It was the last day of 2012. As Artie reflected on the year, over a cup of coffee while working on a project for Brittany on his laptop, he couldn't believe that the next year was the one where he'd finally graduate. He'd be truly tackling adulthood next year. Turning eighteen hadn't really held a lot of meaning, not when he'd been finishing up junior year with an entire year of high school left while watching the friends his same age graduate and move on.

Speaking of which, it was only fitting that he spend the last day of 2012 with a lot of them. Rachel was having her usual basement party for that tonight, which would double as a graduation party for Brittany.

He wasn't sure if the younger crowd, meaning the sophomore members of the club, were coming or not tonight. They didn't really know Rachel. He knew they'd all still been invited, everyone who was in glee club. He wondered if he'd see Kitty and if he'd have another chance to explain that Betty was just a friend, one with an impressive rack and a fellow wheelchair user, yes, but really just a friend.

She was also a friend who was meeting him for coffee that day, their third date, if you really wanted to call it that. It wasn't actually a date, since Betty didn't date losers in chairs, as they had already established. He scanned the Lima Bean, just to make sure Kitty wasn't going to run into him here, too. This was, of course, the place where he and Kitty first met one another. He chuckled at the memory of her badgering Kurt about her iced latte not being cold enough.

"What are you doing?" Betty arrived with a tall, handsome barista following her to the table and carrying her coffee for her. She gave him a most grateful smile as he set the coffee down on the table for her and looked curiously at her companion, taking in the fact that they both had wheelchairs.

"Thank you so much," Betty told the guy, who gave her a brisk nod and a smile, before leaving.

"People are always that helpful for you, aren't they?" Artie noted, smirking at her. "I had to carry my own coffee over here by wedging it between my knees and hoping for the best."

Betty shrugged, as she took a cautious sip of her hot beverage. "Not my fault guys want to be nice to me," she told him. "What are you working on? You looked serious. Of course, you always look serious. But you were concentrating hard."

Artie rolled his eyes. He knew better now than to take offense when Betty called him out over being too serious. "Editing a video," he explained. "My friend, Brittany, makes this talk show in her bedroom..."

"She makes what kind of show in her bedroom?"

Betty's arched eyebrow caused him to pause, review what he said, and laugh. "It really is a talk show," he explained. "She had me on as a guest yesterday, and now I'm editing the finished project. I kind of need your approval to post it online."

"Why do you need my approval?"

"You'll see." Artie turned the laptop for her to see and wheeled to her side of the table so he could watch the finished project, too.

"Fondue for two, fondue for two, that's some hot dish! Fondue for two!" Brittany sang, as the montage flashed by of her dancing on the screen and finished with her playing the drums. Artie smiled as Betty giggled while watching Brittany be Brittany.

"Welcome to Fondue for Two!" Brittany said, cradling her enormous and stubborn cat, who was presently sharpening his claws on the arm warmers she was wearing with a tank top, one of her favorite winter looks. "My name is Brittany S. Pierce and this is Lord Tubbington. We're here to share a plate of hot dish while enjoying some more hot dish. Here today, if he doesn't get stuck on the rug..." (She'd paused, looking off camera for a minute, where Artie had indeed been struggling to get over the thick rug.) "... is my friend, fifty-percent robot and eighty-percent my favorite ex-boyfriend, Artie Abrams!"

Artie had edited the video to add a short, instrumental clip of the theme song playing as he came on-camera while warily looking down at the fondue, checking it for cat hair. He'd decided not to risk it and wasn't planning to eat any.

"Hey, Brit! Thanks for letting me be your last guest of 2012."

"Well, what with the world somehow not ending on December twenty-first, I figured I might as well give you your fifteen minutes of fame before time eventually does run out." Brittany smiled sweetly, helping herself to some cheese on a cocktail weenie. "So, Artie," she said, with her mouth full of the gloppy mess. She dabbed the corners of her mouth sweetly with a napkin. "Word on the street is, you still like blondes with big boobs. I like to think that started with me. Anyway! You were spotted with a certain blonde in a wheelchair not once but twice over the holiday break. Care to explain? Is this mystery girl in the wheelchair your new lover?"

