The car pulled up in front of the Conde Nast building. Isabelle, Cooper, and Blaine got out of the car. Isabelle had let security know that she was about to enter the building. While she waited for a response, Kurt stayed in the car with Sebastian.

He pulled Sebastian's hand, still interlaced with his, up to his lips and kissed it. He looked him directly in the eyes. "I love you, Sebastian. Nothing that is said during this conversation is going to change that." He leaned towards Sebastian and kissed him.

"I love you too, and I know you're not going to take him back. I'm not concerned about that at all. And I don't feel the need to go up there and defend our relationship. I am angry that he won't just leave you the hell alone. Even though I have listened carefully when you've spoken him, I am just now really understanding why you originally accepted his proposal that day. He just doesn't listen unless you're saying what he wants to hear."

"Exactly. That's one of the many things that makes what we have so different than the relationship I had with him. Even when we disagree, we listen to each other. I have to go in. Isabelle opened the door." He kissed Sebastian again. "I'll be home soon, I hope."

Kurt stepped up behind them as she unlocked the door with her badge and headed straight to the elevator, escorted by the security guard that had met them at the door. He let them go up on their own. When they exited, she led them to the conference room and opened the door.

Kurt went around the table and to the small kitchen area. He opened the fridge, grabbed four bottles of water, and took them back to the table. He handed them out and sat down next to Isabelle, across from Blaine, who was seated next to Cooper. He opened his bottle of water and took a drink before he spoke.

"I would like to start with Cooper. I stopped and spoke with you at Vibes. You seemed surprised to see me, but just the normal amount of surprise of running into someone you didn't expect to see. It seemed genuine, not practiced, so I'm assuming that you were not expecting to see me tonight."

"I wasn't. Blaine said that the place came recommended by someone he knows that lives here. So, he was out doing whatever he was doing while I was filming. We're only filming during daylight hours today and tomorrow. We met up at Vibes. He had asked me to sign him up if I got there first, so I did. He got there a few minutes after you had gone back to sit down."

"Okay. That makes sense. So, you had no idea that my band and I would be there performing."

"I did not. I didn't even know that you had a band, but I will say that you're really good. You all should consider making some demos and sending them out. Do you have a name?" He sat up a little straighter and leaned in. "I know some people."

"Not yet – on the name."

Blaine gave Cooper a dirty look.

"What? They're good." He looked back at Kurt. "Go on with what you were saying."

"Right. Almost exactly two months ago, Rachel 'brought' Blaine to Vibes via FaceTime. I made it clear then that there was no chance of reconciliation. By that point, Sebastian and I had been together for nearly three months. This Friday will make five months."

Cooper responded. "I was also not aware that you were in a long-term relationship with anyone."

Blaine interjected, "This fling you're having with Sebastian won't last."

"Says you," Kurt snarked back. "You don't know the first thing about Sebastian. You have no grounds on which to make a claim like that."

"He'll drop you once he's had his fun."

Isabelle spoke up. "That's uncalled for. Kurt is Sebastian's first boyfriend."

"Of course he is," Blaine responded snidely.

Isabelle looked at him like he had grown an extra arm. "I don't understand what that tone of voice is supposed to mean."

Kurt intervened. "He means that he thinks that Sebastian has a long history of hookups."

"Oh. Not to my knowledge," she said.

"How would you know?" Blaine asked. "You were here. He was in Paris and Ohio."

This time Cooper stopped them. "I'm lost. Why would this lovely lady know anything about Sebastian?" He winked at Isabelle.

"She's Sebastian's aunt," Kurt offered.

He nodded in understanding.

Isabelle answered Blaine's accusation. "You're right. I have no proof, other than his word, which means something to me. So, let's just leave your personal opinions about Sebastian out of this since he has nothing to do with what's going on between you and Kurt."

