If there was one thing that could've kept Kurt and me apart, it was Cooper. After their first meeting, I thought that we were never going to work.

Okay, yeah, Kurt knew that Cooper wasn't totally. . . There. But still.

Coop isn't retarded. He just slurps his soup when he eats, says things that don't make any sense, and analyzes every meager atom of this life as if watching a movie for the thousandth time and no longer finding it funny. When I have to buy his clothes, there can't be any purple or orange involved ("Blaine, those words have no ability to rhyme in the English language. I do not need their rebellious aura encasing my body through those horrendous clothes.") and due to his obsession with even numbers, I have to count every stripe on his plaid shirts or cable-knit socks to make sure that there are no "odds" present when he gets dressed in the morning.

When Kurt met him, he was wearing a black scarf with three purple stripes and a digital watch that was precisely seven seconds off. Coop answered the door, wordlessly looked at him for almost a minute, and slammed it so fiercely that the metal knocker hit Hummel square in the nose.

Cooper does not touch. He does not exclaim. He does not empathize. When we were young together, I thought that he was an alien from Pluto - or some other cold, distant rock floating in the far reaches of the universe - here to observe humans for a short time as a mildly amused outsider. By the time he turned twelve, though, there was a name for his specific brand of weird, one that would label his life forever.

The doctor said Aspergers Syndrome.

Kurt, even after breaking his nose that day - hours before graduation - understood. He saw the crazy and didn't run away. As I watched, he cleared out almost a third of his wardrobe and brought heaps of lilac scarves and burnt orange sweaters and eggplant socks and plum ties to Goodwill. He reset his watch, his oven clock, and his cell phone. When he brought me a movie to watch, he brought Coop a book to read or a puzzle to complete or a joke to ignore.

He made Cooper love him.

With everything - Every. Damn. Thing. - open between us, I couldn't be afraid anymore. Kurt wasn't turning back. He was the friend I needed and the love I didn't deserve, wrapped into the most adorably sincere persona to ever fall into Lima, Ohio.

We had one glorious, breathtaking, beautiful summer together. I grew to really like his family, and he tirelessly won-over mine. Even Luke. By September, I was swearing up and down that Kurt Elizabeth Hummel could write his own book on how to be the perfect boyfriend. The perfect man.

In June, he brought me with him out to Columbus to adopt his new roommate, a puppy on-track to grow into a big, lazy dog, and we brainstormed all throughout the drive there, deciding finally to name the German Shepard Barbie - because Barbara simply is not appropriate for a pet. Kurt Hummel taught me how to skip rocks and pick out constellations in the star-drunk July skies, even wrote up a list of his favorite books for me when I said that I never liked reading.

He said that I must be doing it wrong.

Every Sunday night, we read together over the phone, and he was right. Hearing the words in his perfect voice changed everything. The sadness was real. The struggle was real. The happy endings were vibrantly our own, and they shared our dreams with a fierceness that left me breathless. Kurt read the classics, starting with what he knew I would relate to.

Houlden Cawfield's laments of lost innocence pierced me from A Catcher in the Rye. But after that, The Great Gatsby fell into the core of my heart just as eloquently with the dark symbols and the lost hopefulness of a different life. I cried within The Fault in Our Stars. I adored Frankenstein, identifying more than I'd care to admit with the monster's plight. I saw how he loved his books. I saw how he so clearly loved this world.

I saw how he loved me.

In those lovely afternoon shopping days, a few fights over the stupidest things, the impromptu icecream runs, and that one last trip to the lake as the first leaves changed their colors. . . Kurt did the impossible.

He made me fall in love with him, like I promised I'd never.