“Mercedes!  Britt!  Have you signed Kurt’s card yet?” Tina yelled up the stairs.  The Delta Nu Sorority house was buzzing with energy as most of the chapter was there for the surprise party.  More sisters breezed in through the back door, shedding their UCLA Cheerleading jackets as they came in from outside.  Tina followed the procession of the big, pink, glittery card as each sister signed the inside.

“We’re coming!” Tina heard Mercedes yell back as footsteps pounded on the stairs.  Her two friends, one blonde and pale, the other dark-skinned and dark-haired, rounded the corner dressed fabulously.

“Excellent!” Tina approved of their outfits, handing them the card to sign.

“Alright girls!” she called to the room at large, but the noise level did not change.  “DELTA NU!” Tina yelled in a sing-song voice, using the sorority’s secret code.

“Pink and Blue!” the room replied, snapping on the words.

“Anchored True!” The sisters all said together, full attention now to Tina, their president.

Tina smiled at her sisters.  “Alright ladies, Kurt Hummel, better known to us as our Kappa Beta Chapter’s Anchor Man for three years running, is getting ENGAGED tonight!”  The whole room erupted in squeals and snaps.

“Okay, okay!” Tina called, quieting them back down.  “Everyone signed the card, right?  He should be here in fifteen minutes so Mercedes can approve of his outfit and give him his pre-date pep talk.  We’ll meet him in the foyer and you guys will hide in here—” she stopped as three phones went off at once.  Tina picked up her phone at the same time that Mercedes and Brittany did, and after they read the group text they glanced at each other in horror.

“Change of plans!  There’s a fashion emergency!  Britt, Cedes, and I have to go calm Kurt down.  Stay here, don’t panic, and get the cheesecake bar set up.” Tina called to an anxious crowd of sisters as she grabbed her wallet and keys.

“Let’s go!  Kurt’s in trouble!” Britt called as she and Mercedes ran out the back door after Tina.

Kurt discarded another silk button-down onto the ever-growing pile in his dressing room.  He buried his face in his hands briefly, trying to pull himself together.  It didn’t have to be perfect, he tried to reassure himself.  It just had to be close, very close.

He looked up at the mirror, uncovering his eyes but keeping his hands on his face.  A scared young man with big blue eyes, freshly spray tanned skin, and (mostly) sun-bleached blonde hair stared back at him.  He looked like he could use a massive pep talk.

This could be—no, it IS—the biggest night of your life, Hummel.  He’s going to ask you to go to Massachusetts with him.  You’ve got to be ready and that includes having the perfect outfit.

When his boyfriend of two years had asked him to dinner, Kurt knew instinctively that this was no ordinary evening out.  He had instantly noticed the nervous but sure way that Sam had suggested the outing, his unnecessary reminder that Kurt should wear something nice, a subtle indication that he had something important to talk about.  When he hung up the phone, Kurt could only think of tuxes and flowers and his father leading him down the aisle.  Kurt had long been dreaming of marrying Sam, and now, with his graduation only a semester away, it was the only thing he was sure about anymore.

“Mr. Hummel?  Are you okay?”  The sales attendant knocked on the door softly.  Kurt had been here so long that the store manager had sent someone to check on him.  He straightened up and moved to the door of the dressing room.

“Yes, sorry,” he called through the door, running a hand through his hair, “I’m nearly done, I just—”

“Kurt?  Kurt, are you there?”  He would recognize that voice anywhere: Mercedes.  Kurt heard a muffled voice say “I don’t think the first place we should look for Kurt is in a closet…” and a third voice barely stifle a laugh, then make shushing noises.  Brittany and Tina were there too.  Thank God.

“I’m in here!” he called quickly as he opened the dressing room door clad only in his undershirt and dress slacks.  His three best friends stopped in their tracks, mouths agape.  Except for Brittany, who was still trying to look under the doors of the other dressing rooms.  

The girls had never seen him in such disarray. His hair was mussed from its normally perfect coif, sticking up every which way from where Kurt had run his fingers through it in frustration. And his clothes, Kurt Hummel never came out of a dressing room partially undressed. The girls knew it had to be bad.

“I’m having some serious shopping problems,” Kurt tried to explain, panic creeping into his voice.  “Everything looks wrong, fits wrong, feels wrong--”

Mercedes moved in to hug him tightly.  “We’re here to help!  Of course you want to look perfect for Samuel tonight. It’s the first night of the rest of your lives together!”

