I’m seventeen years old and my boyfriend Kurt just broke up with me over the phone.

I’ve never thought he would do this to me. Not him. After all, he was the one who cared the most about the anniversaries and he was the one reminding me about how important are romantic gestures. He would never, he would never… Every single sentence starts in my head with these two words, slowly driving me crazy.

His voice still echoes in my head, loud and clear like in some sort of nightmare.

‘It’s better for both of us.’

The rage’s pumping slowly in my veins and when Kurt repeats probably for the tenth time “Blaine, are you still there?”. I don’t say anything. I clench my jaw and I simply hung up. My phone remains turned off for another month. Life doesn't mean much to me right now. It's just a sequence of breaths. One day I find my phone and I simply throw it out the window and then I cry myself to sleep. This is the first time I let myself cry after the breakup.

I open my eyes. The room is still dark.

My back reminds me about its existence sending sparkles of pain down my spine, but I ignore it and somehow I manage to push myself up onto my elbows. I rub my eyes in tired gesture. Getting up hasn’t hurt so much when I was younger.

Younger.

This word drags my attention.

I walk into the bathroom and I stand in front of the mirror, but I don’t recognize the person who's staring back at me. The guy with his hair messed up and dark circles under his eyes just can’t be me. I don’t want him to be. I look down and fix my gaze in the sink.

I realize that I need some facts in the right order, so I make myself look up again to meet the strange guy’s eyes.

My name doesn’t change, I’m still Blaine Anderson, but I’m most definitely not seventeen anymore. I’m the college student and this darkness surrounding me is simply another night in New York. So far from Ohio…

The apartment is mine, it’s the only thing I let my parents buy for me. During the nights it's completely dark and from what I heard, it's quite rare in New York - there is a reason why people say this city never sleeps. Lamps, banners, the lights of the speeding cars… In New York you can never see stars, unless you live far from the center of the city and street tumult. I hate it. I hate New York. I live in a typical apartment and I'm protected from the light only because my window is right in front of the other building. Apartment is on penultimate floor, which irritates me a little - if I lived a floor higher, I could easily spend time on the roof. But after all that time, I got used to it.

I wash my face with cold water and when I'm wiping my face with a towel, I close my eyes for a moment, pressing my face against the material.

I don’t have the strength to face another day.

I come back to my bedroom to check the time. It’s almost dawn. I open the window and I close my eyes for a moment. I feel the cold, winter air against my skin. I swear loudly and close the window, shivering. Fucking January. Winter weather doesn't let me play in the corners of the streets, which sometimes means I don't eat for few days. I often sing in cheap bars, but if I have to be honest, I'm earning more money on the streets. If I'm lucky, one of the waitresses is sick or simply doesn't show up in work and I can replace them. Lately I was lucky. For two weeks now I've been replacing Betty Donovan, who's had been found dead in her own apartment. My boss, Fred, still can't find a replacement for her, so I work for half of her pension, but what's the most important, I'm able to earn a lot of tips.

Betty's boyfriend still comes here to buy a beer and then for twenty minutes he's complaining and crying on my shoulder until I find the strength to remind him I have to work. When I have money, I'm buying him a dinner, because I know that he can't afford it. His boss kicked him out of work when he stopped coming to his shifts. Fred really liked Betty and this is probably why after some time, he offers him a job. Washing the dishes is nobody’s dream job, but the man is very happy. I'm not even protesting when Fred tells me I'm gonna work for even less. I just shrug it off.

I know I have to find a better job.

But when I'm talking to my friends from college, it turns out I didn't end up the worst. Those who don't use their parents' money, usually sleep around with desperate women and old businessmen to earn something. I never judge. I know that when the hunger looks you in the eyes, you're ready to do a lot to change it. It is the way it is.

I don’t have many friends. When I’m in trouble, I usually call Cathy, but we never meet anywhere beside the school. Cathy was born and raised in New York and she’s always ready to help whenever I have problem with getting to some place. Without her I probably wouldn’t survive a day in such a big city. We’re good friends and we’d definitely meet much more often, but Cathy has other obligations. Apart from studying, she needs to look after her daughter, Melanie. Cathy got pregnant at really young age. When she told her boyfriend about the pregnancy, he moved with his parents to Los Angeles to be far away from the trouble. Cathy was left alone. She and Daniel Summer, the father, haven’t spoken to each other since the day Melanie was born. Daniel arrived at hospital, but Cathy was too proud to take anything from him. She didn’t want his money. “I was stupid”, she often tells me. Now she would sacrifice her own pride and everything else for Melanie. She survived thanks to her parents who not only didn’t throw her out, but also offered to help with taking care of their granddaughter, so Cathy could go to college.

I've never met Melanie, but Cathy has a lot of the pictures of her on her phone. Melanie’s beautiful. However, she looks nothing like her mother, so she must resemble her father. Cathy has to suffer a lot, I guess, considering that every day she's looking at someone who in that painful way reminds her about the past. But the girl never complains. Sometimes, when she's late for classes, she sits next to me and whispers that Melanie gets not only older, but also more stubborn and college's not as easy as it used to be. The girl doesn't want her mommy to leave her alone with her grandparents. She cries and screams until her face turns blue, so Cathy has to calm her down and rock her in her arms until she falls asleep.

I would never tell her that, but in those moments I thank God I'm gay.

And about my old friends from high school, we don't really keep in touch. Once I stumbled upon Mike and Tina, who, unlike me and Kurt, got through the separation. They were engaged now. Mike ended the school in the same day as Kurt and to everyone's surprise, he got into Julliard. Rachel got so angry that she hasn't spoken to anyone for a whole week and I'm not sure if it was because of Finn or just the perspective of the separation, but finally, she started crying during our last meeting which had a place in Will Schuester's house and she was apologizing to Mike for the next two hours.

Mike and Tina often invite me for a dinner and we talk for hours about the old times. It’s a little painful for me to look at their happiness and I know they’re aware of that. I’m much more attached to Tina than I am to Mike, after all, we both stuck at Lima when our boyfriends went to New York. She was the one helping me to put the pieces of my life back together after Kurt broke up with me and many times she saw me losing control. Sometimes I simply cried for hours and she stroked my hair, whispering sweet nothing to calm down, but at the same time, she didn’t even try to cheer me up. She knew that it’s pointless just like she knew what Kurt meant to me. There was nothing she could do to help. Few years later, she admitted how afraid she was back then. She was scared that Mike will break up with her the same way Kurt broke up with me and she won’t even get a chance to say goodbye.

“I guess Kurt never loved me the way Mike loves you,” I tell her.

She knows that it means I don’t want to talk about it.

‘I need to call them soon’, I think, as I sit down at the edge of bed, reaching out for the cigarettes laying on my nightstand.

The match dissipates the darkness for a little while as I light up my cigarette, but I put out the fire with quick movement of my hand. I take a careful drag on a cigarette and I let out the smoke, which slowly starts to fill up the room, reducing the visibility.

I’m trying to give up smoking few months now. Still ineffectually.

Cathy thinks that cigarettes make me look sexy.

Cigarettes, coffee…

I don’t even remember the times when my life tasted differently.