A Little Bit of Heaven

My name is Blaine. I died when I was twenty years old. My body is buried deep down, lost under earth and grass and worms. Considering it's been five years, it probably has began decomposing already.

But I stayed.

Right now, Cooper is knelt down in front of my grave, whispering softly about the last months of his life. Somethings I noticed when he appeared: he got a haircut, he's started wearing glasses and his skin is slightly tanned, what tells me he traveled during summer.

Other things, only he can tell me. And he does. He tells me how much he loved Spain and speaking Spanish and eating Spanish food and meeting Spanish women. He tells me how he wishes he didn't have to come back, how he's killing himself to get a big part in an upcoming movie and that he brought a dog—a black Labrador—and named him Blainers and no, that isn't depressing at all.

He also tells me about our parents. Mom's getting better, he says, even though I know it's a lie. Dad passed by last week. I know she still cries every time my name is mentioned.

Cooper just says Dad is doing fine. He doesn't know he comes every fortnight, when he manages to catch a plane quick enough, with flowers. He doesn't know he apologizes every time, no exception, before leaving. He doesn't know he anonymously started donating to a foundation dedicated to the cancer treatment research. He doesn't know any of this because nobody knows any of this. Dad comes during his free afternoons, while everyone thinks he's at home watching sports. It's not that he's ashamed, he told me. It's just that I'm the only one who matters here.

"Because you matter, son. I'm sorry it took me so long to realize that."

Cooper's about to leave. He didn't mention Kurt because he never does. Because he knows Kurt comes every weekend, even though he doesn't believe in God, even though he doesn't believe I can really hear him, even though he's certain he's lost me forever.

"Take care, B. We miss you," Cooper says like he always says and leaves, hands in his pockets, walking slowly, and I sit back on the grave next to mine, which no one ever comes to visit, look at the small chrysanths Cooper brought me, which will die in less than a week because of the sunny weather, and wait.

Because that's what I do.

I wait.

When the tumor appeared, there was nothing we could do. It was already too late. I'd been blaming the headaches and tiredness on college, and the fainting on not eating enough. I didn't tell Kurt because I didn't want him to worry and I thought it was nothing. It never crossed my mind I had cancer. Things like that just don't happen when your life is perfect.

We found out when I didn't wake up one morning. Kurt tried everything, but I just wouldn't open my eyes. He then called 911, the doctor asked for exams, and when I finally woke up thirteen hours later, I was told the truth.

I had six weeks. That's how long it took the tumor to steal my consciousness. I spent that time going to every doctor my parents could find, hanging out with family and friends, and knowing that eventually I'd be the one to say goodbye to Kurt. He tried to be strong, crying only when I wasn't around or when he thought I was asleep, taking me to places I'd told him I wanted to visit and making me do everything I'd ever mentioned wanting to do. But I knew it was killing him too. I saw it on his eyes, when the eleventh doctor said surgery wasn't possible, when the twenty-third one said chemotherapy wasn't working and when I first started losing my memory.

The only time he really lost it was when I asked if he wanted to break up.

"Why on earth would I want that?" Kurt cried, looking at me with big, wide green-bluish eyes. "Do you want to—"

"No!" I exclaimed quickly, holding his hands. "It's just that, well, I'm dy—"

"Don't say that."

"It's the truth, Kurt."

"You still don't have to say that."

He wasn't looking at me anymore, but I could see the tears he was trying to hold back. It broke my heart a little bit more.

"I just don't want to hold you back," I whispered.

Kurt rubbed his eyes before looking at me, but the tears were still there. "You're not holding me back."

"But, Kurt, I'm—"

"I'm not leaving you, Blaine. I'm not leaving you."

When he comes to visit this week, he takes my breath away. He's always beautiful, of course, but today there's something on the way the walks, the way his eyes shine, that reminds me of old dreams and lost fantasies. It's only when he's standing in front of the grave—he hardly ever kneels down, only now and then—that I realize what's different.

He's happy. He's happy like when we first kissed, and when we first made love, and when he and Burt told me he was a NYADA finalist, and when the three of us opened his acceptance letter, and when I finally joined him in New York, and when we finally moved out of the flat we shared with Rachel to our own apartment. He's happy like when I surprised him with breakfast in bed that one morning, and when we first visited the Central Park at night, and when same-sex marriage was finally legalized on the entire USA. He's happy like he hasn't been since the night before my not-waking-up.