Artie chuckled. He wasn't caught off-guard at all, as this question was the reason for his visit. He'd pre-arranged the whole thing. "I'm here to set the record straight," he said. "No. Betty Pillsbury is not my new lover. She's just a friend. She and I obviously have a lot in common, yes, but there's not anything else going on besides me making a new friend."

"So, the rumor that you and your friend got a room two doors down from mine and Santana's at the Days Inn after the wedding also isn't true."

"Not true at all."

Brittany yawned. "Well, there you have it, friends," she said to the camera. "Some not-so-hot dish. Boring fondue for two. Moving on, confirm or deny this rumor for me. Word on the streets is, Asian Fusion is back on. What do you know about that?"

Artie shrugged. "I don't know anything," he said. "Sorry. Why don't you have them on as your first guests of 2013 and ask them yourself?" He turned and faced the camera. "But, again, just to set the record straight... I'm still as single as they come. And... I'm hopeful the right person will hear what I'm saying and won't misunderstand me again."

"I do so miss not understanding you, Artie" Brittany said, completely serious. "But sorry, I have a girlfriend and soon-to-be college roommate. Anyway! That's some hot dish for another time and another year. Happy New Year, everybody. The Mayans were wrong!"

Artie closed the laptop. There was more to the episode, which would air that evening as soon as he finished it and sent it back to Brittany, but this was the part he needed to show Betty. "So, are you okay with being mentioned on Brittany's online talk show?"

"It's fine, but what did I just watch?" Betty wanted to know, arching a brow in his direction as he wheeled back to his side of the table. "That was totally bizarre."

"That's Brittany," Artie confirmed.

"Your ex-girlfriend," she added, looking amused.

"Once upon a time," Artie acknowledged, reaching for a sip of his coffee and shrugging. "Now she's just one of many in my trail of broken hearts."

Betty grinned. "Uh-huh," she said. "So, do you want to hear all about my date last night?"

"You gonna call it that?" Artie asked, teasingly. "He's just fifteen." Same reason I can't date Kitty, he thought. One of many.

"I'll call it whatever I want," Betty told him, indignantly. "He did pay. Though seeing as he has no job and no disability benefits, I don't exactly know where he got the money..." She laughed, as Artie did too. "No, but he was sweet. Definitely doesn't look or act his actual age. He did seem older."

"How did he handle going on a date with someone like you?" Artie wanted to know. His curious question, however, only seemed handi-centric in her mind, and she scowled at him.

"Like a perfect gentleman," she said. "I'm afraid he's a little boring though. We don't have much in common. That was probably the first and last date, but it was okay."

"Just okay?" Artie furrowed his brow at her. "Look, I didn't accidentally set you up with Ryder for it to be 'just okay.' Anyway, this is a good learning opportunity for me. What was 'just okay' about it? What did he do wrong?"

"Nothing!" Betty almost sounded angry but she followed up that statement by smiling sweetly and sipping her coffee. "He just didn't know how to deal with me, that's all."

"How to deal with what?" Artie asked her, cautiously bringing it up because it was the elephant in the room. "Dating a girl in a wheelchair?"

"God, no, Artie!" He rightly expected that to annoy her, and it clearly did. "You're still doing it. Can't we just have not hit it off for other reasons? But since you asked, he actually did a nice job of handling all moments related to my chair. Not that I was worried about it. Unlike you, who can't stop talking about it every chance you get. Seriously, I'd like to get you a shock collar and zap you every time you bring it up!"

"Every time he brings what up?"

