Chapter Four

“I don’t get why you don’t want to tell them...” Finn said slowly. He was sitting on a barstool, looking at Kurt curiously as the slender young man pulled out pots and pans that seemed to have never been used. Kurt sighed, crossing his step-brother’s small kitchen to the counter where Finn sat across from him.

“I don’t feel comfortable about it,” he responded simply.

“Why not?” Finn asked, but Kurt merely shook his head as he bustled around the kitchen.

“Why are you interrogating me?” Kurt inquired in turn, dropping a pot filled with water on the stove. “I could do the same to you. I could remind you that you’ve been engaged to Rachel for years. So ready to marry her in high school, but after enlisting, you suddenly can’t. I could ask you if it’s going to take her getting pregnant for you to finally actually marry her.”

“Dude,” Finn sighed, running his hand through his hair. “I talked to you about that. You said you understood...”

“Well, I don’t anymore, Finn!” Kurt snapped, slamming down another pot with a harsh clang. “You could have the person you love!”

Silence rang through the apartment, except for the television that Aiden was watching. Even the three-year-old glanced hesitantly at the two adults.

“You have Blaine,” Finn said at last, his voice painfully quiet. Kurt laughed bitterly, pointing a spoon at him.

“The exact reason I want Mom and Dad to think I was just... running errands and came here after,” he said.

“But you do love him,” Finn protested.

“I care about him,” Kurt said in an even voice, stirring the pasta sauce as the noodles boiled. “I care about him the same way I care about Mom and Dad, and you and Aiden. That’s it.” He let out a breath and licked his lips. “I loved Alex, and seeing an ex-boyfriend doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten that.” He paused, looking at Finn with a hurt expression. “Why didn’t you tell me about his brother?”

“It happened right before Alex,” Finn said, frowning. “I feel like an idiot admitting it, but I kept forgetting to say something the two or three times we talked before Mom and Dad got the call from you.”

Kurt turned his attention back to the stove, nodding vaguely. “I felt like an idiot when I got there,” he mumbled. “He got custody of his niece, you know.”

“Damn, that’s got to be rough for him,” Finn breathed out, and Kurt nodded.

“He said she’s helped him through it all, just by being there,” he responded. “Kind of like Aiden has for me.”

There was silence for a moment before Finn took a deep breath. “This is probably a terrible time to ask, but if something happened to you, am I the one who—”

“Yes.”

Finn nodded. “Well, you will be the one to take care of mine and Rachel’s kids,” he offered.

Kurt shook his head, smiling. “Please don’t tell me she actually is pregnant,” he teased.

“Well, not that she’s told me,” Finn said, furrowing his brow. “And it’s been kind of a while since we’ve... you know—”

“Don’t want to hear it!” Kurt said. “There is a child present, Finn Hudson.”

“All right!” he said. “And I’ll do it, by the way. Cover for you, I mean. But you owe me one.”

Kurt raised his eyebrows. “I never told my father that you and your friends used to throw pee balloons at me,” he said. “I don’t care how old he is, he’ll kick your ass.”

“Daddy said a bad word!” came a cry from the living room, and Kurt squeezed his eyes shut and let out a sigh.

“No I didn’t,” he said as the tiny boy came running into the kitchen, wrapping his arms around his father’s legs.

“Did too!” he insisted.

“Well, don’t think that means it’s okay for you to do it,” Kurt pressed on.

“But then why can you do it?” Aiden asked, tilting his head and looking up at his father.

“Yeah, Kurt, why can you do it?” Finn asked, smirking, and Kurt glared at him.

“Go wash up, all right? Dinner’s almost ready,” he said, directing his attention back to the little boy at his feet. Aiden nodded and ran off again.

“By the way, I’m supposed to extend an invitation to you,” Finn said, sliding off the stool and slipping into the kitchen to grab some plates and silverware.

“Oh?” Kurt asked warily.

“I know it’s still a while off,” he went on, setting the table, “but Puck’s throwing a party between Christmas and New Years. All of the old New Directions are coming.”

Kurt shifted and sighed. “I don’t know.”

“It’s still over a month away,” Finn reminded him. “But he did it the last year, and he said he wants to do it again.”

“I’m not sure if I want to be around ten or twenty people, plus significant others, at one time,” Kurt said.

