At the time, I was of the firm belief that I deserved to be slapped. Kurt asked so little of me. All he ever wanted was for me to be home in time for dinner and I had failed to do that. I had been irresponsible; I hadn’t charged my phone, I hadn’t told him where I was going. He didn’t know where I was or what I was doing and so, naturally, he had been upset.

Now, though, I can clearly see that my actions would have only deserved a reprimanding if I had been a teenager who had stayed out too late with friends and didn’t inform my parents. Kurt had no right to hit me, whether he was a parent or a boyfriend or anything.

But, you know, hindsight is always clearer. I should have left and I didn’t. So Kurt isn’t completely at fault for everything that happened after the fact. You probably think I’m stupid. You might think I suffer from that kicked-puppy-syndrome, you know? That one where puppies who get kicked still return to their abusers with their pleading puppy dog eyes because all they want in the world is to be loved and cared for? Yeah, that one.

Well…maybe I did suffer from kicked-puppy-syndrome.

Who doesn’t want to be loved and praised and held? I certainly did.

“I’m sorry,” I said a few hours later, after Kurt had disappeared into the bedroom to calm his temper.

“I know,” he sighed, sinking into the sofa next to me.

“I – I bought this for you,” I said meekly, holding out the ruined shards of the seashell necklace I had so meticulously chosen for the man I loved. “I bought it from the art festival I went to but I - I dropped it and it broke. I’m sorry.”

He accepted the broken bits from the palms of my hands and nodded. “I’m sure it was lovely. But like I said, I don’t need you to buy me anything.”

“It was just pretty and I thought-”

“I know. But there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

Kurt stood and dumped the remains of the necklace into the nearest trash bin. I watched them fall from his fingers, piece by delicate piece, and willed my heart to mend the way the necklace never would. I felt a bit emptier inside as he tossed the bits away without care. It’s like…when you get a silly, pointless gift – and it’s a gift that you’ll never use or display for any reason at all, but it was given to you by your mom or your very best childhood friend or your favorite grandpa so you can’t get rid of it, you just can’t, but then one day it breaks or something spills on it and it’s ruined forever and part of you dies because it was so simple and useless but you loved it to death.

And then it’s just a piece of trash like a banana peel and suddenly the meaning is lost.

That’s what it felt like when I watched Kurt dust off the last few broken pieces into the bin. I lowered my head and felt the sofa dip once more before I was wrapped up in the safety and warmth of his arms. I felt his hand cup the back of my neck and at that moment, I couldn’t stop thinking about how those hands could heal just as easily as they could bruise.

“Do you just not like being around me anymore?” Kurt asked in a whisper.

“What? What’re you talking about?”

“You just spend so much time with your new friends,” he said slowly, “I thought you might be tired of me.”

“No, no,” I said with conviction as he released me from the hug. “I only hang out with them when you’re at work because I have nothing to do during the day. I mean, you’re gone for hours and sometimes when you’re busy you’re not even home until it’s time to go to bed. It just – it gets lonely.”

“…I thought you preferred to be alone.”

“I guess I just never thought I’d be able to find good friends like them, you know? Like, they don’t care if I don’t say much, or anything at all sometimes. I just like their company when you’re gone, I guess.”

“You hang out with them and you don’t even talk to them?” Kurt asked, bewildered.

“Well, I mean, there are just days where I don’t feel like talking. They talk a lot,” I pointed out. “But they don’t care if I don’t have an opinion on every single detail of their lives that they share.”

“Blaine, if you don’t even talk to these people, how can you consider them friends?”

“It’s – it’s not really like that,” I stammered because what Kurt was saying was beginning to unnerve me. “I try and join in most of the time.”

“Hm,” he mumbled flatly.

“What?” I asked, suddenly panicked, as if I was going about this friendship thing all wrong.

“No, it’s nothing,” he said. “I just think it’s strange that you have these friends, your only friends, and you hang out with them and don’t even talk to them.”

“But, like I said, I do talk most-”

“They’re your friends, Blaine,” Kurt said with a pat to my knee. “What I think doesn’t matter.”

With that, he stood and made his way into the bedroom while I sat, completely confused, on the sofa alone. I always thought that friends were the type of people who liked being around each other even if there wasn’t much to say. At least, that’s what I had observed. I didn’t have much practice in the field, as one might say, but even on the days that I didn’t feel like chiming in I still felt part of the group. I saw it as normal. I just figured they had accepted me the way I was, every bit as lonely and shy as I’d always been.

But then I realized that Kurt had a very valid point. If I didn’t feel like talking to these people all the time, why did I hang out with them on the days where I felt like being quiet? In fact, thinking back on it, I was probably just the boring third wheel type of friend, the kind that wasn’t important to the setting or the conversation. Maybe I was just an extra in the scene and they had snatched the principal roles when I hadn’t been looking.

I probably made it awkward for them, just sitting there all silent with my half-attempted smiles over the lid of my coffee cup. Suddenly, I felt blind and ashamed. How could I subject those people, people I called my friends, to such a pointless situation? Even on the days when I didn’t feel like talking, they’d still try to include me in their conversations and…I just didn’t pick up on the cues. I sat there, like a prop or a stand in, while they used their own energy to make me feel comfortable when there was no need.

I was so naïve. I was naïve and oblivious and absolutely rude. Why did I do that to them when I could just stay in my quiet room with a book and cup of tea instead of making things awkward as anything?

How could I do that to my friends?

From then on, as I stood to find my boyfriend, I vowed to never place myself in that position ever again.

“No, no, I’m just tired,” I began to tell my friends on the days when I didn’t feel like burdening them with my presence. “Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Instead of seeing Marcus and Julie nearly every day of the week, our visits dwindled to twice a week. They constantly asked if I was feeling okay and I was constantly telling them that I was simply tired or busy. In reality, some level of guilt was eating away at my subconscious. I was caught between feeling guilty about abandoning them and feeling guilty about remaining an imposing presence in their lives.

Of course, when Kurt began to realize that I was spending more time at home and less time in the bright windows of a coffee shop with the only two friends I had, he became much more jovial. He smiled easier, he laughed more often and I felt proud of myself for doing something right for a change.

We never discussed the slap. However, the shards of the seashell necklace remained imprinted on my memory, occasionally stabbing and pricking at thoughts I fought to repress.

Christmas that year was still a good one for me, though it was less romantic and less of a milestone than the previous one had been. Kurt and I cooked an entire Christmas dinner, just for the two of us, and even though we hardly made a dent in the food it was still a nice day.

I was grateful to have someone to share Christmas with.

By the time Valentine’s Day came, Kurt was in a fantastic mood and I had completely removed myself from my friends. What had started as an attempt to be less intrusive turned into me feeling uncomfortable during every meeting after that. I felt like I was inflicting my presence on them, unnecessarily so, and because of that we slowly parted ways. Sadly, I think losing my friends was the greatest cause for Kurt’s improved mood.

I didn’t know how to feel about that.

Valentine’s Day was lovely, though. While Kurt was at work, half a dozen men showed up at our front door to deliver three hundred roses, all in shimmering crystal vases. They placed them on the coffee table, the dining room table, the kitchen counters, the fireplace mantle, shelves, and eventually they had to start sitting them on the floor. When they left, I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. The room smelled like a heavenly garden and I nearly knocked three vases over trying to get into the kitchen.

The gesture was romantic and cliché but I loved it. If only I would have known that those same three hundred roses would lead to one of the saddest points in my relationship with Kurt.

Besides death, anyway.