IT HAD TO be a dream. No, it was a dream.

There was no way, not even given in the slightest chance, that Kurt was actually on Lindy's doorstep, his face pink from the cold and his chin growing scruffy with the onset of a beard.

"Hi," he said. This one word was enough to nearly send Lindy toppling over the edge of her sanity.

She made another sound, this one something like a suffocated whimper, and grabbed her door frame for support. Her vision was shifting in and out and she thought that she was seeing double of him, sliding in and out of focus.

This very moment had stained her nightly dreams for months. Years, even. She had fallen asleep every evening and her brain had spun fictional tales in which Kurt would arrive at her apartment, guiding her into his arms and whispering to her that he still loved her. He would always add that he had missed her even more than she had missed him.

All at once, that dream had become a tangible thing. Even though Lindy was still questioning it in the back of her mind, she slowly realized that the figure standing in front of her was not make-believe. He was the same man that she had seen in September, who had stared at her coldly  as if she were nothing but invisible air to sweep along by. 

But now, he seemed less hardened. His face was full of anxious worry, his blue eyes staring at her intensely. It was like he was expecting her to hit him.

She could have done it. Despite her awe over seeing him in the flesh, the angry little part of her heart that resented Kurt for the way he had treated her two months prior was defiantly waving its fist in the air. Her sensible side was telling her to slam the door in his face, but she knew more than anything that she was not going to be able to put another barrier between them. She had been trying to for the last two years with no avail, and he hadn't even been physically there to stop her then. 

"What . . . what are you doing here?" she finally asked. Speaking the words aloud felt unfamiliar as they rolled off her tongue.

"Oh," Kurt said jumpily, as if he had forgotten something. "Krist got your address from Trae. And then he gave it to me. I would have asked myself, but I didn't know if . . . um, Trae would do that for me."

Lindy leaned her bodyweight against the door again. She had been inhaling deeply enough that she was beginning to feel somewhat stable, but not even that could entirely calm her down.

"But . . . you . . . why . . ."

She was trying so hard to make a reasonable guess as to why Kurt had shown up that she had forgotten that he was standing in the freezing cold. It wasn't until she saw him pull his jacket tighter around his midsection that she bounded backwards.

"Shit! Come inside, it's deathly out there!"

She waved him in and he followed quickly, trying to get away from the cold breeze. He crossed the threshold readily, but stopped when he was finally inside. He looked around, standing still in place. His eyes seemed to fall on every item in the room within seconds.

Lindy struggled to understand what was happening. She and Kurt had not stood alone in an apartment together in over two years. And the last time that they had, they'd broken each other's hearts.

"This isn't a whole lot different from our old place," Kurt commented easily, as if the bizarre nature of his arrival was not extremely explicit.

"Kurt . . ." Lindy began slowly. "I don't mean to be . . . be rude, but why are you here?"

This question seemed to baffle Kurt. He looked at Lindy and blinked several times, as if he was just now processing that he had come to see her. In this moment, she felt her heart stutter when staring into his face. He was still so terribly and so agonizingly beautiful. It was enough to make her want to do something stupid, like grab his face and kiss him squarely on the mouth . . .

"I came to apologize. For the way I acted at the benefit in September. Krist pointed out that I was a real piece of shit to you, and I felt pretty fucking awful about it. So I wanted to say that I'm sorry."

Lindy almost suggested to him that he could have simply called her, but she stopped herself. For some reason, his random arrival at her doorstep was making her feel a hell of a lot more warmer inside than a phone call would have.

"Oh. Thank you. For apologizing, I mean. It's okay."

"It's not okay," Kurt mumbled. Freddie had leapt lightly off of the couch and was now intertwining himself between Kurt's legs, purring with pleasure.

"Hey, look who it is!" Kurt said joyfully, reaching down to scratch behind Freddie's ears. The sight of his reunion with Freddy made her bite her lip, a bubbling sense of happiness burning in her chest. 

"He missed you," she said, remembering how fond Freddie had been of Kurt.

Kurt stood up straight again, looking around the room before eventually moving towards the pitiful excuse of an entertainment center where Lindy's television sat. She felt her body twitch when he walked across the room. It was like she was being pulled towards him by gravitational force.

"Trae got married?" Kurt said with surprise. He picked up the frame that held a picture of Lindy with Trae and Allie on their wedding day. She knew the exact one. Her hair had been piled into a curly ponytail and she'd worn a bridesmaids dress of light lavender.

