PART THREE: I'M FEELING AWKWARD

Rosemary Clooney singing "Tenderly" started playing in the restaurant as Kurt opened the doors and went in. He swept his eyes around the restaurant, looking for Blaine. He wasn't sitting at any of the tables.

Kurt approached the hostess hesitantly and asked, "Did a man my age with dark hair come in? He would have been about five inches shorter. I think." Unless he hit a growth spurt.

She shook her head. "Sorry, nobody like that, but—" Then she stopped and tilted her head to look around Kurt to the entrance. She pointed. "Is that him?"

Kurt swiveled around and there was Blaine, smiling hesitantly.

He had grown, an inch or two. The first thing Kurt noticed was the lack of hair gel and that he was wearing glasses. He was wearing an oatmeal cardigan over a plaid button-down, and there was a hint of stubble on his face. Kurt suddenly felt insanely overdressed, wearing designer jeans and an embroidered dress shirt with a tie. He tugged self-consciously at his sleeves and bobbed a little on his feet before walking the three feet to close the distance to Blaine.

"Hi," Kurt said.

"Hi, Kurt," said Blaine, and opened his arms to take Kurt in a polite but warm hug. The close physical proximity reminded Kurt of his time at Dalton, before he was dating Blaine, of frequent hugs that meant nothing to Blaine, who gave them to everybody, but meant everything to Kurt. How strange things ended the way they did, after what those hugs had done to Kurt for so many months.

After a few seconds, they parted, each looking down awkwardly and fidgeting with their clothes.

The hostess interrupted their reverie with, "A table for two?"

Kurt turned back to her and nodded, then followed as she led them to a little table in the corner, away from the tables with children, closer to the tables with other couples. He looked back several times almost frantically, to make sure Blaine was still following him following the hostess. Each time, Blaine met his eyes with a tight smile, his face never lighting up like it used to when he saw Kurt. Not anymore.

They sat down. She asked if they knew what they'd like to drink. Kurt decided to stick with water, but Blaine ordered a glass of red wine.

"I had three glasses of wine on the plane," Kurt said, after she had left.

"Oh," said Blaine.

Kurt picked up the napkin folded into what looked like but was probably not a hat on his plate and fiddled with it, not meeting Blaine's eyes. After about thirty seconds of what Kurt would later tell Carole was the most awkward half-minute of his entire life, Kurt dropped the napkin in the plate and looked up.

"It's good to see you," he said to Blaine.

Blaine opened his mouth to respond, but then their waiter brought Blaine his glass of red wine and a basket of bread for them to split. He asked if they needed a few more minutes. They did.

"I guess it's nice to see you too," said Blaine. "It's been—what, six years?"

"Something like that. Since the Christmas party at Rachel's before I went to France."

Blaine lifted his glass of wine and swiveled it gently. "What's Rachel up to these days?"

Kurt shrugged. "I think she's doing Broadway. I don't really pay attention. I spend most of my nights working or in the East Village."

"Is that where you live?"

Kurt hesitated for inexplicable reasons before nodding. "Near Bleecker Street."

Blaine started. "I forgot that was a real street. Do you ever get that song stuck in your head?"

"The first couple weeks I did."

"How long have you been living there?"

"I graduated four years ago, so ever since then."

Blaine nodded. "What do you do?"

"You mean my job?"

"Yeah."

"I'm an interior decorator. I'm out here picking out a rug for a client."

"You came to Chicago just to buy a rug?"

Kurt laughed. "She insisted."

Their waiter came back, then, and they ordered food.

Blaine took a gulp of his wine and asked, "Do you live with anyone? In New York."

Kurt's heart sped up and his eyes fell to the napkin on his plate again. "I have a few fish. But I could never bear roommates."

"Ah."

Kurt looked up. "And what do you do?"

"I'm a librarian," Blaine said.

"You're joking."

"Not joking. I work in a library."

Kurt raised an eyebrow and leaned forward. "How did that happen? You were a double major in business and polisci last time we talked."

Blaine sighed. "I hated what I was doing. I took a lit class the spring of my sophomore year. It changed everything. I had this really cool professor, she used to tell us the greatest things about Melville and Hawthorne."

"So… you switched to English?"

"Yeah. Then I did my MS in library science. Just finished last year and was lucky enough to get a job in the city. And here we are."

"Here we are," Kurt echoed.

"So do you still talk to anyone from high school?" Blaine asked Kurt. "I keep up with Wes on Facebook, but that's it, really."

"I see Mercedes sometimes. She's in LA though, so it's rare. Finn of course, on family holidays. I didn't really keep in touch with anybody else."

"Sounds about right," Blaine said in response, and Kurt felt the ice wrap around his heart.

Kurt leaned forward and in spite of himself felt his eyes stinging a little with oncoming tears. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't … make more of an effort. But we broke up."

"You broke up with me," Blaine reminded him. "Because you were going to New York and I was going to Northwestern and you thought you'd have a better time in college if you didn't have a ball and chain in Chicago. That is how I remember it."

"Blaine, please, we were sixteen when we started dating. Eighteen when we—when I broke up with you. It's hardly the stuff of a Lifetime drama. Nobody marries their high school sweetheart." Kurt was saying these things, but they were only the repeated lines he had told everyone who had ever asked about Blaine.

"Some people do," Blaine said quietly into his wine glass.

Kurt leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I'm sorry."

Their food came and they ate quietly, reverting to half-talking about their jobs. Kurt told Blaine about the Duchess and the mansion he was filling slowly with lamps and armoires and, yes, rugs, and Blaine listened and asked simple questions. There were moments filled with silence that pierced Kurt through with their awkwardness, especially when he remembered all the times he had eaten or had coffee with Blaine in high school, and the silences were never awkward, they were always perfect and filled with smiles and hand holding.

Kurt paid for the check when it came. Blaine left the tip. They parted, shaking hands, and Kurt went back to his hotel, fighting back the tears until he was back in his suite.