Betty wasn't the only person meeting him for coffee. He'd made sure of it, just so it could be perfectly clear to anyone who strolled into the Lima Bean and actually knew or cared about he and Betty, that they weren't dating. Quinn paused by their table and gave Betty a sweet smile, as she pulled up a chair between them and sat down.

"My wheelchair," Artie supplied, shooting an enormous grin at Betty.

"Bzzz." Betty closed one eye and pretended to fire at him with her index finger. Artie, in turn, pretended to be shocked and twitched accordingly. Meanwhile, Quinn tried to figure out what inside joke she'd missed.

"I'm Quinn," she said to Betty. "I saw you at the wedding but didn't get a chance to say hi."

"Betty Pillsbury," she said, extending a hand and shaking Quinn's. "Nice to meet you."

Artie and I actually bonded over..." Quinn paused. "Well, over a lot of things over the past few years, but we truly bonded over us both using a wheelchair for awhile. I was in a bad car accident during my senior year and it took me from the end of October to around prom to relearn how to walk." She met Artie's gaze and exchanged a smile with him. "He helped me throughout my entire rehab, every step of the way, no pun intended. Without Artie, I couldn't have gotten through the year. I have the utmost respect for what all he deals with every single day, just to live his life. And I'm so thankful he was there for me."

Betty pursed her lips, like she was trying to decide whether or not to agree with Quinn, that it was good that Artie could use his status as the guy in the wheelchair to help a friend. She settled, it seemed, on saying nothing about it and changing the subject instead.

"So... what about you two... did you ever date?" Betty asked, looking curiously between them with a sly grin on her face. "I notice you're a blonde. We know Artie likes blondes."

Just as Artie started to shake his head, Quinn supplied a most intriguing response to Betty's line of questioning. "Almost," she explained, shrugging as if she weren't just dropping a huge truth bomb.

Because it had been almost exactly two years since Quinn had kissed him three times. It happened not once, but twice, at Rachel's New Years' Eve extravaganza. The first time was during Spin the Bottle, a game they were playing while some of them were getting wasted. Artie had only pretended to be getting drunk. And she had been sober as well. The second time was at midnight, with the drunken logic of others around them being that everyone had to kiss someone at midnight. And, in the midst of that confusion, she'd kissed him at the Hummel-Hudson nuptials on New Years' Day. And it had been almost two years since they'd talked about all of that. Artie had never once thought that it constituted "almost" dating. He stared at Quinn, hoping that her mysterious proclamation of almost was her strange way of permitting him to talk about it. Betty was enjoying the display of sexual tension she must have assumed was unfolding at present.

"Like you..." Artie licked his lips, tearing his eyes off Quinn and glancing at Betty. "She wanted to find out if I was a good kisser. I guess? Right?"

Before Quinn could answer, Betty giggled. "And he totally is, right?" (Quinn raised her eyebrows.) "Lips like soft, little pillows. With Ryder, he puckered up like he was trying to give his dear old granny a little peck on the cheek."

"Well, these sexy pillows thank you for the..." Artie grinned at his own cleverness, or maybe it was just those Alanis Morissette lyrics that Amy used to sing in the car when she'd drive him to school. "... lip service."

"You've already won me over... in spite of me," Quinn was quick on the draw, grinning as Betty immediately chimed in with more of the not-so-angry girl anthem. "So don't be surprised if I fa-all head over feet."

"That would be a good glee club cover," Artie pointed out. "I don't know who would do it, other than you, Quinn. I guess Tina. For sure Kitty could."

"Well, you know, I've been wanting to sing something with my little protégé anyway," Quinn said. "Of course, if you beat me to arranging a duet with her during karaoke at the party tonight, I'd much rather watch the two of you sing something."

"Oh?" Betty caught that. She turned a most disappointed expression on Artie. "Party? When were you going to tell me there's a party tonight?"

"Oh, I, uh..." Artie was stuttering but she was laughing.