"I have great new, Blaine," he says, smiling shyly. "Well, you know I'll be unemployed while the musical goes on hiatus, so I talked to some friends from college and I got a internship at a fashion magazine! Isn't it amazing? I'll write about fashion on Broadway!"

A wide smile breaks on my face and I wish more than ever that I could hug him and kiss him and say how happy and proud I am of him. I wish I could hold his hand and say, "That's great, Kurt." I wish I could buy him flowers on our way home and make him dinner. I wish I could look straight into the happiness in his eyes and have him looking back at me. I wish he knew I could hear him.

He tells me everything about how the internship's going to happen while he cleans the grave. He picks Cooper's chrysanths, which are now withered and look a month old, and throws them away and wipes the fallen leafs away. He then takes two lonely flowers from his bag, a yellow and a red, and puts them in front of the grave.

"I'm going to start working this Friday, just to see how I fit there, so Saturday I'll tell you all about it, okay?" he whispers when he's about to leave. He smiles down to the grave. "I love you, Blaine."

"I love you, too," I whisper back, watching him walk away with low shoulders and head held down. These are the only times he ever holds himself like that, as far as I know, and it kills me to know I'm the reason.

Sighing, drying some tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand, I turn back to sit down on my typical place next to my grave.

But it's already occupied.

The first time Julia appeared, I thought she was just another young woman visiting a friend or family. She was walking slowly, like she was testing the ground, and kept looking down. She eventually stopped by a big marble grave and knelt down, running a trembling hand through the name written on it. Her body was shaking a little, and, even though she had her back turned to me, I could imagine her face screwed up, the tears streaming down her cheeks, her eyes closed with force. She looked like that kind of girl, the one who looks miserably beautiful when she cry. I wanted to console her. I knew it would be weird, but I wanted just to be by her side, so she would know there was someone else there.

She wouldn't know I was there, though, so I just watched from distance until a man, apparently twice her age—she looked around her twenties, while he could pass as my father—appeared. She looked up, and she had the most expressive green eyes I'd even seen, and she smiled a bit through the tears, but the man didn't even look at her. He just knelt down right next to her and placed a bouquet of tulips on the grave. She didn't seem affected by that, and just kept smiling, looking at the man, while he looked down at the grave and breathed with difficult, quiet and serene.

Eventually he got up and left without a single word, and the girl just watched him go. Suddenly I was reminded of myself, of when Kurt and Cooper and my parents and friends first started visiting my grave in a regular basics. Now only Kurt and Cooper and my father come frequently, but at the beginning it was quite active around here. And, whenever they'd leave, whenever they'd walk away from me not even knowing I was still here, I'd watch them with longing eyes and breathless.

When the man disappeared, I looked back at the girl. She hadn't moved, but her eyes were now focused on me, like she actually could see me. And then she got up, walked straight to where I was and, with a rough, shy voice, said, "Well, this is new. What happened to you?"

My eyes went wide and I stumbled backwards, almost falling to the floor. The girl only raised her eyebrows. "Well?"

"I—You can see me?" I stuttered.

"Yes, I can. That's why I'm talking to you." She rolled her eyes. "So, what happened to you?"

It took me a moment to realize she was asking why I was dead. "I had cancer."

"Hm." She checked me up. It would be embarrassing if she didn't have red eyes and a puffy face. "Where?"

"Brain."

"That's bad. Did you leave anyone behind?"

"Did I leave—"

"A significant other."

I hesitated a little, and then managed to finally ask, "Why does it matter to you?"

She laughed. "Just trying to make conversation. Besides, if you're still here, you must've left someone behind. Someone you wasn't ready to let go yet, and someone who isn't ready to let you go. Happens when the couple's young and in love and, in most cases, planning to get married soon."

"How—How do you know all of that?"

"Been around for a while, kid. He won't let me leave, and, honestly, he needs me." She looked back at the way the man had taken to leave. "They need me."

"But how can you help?" I was asking before I could stop myself. Before, I would've listened to her tale and tried to help somehow. But now I thought I had the right to be a little selfish. I would do anything to help everyone I'd left behind.

"I can't," she whispered, still not looking at me. "But I like to feel like I can. I like to feel like I can kiss my son goodnight, even though he's already eighteen, and that my husband can hold me at night. They can't feel me, but somehow they do. They know I'm around. And as long as they need me, I'll stick around." She blinked quickly, and then added, "So, who is keeping you down here?"

