"Well that was an unmitigated disaster," Kurt concluded in a dramatic sigh, as he pulled his seatbelt across his body to fasten it at his left hip.
"Oh, come on, it could have been worse," Blaine replied, as he twisted around to look out his rear window while backing out of his parking space.
"How?" Kurt queried, skeptically.
"Well," Blaine continued, as he put the car in Drive and spun the wheel in the direction of the exit, "he could have actually punched me."
"Yeah, I suppose," Kurt conceded gloomily.
He was, by turns, both amused and depressed by Blaine's nonchalance in the face of their failure. The other boy seemed totally unfazed by what had just gone down between the two of them and Karofsky in the back stair well. He, on the other hand, was far more disappointed about it than the situation actually warranted.
"Hey, I have a big case of CDs in the back. Why don't you pick out something you want to listen to?"
Blaine was clearly trying to get Kurt to stop feeling sorry for himself, and Kurt knew singing would help. He reached around to the backseat and grabbed the large black case that was lying on the floor. Unzipping it, Kurt flipped through the pages briskly, feeling a detached appreciation for the range of music Blaine seemed to like. He had everything from showtunes, to classic rock to 80's one-hit-wonders. Soon enough he found something that matched his mood: it was a Best of Bernadette Peters collection.
Kurt fed the CD into the designated slot on the dashboard and soon the car was filled with the opening notes of "Not a Day Goes By." Kurt belted out in perfect unison with Bernadette for the next few minutes, until they pulled into the Breadstix parking lot.
Feeling marginally better by this point, Kurt followed Blaine into the restaurant and ordered a Chicken Caesar salad and a Coke. As they waited for their orders to arrive, Kurt chewed slowly on one of their complementary breadsticks, getting lost in his own thoughts as he did so.
"Hey," Blaine eventually said, kicking Kurt gently under the table. "Where are you right now?"
Kurt shook his head vigorously and replied, in all earnestness, "Sorry. I'm just feeling more depressed about this than I should be. I mean, I knew it was never going to work. But I hadn't realized, until Karofsky started threatening you, just how much I had still been hoping against hope that it might. I feel really disappointed. I guess I just wanted it a lot more than I thought I did."
"Yeah, I get that," Blaine replied, as their waitress arrived with lunch. The boys each thanked her and then took a few bites, chewing quickly in the relative silence.
"I'm sorry he stole that kiss from you," Blaine said after a few minutes, his tone surprisingly serious.
Kurt nodded but could not actually think of anything to say.
"You know, not to put a damper on things, but realistically I think most people are disappointed by their first kiss for one reason or other. I'd bet for a lot of people, it's not with the person they really would have liked, or it happens at the wrong time or the wrong place or it just turns out gross."
Blaine put extra emphasis on the last word and made a dramatic face, clearly trying to make Kurt laugh. It worked. Kurt could not help but chuckled at his comrades' expression.
"First kisses are one of the things that get so hyped-up and romanticized that, for most people, I think they are probably just a big let-down. And while that might be depressing in itself, I think you should take solace from the fact that you probably haven't actually been deprived of all that much. Even if your first kiss had been with someone of your choosing, it would still most likely would have been a disappointment in some fashion."
Kurt thought for a moment on Blaine's words and then nodded in resigned agreement.
"Plus, if nothing else, you certainly can't say yours lacked for drama!" Blaine concluded.
Kurt laughed again. Blaine had a way of, if not slaying Kurt's dragons, making them seem smaller, and more harmless. He took a moment to fully appreciate the mitigation of his loss and then tried to explain to his friend why their failure this afternoon had hurt as much as it had.
"You know, I think I just wanted something good to come out of it. I wanted it to have some larger meaning or purpose. Rather than it being just one more secret I have to keep, one more burden I have to carry for somebody else…somebody I don't even particularly like!"
"C'est la vie."
"You speak French and Latin. I should have known."
"Only a little bit."
"And like an idiot, I kept running all these fantasies about it through my head. I just couldn't help thinking, what if he actually did come out? Then I would no longer have to be 'the' gay kid. And people wouldn't be able to make fun of me without making fun of him, too. I mean, right now bullying me is easy; I'm not threatening in the least. But Karofsky – he beats people up on a regular basis. Kids at our school would actually be scared to be homophobic if he came out."
Kurt paused for a moment, reveling in the oh so distant possibilities that appealing scenario presented.
"I just couldn't stop myself from imagining how it might get better for me. And I got carried away with it all." Kurt paused again, for a few seconds, then continued.
"But even when I was trying to be more realistic, I still couldn't help thinking that, at the very least, he might be capable of facing up to how he feels in front of other gay people. I honestly had myself believing that he could maybe admit to his sexuality, if only in private, amongst people who already know. Then, if nothing else, perhaps he would have stopped harassing me so relentlessly. Now I'm worried that, not only did we not make things better, we may have actually made them worse. I mean he probably thought I would play along with him and just pretend like it never happened. I don't think he was expecting me to make a project out of him. And now that we've tried to intervene. he's probably even more anxious about this whole thing than he was before…which I somehow don't think is going to make him kinder towards me in the coming weeks."
At that, images of the new horrors Karofsky was likely to inflict on him started flicking through Kurt's imaginative brain. The prospects were grim, there was no getting around it. "This whole thing was a stupid, crazy idea and I have no idea why we even bothered," Kurt burst out in conclusions, feeling impotent and idiotic.
"We wanted to help, remember?" Blaine reminded him earnestly, touching his arm gently across the table.
"Yeah, that was stupid," Kurt responded a bit petulantly.
"It wasn't stupid. It was caring and it was descent. And even if it didn't work today, maybe just knowing he has someone he can confide in will help him get there a little quicker."
"I doubt it," Kurt rebuked cynically.
"Yeah, me too. But you never know."
"We should probably be getting back," Kurt said after a brief pause.
Blaine looked at his watch and his eyes widened.
"Yeah, we definitely need to make a move."
He flagged down the waitress and asked for their bill. Retrieving $30.00 from his wallet, Blaine waited until the squat brunette returned, then stuck the bills into the black folder she handed him without even looking at the tab.
"Keep the change," he said, while flashing the woman a dazzling smile.
"Thanks. You two have a great day," the waitress replied, giving Blaine a genuine smile in return.
As they exited the restaurant Blaine said, "What's done is done. Why don't you wait to see what happens before you start assuming the worst."
He then unlocked his car and slid into the driver's seat. With his hand on the passenger door, Kurt mumbled to himself, "Too late," before opening his door and settling into shotgun.