Kurt smiled gratefully at his friends and took a deep, calming breath.  With them there, he could do this.  “Yes, that’s it.  I’ve been mildly freaking out all week long, and Sam’s been so secretive, and you know he accidentally sent me that text message ‘I’m going to do it Saturday night,’ and just, yes.  This is it.  And in the wake of my whole life changing and all, I can’t even dress myself!  This has never happened to me before!”

“It’s okay, that’s what sisters are for,” Tina smiled, squeezing Kurt’s hand and running the fingers of her opposite hand over her anchor necklace.

Kurt took a deep breath.  “Okay, let’s do this.”

At 6:30 sharp, Kurt was stationed in the foyer of the Delta Nu house, wringing his hands and glancing at his reflection every ten seconds in the mirror.

Tina gently took his hands, untangling them from the death grip they had on each other.  Mercedes brushed his shoulders off once more with the lint roller and Brittany stepped up and straightened his bow tie.

They had settled on navy blue pants, matching vest, and an ice blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.  The bow tie was pink with blue anchors stitched into it, a tie that neither he nor the girls could resist as soon as they saw it.  “So you know that your Delta Nu sisters always have your back,” Mercedes said, winking, as she insisted on buying it for him.

“You’re going to be fine.  You’re a frigging force of nature, Kurt.” Tina smiled up at him.

“Seriously, Kurt.  You really let that salesperson have it when he tried to sell you that shirt,” Brittany chimed in from where she was gripping his forearm.

“He should have known better than to try to pawn off last season’s rejects on me!  Seriously, do I look that ignorant?  Just because I’m blonde doesn’t make me dumb.  I hope he learned his lesson.  Honestly, pre-shrunk Egyptian cotton?  He thought that was a thing?  He should be fired before he hurts himself.”  Kurt huffed as the lingering feelings of frustration and insult prickled the back of his neck.

Mercedes smiled, clearly amused at his outburst.  “I’m sure that salesman will read every issue of Vogue now to make sure he’s got his frauds in order,” she quipped, making one last adjustment to Kurt’s hair and applying a final coat of hairspray.

The three girls backed away from Kurt simultaneously, standing behind him as he gazed into the large mirror on the wall. I look good, Kurt told himself. He couldn’t help but add an, I think…

“I’m ready,” Kurt said, sounding much more confident than he felt.  He grinned at the reflections of his dearest friends in the mirror when the doorbell rang.

Kurt watched his own eyes widen in fear as Tina, Mercedes, and Brittany all gave little shrieks of excitement.  Brittany and Mercedes darted up the staircase to join the rest of their sisters, who were eagerly hanging over the banister to get a look at Kurt and Sam.  Tina moved to open the front door for Kurt, giving him a brief kiss on the cheek.  “Good luck,” she breathed into his ear.

Wiping his slightly damp palms on his slacks, Kurt nodded at Tina and she pulled open the doors.

Kurt’s breath caught in his throat as his eyes locked on the figure standing there.

Samuel was impeccably dressed in a dark suit and light colored dress shirt, setting off the blonde of his hair nicely.  He ducked his head adorably as he took off his sunglasses and looked at Kurt with a smile.

Kurt returned the smile, feeling his nervousness dissipate as Sam reached forward to take his hand and brush his lips over Kurt’s knuckles.  Kurt used the touch to pull Sam forward into a kiss, curling his other hand into the lapel of his coat.

A chorus of sorority girls sighing a collective “Awww!” erupted behind him and Kurt smiled against Sam’s lips.  Sam broke the kiss, startled, and looked up into the foyer at the curved staircase and open landing.  Kurt turned around in time to see a hundred women wave sadly with the same forlorn expression on their faces.  Kurt smiled.

“Sorry bitches, he’s spoken for!” he called gleefully and dramatically escorted Sam from the building.  Kurt took his outstretched hand, and even with the door shut he could hear the peals of laughter from the Delta Nu house. He couldn’t help but join in.

Sam hadn’t told Kurt where he was taking him to dinner, so when they pulled up outside the restaurant where they had gone for their first date, Kurt’s heartbeat picked up to double time.  The suspicions he had been having all week were slowly turning into solid fact.  This was it.  It was really happening.  Kurt’s stomach flipped and filled with butterflies.

“So, Chef Sake’s?” Kurt said, attempting at nonchalance.

“Yeah.  I know how much you love spicy tuna rolls, Pooh Bear,” Sam replied with a wink.  Kurt laughed good-naturedly at the silly nickname.  Sam insisted that Kurt reminded him of his favorite childhood cartoon character, something about the single-minded quest for honey.

They were seated right next to the large fish tank that took up most of the wall.  As predicted, Kurt ordered a spicy tuna roll while Sam got fried rice, a California roll, and hibachi steak.  Kurt rolled his eyes as the mountains of food came to their table.

