"I'm home, Mom!" Artie called, pushing through the front door and dropping his keys in the plate.

Kitty trailed along behind him, feeling a bit more timid than she had the last and only other time she'd been to his house. That was when she'd gone behind his back to talk to his mom about film school. It was then that she'd found out Artie hadn't even told his mom that he'd been accepted. Back then, she was just Kitty the overly-involved friend from glee club. It was different, now, showing up as the new girlfriend.

"In the kitchen!" called Nancy. "Could you come in here please? I need to ask you a question about your sauce recipe."

"I cooked a new recipe for spaghetti sauce with red wine the last time Amy came home and she declared it to be her new favorite home cooked meal," Artie explained, wheeling down the ramp and turning left, into the kitchen. Kitty followed along, having just learned something new. She didn't even know Artie could cook.

"Does it look too thick to you?" Nancy asked, as Artie approached the stove, which Kitty noticed, was a bit lower than most.

"Yeah, a little," he said. "Add some more wine and just cook it a little bit longer. And Mom? You forgot to add the basil. It's sitting on the counter. Want me to chop it up?"

Nancy nodded, as she passed him the knife and cutting board. Artie removed his gloves and washed his hands in the sink, which was also adjusted to match his height, and said, "Mom, you remember Kitty."

"Hi, Mrs. Abe— I mean, Nancy." Artie's mother had asked to be on a first-name basis the last time she'd been there.

"Yes I do, but I remembered her as Kitty the friend," Nancy said, with a grin as she turned her attention to the petite blonde. "Hi, Kitty. The word on Facebook is that you're now Kitty the girlfriend. Artie, did you know your status has a hundred likes already and almost as many comments?"

As Artie reddened and shook his head in response to his mom's embarrassing Facebook sleuthing, saying nothing and turning his attention to chopping the basil, Kitty whipped out her phone and took a seat on a barstool.

Sure enough, their relationship status update already had quite a following. The comments were harmless enough, mostly things like "cute couple!" But then there was one from Bree Westbrook that got under her skin: "Kitty, you are SUCH a good person!"

First of all, no she wasn't, at least not as far as McKinley High was concerned. It had taken Kitty a mere semester to establish a reputation as McKinley's Biggest Bitch. And secondly, Bree had once again implied that Kitty was doing Artie some kind of favor. Kitty wished she could delete this, so Artie didn't have to see it, but it was his post, so only he could delete a comment.

"Thanks, hun, you saved it," Nancy said then, as Artie passed his cutting board her way. "Amy should be here just in time for dinner. We'll eat around five."

"Come on," Artie said to Kitty, after slipping his gloves back on. "I'll show you my room."

"Door stays open," Nancy reminded, cheerfully. As Artie looked up at her, she raised her eyebrows and nodded, as if to say you know what I mean.

"Of course," Artie muttered, gesturing for Kitty to follow. Last time she'd been there, she'd only go into the living room.

Artie's house was a small, older home with all kinds of modifications and additions here and there, to accommodate his needs. He'd told Kitty before that it was usually just he and his mother at home. Amy had been away at college for the last four years. And though Artie's parents were still together, his dad traveled for work and was gone often during the week. Artie had told Kitty that his dad was coming home to see Amy but wouldn't be there until Saturday.

"My room used to be the den," he explained, as they entered the wide doorway that had evidently had a sliding door added, so that the former den could now be closed off. "Hence the size. Mom keeps threatening to make it her new craft room when I'm gone."

"Let's not talk about you leaving," Kitty said, taking a seat on the small loveseat, with a matching ottoman, that sat next to the bed. Across from that was a dresser. On another wall was Artie's chairless desk and a seated elliptical machine. Otherwise, there was just a lot of empty space for him to get around freely.

"Okay, we don't have to," Artie said, grinning and rolling his chair parallel to the loveseat as she patted the space next to her. Artie set his break and transferred over to sit beside her, arranging his legs to stretch out on the ottoman, too.

"Why do you have a picture of Mike Chang without a shirt on in front of your elliptical?" Kitty asked, gesturing to the printed photo on the wall.

Artie blushed. "Goals," he muttered. "I put that up when Tina dumped me and just never took it down. I probably should now. I mean, I'm no Mike Chang but I'm not doing too badly in that department these days." He lifted his shirt a little, making his point.

At this, Kitty stuck a hand to his bare skin, but held back. "The door's wide open and your older sister is due home any minute," she said, teasing him with a quick kiss. "You can finish showing me another time."

"Guess so," Artie said, grinning and taking off his yellow gloves again, setting them aside on his nightstand. Kitty noticed he had two pairs — those and the black ones. He'd usually save the black ones for glee club performances and other times he wore suits, and the yellow ones were usually present, even when they clashed horribly with his outfit. She made a mental note to buy him some more in other colors.

"Also, you should abandon the practice of comparing yourself to other guys, Artie," Kitty added, which she knew was rich coming from a girl who'd once tried to trick Marley Rose into developing bulimia, a dark time she was trying to move past.