"Oh, yeah," Lindy said, her response delayed. She was still busy staring at Kurt with disbelief, took preoccupied with his very existence to answer right away. "He and Allie got married a little while after we . . . you know."

"Broke up?" Kurt finished. There was a bitter edge to his voice as he sat the picture back down. Lindy did not confirm nor deny his assumption of her answer.

"They're having a baby now," she offered, shrugging her shoulders nearly to her ears as she intertwined her hands behind her back, squeezing them tightly and hoping it would soothe the trembles in her body.

"They'll make a good family." Kurt traced his finger down Lindy's smiling face in the picture. "Krist went to the wedding, you know."

Lindy wrinkled her nose, taken aback. "No he didn't. I would have seen him there."

"Exactly. He didn't want to upset you. But I know he must have gone and said hi, even if it were for a moment. Probably did it when you were away so you wouldn't know about it. He had told me it was a wedding that he was going to . . . he just didn't specify whose."

Lindy turned over this new information, briefly caught up in trying to guess whether or not Kurt was being honest with her. She was dragged back to the present when she saw him tense as he picked up another picture frame.

This one contained a photo of her and Jack -- it had been taken sometime during the past summer, and Jack had his arm snugly around Lindy's waist. She was smiling a closed-lip smile, staring not into the camera but off into the distance. They had been out with Beth that night. She'd been the one to snap the photo. 

Kurt's eyes flashed to Lindy's ring finger, no doubt searching for a sign that she too had committed herself to someone else in their time apart. Finding no ring present, he set the picture down, but did not remark upon it.

It was so very like him to be non-confrontational. He would have rather pretended that he had not seen the picture at all then ask her who the man in it was. In that moment, Lindy too was pretending that it did not even exist.

"I still can't believe you're here," she said quietly.

"Why?" Kurt shot back, as if the answer was not intensely obvious.

"Because it's been so long. And the last time we saw each other, I thought you were going to spit at me. And you've gotten so fam-"

"Please don't say famous," Kurt said brazenly, holding up his hand. He closed his eyes. The word 'famous' had become his least favorite adjective. He despised it.

"I'm sorry," Lindy whispered. She could see how much he detested what she had very nearly said.

They stood in silence for a few moments longer before Kurt locked eyes with her, a pleading look sweeping across his face like water flowing from a broken dam. It was a release.

"Can I hug you?" he asked. His voice cracked.

Lindy's intake of breath was so sharp that she could feel it pinch her lungs as it hitched in her throat. She did not have to give him a verbal reply. As she opened her arms and walked forward, he fell into them, clutching himself against her like a lost child.

It was heaven on earth, rapturous and whole and pure. Holding him close was better than anything in the world, even better than daydreams and physical pleasures. For a moment, Lindy could have guessed that it was nineteen-eighty-seven again, and she and Kurt were still in love and she was holding him the way she used to. He even smelled the same as she pressed her face into his shoulder, inhaling his scent deeply. She didn't want to ever forget it again.

They held on to one another for a long time until finally, Kurt stepped back. Lindy could have sworn she saw a glimmer of tears in his pale blue eyes, making them luminous in the dim light of her apartment.

"I'm really sorry, Lindy. I'm sorry I was such an asshole. When I saw you, I thought I was dead. I didn't think I'd ever see you again until I was dead. But you were still there and I was still breathing . . ."

"It's okay," Lindy assured him, tears pricking in her eyes too. "It's all forgotten."

"I was mad because for a second, I was blaming you," Kurt pressed on. "I blamed you for being the one to end things between us. I felt like you had sent me away. That you didn't want me anymore."

"That wasn't true and still isn't," Lindy said fiercely, moving towards him so quickly that she almost became a blur. She had grabbed his arm in her passionate outburst. Realizing how closely she stood and what she had confessed, she immediately distanced herself, looking away and biting her lip.

It would be better for them both if they each forgot what she'd said. He was married. She was in a relationship.

She couldn't look at him again until the moment had passed and was forgotten.

"It was both of us, though," Kurt finally said. "I know we both couldn't take it anymore. We were hurting each other."

"Let's not talk about it," Lindy hastily suggested. The strain she felt when talking about their broken relationship was too overwhelming. She had dreamt of repairing things with him in the past, but given the context of where they stood in their lives now, it seemed virtually impossible.

