Puck was right behind him, and swung an arm over his shoulder, leaning heavily on him as he bumped his fist into Blaine’s chest. “So. Tell us about your summer, man,” he prompted, grinning over at the other three behind them. Finn, Artie and Mike cheered quickly, agreeing. “Spare no dirty details. I may not have a thing for cock but I can appreciate a good fuck like any other.”

Smirking to himself, Blaine led the way outside, to where the sun was shining bright in the post-summer weather, sunglasses still in place. “I met a guy,” he replied, shrugging somewhat. His face swarmed in his mind, still, bright blue eyes and an angelic complexion. There’d been laughter, kissing, soft touches on smooth, warm skin, and playful shoves into the waves.

Blinking himself out of it, Blaine turned around and flopped down his usual seat at the top of the bleachers, immediately feeling himself surrounded by the other guys. “You know. It was fun….” he trailed off, knowing he was being a jackass, and kept the smirk in place.

“Did you get some?” Puck asked, raising his eyebrows at him with a devilish grin.

Blaine scoffed. “Dude. Remember who you’re talking to?” He ran a hand through his hair and leaned back on his elbows, letting himself enjoy the attention. “He was crazy for me. Would’ve bent over the hood of my car if I asked.”

A twinge of guilt made his stomach flip at his words, but he ignored it. He was back in New York. It wasn’t like they were going to see each other again, or like his friends would find out the truth. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter.

The claps on the back and laughter around him encouraged him further. Artie had an excited spark in his eye. “Where’d you meet, yo? How come we can’t get girls like that?” he asked around, clinging to Blaine’s every word.

As usual, he thought, with a self-satisfied grin. “Malibu,” he replied, shrugging him off. “My dad dumped me there for the summer.”

“What was he like?” Mike asked, shifting on the bleachers to be able to look at Blaine properly as Puck swatted at the back of his head. “Chill on the gay, man.”

“Sexiest little thing ever,” Blaine replied, smiling, his face in his mind again, the way he’d looked flushed after being kissed, sleepy when it got too late, or with a dab of ice cream on his chin, which he’d wiped away. He shook his head to clear his mind. “Took him for a ride to the movies…” he let that hang there, knowing they’d take it the way he wanted them to, and wiggled his eyebrows.

Finn was the only one looking rather uncomfortable; only because, Blaine knew, he hadn’t gotten any. Ever. “No need to brag, man.”

“Oh, shut up, Hudson,” Puck replied, shoving at him too before turning to Blaine. “So, was he…y’know. Good?”

Blaine pushed his sunglasses up to look at him for a moment without replying, then brought out another cigarette from his pocket, lighting it and puffing smoke into his face. “D’you think I’d have stayed with him if he hadn’t been?” he replied instead. “What do you think, Puckerman?”

Puck shrugged him off and took out a cigarette for himself as Artie—who’d been carried up by Finn and Mike, wheelchair still on the ground—elbowed Blaine on the knee. “And he doesn’t have any friends to spare?” he asked meaningfully, much to Mike’s amusement, who snorted into his hand.

“Just because you have a girlfriend, yo, doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t want a slice of pie, too!” Artie argued, put off by that. Blaine blew more smoke through his lips and licked them. “He went back to New York,” he replied instead. “It was summer fling. Not a big deal. Good fuck and it’s over, y’know?”

The other four nodded in agreement for a while, silence settling in before Finn spoke up. “So you’re, y’know, over Smythe?”

Blaine snorted. “Don’t be a jackass. I never even liked him.”

“That’s not what you were saying when you were all over him in his Porsche last year,” Mike muttered under his breath, and Blaine kicked up a boot-clad foot to his side, sending him tumbling down one of the bleachers’ steps.

“Well, he’s history. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have better things to be doing than hanging around you idiots,” Blaine muttered, pushing himself up from the bench and jumping down the remainder of the bleachers, rounding them until he was alone, and slumped against one of the metal poles.

Yeah, he missed him. He could’ve sworn he’d fallen in love over the summer. If that wasn’t love, he didn’t know what love was. But they couldn’t stay together—he’d left, and Blaine had gone back to school where he couldn’t be a boy in love.

Trying to picture him in New York, going back to school there, with his old friends—who knew if he might already be chatting up some other guy right now—was impossible. To Blaine, he was sunshine, he was sand; he was the sound of waves hitting rocks, shrieks as they tumbled into shallow water and warm kisses under the stars.

It was pathetic. He was being pathetic. Shaking his head at himself, Blaine spat out his cigarette and ground the heel of his shoe on it. Enough.

---

“You guys are not going to believe what I just found out,” Rachel shrieked as she approached the rest of the girls. Kurt had been dragged over by Brittany, who seemed to have deemed him worthy of sitting with them, and was now off to a side of the steps in the school courtyard, looking up at Rachel as she came over, face bright. “I got a role in Hairspray!”

Mercedes rolled her eyes at her. “I thought the school play this year was West Side Story?”

Rachel twirled around and sat down next to Kurt excitedly bobbing up and down. “Yes, it is, but Hairspray’s an off-school production. Like, a big time thing. This could be it.”

“Wait,” Mercedes narrowed her eyes. “So, you’re dropping out of school?”