Cooper nodded. "That seems like a wise course of action. I feel like I'm missing key information. Let's start from the last time I saw Kurt, which was in March of 2012. You two had been dating for about a year at the time. He facilitated the two of us spending some much needed time together. All I know beyond that is that Kurt graduated and Blaine was in Lima still living with our great aunt Brenda. He didn't work at Six Flags that summer because he wanted to spend more time with you, Kurt. You left to come here in the fall. You two broke up. He said you got back together at Valentine's Day. About a month later, he jumped the gun and proposed to you. You freaked you out and broke up with him again. And I guess from what you just said, you started seeing Sebastian," he paused and thought for a few seconds. "About three months later."

Kurt responded, "Well, that's somewhat accurate, and you're right about me starting to see Sebastian three months later."

"Which parts weren't accurate?" Cooper asked.

"You didn't mention a reason for the breakup."

Cooper shrugged. "Distance?"

"He cheated on me."

Cooper's eyes narrowed and he turned his perplexed gaze on Blaine. "For real? Why would you cheat on Kurt?"

"I was lonely. I needed him and he was busy all the time. He was ignoring me. I thought he had moved on."

"Wait. I'm vaguely remembering what I heard at Vibe. You were talking over Kurt, but I could still hear him faintly." He stopped and tried to recall what Kurt had said. "How could you get so lonely in two weeks that you cheated on the person you told me loved you more than I ever did?"

Blaine smacked his hands on the table. "I don't know, okay? It felt like the end of everything. Nothing was the same at McKinley without him and the other seniors that had graduated. I called and he didn't answer. He rescheduled our phone dates. He never had time to talk."

"I'm not going to defend the fact that I had to get a job and that business jobs do not allow people to take personal calls."

Isabelle spoke up. "He actually took your calls until I caught him – twice in his first week of working here. Vogue doesn't pay people to talk to their significant others on company time. Being my intern isn't a job that always has set hours. He knew that, but he wanted the position, so if you called in the evenings, he may very well still have been here at work with me working on a project."

"You joined like ten clubs and ran for student body president in that same time period. I have no idea how you could have been that alone. The day you came to see me, we had talked at lunch. I called you back on my way back to the loft when I got off, but it went to voicemail. When you showed up, I realized why. Anyway, I was actually physically busy those first two weeks. Every moment I wasn't looking for a job or working the job I got, I was working on turning that empty loft into a home. I don't have to justify being an adult and doing adult things to live an adult life. I deny ignoring you. We talked every day, usually more than once. We texted all day long. We Skyped. We even watched Treme together. Being ignored is what Finn did to me and Rachel. We called, texted, emailed, left voicemails – all forms of communication went unanswered. Missing a couple of calls from you while I was working should have been something you expected after I told you I couldn't talk to you anymore when I was at work."

"When we talked, all you talked about was your amazing life here."

"When we talked, all you talked about was McKinley and the clubs you were in and your campaign for class president. It's like you became this completely different person. Why did you expect me to be interested in what you were doing in D&D Club? Or the Superheroes Club? I had known you for two years and never once heard you mention D&D or anything about you reading comic books or liking science fiction. Where did all of that come from?" Kurt paused dramatically, but didn't give Blaine time to answer. "I'll tell you what I think now that I've had time to think about it. You reinvented yourself. Sam and Artie were the only two guys left you knew and you made yourself into someone that liked what Sam liked. You had a crush on him when you were scheming to set up a huge public event to propose to me. I didn't know at the time."

Blaine rolled his eyes as if Kurt were making things up.

"The biggest problem wasn't you talking to me about things that didn't interest me, though. The biggest problem was that you didn't tell me how upset you were. You told me that you missed me, yes. But you never once voiced your fear that I was moving on without you. In my mind, I was moving forward, bulldozing my way through the jungle from childhood to adulthood, making the way easier for you when you joined me. You wouldn't have to struggle to juggle working and making a place habitable. You'd be able to move into the comfort of the home that I had created, It might have been a bit on the ragtag, flea market chic side, but still a loving place to come home to every evening. I was putting every ounce of my effort into turning a dirty empty space with absolutely nothing in it into a warm, welcoming home by the time you were supposed to visit. I gave myself four weeks to create a home – one where you could visit me and that would eventually be for us to share."

