The Betrayal Part Two
Blaine had just gotten off the phone with the property management company that was handling his apartment search in New York. They had finally found something for him, within his price range, which of course was still outrageously expensive for what he was getting.
Santana’s response to his lament was typical. “As a hobbit, why wouldn’t you expect to get a hovel in the shire?”
Blaine rolled his eyes and smiled.
They had settled into a familiar and easy relationship through the years, and curiously enough, she was the one New Directions member who ended up in New York like Blaine.
Rachel had long exiled herself to California where she was toiling away in semi stardom on a reality series about the lives of frustrated actors living in Southern California. “It’s Real World meets American Idol” was the way Santana had described it, with the irony of course escaping Rachel.
”What’s horrible is that Rachel and I are actually friends. Can you believe it? I genuinely like the needy bitch!” was Santana’s latest tirade when they met for coffee.
Had it really been eight long years since he attended McKinley High? The first few months after the breakup with Kurt were difficult for Blaine. Easing back to Dalton was strange but manageable, but never talking again to Kurt was something he never quite got used to. No closure. Nothing. There were whispers about Kurt but nobody knew for sure, and goodness knows Blaine’s friends tried to dig up information for him. Once he graduated from Dalton and physically went away to school at Columbia it became better. Not good, but better.
He always wondered if his choice of Columbia was influenced subconsciously by the notion that Kurt had always harbored hopes going to school in New York, that it was his wish for both of them.
But college and life intervened so that he wasn’t pining for Kurt , wasn’t his obsessive focus as it was while he was still in High School. Yet once he finished school he was fully determined to look for Kurt, if for nothing else to satisfy his curiosity. The one consolation he had was that Kurt had initiated their breakup. For God’s sake he had slept with someone else.
But life had a funny way of interfering with Blaine’s plans.
He was getting a handle on his career as a lawyer when his parents first had health issues.
Once they died he didn’t return to Ohio that often.
Going home to Ohio was difficult for Blaine. He had run into Finn once at the local grocery store in Lima and for a second Finn seemed happy to see him. Then he seemed to remember the past and just waved weakly to Blaine. Quinn simply glared at him.
This was a pattern that happened whenever he ran into any of the old McKinley crowd infrequently through the years. They couldn’t break though the wall they had built up between themselves and Blaine.
When in Lima he would drive by the Hummel Tire and Lube and watch Burt Hummel through his car window. But he never had the nerve or courage to get off and try to approach him again. It was obvious that he still had hope he would catch a glimpse of Kurt there, or somewhere. But Kurt seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Blaine knew he wasn’t dead, that he would have known but the mystery of Kurt remained. He knew how close Burt and Kurt were, what could possibly keep Kurt away from home all this time?
After he finished school his parents’ health took a turn for the worse. As he told his friend Wes, “what were the chances anybody’s parents both getting cancer at the same time?” So the first few years after college was helping them attend their medical needs and appointments as well as he could, even while working. If it was any comfort to Blaine they grew closer the more they got weaker, and soon they depended on him for everything. He missed them terribly once they did pass away.
At his mother’s funeral he thought he saw the Hummels at a distance. But when he approached them they turned and left. He could have been mistaken.
Blaine had been in several relationships though the years. But for whatever reasons they didn’t last, and that was when it got bad for him. After the breakups he would start to remember and that was never a good thing for Blaine. What was hard for him to reconcile was that he had only been genuinely happy when he was with Kurt. Rationally he knew he probably had idealized the high school romance they had, but emotionally it was hard to accept.
Sometimes he wondered if he dreamed up their relationship, it all seemed so unreal at times. He realized that at this late date he could probably hire a private investigator, but it felt to him disrespectful to Burt Hummel. Why hurt the family even more?
Yet the ache never really went away.
Those were the times when he would especially seek out Santana , she was his link, an unspoken reminder and connection. Santana sensed this but didn’t seem to mind that Blaine sometimes needed her in this way.
Sometimes what was unsaid between them was overwhelming to him. In his melancholy moods Blaine would just stare at Santana for long periods of time, and she seemed to know that she was to remain quiet while he did this.
He would search her eyes for something, but she gave nothing away.
**********************
“Blaine! Blaine Anderson!”
Blaine turned around and looked at the man that was confronting him at the Starbucks. He looked oddly familiar and yet he couldn’t’ quite place him. He knew he recognized him but from where?
“Yes, I’m Blaine.”
“Thank God. I can’t believe I ran into you. What are the odds?” The man then took the chair at Blaine’s table.
Blaine looked at him puzzled and the young man realized that Blaine couldn’t quite place him.
“We went to High School together?”
“At Dalton?”
“No, at McKinley High School in Lima.”
“Oh, sorry, I wasn’t there very long.”
“Well, maybe not but I knew one of your friends quite well.”
“My friends?” and Blaine nearly choked out the words.
“Yes, Kurt, Kurt Hummel.”
Blaine looked up startled and gave the man his full attention. It was so long since he had heard anyone mention Kurt’s name in connection to his.
