The corsage was beautiful. Quinn lightly touched the silk petals of the artificial flower that was tied to her wrist. The ribbon even matched her eyes.

"You ready to go?" Finn asked. She nodded to him, and he offered her his hand to pull her up from her seat on the stairs. Maybe he was starting to take this relationship seriously.

The day after prom, Quinn was sitting at her desk finishing up her English homework, when she happened to glance at the corsage she had left there the night before. It occurred to her that there was no way Finn could have chosen that color of ribbon by himself. Even he wasn't that lucky. And the last time Quinn had asked him what color her eyes were, his response was 'Umm…brown? Ish?'

But who knew her well enough to match something to her eye color from memory, and would be willing to help Finn? Sam, or Puck, maybe. But she doubted they talked about things like that. Santana would have sabotaged him. Mercedes, maybe. She didn't really talked to Finn, though.

Rachel. Rachel talked to Finn. She was also the sort of person who notices little things, like the exact color of her friends' eyes.

She stared at the ribbon for some time before something clicked in her mind. The scarf. Rachel had given her a scarf for Christmas that almost exactly matched the shade of the ribbon. It had been way over the twenty dollar Secret Santa limit, too. Quinn knew because she had considered buying the same scarf for herself.

The corsage would definitely fit the pattern of oddly intuitive gift choices from Rachel.

But why would Rachel help Finn impress his girlfriend? Wasn't she still in love with him? Maybe she had given up on that. Maybe she was serious about making their friendship work. Their talk in the bathroom certainly made that a possibility.

She decided not to say anything to Finn about Rachel's assistance. They had enough problems for now.

One night, a few weeks into summer, Quinn watched a movie that Santana had leant her. The movie had made mention of meanings ascribed to certain flowers, and that had led Quinn to a website with a long list of flowers and what you could say with them. She was idly scrolling through the list when something caught her eye.

Gardenia – you're lovely, purity, grace, secret love

Quinn froze. She just sat there for several minutes and stared at the last two words. Secret love. Did Rachel secretly love her?

Suddenly an image of Rachel tying the flower onto Quinn's wrist herself, instead of Finn. Rachel dancing with her at prom. Rachel throwing her onto the bed and—.

Maybe she had been watching too many of Santana's movies. That must have been the source of those thoughts. Surely Rachel had meant for the flower to convey one of the other meanings. Those we're things friends could say, right? Maybe Rachel wasn't even aware of the meaning. And wasn't it supposed to be from Finn, anyway?

She shook her head to clear out all the stray thoughts. Maybe it would be best to forget about this.

She put the corsage safely back in its box, then hid it far at the back of her closet.

Much later, when she was almost asleep, Quinn recalled something she had once heard Rachel say.

'I'm very specific when I gift.'