I didn't know. I didn't know why I was stuck in this cemetery, forbidden to leave, watching the people I loved the most falling apart in front of me. Of course, Cooper's doing fine. Not great, not amazing, but fine. Even my father's not that bad. He's rational. He misses me, he said so, but he keeps on with his life. Most of my friends are the same. Mike and Tina got married two years ago and came to visit and say they wished I'd been there after coming back from their honeymoon. Wes and David still come every year on the anniversary. Rachel comes sometimes with Kurt, but she's too busy with off-Broadway shows—for now, that it—and making a name for herself to care that much. The same goes for most of the Warblers and New Directions and my college friends. They're fine. They're all fine.

But my mother and Kurt aren't. It's been four years since my mom last come to visit. Dad says she can't. He says she's tried sometimes, but she can never come close enough, or she loses it. She's seeing a therapist, and I really, really hope she gets better soon, but for now I can only do that. Hope. And Kurt's surviving. He's doing the things he's always wanted to do, and he's living his life, but I can see in his eyes he's not there yet. I don't know if he ever will be.

"Some people," I answered the girl, not willing to give details. She looked at me for a little while and then shrugged, muttering, "I guess everyone has their secrets," before turning to leave. Only when she got to the gates of the cemetery and I realized she was actually going out that I figured I should ask how she did that. How she left.

"I was cremated," she answered, turning back to me with hesitant eyes. "There's parts of me all over the world. With my parents, with my husband and son, here, with my best friend. They all kept a bit. Lucky for me. I don't have to stay stuck in a depressing place like this for the rest of times."

I narrowed my eyes. "What do you mean?"

"You're stuck to your body, kid. You can't go much far away from it. If you're whole body is here, you're stuck here. Sorry." And then she took one more step and disappeared with the wind, like she'd never been there.

"He's finally getting it," Julia says, her eyes still fixed on Kurt's retreating form. Her head is slightly tilted, and her eyes are careful. "Who knows, Blainers. Maybe your time will finally come."

"Don't call me that," I say by force of habit, not really caring. It's been too long to care about things like this. "And I don't know. I... I don't know."

She looks at me sympathetically. "I've been around for longer than you, Blaine."

"I know. It's just... You didn't meet him. The old him."

"And you still expect the old him to come back?" She sits up, her voice losing the typical teasing. "Blaine, he basically lost the love of his life. You two were supposed to get married and celebrate 50 years together. You can't really tell me you think he's ever going back to who he used to be."

I sigh, sitting on the floor next to her, and drop my head on my arms. "I don't know. I just... I want him to be happy. And he's happy, but he's not... happy. Momentary happiness is good, but I need him to be fine. And he's not. He's not fine."

Even though we're both ghosts or whatever it is we are, we can't touch each other. Julia still putts her hand on my arm, and I don't feel anything like always, but it's nice. At least I'm not completely alone anymore.

Kurt visits every weekend, but it hasn't always been like this. At the beginning, he never came. The last memories I had of him were from my funeral, watching it from the biggest distance I could, watching him crying on Burt's shoulder, and then Rachel's shoulder, and then Mercedes', and then Cooper's. It was heartbreaking and I wanted more than anything to walk to him, take him in my arms and whisper that everything was going to be okay, but everything was not going to be okay—at least, not for now.

I cried with him. I cried with him, with my brother, with my parents and with my friends. I sang "My Way" with the few Warblers and some of the New Directions members that were around. I watched Kurt sing "Blackbird" to himself when he thought nobody was looking—and nobody was, actually. Only me, and he couldn't know I as there.

Until that day, I hadn't understood why everyone was saying I was dead when I was walking around the hospital like I'd never been sick at all. Sure, I'd been on coma for a few weeks, but now I was awake. They should be celebrating.

Only when I saw myself on that coffin, dressed on my best clothes and eyes closed and skin pale that it sunk. I didn't call myself a ghost at first because that felt childish, but I knew that was what I probably was. A ghost watching everyone I loved morn my death.

At first, when Kurt never appeared, even though I knew he used to visit his mother's grave every now and then, I thought the worst. He'd already forgotten me. He'd already moved on.

Of course, those thoughts only lasted a second, but then I needed to understand why almost two months had passed already and Kurt hadn't come to at least clean the grave. I knew how he was with stuff like that.