“I finished college and got my degree at Michigan. It’s not an exaggeration to say I owe a lot of that to Kurt.”
Blaine still couldn’t place him.
“I’m Michael Cortez, I was for a while quite close to Kurt.”
Suddenly all the anger came back to Blaine. Here was the cause of all the wasted years.
“You have some gall talking to me Michael!” The fury was building up in Blaine.
“What are you talking about?”
“You slept with my boyfriend, how the hell to you expect me to feel?”
Michael looked at him and just stared.
“Oh my God.”
And Blaine hardly expected what happened next. Michael stepped off to the side of the table and leaned over and threw up. Of course he shielded himself as best he could but the heaving was both sudden and continuous.
Blaine tried to look away. What was Michael disgusted about, his own guilt and shame?
After Michael finished almost by instinct Blaine offered him his handkerchief. Always his damned manners as a defense mechanism. It seemed so pathetic.
As Michael wiped his mouth he finally seemed to come to his senses.
“When was the last time you saw Kurt?”
“Nearly eight years ago when I confronted him about sleeping with you. I asked him in front of the whole choir group and he couldn’t deny it.” Blaine’s hands were rolled up into fists and it took all his self control not srike out at Michael.
“Did you talk to him afterwards?”
“No.”
Michael looked miserable and then he looked angry. Blaine was getting upset, what the hell did Michael have a right to look angry at him for?”
“Blaine, do you want to know from me what happened?”
“I already know what happened.”
“Shut up! Do you want me to tell you or not?”
“Go ahead”.
“I never slept with Kurt.”
“God! Kurt confessed, stop lying.”
“Look at me you asshole.” He grabbed Blaine roughly by the shoulders.
“I never slept with Kurt.”
“But…”
“I never slept with Kurt..”
Blaine stared at Michael. It was confusing because Blaine could swear he looked sincere and suddenly Blaine wanted more than anything for it be a mistake. He couldn’t conceive the suddenly horrible notion that Michael might actually be telling the truth. The one comfort Blaine had was Kurt’s betrayal, strange as it seemed. He clung to the notion that Kurt had ruined their relationship, even if Blaine hadn’t tried to salvage it.
“Think, Blaine, think. Where did you ask Kurt about us?”
“in the Choir room in front of all of his friends.”
Michael shook his head, “Kurt wouldn’t deny it in front of his friends.”
He settled down and gave Blaine a look that was both pitying and disgusted.
“It was hard for me when I got to Lima. You see, I was a new kid in town, an illegal Mexican and gay, great combo, no? But I hadn’t come out yet. Kurt had tried to get a PFLAG chapter set up in McKinley but nobody would show up for the meetings. We were talking Lima, Ohio for God’s sake. But one time I secretly confronted him and told him my issues, my fears.
Kurt said he would try to help me; he said he understood what I was going through. It meant the world to me to talk to someone who could relate to me without judging. I made Kurt swear not tell anyone, I was so paranoid. I’m pretty sure he never told you, right?”
Blaine silently nodded.
He remembered Wes’s words to him.
“Did you realize that Kurt has been seeing this Michael Cortez guy for months on the sly?”
To complicate things, I got involved my senior year in high school, with a boy named Gary. We were neighbors out in the country. It was so hard for us to see each other because Gary lived in an abusive household. His household was a hell hole. And what made it worse was that Gary couldn’t really hide what he was, he couldn’t ‘pass’. His voice was a little too high pitched and his mannerisms were too effeminate for his father’s taste. So he got beat constantly for being a ‘fag’, and not a ‘real man’ in the words of his dad.
Soon we both got together with Kurt and he tried to help us as best he could, but it was difficult. I was afraid to come out and Gary didn’t dare because of his father. His mother and brothers also received abuse and Gary knew that they would receive the brunt of things if he protested or reported anything. But Kurt tried to accommodate us so we could have time together, to talk. He said that he understood how hard it was to make a connection with someone else, especially under our circumstances.
Kurt couldn’t solve our problems, as much as he wanted to. It was frustrating for him, I could tell.
He was very sensitive about all this. He knew how hard it was for Gary to come out. And with a violent and abusive father, it was something that Kurt felt he couldn’t push the issue.
So on this one occasion Kurt offered to drive Gary and me home and somehow Gary’s father was waiting for us. I’ll never forget it, he was waiting by the front porch with a leather strap in his hand. It didn’t matter that Gary nearly was as tall as he was , the man was a menacing hulk and he was reeking of alcohol.
He told Kurt and I to leave, because he needed to talk to his fag of a son and beat some sense into him. I was terrified because I had been in their home the other day when his dad was away working. Somehow he must have found out about us.
He started yelling that he found a used condom in the garbage and that his son must have been fornicating with one of his pervert friends. And he kept telling Kurt to leave, that this wasn’t any of his concern. See, I did have sex with Gary and I did use a condom that I had thrown out.
Gary was shaking and starting to cry and I was about to die because he stopped telling both of us to leave, he only insisted that Kurt leave, which made me believe he suspected it was the two of us. He knew I lived with my mom, who was Hispanic and had limited English and that I didn’t’ have a dad around. He had nothing to fear from me. I know this sounds like something out of some Victorian melodrama.
