LINDY KNEW BETRAYAL like she knew the weaving patterns on the palm of her hand. She had grown up in the arms of betrayal, having become familiar with its bitter sting when her own father had sneered down at her with disdain from the time she could walk.

She had even felt betrayal when she had heard the fatal news of Hannah's passing -- her savior, her idol, had left her like a beam of lightning disappearing in a flash against the night sky. Betrayal was a friend that Lindy was all too familiar with.

Yet nothing, nothing had been more treacherous than Kurt's cold rebuff of her.

She hadn't know what she had truly expected out of it. In the wake of their awful encounter, she had spiraled into a terrible hole of self-hatred as she blamed herself for stupidly nosing into the situation in the first place. The fact that she even gave a damn about it was enough to drive her insane with anger and disgust. 

Lindy knew that she should have maintained her promise to Kurt to stay out of his life.

When she had been around, she'd acted as a physical barrier to his dreams, a ball and chain that kept dragging him back to Aberdeen and the early start to his life that he wished to forget. Now, he regarded her with absolute loathing. She should have known that it would always come to this.

A part of Lindy continued to furiously admonish that she should move on and damn Kurt and their memories to hell after what he'd done to her. If he had the nerve to turn his back on her like that, he hardly deserved a place in her life. In no way would she want to associate with someone who was capable of such hostility towards her, especially when they shared such private, tender memories.

But then again, she grappled with the blatant display of hatred that Kurt had shown her. He had never treated her so poorly in all the time that she had known him. She could not understand what she had done to make him hate her so much.

In the end, she became tired of trying to guess. 

The day after the concert, Lindy curled her body up into a tight ball on her couch, a box of tissues wedged in the seat cushion next to her. She had been crying since she had woken up, but she was not only crying over Kurt. She never would have guessed that she would shed so many tears over a man, but something about what had happened had whittled her strength into nothingness. 

She cried over everything that had ever gone awry in her life. She cried for her broken relationship with her father, she cried for the loss of her mother, and she cried knowing that Trae lived far enough away that she could not get to him within a few moments time.

Her run-in with Kurt had hit her hard and even though she hated to wallow in the negative, Lindy gave herself over completely to her sadness and decided to take the day off of work and hide in her home. Beth had called her earlier but she had not picked up. She did not wish to discuss what had happened the previous night. All she wanted to do was sit in silence with Freddie in her lap.

The only person that Lindy had even thought of talking to was Trae, but when he had answered her call he had told her that he was leaving for work but would get back to her on his lunch break. So far, he had not called back.

The phone rang abruptly and thinking it was Trae, Lindy reached for it and picked up.

"Hello?" she whispered into the receiver, using her sleeve to wipe at her runny nose.

"Lindy, it's Krist."

She nearly collapsed into a fit of tears all over again upon hearing Krist's voice. He was just another reminder of the humiliation that she had faced. She bowed her head into her free hand, gnawing at her lip to prevent herself from breaking into another upheaval of sobs. 

"Hi Krist."

"Lindy, I'm so fucking sorry for last night. I would have never put you in that situation if I had known he was going to be such a dick. I feel awful. He's unpredictable."

Lindy snatched a tissue from its box and wiped at her eyes gently, knowing they must have been puffy and bright red.

"He's always been unpredictable, so I'm not all that shocked, I guess. But it's okay."

"It's not okay," Krist disagreed. "It's bullshit. I almost punched him in the throat for treating you like that."

"Don't fight with him," Lindy advised. "It won't do you any good."

"I should have. I still can't get over how he acted towards you, like you were nothing to him. He's a good actor, you know that? I thought maybe it might have been Courtney being there, but she wasn't even in the room."

"Sounds like they're a match made in heaven," Lindy said dully, continuing to envision Courtney as someone who would not hesitate to snap similarly in the way Kurt had snapped at her.

"Sure," Krist snorted. "They're about as meant for each other as oil and water."

"They can still be put together if you try."

"Not the way I see it."

Lindy absent-mindedly petted Freddie, wanting to crawl back to her bed but also wanting to remain on the phone with Krist a little longer. There was something comforting about the sound of his voice. 

"Was he mad at you? For inviting me?" she asked softly.

"I'm not sure. I think so. He didn't really say much after you left. I thought he was going to break his own jaw from clenching down on it so hard. But oh, one thing did really piss him off, though."

Lindy raised her eyebrows, wondering what else she could have done to anger him. "Yeah? And what was that?"

"Well, do you remember Dave, our drummer? Poor kid had no idea who you were to Kurt when you walked in. I think he thought you were just an old friend or something. He didn't, uh, read the situation all that well."

"And . . ." Lindy pressed, curious to see where the story was going.

"Once we all got back to our hotel and we were hanging out, Dave, bless his soul man, turned to me and made a comment about thinking you were cute. Said he may want to take you out sometime."

Unable to help herself, Lindy let out a loud yelp of laughter and cupped her hand over her mouth to subdue the giggles that followed. Her mind raced back to when she had been in the dressing room, looking at the quiet Dave standing behind Kurt. She had to admit, she was flattered. He was a pretty cute guy. 

"Did he? And what did Kurt have to say about that?"

"Um . . . a chair was thrown out of a window."

Lindy sat up straighter, her box of tissues falling to the ground. "A chair? What the hell happened?"

Krist laughed nervously. "Kurt didn't appreciate Dave saying that. But you know, he sucks with confrontation. So he just picked up a chair in our room and launched it out of one of the open windows."

"Holy shit."

"I know. The hotel managers weren't really too fucking pleased when they received complaints from those passing by that a falling chair nearly killed them."

"Is Dave okay at least?"

"He was a little freaked out," Krist snickered, remembering the moment vividly. "But he'll recover. I wouldn't expect an invite out on a date from him though if I were you. He knows better than to mess with Kurt."

"It's fine," Lindy said. "I'm seeing someone right now anyways."

"You didn't mention that," Krist said, sounding thoroughly surprised to hear this. Lindy wondered if he had never expected her to move on.

"Yeah, well, I'd rather not talk about it at the moment," Lindy sighed, not wanting for even a second to picture Jack's face. She felt guilty thinking of him when she was owing so much of her  time to being somber over Kurt.

"Oh, alright. Well, I better get going. Band stuff, you know. It was really great seeing you, Lindy."

"It was great seeing you too, Krist," Lindy said, feeling a lump form in the back of her throat. She missed Krist similarly to the way she missed Trae. Nothing could replace the empty space that someone had filled once they became your family.

After Lindy had clicked the call to an end, she dragged herself into her bedroom and laid down. She was hoping that if she fell asleep fast enough, she could dodge anyone else's attempts to contact her, even Trae's. For now, she wanted to be alone in her thoughts.

But even as Lindy cocooned her body into a ball between her sheets, she was reminded that she was in fact not alone in her own head.

Kurt was there.

He always was.