"I just had to see you. I had to make things right," Kurt maintained, his voice just barely rising above a scratchy whisper.

"They are right, Kurt. I promise. I forgive you."

Kurt nodded, accepting Lindy's answer with a sniff. He looked down at her carpet before once again surveying the apartment, his interest darting from one subject to the next.

"Krist said you're working as a nurse in the city."

"I am. That's why I got this place."

"I used to wonder, if something ever happened to me and I was sent to the hospital, would I run into you?"

"I don't want that to happen," Lindy said seriously. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

Kurt didn't respond. Instead, he launched right into the next topic.

"You look nice. Are you expecting someone?"

Lindy could tell by the somewhat accusatory lilt in his voice that he was anticipating her telling him that the man from the photo, Jack, would be arriving any minute. Knowing Kurt, who had a flair for the dramatic, he would have welcomed this situation happily.

"No. I had Thanksgiving with Trae and Allie here today instead of at their place in Aberdeen."

"Good decision. Who the hell would ever go back to Aberdeen?"

Kurt patted his pockets, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and holding them out to Lindy. She declined, and although she normally didn't smoke in her apartment, she allowed Kurt to light up anyways.

"Do you . . . want some leftovers?" Lindy asked awkwardly. She was pretty sure that he was well-fed, coming from wherever rockstars spawned in cities, but she wanted to be polite nonetheless.

"None for me," Kurt said. He placed his hand on his stomach as he said this.

"Stomach still giving you issues?"

"Like you wouldn't fucking believe," Kurt smiled wryly.

He balanced the cigarette between his lips and sparked the tip with a lighter. The flicker of the flame reminded Lindy of the article that she had read on Kurt, the one accusing him of using heroin. The question of whether or not it was true lingered on the tip of her tongue, but she knew better. She knew Kurt. He'd run for the hills if she brought it up. He'd be humiliated.

"Congratulations, by the way," Lindy said.

"On?" Kurt asked. There was a dullness to his tone, as if he had become quite accustomed to being congratulated on one thing or another. If anything, each congratulations had become emptier and emptier than the last.

"Being a daddy. I heard you've got a little girl."

It was an expression that Lindy had never seen from Kurt. His eyes lit up like the daytime sky, his features softening with a sense of divine worship at the mention of his daughter.

"Frances? She's really, really, really perfect Lindy. Damn, I wish you could meet her. Hey, maybe you will sometime, you never know. I've got a photo," Kurt rambled, sounding like any other suburban parent when talking about their beloved child.

Lindy smiled and once again felt the sensation of tears blossoming in her eyes. Her whole life, she had lacked a worthy father and had come to believe that they did not exist. Yet she could tell there was an exception -- he was standing right before her in her little apartment.

"Here she is," Kurt said proudly. He pulled a tiny rectangular photo from his wallet and handed it to Lindy. In the photo was an infant Frances Bean, her limbs scrunched as she laid on a bed and stared in wonder at the flash of the camera right above her. Her little lips were shaped into a round 'o' and she wore a pale blue smock and dainty white socks.

"She's so beautiful," Lindy said softly. She handed the photo back to Kurt, and he too took a moment to admire it before sliding it back into his wallet.

"I really am happy for you Kurt," Lindy whispered. She tucked her hair behind her ear, hoping that he sincerely knew that she meant what she said.

Kurt looked into her eyes, searching their brown warmth with a million lingering questions that he could not verbalize. He looked like a confused little kid, searching for something that he could not find.

"Do you care if I come see you again?"

Lindy blinked. "Come see me again? Are you sure . . . that's a good idea?"

"I mean, I guess Courtney wouldn't be too crazy about it but I slip out all the time and she doesn't say shit. We're going to find a house here in Seattle, but we're staying in a few hotels right now with Frances and her nanny. I'll be around some. We're working on our new record."

She probably should have told him no. For the sake of not only her relationship with Jack, but for her own mental health. How many nights had Kurt Cobain tormented Lindy into the misery of missing him so badly that she could feel the pain emotionally wounding her? Her mind, ever so smart, was telling her that she should have kept her distance from the one human being in the world who made her feel things that no one else made her feel.

"Sure," Lindy said. "You can come by whenever you want."

Sometimes, Lindy thought, you're better off telling your brain to go to hell.