Blaine blew out a breath he didnt know he was holding, and he put a hand on Kurts arm.  "Please, will you talk to me about this?"

Kurt looked at the floor for a moment as if debating.  Finally, he nodded. 

"Give me a second, okay?"  Blaine asked.

Kurt nodded again, and Blaine walked over to the bar and said to Mike, "Can you handle the bar?  Ive got something I need to take care of."

Mike agreed without looking up, his head buried in the refrigeration unit under the bar, rifling for supplies.  Blaine walked back to Kurt.  "Lets go to my office," he said. 

With Kurt trailing in his wake, Blaine unhooked the chain at the base of the circular stairs and motioned Kurt up, hooking the chain behind them.  At the top of the stairs, Kurt stood to one side while Blaine unlocked the door. 

The office was cramped and filled with papers, neatly stacked in file folders.  There was a desk that took up most of the space, an office chair on one side, and a hard wooden chair on the other.  Blaine motioned Kurt to the most comfortable chair and sat on the wooden one. 

"Kurt," he started, "First of all, you have to know that nothing about our breakup was your fault.  I was seventeen; we were young.  When youre a teenager, everythings about you, and its hard to see the world from anyone elses perspective.  When you went to New York and werent returning my calls or my texts as fast as I thought you should, I didnt sit there and go, ‘Oh, Kurt must be really busy, or ‘Wow, all of these adjustments must be really hard on Kurt.  I just thought about how I was feeling.  Instead of talking to you, I acted rashly and ruined us, and Im sorry.  So the things in that email are just wrong.  Every single word.  Im sorry that I wrote them.  Im sorry that I ever thought them, and Im sorry that you saw them."

Kurt didnt respond.  He just sniffed a little and waited for Blaine to go on. 

"Second, I guess I should explain about the email in the first place."  Blaine barked out a short, bitter laugh and ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand out in places.  "After you told me not to contact you anymore, I didnt, but I wanted to.  I had all these...feelings, and I didnt know what to do with them.  So I started writing you email.  There were a lot at first, and then, after a while, there were fewer.  And then they became--Im not really sure--something like therapy.  I would just write to you and tell you what was going on in my life.  It was sort of a way of taking stock.  Anyhow, I never sent any of them.  Obviously.  I would just write them."

Blaine took a deep breath.  Kurt opened his mouth to say something but closed it again, so Blaine continued, "At any rate, when I wrote that email you read on your phone, I was, like, eighteen or nineteen.  I was a kid, and I was an idiot.  I was...I dunno...listening to The Cure a lot."  Blaine gave Kurt an anemic, tight-lipped smile.  "The later emails are quite different."

Blaine wound down and waited for Kurt to say something. 

Kurt stared through Blaine for a long time unseeing.  Then he asked in a choked voice, "Can I see them?  The emails?"

Blaine shook his head, "No." 

Kurt flinched, so Blaine added quickly, "I mean, I would let you if I could, but I always delete them.  I never saved any of them.  I really dont know how you ended up with this one.  I cant imagine."

"Have you written any recently?"

Blaine nodded, "Yeah.  Im not sure when.  A few weeks, maybe a couple of months ago."

"Is that one still in your deleted mail folder?"

Blaines eyes widened, "Probably."

"Can I read it?"

Blaine considered for a moment.  The email contained his private thoughts, and he would never share them with anyone.  Still, it was addressed to Kurt, and somehow it seemed important to Kurt to see it.  Blaine found that, even after all this time, he still didnt have it in him to deny Kurt anything. 

He pulled his laptop out of a drawer and pushed it toward Kurt.  "Im not great with technology.  If you can find it, youre welcome to read it."

Kurt opened the laptop and began typing, his fingers flying over the keyboard as his tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth.  Suddenly, he sucked in his breath. 

Blaine, who was looking down at his fingernails, pulled his head up at the sound.  Kurt pushed the laptop toward him.  Kurt had clearly done a search for his own email address in the deleted mail folder, and there they were.  More than a hundred of them spanning a decade.  Email after email to Kurt, containing God only knew what after all this time. 

Blaine couldnt explain it.  He wasnt great about cleaning out his deleted mail folder, but he would max out his alloted memory every eight months or so and be forced to.  None of his emails to Kurt should have been there except for the most recent ones.  He looked up from the screen to meet Kurts eyes. 

"Ill just...Ill just read the last one," Kurt said, "If thats still okay."

Blaine considered it for a moment, then he shook his head.  "No.  Read all of them if you want.  Or send them to yourself.  Just...just keep in mind that I wasnt going to...just...never mind.  Ill just get caught up on some paperwork."  He handed the laptop back to Kurt and reached into his desk with shaking hands to pull out a ledger and a stack of receipts.  It was an old school method of accounting, but it kept his resident ghost from interfering with his bookkeeping. 

Kurt began reading as Blaine worked on his books. Occasionally Blaine would hear a sniffle and sometimes a chuckle, and he desperately wanted to look at Kurts face, but he didnt.  He kept his head down and pretended to work, knowing full well that he would have to redo all of his bookkeeping tomorrow, because he was probably making a hash of it. 

He heard crowd noises below and wondered if Mike was handling the bar okay.  He figured Mike or Dani would text him if it got too crazy. 

Hours later he heard his laptop click shut, and Blaine looked up into Kurts tear-stained face. 

"I hurt you so much," Kurt whispered.  "I was fixated on how much you hurt me, and I hurt you so much."    

Blaine gave him a small smile and shook his head, "I hurt myself, Kurt.  You just handled it the only way you knew how."

"It wasnt all you, Blaine.  You tried to explain, and I had too much pride to listen."

Blaine sat back in his chair, "It was a long time ago, Kurt.  We were kids.  Nobody can blame us if we didnt handle everything in the most mature way."

Blaine leaned forward and reached for Kurts hands.  Kurt didnt hesitate; he simply put out his hands and put them in Blaines.  "Besides," Blaine continued, rubbing him thumbs over the back of Kurts knuckles, "Youre right about what you said a few weeks ago about the breakup being good.  I think we both had a lot to learn about life and love and the ways of the world." 

They sat silently for a moment, just holding hands until Kurt squeezed Blaines fingers and then extricated his fingers from Blaines, sitting back. 

It was another one of those moments, Blaine realized.  The one where Kurt moved forward and then retreated.  Maybe, despite it all, he simply didnt have the capacity to ever fully forgive Blaine even after reading the emails.  Or maybe he just wasnt interested in Blaine, like that.  Not anymore. 

The latter thought was a punch to the gut. 

As Blaine was screwing up his courage to ask Kurt about it, Kurt spoke first, "You know," Kurt said slowly, "dating an accountant doesnt sound like a lot of personal growth, Blaine."

Blaine groaned, "Not just an accountant, Kurt.  My accountant.  That breakup wasnt awkward at all."  He rolled his eyes. 

"How much of your money is now in his off-shore account?"

Blaine laughed, "I havent looked, but I shudder to think."  He rose from his chair, wincing.  The wooden chair was not designed for hours of sitting; his ass was numb. He rubbed it with a hand, and when he looked back at Kurt, Kurt had a strange expression of yearning on his face.  

Blaine was too tired to analyze it, "I guess we should call it a night.  I think the bar closed about half an hour ago." 

"Ooh, I missed last call."

"You dont have to go home, but you cant stay here," Blaine quipped as he held the office door open for Kurt who sashayed through.