"You called me a liar in the songs you wrote."

"You took Tony."

"You said I was a great Tony."

"You were. How good you were had nothing to do with you breaking your word. I also gave you something else under false pretenses. Something I also didn't know at the time."

Blaine looked confused.

"I know what Artie said about how to be a better Tony. Rachel talked about it very nonchalantly over a little too much wine last winter."

Blaine's eyes flashed, but he steeled his expression quickly.

"I'm imagining some type of lie of omission was involved in you getting my dad to think it was a good idea to bring my ex to me as his Christmas gift to me."

"That was his idea."

"Which you did not see fit to turn down given the circumstances of our break up. You went along with my dad's lack of knowledge and his generosity."

"You reneged on your word to come back to Lima for winter break."

"That wasn't reneging. Things changed. I needed the money I would have spent traveling and the money I could earn by staying here and working to buy my books. At the point in time I said I would be going back, I hadn't gotten into NYADA for the spring semester yet. Anyway, another lie happened on Valentine's Day."

Blaine's expression changed to clueless.

"You agreed to one thing, yet afterwards, you made it into something else. We did not get back together on Valentine's Day. You also led to the woman at the jewelry store to believe that we were a couple. And to me about how you two met. The day at the picnic, I wanted to sing to you for the first time, but you joined in and turned that into something that it wasn't meant to be as well. Your reaction to Valentine's Day had strengthened my resolve to not get back together with you, but being back in Lima under so much stress, I let myself fall into old patterns. I had missed our friendship. I wanted to see if we could rebuild that, but you pushed for more. I was hesitant. I had only just started to recover."

"Why were you stressed out?" Cooper asked. "I'm still operating on a skeleton understanding."

"My dad was diagnosed with cancer in December. I had gone back to Lima in March to be with him at his post-treatment oncology appointment. Something else you probably don't know is that my mom died from cancer when I was eight."

"I see. That would be stress on top of stress. Go on."

Blaine asserted, "You accepted my proposal until Sebastian pulled you away and brainwashed you or something."

"I accepted what I thought was my only option. You and everyone else made me feel like being with you was my only option. My dad knew what was going on and he seemed to support all of it by taking me there and telling me how he wished he had met my mom younger. And how we only have so many days in life. You put on a big spectacle and 60 people were staring at me expectantly. I felt like no one else would ever love me, even though I knew it wasn't true. Adam was the sweetest man. I knew he liked me, but I wasn't over you. I didn't want to hurt him. We talked a lot and eventually I realized that I wasn't ready, so he and I stopped dating casually and just spent time together as friends. Even our casual dating wasn't 'dating' in the sense that most people think. We snuggled on the couch a bit – oftentimes, with Rachel and Santana. We never did anything else physical that dating couples do, so going back to our outings not being official dates meant no changes to what we were doing except in name."

"You said there was nothing between the two of you."

"Which is true. I never even kissed him. Were you listening to what I just said?" Kurt took another drink. "Anyway, that's not why I asked you two to talk. I'm concerned about your well-being, Blaine. Your songs indicate a high level of distress over the fact that we aren't together."

"Of course they do. I'm miserable without you. And the only reason I'm not here in New York City at NYADA is because someone sent my father a video of the proposal. A proposal with, as you said, about 60 people, none of whom were my parents or Cooper. My father said that if I had to propose to you without including my family that I considered you to be my dirty little secret. I told them that you obviously weren't because I had invited 60 people." He smacked his hands on the table again. "I told him that I didn't invite them because he doesn't want me to date or marry a man and I knew that he would ruin the moment for me."

"How did you manage to attend McKinley? Which reminds me of another lie. First you said you did it for you in the fall, then in the spring you yelled at me that you had switched schools for me "

Cooper broke in. "What I heard from our parents was that our great aunt Brenda didn't want to be moved to a home, but she couldn't do a lot of things for herself anymore. She was perfectly able to get around and take care of her own personal needs, but she'd leave food on to burn when she stayed in the bathroom too long or got caught up in a show she was watching. She'd forget to set the alarms on the house at night. Blaine sold my parents on the fact that McKinley had made it to Nationals and that he wanted to spend time the real world before going off to college. He offered to stay with her and oversee the groundskeeper, the personal chef that was hired to show up once a week to cook for both of them, the cleaning service, sorting her meds into her weekly pill box and making sure she took them every morning and at bedtime."

