MARCH 30th, 1994, SEATTLE, WA
THE NEXT MORNING, Kurt told Lindy that he absolutely needed to see his friend Dylan before he departed from Seattle. Lindy went on high alert as soon as Kurt pulled his t-shirt over his head and made the announcement, standing at her bedside.
"Why?" she questioned. There was really no need for her to waste her breath asking in the first place. In the pit of her stomach, Lindy already knew the answer.
"I've just got to get some things in order before I go," Kurt explained. "I'll be back in time for you to drive me to the airport."
Lindy pushed the sheets away from her body and stood up, feeling the cold prickle in her bare legs that stretched out from beneath her oversized night shirt. She folded her arms and nibbled her bottom lip, looking at Kurt knowingly.
"You're going to get high, aren't you?"
Kurt's first instinct was to glare away from her, electing to shoot daggers at the wall rather than into Lindy's gaze. But he sighed, guilty as ever.
"It's what you do before going into rehab. If you do a bunch beforehand, it will help through the first days of withdrawal."
"Yeah and it could kill you," Lindy berated, already hating Kurt's devised plan.
"It will be fine," Kurt said. He grabbed Lindy's face and kissed her forehead, unusually blasé for someone who had been so inevitably depressed about the world the day before.
Lindy knew she shouldn't have let him go. But for some reason, she found no will to bicker with him. Knowing he was voluntarily going into rehab had calmed her, and she figured that this hopeful glimmer on the horizon would be enough to hold her displeasure over.
Kurt was gone all day. Since she had not been scheduled to work, Lindy cleaned her apartment, called Trae to check in and send her love to Hannah, and painted her toenails a bright red on her bedroom floor.
She was slightly bothered that Kurt had chosen not to spend his last day in town with her. It wasn't like him, finding other plans when she was perfectly available to devote the day to being together. Whatever reasoning he had behind it besides getting high, Lindy could not understand. She could barely even dissect why she had ended up letting him go in the first place.
By the time the late afternoon came to a close, Kurt arrived back to her apartment wearing his corduroy jacket and behaving placidly.
"Ready?" Lindy asked him, grabbing her purse. She had slipped her fingers into the purse's side pocket, checking for her ring. Sure enough, she felt the sharp edges of the diamond resting on its side.
"Yeah, I am."
His voice was strained, sounding similar to the way someone might hold back tears. Lindy frowned.
"Are you scared to go?" she questioned understandingly. Kurt was, by no means, being sent somewhere with a reputation of happiness. Lindy could understand why it would be intimidating for him. It was a place where he would have to confront his deepest, personal pitfalls head-on. Nothing in the rehab center could protect him from that.
"I'm sad to leave you," he professed. She knew that he was certainly not lying, but at the same time, Lindy could not help but secretly assume that Kurt missing her while away was only the tip of the iceberg of what was going on.
They walked down the stairs of her apartment building and got into her car, Kurt gripping a small bag of belongings. Lindy did not ask what he had brought along. He had his wallet with him, and seeing as how she had put the picture of herself back inside of it, she wasn't worried about Kurt lacking any mementos of her.