"I'm messing with you," Betty then said. "Ryder invited me. Apparently it's in somebody's basement, but he'll be a gentleman and carry me down there like a queen."

"Yeah, I don't look so much like a queen when they haul me down..." Artie trailed off. "Hold up. Does that count? You brought it up." He decided it did and pointed his buzzer at Betty. "Bzzz."

Quinn looked between them. "I'm glad you two met," she commented. "I mean, I'm sorry everyone is trying to link you two romantically..."

"Literally nobody even thinks about us except maybe this one girl he's all worried about," Betty interjected, before remembering that was supposed to be a secret. Luckily, she was talking to the one other person who happened to know about Artie and Kitty.

"Kitty?" Quinn mouthed it in his direction, hiding her face from Betty, as he nodded to confirm that yes, it was Kitty he was worried about. And for good reason, since she had confronted him about being spotted twice with Betty.

"Oh, so she knows about her, too?" Betty asked, still not saying her name, on the chance that Quinn didn't know.

"You're the only ones I've told about me and Kitty." Artie dropped his eyes to the cup of coffee, absently tracing a circle around the lid. "Not that it really matters now that I doubt me and Kitty are even going to continue to be a... a thing."

"Why, because she's fifteen?" Betty seemed to have forgotten a few key points in the conversation they'd started at the wedding about all of this.

"No, because she saw me fall out of my–" Betty and Artie then said bzzz at the exact same time and burst into a fit of laughter as Quinn continued to puzzle over the joke she wasn't exactly a part of. She excused herself for a moment, as her name was called to go get her latte from the bar.

"I totally called it first, by the way," said Quinn, as she returned to her seat and tossed her hair over her shoulder, looking proud of herself. "I was the one who noticed them flirting way back when he met her this summer. It was when he and I both went to watch this other girl play volleyball, and Kitty sprained her ankle, so he wheeled her back to a friend's car."

"See, now, I couldn't do that," Betty pointed out, grinning from ear to ear. "I'm way too small to use my chair to give rides to– oh, dammit, bzzz! You're rubbing off on me in a bad way, Artie Abrams."

"Are you two doing that every time you bring up wheelchairs in the conversation?" Quinn asked, finally catching on.

"Bzzz," was their answer, in unison, as they pointed finger guns in her direction.

"Okay, okay," Quinn said, rolling her eyes but smiling at their little joke. "Back to you and Kitty, Artie. I think you're letting your own embarrassment over that little incident – I didn't say what it was, don't buzz me – I think you're using that moment as an excuse to talk yourself out of pursuing this girl. Do you like this girl, Artie?"

"I– yeah, I... don't really know why, honestly," Artie confessed to the girls. "I mean, I was interested in Marley first, then I found out she wasn't really my type, then this thing with Kitty just sort of... happened. It was right after I called her out for being, well, sort of horrible to Marley during the musical. She kissed me, in my car. That was when I told you about it, Quinn."

"And I told him there was something different about Kitty," Quinn said to Betty, before turning to Artie. "And I told you to go for it, and well, you went for it. And I saw the way she watched you when we all went out to dinner after Sectionals."

"She didn't look happy when she saw me with you either," Betty added. "And I don't know whether to apologize or say 'you're welcome,' actually. Because maybe this girl needed an opportunity to be jealous."

"Right," Quinn agreed. "Also, I'm not so sure about this whole arrangement with you two making out in a classroom and not telling anyone. Seems like you're letting her enjoy all the perks of having you as a boyfriend without her claiming you publicly as a boyfriend. I don't feel like that's healthy."

Betty was nodding as Quinn spoke, agreeing with every word. It wasn't like Artie hadn't thought of that before. And wondered about Kitty's actual motive for doing so. He knew he personally wanted to hide their relationship so that he could go on making out with her without anyone knowing due to their age difference. But her reasons could have been a little different. She may not have wanted to tell people that she was dating the geek from glee club who was in a wheelchair.