Kurt daintily dipped his spicy tuna rolls into the wasabi-soy sauce mixture, taking care not to drip any of it on his outfit. He nursed two glasses of Diet Coke, somewhat wishing that he had something a little stronger to take away some of his nerves.  The chopsticks that came with his meal were a great distraction for his fidgety hands.  Sam was in the middle of a monologue, discussing Matthew McConaughey’s new movie, and Kurt tried to nod at the right places but his mind wasn’t totally in it.  Instead, his brain was preoccupied with overthinking Sam’s every movement. Kurt watched as his hopefully soon-to-be fiancé leaned slightly to the left, his hand drifting towards his pocket…for maybe a small velvet box? He sighed internally when he realized that Sam was only clutching a penny.  Wait, what?

“Sam, honey, it’s not a wishing well.  You cannot throw coins into the fish tank,” Kurt said patiently, easing the penny from Sam’s hand.  His handsome face fell considerably.

“They’re just so neat, like giant goldfish!” Sam enthusiastically poked at the glass wall of the aquarium, causing several of the fish to follow his finger.

“Koi, dear,” Kurt corrected softly, plucking lint from his dress slacks.

Finally, long after Kurt’s plate had been taken away, Sam finished his mountain of rice and meat.  He patted his stomach and slouched in his seat.  Kurt rolled his eyes, but in a loving way, charmed by the way his boyfriend could be brought up so well and yet still act like he was raised in a barn.  Kurt didn’t allow him to take off his shoes in public anymore, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

“Kurt,” Sam began, and Kurt’s head snapped up attentively.  His tone seemed to allude to the beginning of a big speech.

“Yes?” Kurt said breathlessly, leaning forward in anticipation.

Sam took the hand that Kurt had rested on the table in his, intertwining their fingers.  Kurt’s face relaxed into a smile. It was finally happening.

“Pooh Bear, these last two years with you have been a blast. You know, since birth my parents have been priming me to become a lawyer.  My dad always wanted me to follow in his footsteps and go to Harvard law school.  I fought them tooth and nail to let me come out to California for my undergrad, to live near the ocean, where it’s warm, and to be a brother in Omicron Tau Rho. All of those things have made my four years in LA amazing.  Oh, and you, too,” he added almost as an afterthought, patting Kurt on the hand.

An odd way to start a proposal speech, but Kurt supposed he would take it.

“My point is,” Sam started, pausing to collect his thoughts.  Kurt waited patiently, but his calm façade was betrayed by the uncontrollable tapping of his right foot under the table. The butterflies in his stomach had melted down into pure nervous adrenaline that zipped through his veins, putting every fiber of his being on alert.

The pause stretched into an awkward silence.  Sam kept gazing over Kurt’s shoulder until the suspense killed him and Kurt finally turned around to see what Sam was staring at.  It was either the waitress taking the order at the next table or the oddly dressed couple she was serving.  The waitress really was the classic definition of attractive, all long legs and big boobs, and Kurt’s stomach swooped unpleasantly.  Sam had always been forthcoming about being bisexual, something that had almost kept Kurt from dating him because it still made Kurt uncomfortable to think that he had competition from women.

“Sam, dear,” Kurt hissed through his teeth.  “You were saying?”

“Right, right,” Sam turned his eyes back to Kurt’s face.  “The plan.  My life has always had a plan: become a lawyer, settle down on the East coast, get married, have at least three kids—”

“Like the Kennedy’s,” Kurt finished for him, smiling slightly.  He had heard the plan many times.

“Yes,” Sam agreed, smiling back.  “And I’ve been talking to my parents a lot about that plan, as I’m getting ready to move back east, probably for good.  We discussed how I’m going to take what I accomplished in California back with me to Massachusetts.  It’s time for me to get serious about my future, Pooh Bear.”

Kurt shifted in his seat, his face lighting up with a wide smile, ready to commit Samuel’s next words to memory.

“I love you, and our time together has been amazing.”

Kurt closed his eyes, savoring the warm build of anticipation.

“But I think it’s time for us to break up.”

Kurt opened his eyes in shock, his mouth falling slightly open, too.  He snatched back the hand Sam was holding like something had bit him.

“You’re breaking up with me?!”  The words came out more like a squawk than anything, the sound closer to animal than human.  A few heads turned toward their table, then quickly away.

“Pooh Bear,” Sam glanced around nervously, “Now, don’t make a scene—”

“Oh, I will MAKE a scene, Samuel Evans III!” Kurt practically yelled, on purpose this time, shoving his chair back from the table abruptly.  He had the attention of the entire restaurant now.

