Day 080: Wednesday 5th December, 2012
Four Corners (Utah)

"127 Hours? It's got James Franco..."

"Have you—I mean, obviously you know what happens. Will you hold my hand?"

"Of course I will, silly."



Considering that not two days earlier Blaine had put everything on the line, things between him and Kurt were remarkably normal.

Well, as normal as they could be for two people acting as if they were a couple in a real relationship suffering the aftermath of a huge argument—which Blaine loved and hated in equal measure. Neither of them was the victor nor willing to back down; Blaine was biding his time, holding onto his patience and waiting Kurt out, and Kurt was avoiding the issue entirely.

"Are you sure you don't want me to go with you?" Kurt asked they rolled to an idling stop on South Main Street, just around the corner from the Moab Yoga Studio. He was already decked out in his gym gear, his mat rolled up across his lap—quietly breathtaking when Blaine glanced over and took him in.

At length, Blaine shook his head. "I'll be fine."

"I could get directions, walk up and meet you after," Kurt said, hands twitching in his lap like he wanted to reach out. Blaine wished he would; they'd barely even touched since that night.

"Seriously, go enjoy your class. I'll be back in time to pick you up," he replied.

Kurt shot him the ghost of a smile and got out of his seat. As he was passing by, Blaine caught his wrist, rubbed his index finger across Kurt's skin, and looked up at him imploringly. The problem with being patient was that every second of every minute of every hour, he seemed to grow infinitesimally heavier. His heart felt by turns like a bruise inside his chest and then like a treasure of sorts, something he needed to keep safe for the moment Kurt would finally come and claim it, hands open and outstretched. Although he knew that the latter was the truth—that he was now simply the caretaker of his heart because it belonged to Kurt—it didn't particularly make the waiting any easier.

For one fleeting moment, as Kurt bent at the waist to dust a kiss to Blaine's lips, he was back in Key West, the land falling away beneath him. Then it was back, and Kurt was gone.

Sighing, Blaine rolled his neck and shoulders and pulled off down the street. At least the drive was appropriately distracting; the openness of the road under the prematurely darkening sky afforded him a view of the mountains up ahead and made him feel, for once, like he was at the very heart of something. The buildings grew sparser the farther he went, giving way to trees and grassy scrubland as the mountains shifted to his right. It grew darker the further he got out of Moab proper, the only lights those of cars in the distance and the R.V. itself.

He took a left along San Jose Road and then a right onto Spanish Valley Drive, passing by small wooden houses and backyards strewn with discarded tires. He pressed further and further into the mostly residential neighborhood until eventually, silhouettes of gravestones passed slowly by.

Once Blaine had parked in the sparsely populated lot at the far end of Sunset Memorial Gardens, he scrubbed a hand over his face, retrieved the small bunch of daisies from the dashboard, and reached into the glove compartment for the small box of his grandfather's ashes that had accompanied them thus far on their road trip.

Arthur Thomas had been born and raised in Moab, where he had been married at eighteen to his high school sweetheart, Rose. When she and Arthur were both twenty-four, she had passed away from what would later become known as cervical cancer. Afterward, with ghosts around every corner and no children to support, Arthur had left Moab for Richmond, Virginia, to begin work with a construction company and start a new life.

In his will, he had asked that a small portion of his ashes be scattered at Rose's grave—a part of her had remained with him until the day he'd died, and he wanted part of him back with her. Because the R.V. had been left to Blaine and he was on the road trip anyway, it simply made the most sense for him to be the one to carry out his grandfather's final request.

It took little time for him to locate the plot he was looking for on the map by the entrance, and though the cemetery was mostly dark, there were small lamps set at intervals in the ground that kept him on track.

When Blaine found the grave, he set about brushing leaves and debris from the faded stone, his heart aching—with no siblings or children of her own, Rose's grave had been all but forgotten. Running his fingers over the worn grooves and depressions of her name, he laid the daisies at the foot of her headstone and got back to his feet.

"Hello, ma'am," he said with a gentle nod. "I'm—my name's Blaine. I'm Arthur's grandson."

At a loss for what else to say, standing at the grave of a woman he'd never known—that even his mother had never known—and feeling almost like he was being perfidious to the memory of his own grandmother, he buried his hands in his pockets.

"He wanted to... He asked to be brought back to you," he finally said, drawing the small wooden box out of his pocket and turning it over in his hands. "We weren't expecting it, but you should—you should know that he passed away peacefully, and he wasn't in any pain."

The corners of his eyes stung and he tipped his head back, blinking up at the sky. "I guess you know that, though, if you're up there," he continued self-consciously, his voice hushed, almost a murmur. "Maybe... Maybe you could tell him that I miss him. Every single day. And... We called the R.V. Leona."

At that he fell silent, remembering the taste of cider and sugar on Kurt's lips while meteors streaked by. He shook his head, loosening the memories before they had a chance to take hold, and dug his phone out of his pocket. Clutching the wooden box tightly in his other hand, he scrolled through his contacts to Mom, and hit send.

"Hi, honey," Alice answered brightly after the fourth ring, and just the sound of her voice made Blaine loosen his grip on the box.

"Hey, Mom," he said. "How's the weather?"