And then he came. His clothes and face and hair were perfect like always, but everything else was wrong. His face was dead. His eyes were dead. He seemed more like a ghost than me. I felt tears spring to my eyes just at the sight of what he'd come to.

He fell to his knees the moment he was in front of my grave, and he deposited two roses next to him, one yellow and one red. His body was already shaking, but he wasn't crying yet. He was just staring at my name on the grave, like he couldn't still believe it, and his entire body was shaking like he was really, really cold, even though the winter was already breathing its last breaths, and I just wanted to hold him, to put my arms around him and warm him.

He shook and I cried. I even put a hand over his, but of course he didn't feel it. I didn't feel it. But just the knowledge it was there was good enough for me, like some kind of invisible strength.

And then he started speaking.

"You saved me, Blaine. I don't know if I ever told you this, but I don't think I would've survived high school without you. But I couldn't save you. I failed you, and I'm so, so, so sorry. I—I try to stay strong in front of my dad and Carole and our friends but I just... I miss you so much and I want you back, Blaine. I need you back. I want yo wake up next to you and know it's going to be like this for the rest of my life. I don't want to wake up in our bed alone, knowing you'll never be there anymore. You had an amazing life ahead of you, Blaine. You were going to be great. You deserved it. It's just... It's so not fair. I feel like I'm losing my mom all over again, but now it's worse, because I didn't understand the concept of a lifetime without her back then. But a lifetime without you... it just hurts so much, because I love you so much and I want you so much and I know if you were a-alive you'd love and want me back and I just.. it just doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense anymore."

It felt worse than dying. When I was dying, I was peaceful, in coma but peaceful, and I didn't feel anything. Realizing I was dead was harder but, still, nothing had ever made me feel like this. Broken and lost and powerless. There was nothing I could do besides fall apart while he fell apart a few inches away from me and I just watch, watch and watch. I try to reach out and touch him in someway, in anyway, but I just keep trying and trying and still touching the wind.

"They tell me it's better this way," Kurt continued, rubbing his eyes to try to dry the tears but giving up when it didn't work. "The doctors... even Mercedes agree. They—They showed me what happened to other people who had brain tumor but didn't... recover. Some lost their memories completely and others are totally incapable of doing anything on their own and maybe they're right, maybe it could be worse but... you'd be alive and I don't know if it makes me extremely selfish but I just... you're dead, Blaine, and I really can't imagine it getting worse than that."

He lost it after this, and I just sat there, helpless and hopeless, crying and sobbing while Kurt cried and sobbed and repeating his words in my head and I just knew he was right, because this wasn't fair, this isn't fair and makes no sense and I didn't—don't—even know what to do anymore.

So I just sat there, pretending I could actually rub his back while he cried like I had so many times and waiting, hoping something would finally start making sense.

"I met someone," Cooper says as soon as he arrives, two weeks after his last visit. "She's a beginner, still getting small parts, but it doesn't matter. Blaine, you'd've loved her. Kurt does. I had her over one day when he showed up, and he just loved her. She's so full of energy and always smiling and also caring and just... she's everything I need right now, y'know? Everything I need."

I smile at Cooper, even though he can't see, and listen to him telling me about his new girlfriend a bit more, but just from the first sentences I liked her. Coop was right—she's exactly what he needs right now. He's bringing his old self—the one that eventually helped me when I was a teenager, the one that teased Kurt and I non-stop, the one everybody loved—back. I already love her just for it.

"I'll bring her over one day, B. I promise. I've told her so much about you. Just yesterday she told me she would have loved to have met you."

"I would've loved to have met her too, Coop," I whisper.

The first time my father came alone, he didn't cry. He didn't do much, actually. He just sat a gorgeous bouquet of some flower I didn't recognize on my grave, ran his hand over my name, whispered, "I'm sorry, son," and left.

The second time he came alone, he had this weird expression, like when someone tells him something he doesn't like but knows it true.

And then he started talking. He told me how Burt had visited him just two days ago, and how they'd talked for almost two hours. He told me how Burt was worried about Kurt—this was just a few days after Kurt's first visit—and how he was worried about my father too, because he had a feeling lots a things had gone unsaid between us.

It wasn't a feeling, actually. I'd told him this myself, like I told him almost everything when it involved my father. But my father didn't know that, and even if I could tell him, I wouldn't have the heart to.

Burt told my father to try and talk to me in the cemetery. He said people do that all the time—which is true, as you realize when you start living in one—and that it could help.