Kurt raised his eyebrows and turned to Rachel, who was pursing her lips, deep in thought, before nodding. “Yes,” she finally said, sighing. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Where’s school going to get me if I want to be an actress? Trust me. I’ve been taking acting lessons all summer. This is the first step; next stop, Broadway.”

The girls stared at her for a moment before shrugging and going back to their own lunches. Quinn was smoking off to the side, and snorted. “I can think of a thing or two I did better during my summer,” she drawled, causing Rachel to huff somewhat.

“Who did you hook up with now?” she asked, half-irritated.

Quinn shrugged. “You don’t’ know him.”

Mercedes groaned. “What is it with everybody having summer flings? Why can’t this girl get a guy for once? Even Brittany hooked up with that cute cashier from the ice cream shop at the docks.” Rachel turned to Brittany with eyebrows raised. Kurt got the feeling she wasn’t the smartest cookie around. Then Mercedes rounded on him. “I mean, what did you do this summer?”

A rosy blush crept up to his cheeks, and he bit down on his lower lip, glancing at Quinn uncertainly, shifting before replying. “I…I met a boy.”

There was a pause, in which Kurt felt heat flooding his face, and then he had the immediate attention of three girls. “What!?” Rachel gasped, eyes shining as she looked up at him. “You didn’t tell me about that! Where?”

“At the beach,” Kurt replied, looking between Rachel’s eyes bugging out of their sockets, Mercedes’ dropped jaw and even Quinn was looking on interestedly, having pushed her sunglasses over her head and seemed to be assessing him like she clearly thought he wasn’t the type. It made him want to prove her wrong.

He sat up a little straighter. “We had a thing,” he continued, licking his lips as his face came to mind again. “Just—just throughout the summer.” They were still staring at him expectantly, which gave him a little more confidence, so he went on. “He was cute. Handsome, charming; the perfect gentleman.”

Rachel made a soft noise and smiled at him eagerly; he smiled back automatically. “It was great,” he said fondly, “We spent hours on the beach; he took me to see his house. We danced, and sung together. He sings. Really well,” he added, to Rachel’s expression. “We went to the karaoke bar a lot, and we had ice cream together…”

“How old was he?” Mercedes piped up, having forgotten about her bedazzled cellphone to watch him.

“Eighteen,” Kurt replied, wistful. “He showed off all the time. Picked me up, raced me down the beach...it was perfect.”

Brittany seemed engaged. “Was it love at first sight?” she asked, voice breathless, and Kurt blushed again, biting his lip, and shrugged a little. “I guess so,” he whispered back. “It seemed like that.”

“He sounds like a drag,” Quinn commented from off to the side, smirking a little, and Kurt’s face fell somewhat before Rachel waved her off. “Ignore her, tell me more.”

Hesitantly, Kurt fiddled with the strap of his own bag. “I—I don’t know; he was really sweet. He had the most gorgeous eyes; hazel. And he held my hand in the movies and…we kissed.”

Mercedes giggled. “Get it, boy!” she laughed, shaking her head at him. “So, where is he now?”

Kurt smiled sadly. “I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “I mean. He said he loved me, and I—me too, but it was going to be over. I was supposedly moving back to New York, and we just…decided it’d be better to end it. Let it be what it was, you know? Just a summer romance.”

A silence filled the space between them before Brittany broke it. “Wait, so you’re gay?”

“Oh my god, Britt,” Quinn groaned. “Look at him.” Parting his lips a little, Kurt flicked his eyes off to a side, not wanting Quinn to notice how much that kind of insulted him, and stayed quiet instead, while Mercedes whispered something into her ear.

“It was no big deal,” he added after a moment, taking a deep breath and trying to forget the way his hands had felt so right wrapped around his waist, holding him tight, or the way he could have spent days looking into his eyes, at that exquisite honey-green color, and let out the breath, nodding to himself. “It’s over now.”

Just like that, the bell rang again, signaling the end of lunch. The girls started to wrap up around him, Rachel tugging him up to his feet. “Crap,” he suddenly remembered. “I have to go see the English teacher before class! I’ll see you later,” he told Rachel, who nodded.

Turning back to jump down the stairs, Kurt swung his satchel over his shoulder when a voice stopped him. “Kurt!” Mercedes called out behind him, and he looked over his shoulder as they caught up with him. “What was his name?” she asked meaningfully.

“Oh,” Kurt said. “Blaine. Blaine Anderson.”

Mercedes stopped walking beside him and he gave her a curious look before offering the girls a small smile and bounding off towards the English classroom.

“Oh my God,” Mercedes muttered under her breath, and turned back to look at Quinn, who was staring after Kurt’s disappearing frame with a look that spelled disbelief and something like a flash of anger. “Did you know about this?”

“What do you think?” Quinn hissed, rolling her eyes as she shouldered her way past Brittany, then paused, thinking better of it, and turned around to face the other three girls with a smirk set on her face. “Well,” she decided. “Isn’t Kurt going to get a nice surprise this afternoon at the pep rally?”

Without another word, she turned around and walked off, leaving Rachel to turn to Mercedes with wide eyes. Brittany frowned at them. “Are we planning a party for him?”