"Cloudy with a chance of meatballs," she quipped, and though Blaine rolled his eyes, he couldn't help but smile a little. "It was sunny this afternoon, but it's cold. Nothing big to report. How about where you boys are?"

"It's already dark here, and pretty cold."

"And where is 'here?'"

Blaine squared his shoulders and fixed his eyes upon Rose's headstone. "Mom... I'm in Moab." After a few seconds had passed with no response, Blaine pulled the phone away from his ear to check that the call was still connected. "Mom?"

"Sorry, honey. I'm here," she said tremulously. "So you're in Grandpa's home town."

"Yeah. I'm at the cemetery. I thought I'd—well, I... I wanted you to be on the phone with me while I did this. I didn't wanna do it alone."

"Alone? Where's Kurt?"

"A yoga class in town," Blaine said dismissively, adding, "We just needed a little space, that's all."

"You boys aren't fighting, are you?" she asked.

"No, Mom, we're not fighting. We just..."

"Blaine, you know I can tell when you're lying to me."

"I'm not lying, I just—I don't... I don't know what we're doing anymore," Blaine said, the words rushing out of him like a breath held for too long. "I came clean with him two days ago, told him everything, and he just... He hasn't said anything."

"Oh, honey," Alice sighed. "He'll get there."

"What if he doesn't?"

"He will. You did the right thing in telling him."

"How can you be so sure?" Blaine asked, his voice small as his most deeply seated fears confronted him.

"Because I've known Kurt since he was six years old, and I know that he loves you with his whole heart," Alice said assuredly. "It's only a matter of time."

"I feel like we've wasted so much time already, though," Blaine admitted. "There were so many times when I could have—"

"Thinking like that isn't going to get you anywhere," she gently interrupted. "And look at how brave you were in telling him. My brave little soldier."

"Mom," Blaine whined.

"All I'm saying is that I'm proud of you. And Kurt will come around. Just you wait," she said. "Now, you've got something to do for Grandpa. No more stalling."

"I wasn't—" Blaine began, but cut himself off as he realized that stalling was at least part of what he'd been doing. He held up the small wooden box, examining the intricately carved Celtic knot on the lid, and heaved a deep sigh. A breeze picked up, and he knew that it was time. "Do you think I should say something?"

"Only if you need to, honey," came the soft reply, tinged with a deep, yet mostly concealed, sadness.

He carefully unlatched the small metal clasp on the front of the box and opened the lid, averting his eyes even in the darkness. He wanted to say something, but he'd said all of his goodbyes on the day of the funeral, Kurt's fingers in the crook of his elbow smoothing the rough edges. The breeze picked up even more, and as he tipped the box toward the ground by degrees, words from a song he'd heard long ago came back to him: "And when the day arrives, I'll become the sky. And I'll become the sea, and the sea will come to kiss me, for I am going home. Nothing can stop me now."

"That's beautiful, Blaine. I think Grandpa would have liked that," Alice murmured after a moment, her voice thick. "You run along now, okay? Go and find Kurt, and tell him to give you a hug from me."

Blaine nodded, and said, "Okay, Mom. Love you."

"I love you too, honey."

He hung up with a heavy heart, pausing as Rose's name caught his eye once more. He felt oddly sorry that he'd never known the first woman to have captured his grandfather's heart. They'd had so little time together—but then, as Blaine's grandfather had himself once said, "I'm lucky that your Grandma turned out to be a love of my life. I'm lucky to have had two of those."

Leaving the box on top of the headstone, he turned and made his way back to the R.V., feeling a little lighter for having closed the chapter completely, and idly contemplating the words 'love of my life.'

Later that evening, when he had picked Kurt up from yoga and taken in the flush high in his cheeks, the fluid grace returned to his body after such a noticeable absence, Kurt insisted on taking over driving duty. It took nearly three hours for Blaine to find out where Kurt was taking him, and as they stepped out of the R.V. in the middle of the desert, it dawned on him that his mother might have been right.

"One foot here, and the other here," Kurt directed him as they stood atop the Four Corners monument. The border of the circle that surrounded the meeting point read, 'Four states here meet in freedom under God.' He had one foot in Arizona, the other in New Mexico. "Now, bend over—"

"Bend over?" Blaine asked him, one eyebrow raised.

"Stop being a pervert and just do it," Kurt said.

"I swear to god if you take a picture of this," he grumbled as he followed Kurt's instruction, placing his left hand in Utah and his right in Colorado. "What now?"

"You bask in the fact that you're in not just two, not just three, but four places at once," Kurt announced triumphantly, and a few hazy memories of their second night in Montana came back to Blaine. For a moment, he let the knowledge sink in and take root—he'd wanted to be in two places at once, and Kurt had given him four.

He stood, brushing his palms off on his jeans, before turning to Kurt and cupping his jaw with both hands. As he crushed their lips together and let the kiss set his body aflame, Kurt kissing him back with just as much fervor, his mind wandered back to those four words—love of my life.

Instead of saying them aloud, however—there was most definitely such a thing as too much, too soon—he settled for five that he hoped conveyed everything all the same, whispered into Kurt's ear like a promise and a prayer: "Thank you. I love you."



Distance: 11,798 miles

Additional Listening: Iridescent by Linkin Park, Walk It Off by Angus & Julia Stone.