So that was what my father was doing. He was talking to my grave. He made it clear he thought it was no use—but, as he knew how much I admired Burt and how he normally was right, as much as it hurt for my father to admit that, he decided to give it a shot.

He apologizes. He recalled everything he'd ever done and everything he could have done and apologized and then he cried and confessed my mother was not good, that he didn't know how to help her, just like he couldn't help me, and I just sat there and cried, like I always did, while my father talked his heart out to a rounded rock. When he finally decided to leave, he whispered this: "I'll make something right for you now, son. I'm sorry it's too late, but I'll try to make it right. Because of you, because you matter, son, and I'm sorry it took me so long to realize that."

The next time my father comes, he's holding a piece of paper. It looks formal, but has been read and folded so many times that could be a newspaper where a dog peed. My father's smiling, though, wider than I can remember seeing him do, and when he stops in front of my grave, he shows it the paper, as if the rock could actually read it.

"I told I would do it, didn't I, son? They're getting there. There's still a long why to go, but they're getting there. They'll get there."

I have no idea what he's talking about, and every time I try read the paper, he shakes it or changes the position, so the only word I gathered was "institute".

"They can't be sure if it will help, but the technology they managed to create is unbelievable, son. Only time will tell, but I think we're in for something big here," my father adds, dropping to his knees to place the paper, folded neatly, in front of my grave. He's still smiling, and even though I have no idea of what is going on, I can't help but feel happy too. It has to be something great to make my father smile like this

"I'm leaving this here because... well, it was you and my money that made it happen, and I think if this paper is going to get lost, it better get lost here. I have to go now, but I'll try to bring Mom together next time, okay?" And then he disappears, not even five minutes after he arrived, and I stay there, staring numbly at the paper and wondering what the hell does it mean.

I decide to hope for the help of the wind and, luckily, it doesn't that long for the paper to unfold and get tossed till a grave near. I follow it, reading it bit by bit and, when I'm finished, I just want to grab it and read again and again and again because this is amazing and suddenly I don't understand how my father managed to not scream in happiness every time he opened his mouth.

It's a prototype. They—some researchers from a university whose name I didn't care to read—had had the model for a while, but didn't have enough money to work on it. My father found out, made an anonymous donation from what I gathered—he said he did it, but there was no name on the paper—and now this prototype may be the first of electronic equipments to help cure people with lots of cases of brain damage, tumor and alike. It's a beginning, like my father said, but it's a big beginning. I can't wipe the smile off my face even when the tears start falling.

"Do you know of anyone who stayed behind but left after?" I asked Julia one day, not long after we'd met, when she'd show up to see how I was. I think she created some kind of maternal instinct over me.

"One guy," she answered. "He died on a car crash two days before his wedding. Needless to say, his fiancée had a few issues getting over it. He stayed here for a while, in this very grave you're always sitting, waiting for her to come visit him. She never did, because she refused to leave the house. The last time his mother came, it had been four years."

"What happened, then?"

"We both found out five years later. I used to stay here more, to keep him company, as nobody ever came to see his grave. He had just giving up hope and decided we were both stuck here forever after when there was a rather small funeral."

Just like that, I already knew I wouldn't like what was to come.

"The first thing he noticed was that his parents were here. Both of them. As well as all of his friends. And she." Julia paused, looking at nowhere for a while, and then continued, "But she was confused. She wanted to leave. She kept screaming at them to take her back home, where she was safe and could never be hurt that bad anymore, but none of them paid her any attention. And then she looked in our direction and... well, I think you've already guessed what happened?"

I nodded. "So she... uh... killed herself?"

"Caused her death, I'd say. She refused to leave the house, refused to eat, refused to do anything, really. People just gave up after a while, and then one day she called her mother saying 'It's time' and by the time her brother finally got to the house, she was already dead. Natural death at the age of 30."

I let my eyes get lost in the cemetery, trying not to think, trying not to imagine, because Kurt hadn't come to visit me yet but I couldn't let myself think like that, and Julia, probably sensing something was wrong, started talking again.

"I don't much more because she only had time to tell the story to my friend before they both hugged and disappeared. Never heard of them again."

"So that is it? We have to wait until the person who's holding us back dies so that we can move on?"

"I don't know." Julia shrugged. "Like I said, I haven't met that many people like us. All I know I gathered though the years. But, maybe, who knows."

