helping his parents and getting his siblings something nice.

But after a second, the guilt gets to him and he turns his head anyway, and there's Quinn, sitting next to him in the empty classroom and holding out two slips of paper. It takes him another second to recognize the  simple, edited layout with the Breadstix logo on it.

Before he can help it, he’s scoffing out a laugh, and Quinn smiles that perfect, dazzling, beauty queen grin that makes her look like she could be on a toothpaste ad—or a shampoo ad with that hair—maybe a hair dye ad—or one of those fashion models plastered over the sides of the wall at the clothes store—just any kind of ad, really.

It makes him feel a little self-conscious, and his smile falters a little as he ducks his head. Sam busies himself with tucking his school supplies into his bag. Normally, he'd just chuck them in, but now he does so a little more conscientiously and carefully, dragging it out to avoid looking Quinn in the face.

“There’s no expiry date,” Quinn says, “and I dropped by yesterday to ask if these were still valid. The manager said yes.”

“Cool.” There's only so much stalling you can do with a couple notebooks and a pen, so eventually Sam has to look up again.

Her smile has only faltered a little. Quinn’s hands are steady as she takes Sam’s, and she slips the coupons in. Her skin feels ice cold, but her touch is gentle.

“It’s yours.”

“We both won.”

“Well, I made you pay. So you can have mine too.”

Sam stares down at her hands, holding his closed. It’s a kind gesture, once he can’t afford to refuse, and the mix of resentment and gratitude and lingering love is a bitter pill to swallow.

“Thanks,” he manages. That’s really cool of you, he thinks of saying, but it gets stuck in his throat with all the feelings. And honestly, he’s not sure it’ll come out like he means it. So he smiles instead, and nods, tucking the coupons carefully into a side pocket on his backpack. Cool cool cool, he thinks, and he’s not entirely sure that he wasn’t muttering it under his breath when he looks back up.

Quinn just closes her mouth, her smile a little more subdued now, but genuine. There’s something brewing behind her eyes, and Sam is afraid that it’s an apology.

“I was homeless for a while,” She says.

“Huh?”

“That came out poorly.” Quinn laughs, and brushes a stray lock out of place. “I, um, last year, the whole babygate thing. My dad kicked me out, so I was . . . " she pauses, and it falls from her lips in a terse exhale, " . . . kind of hopping houses, just staying wherever anyone offered until my mom took me back. I even stayed at Puck’s for a while. So I get it.”

Sam looks at her now, really looks at her. Quinn was looking off in another direction, but shifts her gaze back. It feels like more of a moment than anything they’ve ever had in their relationship.

Sam swallows.

“So, I know it’s hard, but whatever you need.” Quinn gestures to him, and Sam sees the awkward teenage girl under the persona. “I’ll help. Better than nothing, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, and he repeats, genuinely, “Thanks.”

Quinn nods. She stands up, brushing invisible dust off her skirt. Sam watches her begin to put her mask back on, the one that stayed in place almost the whole duration of their relationship.

There’s something about it that’s honestly still alluring—the beauty queen smile, the elegance, the way she holds herself like she knows she’s being watched and every move is angled picture-perfect. You wouldn’t think that this was a girl who’d been kicked out, who’d gone through all she did.

Sam wants that. He wants the abs, the rockin’ bod, the prestige of “quarterback”, “leader”, “golden kid”, and just to feel good about looking good. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sam’s not interested in being held back by the status quo, and Quinn didn't seem to be either. It's what he liked about her in the first place.

What’s the point of being popular if you can’t do what you want? She’d asked him back then, and her eyes were burning with something intense, a cold fire like the sting of the cherry red slushie that was still dripping down under his shirt.

It looks a lot like desperation now, Sam thinks, something cool settling in his heart as he watches her string her popular girl look back together after a moment of vulnerability. That moment in the bathroom is way behind him now, light years back, and here he finds that Quinn a little more real, within reach.

He's not sure he wants to reach for it this time, not like before. He'd wanted to marry Quinn. Past tense. Now it's just . . . colder, but gentle. Alive, still. Different, because now even he's keeping his situation under wraps to keep himself from the added torment of high school judgement. He gets it.

Something new rises up and is leaving his throat in a cough before he can think too much on it, and Quinn looks at him questioningly.

Strangely, he feels like laughing. It feels stupid to be hung up on this now, with everything going on in his life right now, and it's both easy and difficult to put their history aside in his head for now.

“So, I’m trying to get a job as a delivery guy at that pizza place in West Lima." Sam clears his throat. "The thing is, I can’t pick up as many shifts as I need to ‘cause I gotta look after my sister and my brother, my parents are out a lot, you know, 'cause of the . . . ”

“So, babysitting?” Quinn fills in.

“Yeah,” Sam says.

To his surprise, she smiles.

“Cool," She says, and he's not sure if she's mocking him, the way she says it, but she's following it up before he can think on it too hard. "When?”

“Uh, right now, actually.” Sheepish, Sam ducks his head. “I was gonna head over there while it was light out.”

“Sure,” Quinn says easily. “I’m free.”

Sam nods, and stands up. Thinking, he reaches into the still open side pocket and takes the coupons out. He holds them out.

Quinn's lips purse and her eyes squint. At her awkward expression spasm, he laughs.

“It's better if you just give these to Stacey and Stevie,” he says, and she takes them.

"You're a good brother," she says.