Nothing Can Keep Us Together (17 page)

Nate sat on the edge of one of the Yale Club lounge’s oriental carpets, pretending to watch the Spin the Bottle game. That French hippie chick, Lexie, who’d followed him around for a few weeks claiming to be madly in love with him, and her other L’École friends were sitting in a tight circle only a few feet away, all wearing crocheted halter tops with their skinny bellies showing, smoking Gauloises like fiends. He hoped she wouldn’t notice him.

Too late.

“Nate?” Lexie sat up on her haunches, her scrawny, tan tummy bulging in a way she must have thought was irresistible. She’d gotten a navel piercing, and it was still pink and new.

Ew.

She stretched her long bare arms overhead, giving the rest of the room a fine view of the sun, moon, and stars tattoo on her right shoulder blade.

Ooh la la.

Nate smiled, pretending to have only just noticed her. “Hey, Lexie.” He waved cautiously and then hugged his knees to show that he had no intention of joining her.

Lexie rolled her dark brown eyes and flipped her long raven-colored ponytail over one shoulder. “Bastard,” she retorted with a heavy French accent and a very French-looking scowl. “You broke my heart.”

Something exciting had just happened in the Spin the Bottle game, and everyone whooped and clapped. Nate began to clap, too—anything to avoid a confrontation with Lexie.

Serena and that weird shaven-headed girl from Constance who Blair was supposedly living with and reportedly having a lesbian affair with were dancing like disco diva freaks in the middle of the room, looking drunk and ecstatic—the way you were supposed to look the day you graduated from high school.

If, that is, you actually obtained your diploma that day, unlike a certain person we know.

Nate had a sudden flash of déjà vu, or maybe it was ennui. At any rate, it was something sad that sounded French. He remembered being drunk at a random party at that guy Dan Humphrey’s house over on the West Side back in ninth or tenth grade and letting Blair and Serena draw a face on his bare stomach with a black indelible marker. They’d named the face Buck Naked, and each girl had kissed Buck repeatedly over the course of the evening, even after Nate passed out.

Those were the days.

Suddenly Nate became filled with dread. What if he’d already had all the fun he was ever going to have? What if it was all downhill from here?

And what if he’d gotten more and more stupid with each year of high school instead of smarter? That can happen when you remain stoned most of your life.

Tears began to ooze slowly down his golden cheeks. Everybody else at the party seemed so happy and so excited about their future, but he wasn’t really sure what he had to look forward to anymore.

Nothing Can Keep us Together

Parties had always seemed intimidating to Jenny—especially parties where the majority of the girls were normal-chested and taller, prettier, and more confident than she was. But now that she was into boarding school, Jenny felt like the possibilities—at least, the possibilities for her—were multitudinous. She didn’t have to be tiny little Jenny Humphrey, the curly-haired artistic girl with the knobby knees and gigantic boobs. Next year at Waverly she could be Jennifer Humphrey, the outrageously confident boy magnet, coolest girl in the sophomore class, or maybe even the whole school.

Maybe.

And if she was going to change her image, it seemed prudent that she do something drastic, like lose her virginity.

Whoa.

She’d been watching Nate Archibald for a while now. He seemed different than when he’d broken her heart on New Year’s Eve. He was crying, for one thing, and his shoulders were slumped, like he’d gotten some bad news and hadn’t been able to shake it. Even the glitter seemed to have left his emerald green eyes. She could hardly resist the urge to give him a hug.

“Hi, Nate,” she squeaked, boldly touching him on the shoulder. “Remember me?”

With that chest? Even the stonedest boy could hardly forget.

Nate scrubbed his hands over his blotchy face and attempted a smile. “Howdy, Jennifer,” he greeted her, with the sort of tired cheerfulness of someone who’s had kind of a rough day and doesn’t much feel like talking.

“So you’re all done with school and everything?” Jenny persisted. She was acutely aware that from his angle Nate was looking up at the shelflike undersides of her gigantic breasts, which were stuffed into a stretchy black Anthropologie halter top with a built-in Lycra bra. He probably couldn’t even see her face. She squatted down beside him, teetering slightly on her baby blue BCBG kitten-heel slides. “I’m going to boarding school at Waverly Prep next year,” she blurted out. “I totally can’t wait!”

Nate was sort of surprised that Jennifer wanted to talk to him at all, but he was grateful because it meant he didn’t have to avoid talking to Lexie anymore. “That’s a good school.”

“Yeah, and I don’t ever have to wear a stupid Constance uniform again,” Jenny added excitedly, already regretting how petulant and childish she sounded. Then she remembered something that wouldn’t make her sound childish at all. She inched a little closer to Nate’s ear. He smelled like freshly laundered shirt and that heart-stoppingly delicious Hermès cologne he always wore. “I have a tab of E in my bag. Someone gave it to me at the Croton School when I was visiting. I don’t even know if we can even split one tab, but …” She smiled her coyest come-hither smile.