"So, I shouldn't stick a picture of Jake Puckerman up over there?" Artie gestured to his elliptical corner. "I mean, I assume he's your usual body type..."

This got a huge eye roll from Kitty. "Please forget I said anything, okay?" she begged, wishing she could take that back. Evidently, it got under his skin.

"Just want to make sure you know that I am working on that, for you," he said. "The part that I can work on, anyway."

"You don't have to do a thing for me," she said. "Except maybe burn a few of your sweaters. After that, we're good." That got a laugh out of him, and Kitty felt relieved that she hadn't totally ruined things while they'd barely even gotten this relationship off the ground.

"I am in full support of burning Artie's sweaters," said a voice in the doorway. They both looked up to see Amy Abrams standing there, grinning, and Kitty wasn't sure how long she'd been there or how much of the conversation she'd overheard. At any rate, she jumped to her feet.

"Hi, I guess you're new to glee or I would've met you before," Amy said, moving into the room to offer a friendly hug to Kitty. "I'm Amy, his much cooler older sister. Good luck with my brother, you're going to need it."

"Kitty," she said, chuckling. "And, uh, thanks."

"Ames, get over here," Artie said, holding his arms up. She wrapped him in a bear hug, then drew back to look at him. "Well, this is a new look. Sort of new, I guess, it's like a subtle improvement on the old look. I approve."

"Thanks," said Artie, a bit indignantly. "So, don't go so long between visits again, okay? I know you're busy but geez, you're just in Columbus." Artie said the next part to Kitty. "Amy's graduating from Ohio State with her bachelor's degree in education in May."

"I'll just be a boring, old school teacher now," Amy said, with a shrug. "I'll miss college, but I can always live vicariously through my little brother's new experiences. And Artie, you know I've got to come back in a few weeks anyway, for your birthday."

"Oh, is that coming up?" Kitty asked, blushing when she realized she didn't even know when his birthday was. But then, he didn't know hers either. This was all very, very new. "Cool, you'll be eighteen."

It was then that Amy and Artie exchanged troubled looks. Amy pursed her lips. "Um, he's already eighteen..." she said, taking in the look of shock on Kitty's face. "He'll be nineteen in April. Oh, this is fun."

Kitty turned sharply to look at Artie. "You're turning nineteen?" She shook her head. "You never mentioned you were a year older before."

"I'm gonna go see if Mom needs any help in the kitchen," Amy said, quickly making an excuse and leaving them alone.

Artie looked guilty. "I thought it might weird you out," he admitted. "Clearly it does. Yes, I'm turning nineteen. I had to repeat third grade. I missed a lot of it, due to being in the hospital after my accident."

Kitty sat beside him, taking in the news. "You know I'm still fifteen, right?" she said. "I don't turn sixteen until June. So, for two months, I'm fifteen and you're nineteen. Wow..."

"Please don't let your dad have me arrested or anything," Artie said, trying to sound like he was joking but missing the mark.

"I won't, but it is weird," Kitty told him. "You're like, the same age as my youngest older brother."

"Hold up, your youngest older brother?"

"Yes," Kitty replied, calmly. "My youngest older brother, Hunter. He's nineteen and goes to community college. He still lives at home. Then there are the twins, Logan and Collin, but they're twenty-five."

Artie's eyes were huge, and Kitty laughed at that, seeing that she'd clearly freaked him out with this revelation about her family. "They'll all be wanting to meet you soon," she added. "My brothers and my dad. They're a little overprotective of the only sister in the family, you see."

Amy then poked her head around the corner as Artie tried to collect himself. "Hate to interrupt all the fun," she said, with a wry grin. "But Mom wanted me to come tell you dinner's ready."

Artie moved himself back into his chair and they headed into the kitchen to find Nancy putting the finishing touches on the dinner table. "Hope everyone's hungry," she said. "Dig in."

The Abrams were pretty informal with dinner. They ate spaghetti on paper plates, with plastic cutlery, which made Kitty feel right at home. Amy wasn't at all shy and when she talked about herself, she seemed to be setting some kind of landspeed record for words per minute. (This kind of explained why Artie talked so fast himself, sometimes. He had to keep up.) She looked a lot like Artie, with blue eyes but minus the glasses, and she wore her light brown hair in a pixie style with blonde highlights.

"So, Artie," Amy said, shifting from one topic to another, between bites. "Got any new film projects in the works?"

"Actually, we're doing Beatles songs in Glee club," he said. "So I'm getting four of the guys together to recreate their 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan show." With a nudge to Kitty, he added, "I'll need some girls to be in the crowd, too."

"That sounds good," Nancy said. "I'd say you should send that to film school, but seeing as you already got in, you don't need to."

"I'm sure they'll have specific types projects in mind for me to do," Artie said, shrugging and looking at his plate. "I'm probably going to be losing a lot of my creative control. I guess it's a fair price to pay."

Kitty didn't like talking about Artie going off to school. She didn't know what was going to happen after that, but it did her no good to dwell on it now. She was going to enjoy him while she could.