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.