"But what if they fall in love again? What if they have someone to wait for? We wait with them and them die happily ever after in a twisted threesome?"

Julia laughed, even though I didn't understand why it was funny at all, and smiled at me. "I don't know, kid. But this is a interesting theory. Well, I wouldn't know. Rick hasn't dated ever since I passed."

I would say I wish I had hold my tongue back that day, but I don't, actually. It doesn't please me, but what can I do?

His name is Adam. He's twenty six, a lawyer, blond and brown eyed and Kurt is falling for him.

I've never seen him look so guilty. His eyes are shining with tears and his face is flushed. He looks fifteen again.

"I love you, Blaine. I'll always love you, but he's so good to me and he's helped me so much and I just..." He dries his eyes and sniffles. "I like him. I really like him."

I just sit by his side, numb, trying to understand the fact that Kurt, my Kurt, might love someone else. I know it's been five years and that it could happen at sometime but I just... I didn't think I'd be here to see it. I can't decide if I want to see it.

Kurt keeps apologizing, and I just want to snap and tell to shut up, that this isn't his fault, that I'm gone and he's allowed to fall for whoever he wants, but this... this isn't entirely true. Because if I were really gone, would I be here? Would I be living by my grave, forbidden to leave, stuck in this cemetery, having as only companion a woman who died fifteen years ago and still has to see her husband say he misses her everyday?

I'm not gone. I refuse to accept that.

After Kurt leaves, I don't move. I stay sitting there, looking at nowhere, trying to picture Adam and hoping he isn't as handsome as my mind created and then I start imagining Kurt with him, Kurt going on a date with him, Kurt having coffee with him, Kurt kissing him, Kurt having sex with him, Kurt marring him and—

"Snap out of it, kid."

I shake my head, smiling shyly at Julia, and thank her.

"No problem. So, what happened? Or you don't want to talk about it?"

I look at her for a long time before answering.

"Actually, I think I do."

When I finally told Julia about Kurt, I broke down in front of her. It was a few days after Kurt's first visit, and she had decided to check on me again. I think she knew something was wrong the moment she arrived, because she just sat by my side and asked, "What happened?"

And I finally told her. I told her everything Kurt and I had gone though, from high school to a year apart because of Kurt's college and then when we finally started living together in New York, and how we were now talking about a little competition to see how managed to propose first, and how our apartment was little and Kurt was always complaining because not even half of his clothes fitted in the wardrobe but, deep inside, he loved it as much as me because it was ours, ours and no one else, just like what we had was ours and ours only. I then told her about the tumor, about the six weeks I had, and about Kurt's visit. I told her everything crying and sobbing and holding myself as if it would stop me from falling apart.

When I finished, she just looked at me and said, "I get it."

The Saturday Kurt doesn't come is the Saturday Julia tried to slap me.

It's been a while since Kurt first told me about Adam and, even though he doesn't mention him much, I know he's around, because Kurt's smiling, not like when he was with me or when he got his new job, but he's smiling and, even though I want to hate the guy, I can just close my eyes and thank him.

But, even after Adam arrived, Kurt never missed a weekend. Every Saturday, around four pm, he was around with two roses, one red and one yellow, and a tale from his week to tell me.

Every Saturday.

Every Saturday but this.

"Blaine, stop walking around."

"Blaine."

"Blaine!"

I want to listen to Julia when she says something might have come up, but I just can't I keep seeing my version of Adam holding Kurt's hand when they walk down the Wall Street and, when they get home—our home, where we lived—Adam asks Kurt who is the guy in that photography and he just says, "A old boyfriend. Nothing big."

I know it's irrational, of course. I know Kurt. I know he'd ever forget me. But it's already almost seven pm and he didn't come and he didn't say anything about traveling, so my brain just creates a mind of its own and starts making up the most ridiculous and terrifying sceneries. I feel like I'm going crazy, and this is insane because if I were to go crazy, it would have happened when I realized I was a ghost, but no, it's happening because Kurt and Adam are put together in the same phrase.

Soddenly, there a strong wind passing in my cheek and, after a few seconds, I realize it was Julia's attempt of slapping me.

"Why would you do that?" I ask, as if it actually hurt.

"I wish it had been real. Here, Blaine, listen to me." She moves as if to hold my shoulders, but then lets her hands fall. "You need to snap out of this. It's a good thing, okay? It's a good thing."

"How is the guy I love falling for someone else and forgetting about me something good?"