"What do you mean by the 'real world'?"

Blaine glared at Cooper, but Cooper was unfazed or just didn't notice.

Cooper continued. "Well, he had spent elementary school, junior high, and his first two years of high school at private schools. He told our parents that he didn't think he was being properly prepared to live in the dog-eat-dog world of a non-Ivy League school and the rough and tumble of real world competition for parts. As I remember it, he convinced our father that my initial floundering in college was due to such a lack of real world understanding."

"I see." The memory of Blaine's story about Sadie Hawkins flashed in his mind, but he let it go, seeing no point in hearing whatever Blaine had to say about it. "We've gotten way off topic. I wanted us to talk because I'm concerned about Blaine, as a person, not as a friend or romantic partner." He looked at Blaine directly. "You being at the show last night and Vibe tonight proves that you can't listen to my requests about personal space. I asked you to leave me alone and I thought you had, but instead you were actually devising a way to get here to interact with me personally. Did Rachel tell you about the show?"

"No – not directly anyway. She did post to her Facebook page about going to see you in the show, and she encouraged anyone else in the area to go see it too. I didn't get a chance to tell you yet, but you were really good."

Kurt ignored the compliment. "I think you need to see someone. We've been broken up for 13 months. And even by your own miscalculation of counting from the proposal, it's been nearly eight months. We're not getting back together. I've moved on. You need to as well. I get that you don't know how. Neither did I at first. It took a lot of work on my part. What you did gutted me. Last fall, I was too depressed to eat or sleep properly until I went to a doctor and started taking Ambien for a while. And that was thanks to Isabelle's intervention." He looked at her and smiled fondly.

She smiled back and nodded.

"Five months later, I obviously wasn't ready to move on. I went to a therapist after I came back here from Lima after Finn's funeral to help me deal with that and what I had nearly allowed myself to fall back into in Lima."

Cooper said, "Sorry to interrupt again, but who is Finn?"

"My stepbrother."

"I didn't know. My condolences on your loss."

Kurt nodded. He focused back on Blaine again. "I didn't just wake up one day and find that my world had righted itself miraculously. Sebastian gave me a refuge, a place to stay, which gave me time to heal away from the constant bickering between Santana and Rachel in the loft."

"That wasn't self-serving at all," Blaine said, his words laced with sarcasm.

Kurt didn't understand his statement. "Does that mean that you knew that he liked me back in my senior year?"

"That's absurd. He liked me."

"That's not a topic we're going to discuss. If you didn't know that he liked me back then, then what did you mean by saying that it was self-serving for him to give me place to stay?"

"Oh, just that you were already comfortable there by the time he came here. And it made it easier for him to worm his way into your bed."

"The place has two bedrooms," Kurt deadpanned. "He had no need to worm his way into my bed."

Blaine rolled his eyes. "Sex, Kurt. Stop playing dumb."

"My sex life or lack thereof isn't really an appropriate conversation topic."

"I agree," Isabelle said.

"Yeah, me too." Cooper agreed. "I want to go back to what Kurt said about repeatedly asking you to leave him alone." He turned to Blaine. "I get that you're lonely in Ohio. Have you even tried to make any new friends?"

"I don't want new friends. I liked the friends that I had. Tina, Sam, Rachel, Nick, Jeff, Trent, Wes, David, even Artie. And except for Tina, they're all here."

"As is Kurt," Cooper offered.

"Yes."

Kurt looked at him and spoke as gently as he could. "You and I are never getting back together. It doesn't matter how many songs you write about how sorry you are. There are other reasons why I don't have any interest in being in a relationship with you besides the fact that you cheated on me. I really don't have any interest in hashing through all of them, but I will if I have to."

