Kurt’s grandmother had given him a little time to pull himself together then the two of them set out for lunch. She asked if there was anywhere special he wanted to go but he agreed to bow to her wisdom.

They went to Aureole, a bright and obviously expensive restaurant in the Theater District. The maitre d greeted his grandmother by name and showed her to her ‘favorite table’, a quiet corner booth away from the bar area. She ordered the summer squash soup to be followed by the pink snapper. It took Kurt less than a minute with the menu to choose grilled octopus and lobster salad. The waiter thanked them and disappeared leaving his grandmother considering him for a few minutes. “So tell me what your plans are after senior year?”

“This. New York. Blaine and I want to move here and go to college.”

“Have you thought about schools?” She sipped her drink.

“We’re talking about Julliard but I want to look into fashion journalism too.”

“Julliard.”

“Long term I think Blaine belongs on Broadway. I haven’t decided.”

She considered his outfit, “What about design?”

He perked up, “You think? I’d love that but I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“It seems like such a long shot.”

“Unlike Broadway.”

“Blaine can do anything. I wish he was here. You’d love him, he’s sweet and caring and you should hear him sing. The world pretty much stops when he starts to sing.”

“I’d love to meet him. He certainly would have been welcome to join you if I had thought your father would approve.”

“His parents don’t even let us speak. He’s in a mental hospital because his father convinced them I…doesn’t matter, the point is he was in a car accident and everything started to fall apart after that. His parents have forbidden us from seeing each other. They don’t know that I know where he is, neither does my father. I hate lying to him but he thinks, well, he thinks we’re too close but he doesn’t understand how much we need each other.”

“First Burt knows very well that you’ve been sneaking off to see Blaine. He told me he thought Blaine needed your support right now more than he needed to make a point. He’s hurt that you didn’t tell him, so you might want to correct that, but that’s between you and your father and I won’t interfere. I don’t completely understand how a car accident would land him in a mental hospital, was there head trauma?”

Kurt felt his face flush. “No, no head trauma. His father is,” he paused, “not okay with him being gay. He told them that I was pressuring him, brain washing him. To their credit the hospital saw through it. They’re going to talk to his parents with him today to try to help them all deal with it. I just wish his father didn’t make him feel so much like there’s something wrong with him. He was always so sure of himself and now it’s like there’s something broken in him. We don't ever talk about that night, what happened, he won't discuss it even with me but the guy who hit him, he was drunk, and he smashed into Blaine and pushed him over an embankment and kept on going. A little further down the road he hit another car head on and killed a mother and son. The kid was from Blaine's school, a freshman. His dad was devastated and Blaine's father...” Kurt's eyes were welled with tears of rage, "His father told him the wrong boy died that night. If there's anything he needs to be dealing with in that place it's that. It's feeling guilty for living and feeling like his family would rather he be dead than in love with a boy."

"What of the man who hit him?"

"Died on the operating table, and I'm relieved because I'm not sure I could go on knowing he was out there. It's hard enough every day to not go after Mr. Anderson, but it isn't worth it. It's just another year and we can live our own way." Kurt looked at his grandmother for the first time since he started speaking. He hadn’t talked about the last part with anyone since it happened. Blaine didn’t know he’d overheard the conversation with his father and Kurt kept waiting for him to bring it up. He’d spent so much time since that day plotting the second Blaine turned 18 and could get away. He would love Blaine so hard he’d forget he’d ever felt anything but surrounded by love.

His grandmother took his hand across the table. “I’m sorry. It’s so much for a young person to go through, for both of you to go through. What does Blaine’s mother say?”

“She’s, Blaine’s father broke her a long time ago. It’s not my story to tell.”

The waiter set down their appetizers, his smile lingering on Kurt just a touch longer than necessary. It wasn’t lost on his grandmother but Kurt remained oblivious “Tell me why you love this boy.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocked and found a picture of Blaine, turning it to his grandmother. “This is a good start. He’s the best looking boy I’ve ever seen, even if he’s half my height.”

“Very handsome, but that’s not love. That’s lust.”

“Grandmother!”

“Oh, sorry, shall we pretend I don’t know teenage boys are lusty?”

“Yes please.”

She sighed, “Carry on then, why else?”

He listed some of Blaine’s more obvious attributes: supportive, caring, kind, intelligent, funny, and sarcastic, into many of the same things Kurt was and yes, an amazing kisser. “But it’s more than that, it’s all these things that there aren’t words for. The way he looks at me, the way I feel when I’m with him, the way I know I can trust him with anything. I’ve never been very good at being vulnerable before him, but there’s nothing I can’t say, or do when I’m with him. He believes in me, he shares things with me that cut so deep for him he hasn’t even admitted them to himself fully. We just, belong.”

His grandmother excused herself to the ladies room and Kurt picked at his food and absently flicked through the photos of Blaine on his phone setting on the table. The waiter returned to top off his water, “Oh, handsome boy alert, is he yours?” He grabbed the phone up and leered at the image on the screen.

“Yes, he is.” Kurt reached up to take the phone back.

“Yummy. Bring him with you next time.”

“Yeah, I’ll get on that.”

When she returned from the ladies room Kurt’s grandmother’s eyes were red, she’d gone there to cry, and Kurt wondered if it was that she didn’t want the waiter to see her, or if she didn’t want him to see her.

The remainder of the conversation was light hearted. Kurt changed the subject himself, asking about the d�cor of his room and learning his grandmother had chosen with him in mind, hoping he’d spend his summers in New York while in college, not realizing his plans to move there. “I don’t know if you and Blaine had planned on living together here, if not you can live with me if you like while you’re in school.”

“But we can’t both stay with you?”

“Not that I’d mind, I just think two young men in love would want more privacy than living with your Gran might offer. “

This made Kurt smile which lightened his grandmother’s heart. She took her cue from him and asked what shows he wanted to see while in town and what else he might like to do.

They walked to Eataly for gelato after lunch and sat across the street outside watching the city go by. Kurt released a contented sigh, “I love it here, it feels more like home than Lima ever has.”

“Your mother loved it here too. She used to come in December every year and Christmas shop, see all the Broadway shows she could, dance in all the nightclubs. I hated her running around in those clubs it seemed so terribly seedy but she’d just roll her eyes, add another layer of mascara and race out the door.”

“Did she ever think about leaving Lima?”

“For a little while, she moved here, worked as a secretary, they still called them secretaries then, but she missed your father so much and he hated the city. Ultimately she went back for him.”

“Do you think she ever resented us for missing out on what she wanted?”

“Never. I’d ask her all the time if she missed the city and she’d tell me she had everything she needed when she looked in your father’s eyes. Then you came along and she was overjoyed. You lit her up from the inside out. She be scrapping with her sister or huffing at the mailman, she had a short fuse sometimes, but then you’d make some little baby noise and her attention would turn to you and she’d melt.”

“I wish I remembered her more. I remember weird pieces of things. When we were moving to the bigger house so Finn and I could have our own rooms we went through all these boxes in the attic. I found one full of her old purses and there was this little atomizer in it, the perfume should have gone to alcohol ages ago, it should have smelled rancid, but I sprayed it anyway and it was like having her right there in the room.” He swallowed hard.

“When you were a tiny thing I would babysit you while your mom and dad went to the movies, she was always dragging him to the old black and white movies they’d show on Monday nights downtown. You’d cry and cry when they left but I’d spray that perfume and you’d settle right down and sleep.”

“I know Dad would move mountains for me but Mom was my safety net. There was never judgment, she never had to try, she just, loved me. I didn’t feel that way for 8 years.”

“Meaning you do now?”

He smiled a little sadly, “Blaine.”