"Oh, c'mon, you know you don't really believe that. I've seen the kid, okay? He's crazy about you. Will always be. I can assure you of that. But, Blaine, listen. He's happy, don't you see? In this last weeks, he actually doesn't look like someone died—okay, bad phrased, but he's happy, okay? I can actually see some light in his eyes. And, okay, maybe for that he had to go and fall in love with someone else, but shouldn't you be happy for him, at least?"

"I am," I say, because it's true. I'm happy for Kurt. It doesn't mean I have to be happy with the situation. "I just... I'm afraid in a few years I'll just be some memory, the guy he dated in high school and died when he was twenty and it was such a shame but just that. A shame."

"This isn't happening, Blaine, and you know it. Kurt will be eighty-five and telling his great-grand-children that, even though he loves grandpa, he loves another guy too, one that had to leave Earth before his time and that, even though he doesn't believe in it, inside of him there is hope that he'll see him again. Got it?"

I try to hide the tears on my eyes, but of course Julia sees them, but she just keeps looking at me until I nod. Then, she turns and leaves the cemetery without another word, and I just stay there, staring at the gate and waiting.

Because that's what I do.

I wait.

Turns out Kurt didn't come because he had a emergency meeting with the cast of the musical he's on and he only had three days to pack his things before they were going off to Los Angeles for one presentation, to stay two weeks. Cooper tells me all of this as if he knows I've been freaking out a little bit, but, even though I happy for Kurt and, honestly, happy this is the reason he didn't come, I can't really pay attention to this.

Because Cooper's not alone.

While he tells me everything, I keep looking at her. She's not your usual Hollywood beauty, but there's something to her, to the way her eyes are shining while Cooper talks to a grave and the way she holds his hand, not saying anything, just being there for him, that makes me like her even more than before.

"So, Blaine, I wanted you to meet someone today," Cooper finally says, stepping aside a little. Elena smiles, drops to her knees to put a yellow roses bouquet in front of my grave, and says, "Yellow roses represent friendship. I chose these ones because I think we would have been great friends, Blaine."

I'm smiling when I say I think we would have been great friends too, and I'm still smiling when they're leaving.

On Monday, Dad comes. I'm surprised, because Monday's are normally quite busy for him, but then I see he isn't alone and understand everything.

Mom's walking slowly, as if every steps requires from her an extraordinary strength, but then, finally, she's standing in front of my grave with shaking hands and teared eyes. She's dressed impeccabilityas always, even though her hells really aren't the most appropriated shoes to wear in a ground like the cemetery's, but she still looks beautiful, older, her face harder, but as beautiful as always.

She takes her time cleaning the grave while my father stays far away, almost by the gate, as if giving us privacy. Mom needs almost ten minutes, but then she finally stops cleaning and, after breathing slowly one single time, she says, "I'm sorry, son. I'm sorry I haven't been around. It's not easy, but I'm dealing. I'm going on with my life. I'll always miss you, and I now I don't come here often, but I just want you to know that I'm always thinking about you. Always."

She leaves soon after that, but I've already realized she's right. She's dealing and, I dare say, she's fine. As least, as fine as a mother can be after losing one child to cancer when they're only twenty years old. She will never fully recover, like Cooper never will neither Kurt, but she's getting there.

Honestly, it's about time.

The next time Kurt comes visits, he almost can't hold his excitement.

"I have so much to tell you, Blaine!" he says as soon as he arrives, depositing the two roses in front of the grave quickly before he restarts speaking. "So, we had this small tour to Los Angeles last week, only three performances—but I was amazing, if I dare say myself—and then, when I went back to work on Monday, my boos called me to her office and offered me the change to, wait for it... create my own line!"

I feel my mouth falling open, but there's no one to see how ridiculous I look so I don't really mind. Kurt's starting his own line of clothes. And he's a musical actor. And he's writing for a fashion magazine. It's like all his dreams came true, and all I want is to hug him and say, "I'm so happy for you."

"I can't stop smiling, Blaine. I mean, theater is my passion but... I've always loved fashion. And now I'm managing to conciliate both. Honestly, if you were here, my life would be complete."

But when he leaves, Julia appears by my side and has a knowing smile on her lips that I honestly don't like.

I never found out what happened to Julia. She never told me. All the times I asked, she always changed the subject. I don't know if maybe it was her own fault or maybe she still has to come in terms with it, but she just doesn't like talking about it.