"We were good together, Kurt. We had so many plans."

"We did have plans. I can't agree with your statement that we were good together." Kurt realized that he was going to have to go into more detail. He took a deep breath, which wasn't enough to actually calm him completely, but it did let him get control of his voice enough to sound calm. "I've spent eight months in therapy, only some of which was centered around our issues. I have learned a lot about myself and I've grown through guided therapy and a lot of self-reflection. I wasn't and I can't be my best when I'm with you. I deferred to you. I loved you too much and stopped loving myself. Making you happy made me happy. I became co-dependent in a lot of ways. You needed all of my attention and when you got it, you were happy, so I was happy. But it didn't go the other way. You ignored me for ages spring of my senior year and then blew up when I attempted to make a new friend. You accused me of cheating on you in front of all of my friends."

"You were sneaking around behind my back."

"I talked to Chandler in person for less than two minutes and through texts for not even three full days. He's nice guy. We reconnected late in the summer at Vibes, actually. He's a great drummer and a good friend. And he's still his same hyper, funny self. He and I have a lot of fun together."

"So Chandler is in your band. And the guy with all the tattoos, you're 'friends' with him too?"

"There's no quotation marks around my friendship with Elliott. This is one of the reasons why we aren't good together. You see it as fine for you to have friends that are guys, but you don't like it if I have friends that are guys. You enjoyed having the guys at McKinley as your friend group and me having the girls."

Blaine shrugged. "You don't like the same things that guys do."

"I don't like to watch sports. That hardly disqualifies me as being a guy. I can take an engine apart and put it back together. I can fish. I can do yardwork. I can do basic home repairs. What qualifies someone as being a guy, anyway? I identify as a man. Isn't that the only requirement? Hair length, clothing choices, career choices, hobbies – none of those tell someone's gender."

"Fine. I don't want to argue."

"I don't either. What I want is for you to get some help and to leave me alone. You really need to learn the difference between 'no' being a final answer and 'no' meaning that you need to try harder to get the answer you want. In our case, 'no' is the final answer. There is nothing you can do now or later to change that. If I'm with Sebastian or single, now, next week, next month, or in ten years, I will not consider getting back together with you because of this very issue. When I state a boundary, I don't want my partner to see if he can tear it down. I want a partner who respects my choices."

"Blaine, what Kurt is saying is reasonable," Cooper stated. "I understand your dislike for not getting your way. I'm not great at being told 'no' either, but I had to learn to respect situations like this. If a girl turns me down, I just keep going. There are more fish in the sea, as they say."

Kurt nodded and went on. "Other times 'no' may actually mean to try harder. If you go to audition for a role and you get told 'no' because your dancing is weak or you don't have the vocal range you need, that's an opportunity to improve yourself in a way that could change the outcome the next time you audition for that role in another production – or for a role that requires similar skills."

Blaine stared across the room, not making eye contact with anyone.

Kurt continued. "You need to think about your chances of being with me the way you would think about your chances of being the Prime Minister of the UK."

Cooper stifled a chuckle.

"It's just never going to happen. You need to move on with your life. If you want to live in New York, finish school on your dad's dime in Ohio, and then move here. Or set out on your own. Transfer to a school here, make your own way, and put yourself through school. It's your life. You call the shots."

"I wouldn't get any financial aid."

"Welcome to the real world. When you were complaining that I wasn't available at your beck and call, I was working to make the $900 monthly rent, plus my other expenses. Being an adult in New York City is a lot like being the Genie in Aladdin. Phenomenal opportunities, itty-bitty living space, plus the addition of exorbitant rent."

Cooper and Isabelle chuckled.

"LA is the same," Cooper added.

"You've had everything handed to you so far," Cooper said. "I did too – until I didn't. I won't lie. It's tough. And I have to budget like mad. Getting smaller parts doesn't pay great, but I love what I do, so, I live large in my itty-bitty living space that I bought with my trust fund that I got after I graduated. And I live on my shoestring budget."