“Kurt, listen, you can’t really be surprised here.”  

Kurt was disgusted to detect the pleading note in Sam’s voice.

“Oh really?  Because I thought that you took me here, to the place where we had our first date, to propose to me, Sam, and to ask me to move to Massachusetts with you.  That’s what I thought.  So forgive me for being a little bit surprised!” Kurt threw his hands up in frustration.

“Well, I, I did talk to my parents about that,” Sam said apologetically, trying to reach for Kurt again.  He crossed his arms firmly and Sam retracted his searching hand.  “But we agreed that I’m going to need someone serious if I’m going to be a senator by the time I’m thirty! You know, less of a Clinton, more of a Lincoln!”

Kurt couldn’t keep his mouth from gaping open.  With stiff, unfeeling fingers he grabbed his shoulder bag and stood up, towering over Sam.  His eyes widened and he looked stricken, but Kurt was way past the point of gentleness.  “I may not be serious, Sam, but I am seriously in love with you.  If that’s not good enough for you, then I don’t know what is.”

The look of regret on Sam’s face was enough for Kurt.  He turned and flounced out of the restaurant, ignoring the stares that followed him.

He got about two blocks before the numbness of indignation fell away and all that was left was raw, aching hurt.  Kurt gasped for breath as the sobs came, racking his body with the physical manifestation of the brutal, unforeseen rejection he just received.  He braced himself momentarily on the wall of a brick building.  When he turned to see the company name stuck to the glass window, he laughed bitterly at the injustice of it all.  He was sobbing over Sam in front of a lawyer’s office. 

With trembling fingers, Kurt extricated his phone from his bag and picked the first name off his recent calls list.  He took a deep shaky breath to steady himself, but when Tina answered, voice so full of excitement, he broke down again.

“Please, come get me,” he choked out, and her words immediately became concerned and sympathetic.  “I’ll explain later.  Just please, pick me up.”  Tina coaxed his location out of him and then hung up, her soft noise of worry breaking Kurt’s destroyed heart just a little bit more.

Kurt looked down at the outfit he and his friends had so carefully chosen and the shoes he had polished earlier, both blurred almost beyond recognition through his fast-coming tears.  The sidewalk was certainly not clean, but he found that his legs no longer worked and his brain did not have space available to care about his clothes, every cell occupied with anguish.  He threw his phone back in his bag and sank to the ground, defeated.

“How long has it been?” Ashley whispered to Mercedes and Brittany where they kept vigil outside the door marked 134 in the Delta Nu house.

“Twelve days,” Mercedes answered mournfully, looking in anguish towards the door.  From inside, a soap opera blared, not quite covering the sound of dry sobs. 

Brittany nodded her head gravely.  “I think he’s aging backward and turning into a teenage girl.  I’ve seen twenty packages of chocolate cheesecake go in there and none have come back out.”

Tina came around the corner and sighed at the small group of worried Delta Nus talking quietly.  She looked at the door sadly, taking in the message board with pictures of Kurt, herself, and her sisters.

Technically, boys weren’t supposed to be in any private room of the sorority house, ever.  As president, Tina was really risking a lot in turning a blind eye.  But when Charlotte had to move out of Room 134, no one would take her spot.  And then Kurt was really drunk one night after going to the bars and Tina had made up the mattress with her extra sheets and blankets so he wouldn’t have to drive.  In typical Kurt fashion, he took that as permission to start using the room as a bit of a second home, a place to escape in the middle of the day when he couldn’t go back to his dad’s house.  When he started hauling in furniture Tina put her foot down, worried that the old ladies that kept a close watch on the Delta Nu house would throw a fit.  Kurt had been hurt, but not even two days later he came up with a solution: make it look like the room of a sister, and the little old ladies would never find out.  When Tina saw the flawless pink duvet with blue sheets, the perfect throw pillow featuring Delta Nu’s letters and the symbolic anchor, she couldn’t say no.  Kurt was so thrilled to have a little escape from the world, and who was Tina to take that away?

The night Tina brought him back to the house from Chef Sake’s, Kurt disappeared into Room 134 and had not since been seen, though sisters were diligent about bringing sympathetic food and supportive notes.  Tina herself had ordered him his favorite pizza, half Hawaiian and half veggie lover’s.  At all hours of the day a group of Delta Nus could be found sitting around the door, trying and failing to find something, anything to do to help Kurt.  They had not seen his face in over a week, but took comfort in knowing he was alive from the constant blare of bad television.

