Disclaimer: Glee is not mine.
For Maggie, as ever.
"I guess I'm just not ready for that."
The minute (second) the words are out of your mouth, you want to take them back.
He's not your first love and he won't be your last, but he's the first one to love you back and that's what matters.
But the second you say "yes" you regret it, but it's not the kind of thing you can take back—you're adults now, or almost-adults now and there's no more second chances, no more taking things back. Everything feels permanent now, like it's drawn in big black sharpie, all the way across the page.
It won't erase, and it doesn't come out in the wash.
You're sorry.
You didn't mean for the words to come out—you just kind of opened your mouth and out they fell, like a rockslide, or an avalanche. A vomit of words that just kind of…happened. You certainly didn't plan it, not this way, not any way, and anyway, it's not the kind of thing that can undo itself.
Ever.
Blaine kind of looks at you for a minute, like maybe you're tricking him (surely, surely you don't mean it? And you do, but you didn't want to say them, so doesn't that mean…?) or telling him lies, or just being silly but no, no, you mean the words, you do.
Because you do.
You aren't ready for this, however much you want to be. No amount of wishing and wanting makes dreams come true (you are living proof of this fact) and if you push yourself, you will regret it. You will.
You try to live with no regrets, but this will be one of them, would have been one of them even if you'd chosen the other. This is one of those inevitable things, and you've got to go with the lesser of two evils.
And you wish you could have said it differently, you wish you could have phrased it so it sounded less like a rejection and more like a promise, you wish you could have just done things differently, but that's it. The words are out, and there's no taking them back.
So, because you are Kurt Hummel, and he is Blaine, not your first, not your last, but special all the same, you kiss his cheek and take your things and leave.
(This feels like another regret, but you know it's the right thing. Sometimes the right things hurt the most, and that's just the way it is.)
Big black sharpie on the page says you're not ready and you can't regret that.
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