Kurt redirected the topic back to Blaine. "Love isn't an obsession. People need to know that their partner loves them, but they also need to feel trusted, respected, and appreciated. My concern is that you you're not living your life because you're too hung up on getting me back and 'righting' things so that they go back to the way you had planned them. I hope you choose to get some help so you can move forward and be the amazing performer that I know you can be."

Blaine didn't respond.

"I don't hate you. I definitely did not enjoy the pain of what I went through, but I have learned a lot. I'm glad to be where I am now. I love my life. I'm happy. I like both of my jobs. And despite having not being at NYADA anymore due to financial constraints, I like attending CCNY. And speaking of school, I do have class early tomorrow morning. I need to get home and get some sleep, so unless there's something else someone wants to bring up, I'm ready to call it a night. I expect my request to be heeded. I do not want to have to consider any options to enforce a boundary between us."

"Is there a chance that you and I could talk alone for just five minutes?"

"Sure. Cooper and Isabelle can wait for us in the hall." He turned and nodded to Isabelle.

She and Cooper dropped their empty water bottles in the recycling bin on the way out. Isabelle latched the door behind her. Kurt walked around the table and leaned against it after he had tossed his bottle out.

Blaine stood up. "So, this is it?" he asked sadly.

"It is. For me, the cheating is something there is no coming back from. A relationship is built on love, mutual respect, and trust. I told you that I didn't trust you anymore when we talked after Grease. And I just explained to you that I don't feel like you respect my wishes."

"So, if Sebastian cheated on you, you would never take him back?"

"I wouldn't."

"So you don't love him more than you loved me."

"I don't see love in terms of more or less. My relationship with Sebastian is different than my relationship with you."

"I still don't see how you can trust him."

"That's on me, not you. You don't have a say in who I trust. There's a lot you don't know, but I have no intention of sharing because it's not my place to share it."

"Do you feel anything for me?"

"A residual fondness for some things. The day you brought the Warblers to serenade me was amazing. I will always be grateful that you stepped up to dance with me when David fled the gym. I loved working with you on the holiday special we did for TV."

Blaine nodded slowly. "Can you ever forgive me for what I did?"

"I trusted you in a way that I had never trusted anyone besides my mom. And you willfully destroyed that bond of trust. If I had gone through with the engagement in March, I don't think we would have been happy together. You need more of me than I can give and remain true to myself. I would have had to either give up my own happiness to continue to provide you what you need. Or you would have been unhappy with the amount of myself I had to give. There's no solution that would make us both happy."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I told you that I forgave you ages ago, but you took that to mean that I was willing to take you back if you waited long enough, or if you proposed to me when I felt like I had to ask for a signed copy of Oprah's No Cheating contract just to consider dating you again. If I had to ask you for that, it meant that I still didn't trust you, even though I had forgiven you. A part of me will always love you, but not in the way that would be a part of a romantic relationship. I'm concerned that if you focus in on the fact that I've forgiven you, you will continue to view that as an opportunity to get me back. We're not good for each other. I can't give you what you need."

He made eye contact with Kurt. "You told me you'd never say goodbye to me."

"In a million lifetimes, I would have never thought you would cheat on me and betray my trust."

"I guess there's nothing left to say. As much as it kills me to say it, I won't contact you or interact with you unless you initiate it at some point." He turned and headed for the door.

Kurt picked up Blaine's water bottle, tossed it, and followed him out.

Cooper and Blaine walked together towards the elevator. Kurt stayed back with Isabelle while she reset the lock on the conference room.

"Cooper said that he's going to try to get him into therapy. I called for a separate car to take you back home. They're staying at a place not far from me."

"Thanks. I'll reimburse you for the cost, if you want."

"Unnecessary. When are you going to realize that you are family?"

"Sebastian asked me pretty much the same thing this weekend."

"He loves you." She rolled her eyes and looped her arm around his.

"I know. He knows I love him too."

They walked the rest of the way to the elevator in silence. Cooper was holding the door open and they stepped in. When they got downstairs, Kurt got into the awaiting car and rode back to the apartment still weighed down by the events of the evening.