Beautiful Stranger (30 page)

“Let me in!” she yelled into the intercom outside the Archibalds’ elegant wrought-iron-and-glass front door as she swatted the buzzer over and over with her hand.

Inside, Nate and Serena were still cuddling in the kitchen. Serena raised her head from his shoulder and opened her eyes, as if from a dream. The kiss they’d both been fantasizing about had never actually happened, which was probably for the best.

“I think I’m warm now,” she announced and hopped off the counter, composing her face so that she looked totally calm and cool, like they hadn’t just had a moment. And maybe they hadn’t—she couldn’t be sure. She grinned at the monitor’s distorted image of Blair giving her the finger. “Come on in, sweetness!” she shouted back, buzzing her friend in.

Nate tried to erase the disturbing thought that Blair had caught him and Serena together. They weren’t together. They were just friends, hanging out, which is what friends do when they’re together. There was nothing to catch. It was all in his mind.

Or was it?

“Hey, hornyheads.” Blair greeted them with snow in her shoulder-length chestnut brown hair. Her cheeks were pink with cold, her blue eyes were slightly bloodshot, and her carefully plucked dark brown eyebrows were askew, as if she’d been crying or rubbing her eyes like crazy. “I have a fucked-up story to tell you guys.” She flung her orange bag down on the floor and took a deep breath, her eyes rolling around dramatically, milking the moment for all it was worth. “As it turns out, my totally boring, Mr. Lawyer father, Harold Waldorf, Esquire, is like totally having an affair. Only moments ago, I caught him asking some random babe, ‘If I was a wine, how would you describe my bouquet?’ and they were, like, totally hiding in his closet.” She clapped her hand over her mouth, as if to keep the words in.

Or her breakfast.

“Whoa,” Serena and Nate responded in unison.

“He just sounded so … slimy,” Blair wailed through her fingers.

Serena knew this might be even grosser, but she just had to get it out there. “Well, maybe he was just having phone sex with your mom.”

“Sure,” Nate agreed. “My parents do that all the time,” he added, feeling a little sick as he said it. His navy admiral dad was so uptight he probably wouldn’t have phone sex for fear of being court-marshaled.

Blair grimaced. The idea of her tennis-toned-but-still-plump, St. Barts-tanned, gold-jewelry-loving mom having any kind of sex, let alone cabernet phone sex, with her skinny, preppy, argyle-socks-wearing dad, was so unlikely and so completely icky she refused to even think about it.

“No,” she insisted, wolfing down the uneaten half of Serena’s Pop-Tart. “It was definitely another woman. I mean, face it,” she said, still chewing, “Dad is totally hot and dresses really well, and he’s an important lawyer and everything. And my mom is totally insane and doesn’t really do anything and she has varicose veins and a flabby ass. Of course he’s having an affair.”

Serena and Nate nodded their glossy golden heads like that made complete sense. Then Serena grabbed Blair and hugged her hard. Blair was the sister she’d never had. In fourth grade they’d pretended they were fraternal twins for an entire month. Their Constance Billard gym teacher, Ms. Etro, who’d gotten fired midyear for inappropriate touching—which she called “spotting”—during tumbling classes, had even believed them. They’d worn matching pink Izod shirts and cut their hair exactly the same length. They even wore matching gold Cartier hoop earrings, until they decided they were tacky and switched to Tiffany diamond studs.

Blair pressed her face into Serena’s perfectly defined collarbone and heaved an exhausted, trembling sigh. “It’s just so fucked up it makes me feel sick.”

Serena patted Blair’s back and met Nate’s gaze over Blair’s Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon-glossed brown head. No way was she going to bring up the whole being-sent-away-to-boarding-school problem—not when her best friend was so upset. And she didn’t want Nate to mention it either. “Come on, let’s go mix martinis and watch a stupid movie or something.”

Nate jumped off the counter, feeling completely confused. Suddenly all he really wanted to do was hug Blair and kiss away her tears. Was he hot for her now, too?

It’s hard to keep a clear head when you’re surrounded by beautiful girls who are in love with you.

“All we have is vodka and champagne. My parents keep all the good wine and whiskey locked up in the cabinet for when they have company,” he apologized.

Serena slid open the bread pantry, where most families would actually keep bread, but where Nate’s mom stored the cartons of Gitanes cigarettes her sister sent from France via FedEx twice a month because the ones sold in the States simply did not taste fresh.

“I’m sure we can make do,” she said, ripping open a carton with her thumbnail. “Come.” She stuck two cigarettes in her mouth like tusks and beckoned Nate and Blair to follow her out of the kitchen and upstairs to the master suite. If anyone was an expert at changing the mood, it was Serena. That was one of the things they loved about her. “I’ll show you a good time,” she added goofily.