“Well,” Finn said, “look at it this way. You can knock out seeing them all at once, instead of meeting up with them separately, a few hours each.” Kurt hummed in a noncommittal way. “Come on, it’s fun. Last year Brittany got drunk and kept saying how she couldn’t believe that Mike and Tina’s baby was Asian like them, and even Artie and Quinn—”

“I’ll think about it,” Kurt sighed. “It’s just.. it’s a lot, you know?”

Finn nodded. “You took a big step by going out to see Blaine today,” he said. “I’m really glad you did, bro. I think you needed it. When are you going to see him again?”

Kurt shifted uncomfortably. “I... I don’t know,” he admitted. “It was great to see him, but...”

“But what?” Finn asked. “You two have even more in common now. You both have kids, and you’re both dealing with a lot, I’m sure he understands.”

“Look,” Kurt said, “I know you’re trying to help Finn, but you’re honestly making it worse and—and more confusing.” He sighed frustratedly. “And besides that, you keep saying you’re not trying to get me back with him, but—”

“Sorry,” Finn said quickly. “I... I get what you mean.”

Kurt nodded. “I did think I’d call Rachel tomorrow, though,” he said hesitantly. “I think I owe her that.”

“She’ll be really excited,” Finn told him, and he smiled weakly. At that precise moment, Aiden came toddling back into the room, and Kurt forced a bigger grin onto his face.

“All right, boys,” he said, “who’s hungry?”

Kurt stared at his cell phone in his hand, sighing deeply. Rachel’s number was on his screen, bright white digits staring at him. He shifted his seat on his bed. It wasn’t hard, really, he could just hit ‘send’ and talk to her. It was easy. Yet he’d been staring at the number for fifteen minutes.

He sighed exasperatedly, pressing the green call button and placing his phone up to his ear without another thought, listening to the ringing. For a brief moment, he didn’t think she’d answer. He thought that maybe she was having dinner, or taking a bath, or had just decided to call it a night and go to bed early. He considered that maybe he let himself get worked up for nothing, when he heard the ringing cut off and an intake of breath on the other line.

“Kurt.”

Kurt licked his lips and closed his eyes for a few brief seconds.

“Kurt, are you there?”

“Yeah,” he said, finding his voice at last. “Sorry about that. I’m here.”

He heard Rachel let out a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad you called,” she said. “I knew you’d want space but—oh, Kurt, not talking to you has been torture. How are you holding up?”

“All right,” he told her. “As well as can be expected.”

“I miss you,” she said. “I miss you so much. New York isn’t the same without you.”

Kurt smiled, allowing himself to let out a small laugh. “Thanks,” he responded, and they settled into a small, comfortable silence.

“I don’t suppose you want to talk,” she said, and he smiled wryly. “About it—what happened, I mean.”

“Not really,” Kurt conceded. He paused slightly. “Honestly, I was hoping that this would be one of those conversations where you’d do all the talking.”

Rachel laughed into the receiver. “Are you actually inviting me to tell you about everything that’s happened since you left?” she asked. “That’s what you want to hear?”

“Don’t pretend that you’re not itching to tell me every juicy detail about the show,” he said teasingly. “I know how you are, Miss Rachel Berry. Tell me everything.”

“Ohhh,” Rachel sighed excitedly into the phone. “You’ll regret saying that in a few hours when I still haven’t finished explaining the first two weeks...”

Kurt smiled as Rachel began babbling incessantly about the show and what had happened after Kurt dropped out, expressing her disdain for the majority of the cast (though he could still hear the fondness she had for them in her voice), and for most of the admittedly one-sided conversation, Kurt felt that maybe he really was making progress, that soon things would be better, even if they still weren’t quite good. It wasn’t until she made what he knew was supposed to be a supportive, passing comment about when he returned to New York and the theatre and Broadway that his heart stopped.

Kurt brushed his bangs out of his face, unable to focus on the words the woman on the other end of the line was saying. It was something that he had decided at the beginning of the entire ordeal, but the reality struck him at that moment that he hadn’t told a single soul.

How was he supposed to tell Rachel that he never planned on returning to New York? That he’d let go of his dream—their dream? How could be explain that things had changed? That he had changed?

His took his bottom lip between his teeth and closed his eyes tightly.

Maybe things weren’t getting better. Maybe he was just getting better at faking it.