"Hey, Handsome."

"Hi, Beautiful."

"Oh my God, you actually are handsome." Tina squinted, closer to the screen. "The last time we Skyped I thought I accidentally called a caveman or a serial killer. I haven't seen you this clean cut since senior year."

Blaine shrugged. "Just playing the part."

"And how is life on the road? Is the tour bus everything you dreamed and more?"

"Life on the road was partially fun, partially lonely and boring, fairly disgusting as far as… diet, and lack of showers. Anyway, now it's over."

"Oh yeah, last night was your last show. I kind of knew that. Are you at the airport?"

Blaine turned the screen around to show her Terminal 3 of LAX.

"Very fancy. Was there an actual reason you guys didn't do a show in New York?"

"We didn't do a show in New York so that no one in New York could come to our show," Blaine explained.

"Riiiiight," she pointed at him. "People you know, you mean."

"Right. I only want people I don't know seeing me play music. And seeing me, in general."

"I was stalking the Blam Band—"

"Not our name..."

"— on Twitter. You guys apparently actually have fans. Like, more than one. And as far as I could tell, none of them were even your parents, because they looked like they were in middle school."

"That's Sam's fault. He still looks like a middle school student. And I don't have fans."

"I saw a girl posing in a picture with you on Twitter. And she was all 'Oh my God! It's me with Blaine Anderson.'"

"They like me because I'm in Sam's band."

"They had your autograph…"

"They were probably trying to get Sam's and I got in the way."

"Did they wait by your bus after the shows? Oh my God. I need to see this for myself next time. I'm selling your merch the next time you go on tour. I'm totally your merch girl. Do you have merch?"

"No," Blaine lied.

She sighed. "You're such a glamourous rock star now. Anyway, this Skype date has a purpose."

"I'm listening. Apparently there's a flight-conflicting thunderstorm in New York, so I'm going nowhere for the foreseeable future."

"Actually, it is an epic thunderstorm," she said, and brought her phone to the window, to show him the black sky over Manhattan. "It was hailing a minute ago."

"I'm jealous," Blaine said. He had always loved a good storm.

"Okay, so listen," Tina said, her face appearing again. "Rachel said—"

"I'm going to hang up on you," Blaine interrupted.

"Just listen! Rachel said it's my turn this year to organize the reunion party thing. Except she said it has to happen in the next two weeks. But other than the general date, I have to organize it."

Blaine just stared at her, blinking once.

Tina pressed her lips together and popped them apart, awkward in the silence. "When's your year?"

"I wasn't aware we had designated years, Tina."

Sam fell into the airport waiting lounge seat next to him then, a different kind of fast food salad in each hand. He leaned into Blaine's shoulder to look at his screen. "Hi, Tina."

"Hi Sam! Blaine said I could be your merch girl!"

Blaine shook his head. "No I didn't," he whispered.

Sam smiled at him, and leaned out of their conversation.

"She's trying to get us to go to the party."

"The party?" Sam asked.

"The party."

Realization crossed Sam's face, and his smile turned to a frown. "No!"

"Right." Blaine looked back to Tina. "We're not going."

"Wrong! How long has it been since we graduated? Three years! Three parties! And you only went to one of them. The first one! That is altogether unacceptable. You have a terrible track record."

"I've been to all of them, and I'm not going to this one," Sam said.

"Yes, you are. You both are. I'm one thousand percent determined to get everyone to come."

"Why don't we just invite the people who actually graduated with us?" Blaine tried.

Sam shook his head. "That doesn't help me. I still wouldn't go."

"No, everyone has to come. I can't not invite Rachel. It's her party. I mean, it's my party. But it's her party."

Sam handed Blaine one shredded carrot. Blaine ate it, mostly because it was the only thing he would eat all day, and it was getting dark out.

"Who's gonna be there?" Sam asked, still out of frame for Tina.

"Rachel and her fiancee," Tina began.

"No," Blaine said.

"Mercedes and her boyfriend…"

"No," Sam said.

"Mike Chang, plus one," she went on, with an unenthusiastic tone. "Quinn—"

"No," Sam said.

"Puck and Jake, Ryder, Marley, Kitty, Unique, Artie, plus all their ones…"

"I don't think your apartment can hold that many people, Tina," Blaine said. "I've been there."

"Santana…"

"No," Sam said.

"Brittany…"

"No," Sam said.

"Finn?"

They didn't say anything.

"And Kurt and Adam," she said finally, in one syllable, fast, like ripping off a bandaid. She smiled at Blaine.

Blaine just stared at her again.

After a moment her smile faded. "I feel like I'm forgetting about 15 people. Who am I forgetting?"

He shrugged. "Joe and Sugar?"

She looked pale. "Look, obviously I'm going to have a mental breakdown trying to organize this thing, I'll need you there."

"Did all of these people actually confirm they're coming?" Blaine asked.

"Yes… I told you last. I was trying to think of a way to avoid it, because I knew how much you'd hate it. But there's no way you can avoid it. And neither can I. It's like a terrible, evil monster, that has to rear its ugly head once a year. We all have to sit in a room together, and simmer, and boil, and fester, and suffer, and hate every second of it, and none of us can cop out. If I have to do it, you have to do it."

"Tina," Sam said, leaning in front of Blaine again. "There's a difference between what I had with Brittany, and what you had with Mike Chang."

She frowned.

Blaine twisted his ring.