From inside the room Kurt yelled, presumably at the TV screen, and Tina jumped a little at the sound.  The sorority women gathered in the hallway scrambled to their feet.

“He’s lying!  He doesn’t love you!  He’s never loved you!” Kurt wailed.  A loud thump startled the sisters again; Kurt had thrown something.

“Alright, that’s it.  I’m going in,” Tina said, squaring her shoulders.  She couldn’t let this tragedy proceed any longer.

Her sisters gasped.

 “You can’t!” 

“He’s not ready!” 

“What if you get eaten too?!”

Tina smiled fondly at Brittany’s words, but persisted.  “He needs to break out of this slump.  The longer he pines, the worse it’s going to get.  I don’t even think he’s done his full skincare regimen in days.  This stops now.”  Her sisters slowly nodded in agreement, eyes wide.

Tina gathered a small stack of magazines, a few DVDs, and Kurt’s laptop to try and soothe him.  She tapped on the door lightly.  “Kurt?  Honey?” she called through the door.  No response.

She pushed open the door and found it would not open all the way.  She slipped inside to find wrappers and cartons and Diet Coke cans strewn from one end of the room to the other, piled on every surface, including the bed.  In the middle of the bed was a blonde head of hair, covers obscuring the rest of Kurt.

“Sweetheart, it’s been twelve days.  Please let us help you,” Tina pleaded with the part of Kurt that she could see, stroking his hair carefully.

Kurt moaned pitifully and pulled the covers down.  His face was blotchy and lacked its usual glow, his eyes were rimmed red and his pajamas were not nearly as clean-pressed as usual, but he was alive.

“Tina, I love him,” he said faintly, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his pajama top.  Tina sucked in a breath sharply at the gesture, knowing that she had intervened just in time.  When Kurt wasn’t giving a second thought to his favorite set of silk pajamas, he was past the point of upset.

“I know, I know,” she murmured, touching his face carefully.  “But we love you, too, you know.  This is not the end of the world.”  Kurt opened his mouth to protest, but she placed a finger to his lips.  “I know it feels like it, but it’s not.”

Tina dropped the pile of goodies she brought into his lap.  “Here, I brought you the new Elle and Cosmo, plus Mean Girls and every season of Friends.  And here’s your laptop, so you can catch up on the celebrity gossip you’ve missed.  And if all that is still not good enough, you’ll just have to hold on because the new Vogue doesn’t come out until next week.”  She tapped Kurt on the nose and a small smile passed over his lips.  It left quickly, but it was there.  Tina sighed in relief and got up to start stuffing all Kurt’s rubbish into a trash bag.

There was a knock on the door.  Tina turned to see Mercedes and Brittany tiptoe inside, holding up a fruit tray.  “We figured you might want a change of pace from cheesecake,” Mercedes explained lightly, sitting down next to Kurt on the bed.  Britt, without hesitation, curled up under the covers and snuggled into Kurt, kissing him on the head.  She didn’t say anything, but his face visibly relaxed and his lips almost curved upward.  Tina quietly turned off the soap opera, which had gotten violently loud, and sat on the bed on the other side of Kurt.

“Thanks ladies, really,” Kurt said fervently, smiling at each of them in turn.  He took a strawberry from the fruit tray as he pushed open his laptop.  Tina had already had the foresight to change his background picture so he flinched only a little.  She watched him pull up TMZ and eagerly start reading, so she contented herself with running her fingers through his thick hair.

They sat in contentment for a while, Britt keeping a running commentary on the sex lives of the cats belonging to each celebrity, when suddenly Kurt shrieked and jumped up out of the bed, knocking Mercedes to the ground.

“Kurt, what the hell?” she yelled back, rubbing her hip that had slammed into the ground.  Kurt waved an apologetic hand toward her but stared at his computer screen with wide eyes.

“It’s Sam’s brother, it’s Evan!” he shrieked again, pointing at the laptop.

“His name is Evan Evans?” Tina said incredulously, pulling the screen where she could see it.

Kurt’s hands flapped again, impatiently.  “He just got married!  He graduated from Yale law in December and just got married to Muffy Vanderbilt, his classmate at Yale!”  Tina, Brittany, and Mercedes eyed him warily, wondering where this was going.

“Don’t you see!” Kurt waved his hands around incessantly, this time gesturing towards the screen.  “This is the kind of boy Sam wants!  Someone who’s serious, someone lawyerly!  Someone who wears black when nobody’s dead!”  His face was enraptured, and he was looking at the laptop like it was the Holy Grail.  Mercedes, Tina, and Brittany exchanged nervous glances.

“Girls, I have a completely brilliant plan!”