The next day, Bella shows up on Blaine’s doorstep with a bottle of cheap AH huismerk wine and Blaine feels incredibly guilty for ghosting her for one day. You’d think that he has learned from the past, but no, Blaine’s first instinct is to shut people out, even now.

That’s how he lost Kurt.

“Do you wanna talk, vent, or ignore?” she asks. Blaine lets her inside.

“Ignore. A hundred percent ignore!” Blaine exclaims.

“Good thing it’s a Saturday,” Bella unscrews the cap of the wine bottle and Blaine comes back with two glasses. Bella sighs. “This is going to suck.”

“At least it’s not boxed wine.”

“Who do you think I am, Blaine? Now, be a dear, and put on some music.”

Blaine sets a reminder to apologise to his neighbours later. Then, he turns up the volume. Bella isn’t a big showtunes fan and she also isn’t a great singer, but they don’t care. The two of them drink and sing and dance to the rhythm.

When Seventeen from Heathers starts playing, Blaine’s voice gets louder.

People hurt us
Or they vanish
And you’re right that really blows
But we let go, take a deep breath
Then go buy some summer clothes

The music abruptly stops. Blaine opens his eyes and he sees Bella with his phone in her hand.

“Uhm, you okay there, mate?” she sounds concerned.

“Yeah,” Blaine says silently and he wipes away his tears. He doesn’t know when he started crying, but it was somewhere during his emotional performance.

Bella doesn’t look convinced and Blaine can’t blame her. He has a glass with cheap wine in his hands, he’s crying, and he’s performing a soul-crushing rendition of an admittedly mediocre song. It’s almost as good as a cry for help.

“Blaine, is this because of Yannick’s new fling?”

“How…” Blaine trails off. He’s too surprised to continue.

“Yeah. Adeola and I were looking for you and then I heard someone say your name. I didn’t know the guy, but I asked around and someone told me he’s Yannick’s possible boyfriend?”

“His name is Kurt.”

“Noted,” Bella nods, “So it does have something to do with him?”

“Ignore, we’re ignoring!” I remind her, but Bella huffs out some air in frustration and she crosses her arms.

“Look at you!” she exclaims, “You’re a mess. How can we ignore?”

Blaine looks at Bella. She looks frustrated, but also worried. They’ve only known each other for half a year, when they both moved to Rotterdam to study law here, but they immediately bonded. Blaine is like an overprotective older brother, guiding her through her new life. The moment she turned eighteen, she left Liverpool behind for Rotterdam. Meanwhile, Bella gives Blaine room to exist, which is something he needed, since he was overwhelmed by the scope of the city and it was easy to fade into oblivion here, like usual.

“Blaine…” she sits down on my couch and she pats the spot next to her. It makes Blaine laugh for a second.

And at that moment, Blaine’s just so overcome with adoration for his new friend. He sits down and he tells her everything.

“… and I don’t think- I just-”

“There, there,” Bella pats him on the back. Blaine’s a sobbing mess.

“So all of that happened. I made the biggest mistake of my life, again, if you will. I lost Kurt, my best friend. And if that wasn’t enough, around a year after he ditched me, I realised I was in love with him.”

“That’s… wow,” Bella says. It’s incredibly ineloquent, but honestly, Blaine doesn’t know how else to describe his own queer awakening. There he was, twenty-one years old, and he was slowly realising that there was another reason that he couldn’t stop thinking about Kurt, despite the fact that he’d moved on.

Did Kurt move on, though? When Kurt talked about sending him messages, it didn’t sound like it.

Blaine changed his number a few years back. But Kurt’s probably right. Blaine never properly unblocked him.

“But yeah, I just realised one day,” Blaine tells her, “I can’t say that there was one exact moment that made me go, oh, there you are, but it just fell into place. I loved him. I loved him before I knew, but I didn’t know until I realised I’m gay. It’s not platonic to memorise every inch of his face. It’s not just bro things to feel lost in the depths of his eyes. It’s not friendly feelings that made my heart soar when he was around me. But when I realised, I was too late. We were no longer talking.”

That’s why Seventeen hit him. If only he’d known back then, when they were seventeen. What would’ve happened? Would they have become boyfriends, or would things have gone even worse?

“Wait, just to be sure,” Bella cuts in, disrupting Blaine’s thought process, “The whole in love thing isn’t the reason your friendship fell apart, right?”

“It wasn’t,” Blaine says, “I gave him so many reasons to hate him, but I don’t think he knew. Hell, I didn’t even know.”

“Right,” Bella says, “Wow, Blaine, this is a lot. Like, a lot. And now he’s in Rotterdam of all places?”

“God, I know right?” Blaine groans. He was so certain he was never going to see Kurt again, and now they live in the same city in another country.

“So, what happens now?”

Blaine shrugs. “He made clear that he doesn’t want to talk. I guess I’ll just move on and hopefully we won’t run into each other.”

“He also made clear that he’s still happy to see you,” Bella points out.

Blaine shrugs again. “Kurt Hummel is in the past. It tried to resurface, but that didn’t work out. So let’s keep it in the past.”

University really takes Blaine’s mind off things. The workload is insane. If you fail now, you’re practically done for, since you definitely need to obtain that first-year certificate . Most people see the holidays as a final deadline to withdraw. It has something to do with the student loans. Bella and Blaine are at Sanders almost every day. It truly feels like the hottest club in town, since it’s crowded with students cramming for their exams.

It’s all so worth it when they finish their exams and the kerstvakantie starts.

“TOFFLER time!” Bella says gleefully.

TOFFLER is this underground club close to the Stadshuis. Bella insists that Blaine comes with her. Blaine doesn’t have anything else to do, and after the stress of exams and the reappearance of Kurt, he might need a day at an actual club, not Sanders.

Bella also dresses up nicely, since Adeola is coming, so Blaine puts some effort in his clothing as well. Maybe he’ll also pick someone up.

The club is filled with students celebrating their newfound freedom and the vacation period. Blaine loses Bella and Adeola pretty easily.

He decides to get something to drink and when he walks to the bar, he assumes that the universe must be pulling a terrible joke on him, because Kurt Hummel is standing there.