"If I have to see her, I'll kill myself," Sam said.

"I feel similarly," Blaine nodded. "So we're not coming."

"Fuck you both," Tina said. "You're coming. It's on Saturday. I lied."

She hung up. Then she sent an email to Blaine that said, "Actually I love you."

Blaine walked into Sam Evans' first solo show, at a seedy bar at two in the morning, forty five minutes late. He had fourteen texts on his phone from Sam, all of which said, "You're late!" Or, "YOU'RE LATE." The most recent said, "youre late," which meant he was really mad.

Sam was already nearing the end of his set. At that point he hadn't yet cultivated the pop driven thing that Blaine would eventually encourage him to do, the thing that appealed to all the little girls and would actually make them enough money to pay the rent. Instead he was doing the heartbroken guy with a guitar thing. It was mostly quiet, with occasional bursts of loud, soul crushing vocals. It was affecting no one in the bar, except that when he started wailing they would up the volume of their private conversations to account for it.

The first person Blaine saw that he recognized, except for Sam of course, was Rachel's fiancee. It meant Rachel must certainly be somewhere nearby. Which meant Blaine had to hide, and fast. He never planned to defy security guards and rush backstage without permission, but that's what he ended up doing. It turned out the security guards had no qualm about a perfect stranger entering the magical off-limits zone that is backstage at all. So he watched the rest of the show from side stage, looking mostly at Sam's back, and his profile, and hoping he wasn't noticeable from the audience, next to the curtain that would close off the stage at the end of the night.

When Sam came off stage and saw him, he froze. He said, "Dude, you look like you got dumped." And then, "Dude, did you actually get dumped?" Blaine couldn't speak, so they just looked at each other for a while. Eventually Sam put his guitar down, inferring the answer, and hugged him. It was just the gesture Blaine needed to completely fall apart. He clung to Sam and sobbed into his shirt.

"Sammy!" they heard Artie yell from beyond. Sam pulled away from Blaine fast, and ran to meet Artie in an adjoining room.

"Everyone's here except Blaine and Kurt," he heard Artie say. "They're probably busy singing to each other on a rooftop. Should I have them hobbled or just banished?"

"Blaine's here, it's just Kurt that didn't come. And it's okay."

"Where's Blaine? I didn't see him."

"He's like…" Long pause. "Indisposed right now."

Another long pause. Then Artie said, "Wow."

"They had a fight," Sam whispered, but Blaine could still hear him.

"Was it bad?" Artie asked, voice low.

Sam must have answered with a nod, because Blaine couldn't hear an answer.

Without anyone noticing, Sam took him to an all night diner that night, forgoing his own after party. He tried to feed Blaine pancakes and eggs, and Blaine told him everything. Everything. But the sum of the whole story was one line: He said he fell out of love with me. It was the thing Blaine was sure would haunt him for the rest of his life. Every time he thought about it, and he would think about it all the time, it would hurt just as much as the first time he heard it come from Kurt's mouth. He was sure.

"What does that mean? How does that even make sense?" Sam asked, which was exactly what Blaine couldn't answer.

"He brought up the… the… what I did in high school," Blaine finally put it, "Which we haven't talked about in a million years because we're supposed to be over it. He said I ruined everything, all the way back then. He said every day since then he's been trying to convince himself that he's forgiven me but that he can't pretend anymore, and he can't force himself to. He said he's been waiting this whole time to feel for me the same way he used to feel when we were 16, and he knows now that it's never going to come back. And he said he doesn't want to wait, or try, anymore."

"But," Sam said, "you guys weren't even sixteen at the same time."

Blaine banged his head against the table, and didn't care if his hair got in the syrup.

Sam let him stay at his apartment until he could find a new place of his own. Sam gave him a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants to sleep in. Blaine zipped the hood all the way up to his chin and sat curled up on the couch, hugging his knees, all night, awake. He waited for Kurt to call. He waited for enough time to pass for the pain to stop. He twisted and twisted his engagement ring in the front pocket of the sweatshirt, wondering when it wold stop feeling so heavy and obvious.

The first morning after, Sam came to check on him. Blaine hadn't slept, but Sam had bedhead. "You okay?" he asked.

Blaine shrugged. "He didn't call. Did he call you?"

"No," Sam said.

Blaine nodded, and quit talking after that, for a while.

After an indeterminate number of days, Sam convinced him to to speak, just a little, sometimes. Then he ate again. Then he took a shower, but he went right back to the sweatshirt. It always felt soft and good, like the hug Sam gave him backstage the night that it happened.

After two whole weeks passed and Blaine still hadn't left the apartment, he finally listened to the message from his boss at the coffee shop. "I'm fired," he croaked out to Sam. They were in the living room, on opposite sides of the sofa. Sam was drinking a beer, and Blaine was holding one. He still hadn't relearned to properly consume things yet.

"There are a million coffee places," Sam said. Then he frowned and added, "But you shouldn't be doing that. You should be singing. You should go on auditions like the rest of 'em. Or do an open mic."

Blaine glared at him and hoped the black half moons under his eyes were showing enough to underscore the look. "No."

Sam sighed. "Then play with me, for a while."

"I only play piano," Blaine said, not sure why he was considering the idea enough even to decline it. "You don't have any piano in your songs."

"But I could… if you'd write new songs for me… songs with piano in them…"

Blaine looked at him again, surprised. And then, just like that, he smiled. The world had turned. "Shut up."