I had never seen anyone as cool and collected as Kurt was that afternoon. He stood there facing Gary’s dad and said, “I was having sex with Michael and I l threw the condom in your garbage once I picked up your son up to take him to school. I didn’t want anyone to know what we did. I’m sorry and it will never happen again.”
Well you could have blown his father away with a feather.
It was all Kurt’s idea. He knew that Gary’s dad was violent, and he knew that if he found out that Gary had slept with me he would hurt Gary and possibly myself. He had already beaten up Gary a few months before and out of fear Gary hadn’t reported anything.
So he stood there and told Gary’s father that the used condom was his. That he and I had slept together and had thrown the condom out.
Gary’s dad cursed at us but let us go.
I thought Kurt was insane. I told him that he couldn’t take the rap, so to speak. My guess was that he somehow felt responsible for us getting caught. I told him what if word got out.
He explained everything to me, that the lie would only last for a few weeks. Nobody but the immediate family would know what Kurt had confessed to. He doubted that Mr. Berringer would want to publicize things. “Besides, “ he said, “technically I’m not lying. It is my condom, since I did notice Michael that you took them from my messenger bag the other day?”
I was dying of embarrassment, but I couldn’t deny it.
He told me, “Well, you needed protection. Don’t worry, I’ll handle this . Besides, who is going to find out about any of this? And once I explain everything to my boyfriend it will be OK, it will be be settled. He helped me once when I was in trouble and if anyone will understand it’s him.”
A cold shudder ran through Blaine.
“Blaine, my dad’s gardener Mr. Berringer complained to him that some ‘faggots’ from McKinley High were screwing around in his property and if he had legal rights to sue them.”
“So?”
“He said that one of them was a fruit called Kurt Hummel. That Kurt had been hanging around with his son and his friend for months. He said he’s willing to swear to that in court, that Kurt Hummel admitted it to him point blank.”
“Take that back, Wes. Why would I listen to such garbage about Kurt?”
“Calm down of course it’s not Kurt! It’s too insane to conceive. But well, I overheard the conversation on the phone quite accidently of course. And it got so bizarre that I had to tell you. His dad said that it was some weird condom by the name of Buckeye Warrior. Isn’t that a hoot? That it was stamped on the used condom and he was wondering if it was something, I swear to God, and I quote “ that homosexuals use.” The idiot obviously examined the used condom for evidence how gross! He’s looking for a quick buck, so that tells you how many generations of in breeding were are talking about. It took all my self control not to start laughing over the phone.”
“What did you say the condoms were Wes?”
“Buckeye Warrior Condoms, what the hell are those?” Wes gasped between his laughing.
Blaine’s throat suddenly went dry.
“Um, believe it or not, they are given as a gag gift to Ohio State alumni for their fundraising efforts.”
“Oh.”
Blaine had given those condoms to Kurt just a week before the incident.
“You, Mr. Hummel should be proud you are receiving a limited edition of Buckeye warrior condoms, that is something that you don’t come across every day you know”.
Kurt smirked, “ I will treasure them forever Mr. Anderson.”
Michael continued his story:
“Of course Kurt couldn’t deny it front of New Directions, as much as he loved and cared for them, they were horrible gossips. It would be all over the school that Kurt had not slept with me. The gig would be up. He was afraid word would get back to his Gary’s father that he was lying.
You see, I had just turned eighteen and Gary was a few weeks shy so he was under age. Kurt knew that Gary’s dad would bring charges of child molestation against me. It might be a technicality but it would go to court.
My mother had petitioned me for residency and a charge like that would have ruined my chances of gaining residence here in the states. I would be deported.
You could say it was the ‘perfect storm’ of the shit hitting the fan.”
Michael put his hands on his head. “Kurt thought he had the perfect solution. He trusted implicitly that you would hear him out, that you would understand. He loved you so much. I had always envied how he talked about your relationship. “
Blaine felt everything spinning around him.
It suddenly made sense, Kurt saying in that strange tone “I can’t deny it.” Not at that precise moment in front of everyone in the choir room.
”God forgive me, but I thought everything was resolved. Kurt seemed so confident that it would all work out."
It would have if I would have given him the opportunity to explain.
"After a few weeks my mother moved us out of state to Nebraska. I tried to get a hold of Kurt but his cell phone wasn’t working anymore. I didn’t’ really know many of his friends but I figured Kurt would talk to me eventually.
I once called his dad at their shop but he didn’t know me and it was obvious he didn’t want to give me information. I should have pushed harder, I should have tried more.”
I should have tried more.
Things got better, Gary and I eventually hooked up and we’ve been together ever since. Tell me, do you know anyone who could give me information on Kurt?
Blaine lied.
“No, not really. But give me your number anyways.”
As Michael left Blaine sat there pondering everything he had heard. Suddenly he couldn’t judge Michael for throwing up.
It was time for him and Santana to have a little talk.