She always did.

The Archibalds’ vast bedroom had been decorated by Nate’s mother in the style of Louis XVI, with a giant gilt mirror over the head of the enormous red-and-gold toile canopy bed, and heavy gold curtains in the windows. The walls were adorned with red-and-gold fleur-de-lis wallpaper and renderings of Mrs. Archibald’s family’s summer château near Nice. On the floor was a red, blue, and gold Persian rug rescued from the
Titanic
and bought at auction by Mrs. Archibald for her husband at Sotheby’s.

“
Bus Stop? Some Like It Hot?
Or the digitally remastered version of
Some Like It Hot?”
Serena asked, flipping through Nate’s parents’ limited DVD collection. Obviously Captain Archibald liked Marilyn Monroe movies—
a lot.
Of course, Nate had his own collection of DVDs in his room, including a play-by-play of the last twenty years of America’s Cup sailing races. Thanks, but no thanks. His parents’ taste was far more girl-friendly. “Or we could just watch Nate play Nintendo, which is always hot,” she joked, although she kind of meant it.

“Only if he does it naked,” Blair quipped hopefully. She sat down and bounced up and down on the end of the huge bed.

Nate blushed. Blair loved to make him blush and he knew it. “Okay,” he responded boldly, sitting down next to her on the bed.

Blair snatched a Kleenex out of the silver tissue box on Nate’s mom’s bedside table and blew her nose noisily. Not that she really needed to blow her nose. She just needed a distraction from the overwhelming urge to throw Nate down on his parents’ bed and tackle him. He was so goddamned adorable it made her feel like she was going to explode. God, she loved him.

There had never been a time when she didn’t love him. She’d loved the stupid lobster shorts he wore to the club in Newport when their dads played tennis together in the summer, back when they were, what—five? She’d loved the way he always had a Spider-Man Band-Aid on some part of his body until he was at least twelve, not because he’d hurt himself but because he thought it looked cool. She loved the way his whole head reflected the sunlight, glowing gold. She loved his glittering green eyes—eyes that were almost too pretty for a boy. She loved the way he so obviously knew he was hot but didn’t quite know what to do about it. She loved him. Oh, how she loved him.

Oh, oh,
oh!

She blew her nose with one last trumpeting snort and then grabbed a pink, tacky-looking DVD case from off the floor. She turned the case over, studying it. “
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. I’ve never seen it, but she’s so beautiful.” She held the DVD up so Serena could see Audrey Hepburn in her long black dress and pearl choker. “Isn’t she?”

“She is pretty,” Serena agreed, still sorting through the movies.

“She looks like you,” Nate observed, cocking his head in such an adorable way that Blair had to close her eyes to keep from falling off the bed.

“You think?” Blair tossed her dirty tissue in the general direction of the Archibalds’ dainty white porcelain waste paper basket and studied the picture on the DVD case again. In the movie that began to play in her head, she
was
Audrey Hepburn—a fabulously dressed, thin, perfectly coiffed, beautiful, mysterious megastar. “Maybe a little,” she agreed, removing her black cashmere cardigan so that her hot pink bra was clearly visible beneath her blouse.

Blair picked up the DVD case again. Audrey Hepburn looked so fabulous in the pictures on the back, but also sort of prim and proper, like she wore sexy underwear but wouldn’t let a guy see it unless he was going to marry her. Blair pulled her cardigan back on and buttoned the top button. From now on, her life’s work would be to emulate Audrey Hepburn in every possible way. Nate could see her underwear, but only once she was sure that one day they’d be married.

That makes sense—to her.

“I watched that movie with my mom,” Nate confessed, causing both girls’ hearts to drip into sticky puddles on the floor. “It’s kind of bizarre, actually. I think it’s supposed to be romantic, but I’m not sure I even understood it.”

That was all the girls needed. Blair stuck the DVD into the player while Serena mixed martinis at the wet bar in the adjoining library. This involved pouring Bombay Sapphire into chilled martini glasses and stirring it with a silver letter opener. It was only 11
A.M
.—not exactly cocktail hour—but Blair was in crisis, and Nate tended to take off his shirt when he got drunk. Besides, it was Saturday.

“There,” Serena announced, as if she’d just put the finishing touches on a very complicated recipe. She handed out the glasses. “To us. Because we’re worth it.”

“To us,” Blair and Nate chorused, glasses raised.

Bottoms up!

Before
Vanessa
filmed her first movie,

Dan
wrote his first poem,

and
Jenny
bought her first bra.

Before
Blair
watched her first Audrey Hepburn movie,

Serena
left for boarding school,

and before
Nate
came between them …

it had to be you
the gossip girl prequel

Coming October 2007