She loves talking about her son, though.

He's a basketball player, a really good one, according to her, and he's planing on going go North Carolina for college, to the best College Basketball team of the championship, and, even though I know next to zero about basketball, I'm honestly happy for her.

So, when one day she arrives with a secret smile, I don't like it very much. Recently, I've been feeling like everyone's up to something and I'm the only one who doesn't know about it.

"I have great news," she tells me, sitting by my side. "My son's team is playing in California next week, and Rick's going to, and they want to take my ashes with them. So... I'm going to California!"

I laugh at her excitement, like she's still a twenty something young woman with a baby and a lovely husband, and ask, "So, I'll be free of you from a whole week?"

"Don't miss me too much," she says, although her eyes tell me something else is up. "Well, I gotta go. Just thought I should tell you. Take care, kid." She looks at me for a few more seconds, and then disappears to the gate, just like the first time I ever saw her, just like she's never been here.

Cooper and Kurt come to see me together this week. Kurt's carrying a small plain box that immediately catches my attention, but Cooper soon starts talking animately about Elena and how she's finally agreed to move in with him and, then, he drops the bomb.

"I'm thinking about proposing."

Kurt doesn't seem surprise at all, so I guess this is not news for him, but I just can't get over the fact that my brother, Cooper, is actually getting married. Because Elena will say yes, I'm sure of it, I've seen enough of her on the times she came with him to know her at least this much, and I just can't deal with this information right now.

"I've been telling him to ask her already and get it over, because you know you're brother, he is going to try to be romantic and end up screwing it up, but he's nervous."

"I don't understand how you can't be so sure she'll say yes."

"I'm sure Blaine would agree with me on this."

"Yes, I do," I say, just because I want to, and laugh as Kurt and I would do before. Cooper and Kurt talk a bit more about the proposal and Kurt gives Cooper so many ideas that is kind of scary, but then Cooper starts to get impatient, and I don't understand why until I see his eyes flickering to the box Kurt's carrying, which I'd totally forgotten.

"Oh yes," Kurt says, smiling shyly to my grave. "I have a present for you, Blaine." And then he opens the box, and I have to hold myself up because inside of it is a bow-tie.

A red and yellow bow-tie.

And, in the very corner of it, is a small stylish 'K' that can only mean—

"This is the first prototype ever of my line. I thought it would be a good idea for you to have it because, well... it would be yours in any way. So, here you go. A new bow-tie. Hope you like it."

As I step closer to my grave, to look at the bow-tie properly, I trip, can't breath and my thoughts are a bit of a mess. My eyes stay focused on the bow-tie, and I know Kurt's talking again and Cooper laughs at whatever he said, but I'm not paying attention. Not anymore.

I'm imagining.

I'm imagining what it would be like if the cancer had never come. I imagine if Kurt would have started his own fashion line any ways. I imagine if his first clothe would be the bow-tie. I imagine him coming home one day, a secret smile on his lips, and giving me the box. I imagine myself opening it, shocked and happy and unbelieving and then I ask Kurt to help me put the bow-tie on and hug him and kiss him and say I'm so proud of you and Thank you and I love you. I imagine myself looking at all the sketches of all the clothes he's planned and I think to myself, "I can't believe he's mine."

And then I look at Kurt, at the way he's smiling and the way his shoulders are held high like in high school, when he was so proud of being who he was and didn't give a damn about what anyone else thought. And I realize that maybe he—we will never fully recover, that maybe I'll always be there, in the corner, and Kurt will always remember and love and miss me, but it's possible to move on. It's possible to still want things. It's possible to still do said wanted things.

We'll never be there. But where we are is good enough.

The knot in my stomach starts when things begin to blur. Kurt still talking, Cooper's still smiling and I'm still crying of sadness and happiness and longing, but the other graves are not there anymore, and neither are the trees or the ground and I realize that maybe it's me who's disappearing, not the world, but it's doesn't really matter, because I don't really care.

And then Kurt raises his eyes. He raises his eyes and look straight at me and I realize he's still talking, but it feels more like singing, and I force myself to listen.

He's really singing. And he's singing Blackbird.

He looks at me and maybe he can't see me, but I'd like to believe he understand what is happening. This isn't the end, not really. It's just a new chapter.

While singing, with tears in his eyes, his hands closed around the red and yellow bow-tie, Kurt looks at me and smiles, and I smile back at him before everything goes black.