As I lie here on the ground with two bullet holes in my body, several images flash through my head. The last thing that comes into my mind is you.
Back at my stepbrother's apartment in New York, a picture frame sits on his desk. In that picture, he's smiling with his prized Marc Jacob boots. They're black with laces that go up to a few inches below his knees. There's an interesting story behind those boots. He found them at a rummage sale. It was the first time I had gone shopping with Kurt. I asked him why designer clothing and accessories would be sold at such a low price. He explained to me that they were irregulars. If an item was not sewed perfectly, then it would have IRREGULAR in big, bold letters stamped on its tag.
Later that night, when I was looking at Kurt's boots, I noticed something. The tag attached to the shoes didn't have irregular stamped on it. I ran to Kurt's room to show him. He looked at the tag himself and nodded, impressed with my observation.
When I joined the army, Kurt and I grew apart. I was in the army, and he had a new job working for Vogue. Whenever I came home for a week or two, he didn't know what to talk about. So he turned to fashion. Every time we ate dinner together, he would talk endlessly about fashion. Until one night, I couldn't stand it anymore.
He was talking about how flare pants might someday be in again as I was putting a carton of milk back in his refrigerator. I slammed the carton down. "Will you just shut up about fashion?" I shouted. "I don't ever want to hear about fashion again." Kurt watched sadly as I stormed out of the kitchen.
After that day, he never brought up fashion again. Every night we ate dinner together, was almost completely silent. Kurt had become a neat freak. He refolded all of his clothes every night. He buried himself in work. He even created a dinner schedule, assigning a food to every night of the week.
To be honest, there was only one thing that kept me going back to New York. It was a girl. Her name was Rachel Berry.