"Well, I should get going," Betty said, unlocking her breaks and backing her chair away from the table. "I have a hair appointment to get to. I guess I'll see you both tonight though."

"Oh, wait, before you go–" He turned to retrieve what he'd brought along to give her. He'd been careful not to accidentally bend it in his backpack. He proudly produced a copy of The Guys of Glee calendar and handed it to Betty, who grinned as she saw the cover.

"What's this?" she asked, examining the cover photo curiously. "Oh, hey, that's Ryder."

"Is that the only person you recognize?" Artie asked, arching a brow.

"Oh... and you."

"Gee, thanks," Artie said. "Yeah, that's the Guys of Glee calendar. Each guy has two months. I know you'll probably prefer looking at Ryder, but you'll probably also enjoy Mr. July and Mr. November."

Betty promptly leafed through it, pausing on the months that featured Ryder and the months that featured Artie. When she noticed that he'd posed in his sport chair and his basketball uniform for the month of November, the smile on her face grew even broader.

"Way to represent," she told him, with no hint of sarcasm. She was being sincere. "Thanks for getting me one of these." She set the calendar on her lap and picked up her empty coffee cup. "I guess I'll see you two later," she said, unlocking her wheels and backing out from under the table.

"See you later," said Quinn, as Artie smiled and gave her a little wave.

Quinn moved her chair to be directly across from Artie as Betty headed out. She fixed him with a serious look. "You don't talk about your chair too much."

"Yeah, I do," Artie said, shrugging. "She's right. I'm gonna work on it so I don't do that in college."

Quinn shook her head. "You didn't talk to Tina about your disability for more than two years. You have a story to share, Artie, whether you like it or not. That story helped me. I'd hate for you to regress back to not talking about it with the people in your life, like you did when you were younger."

Artie just nodded. He'd consider what she said, but Betty's comments were likely going to stick with him, too. "So, how was your holiday?" he asked, by way of changing the subject.

"Surprisingly okay," she reported, sipping her latte. "Frannie and I got along, mostly because of Lucy, I think. We took her to see Santa. Went out looking at lights together. Wrapped gifts together. Stuff like that. It's weirdly easy to get along with her when I never see her and there's an adorable toddler to play with. Oh, and speaking of cute kids, I also went to see Shelby and Beth for a couple of days."

"Did you spend Christmas with them?"

"I spent the weekend," Quinn said. "Then I came back for Christmas with my family. Um, and my dad came. Like... like to our house.

Artie fully understood the heaviness of those words. To his knowledge, Mr. Fabray hadn't been home since his wife caught him cheating and kicked him out right after he'd kicked Quinn out for getting pregnant.

"Was that... okay?"

Quinn shrugged. "It was weird," she admitted. "I think Mom decided to invite him because she's dating someone. So, you know, she's feeling better about herself and I think she wanted him to know that. She pretended it was all for me, Frannie, and Lucy though." She rolled her eyes, looking off and sighing. "It was good for me to get far, far away from all of them. Anyway! Enough about me. How was your holiday? How was your college visit to Brooklyn?"

Artie let the conversation move to him and his holidays, as it was clear Quinn didn't want to say much about hers. "A lot of fun," he said. "It's a beautiful city. I could almost imagine myself living there and studying there but... I'm just still... not sure. Something about it doesn't feel quite right. Anyway, I'm still waiting to hear what they have to say about my application. So, we'll see."

"I can't imagine them saying no," Quinn commented, as her phone buzzed. Artie's did the same.

"Group text," he said, as they both checked their devices.

Change of plans tonight! Rachel's text announced. Too many people to cram into my basement. Sugar has volunteered her house for tonight. She's going to reply with the address. See you all there!

"Sugar's house?" Quinn arched a brow. "Well, that's certainly better than a basement, for you and Betty." She paused. "Do you know if Kitty's coming?"

"No, I don't know." Artie told her. "But... I hope she does."