What a flirt, what a risk-taker the new, on-her-way-to-boarding-school Jenny Humphrey was!

Nate blinked. Jennifer wasn’t just talking to him, she was flirting with him—hard. What, did she think he’d just gulp down a tab of E and hook up with her right in the middle of the Yale Club lounge, surrounded by everyone he knew, including his ex-girlfriend Blair and his he-wasn’t-really-sure-but-he-figured-she-was-probably-soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Serena?

Had that ever stopped him before?

Nate had only taken Ecstasy a couple of times with Charlie, Anthony, and Jeremy, but both times he’d enjoyed himself immensely. There was nothing like that good, groovy, E feeling—until it wore off and you were tired and dehydrated and just wanted to float in a bucket of Poland Spring. He was definitely feeling lower right now than he ever had in his entire life. Maybe a little E with little Jennifer Humphrey—who seemed to be getting even cuter with age—was just what he needed.

Jenny could see that Nate was tempted. Empowered by her ability to snare hot older boys with her seductive ways, she breathed lustily into his ear. “Let’s go into the bathroom and do it.”

Hello? Does she not remember what happened the last time she was alone in a bathroom with a horny older boy?

Nothing Can Keep us Together

Blair was in a stall in one of the Yale Club’s pristine and elegant gold-accented ladies’ rooms, wondering at the fact that she hadn’t made herself sick in over a month, when she heard the first worrying rumors.

“I heard he wasn’t even a real lord. He’s just this English guy who came over here and pretended to be this big aristocrat. I bet he doesn’t go on fox hunts or wear a top hat and tails to dinner or anything like that,” Laura Salmon blathered from the stall next to Blair’s.

“I just think it’s really shitty of him. I mean, if he’s engaged to some girl in England, that means he’s actually cheating on both of them,” Kati Farkas replied carelessly as she spritzed her hair with a sample-size bottle of Frederick Fekkai hairspray for the third time that night. “I just love the way this stuff smells. Don’t you love the way it smells? I even put in on my clothes sometimes, even though I know that’s kind of gross. I mean, it’s hairspray!”

Blair kept the pleated satin skirt of her white Oscar de la Renta suit hitched up so the girls wouldn’t recognize it. Were they talking about Lord Marcus?

“I just think someone should tell her,” Laura declared before flushing. She pushed the stall door open and began to wash her hands with the L’Occitane lemon peel foam hand wash provided by the Yale Club. “Don’t you?”

“Totally,” Kati agreed.

Like they’d ever have the nerve.

Blair waited until they’d gone before pushing open the stall door. Her stomach was roiling from all the vodka and champagne she’d drunk in the last few hours, but she wasn’t about to resort to puking and risk splattering the skirt of her exquisite suit.

What do they know about Marcus? she fumed. Their petty jealousy was so transparent, it made her even more nauseous just thinking about it. Of course he was a lord. Hadn’t they noticed his wonderful scuff-free Church’s shoes? The flawless way his hair was cut? The tailor-made seams of his Savile Row shirts? Hadn’t they heard the way he called her “gorgeous” and “darling” and kissed her hand like it was the most natural thing in the world? There’d been no mention of a fiancée when Blair had Googled him. No fucking way was he engaged—to anyone but her. She closed her eyes dreamily. Lady Blair Rhodes—it did have a nice ring to it.

The bathroom door swung open and Isabel Coates marched in, looking frazzled because her white satin Dior hair clip had come loose while she was dancing. Isabel was always such a freak about her hair, Blair wondered why she didn’t just cut it all off.

“Oh. You’re in here,” Isabel observed, making it obvious that she’d just been part of Kati’s and Laura’s ongoing dissection of the so-called Lord Marcus. “I guess I should be the one to tell you.” She lowered her voice to let Blair know that what she had to tell her was extremely important. “Before you get hurt.”

Like she actually cared?

Blair narrowed her blue eyes, glaring icily at Isabel’s reflection in the gilt-framed mirror. “Tell me what?”

Isabel tucked a few stray brown hairs behind her ears, then frowned and ripped out the hair clip, starting all over again.

Blair thought her cutoff jeans and ripped red Juicy T-shirt made her look tacky and desperate, like Paris Hilton.

“That Lord Marcus guy is married,” Isabel told her matter-of-factly, wincing with effort as she tried to get her ponytail completely smooth and lump-free.

Blair smeared Chanel Stroppy lip gloss over her lips for the seventh time in five minutes. She was so mad, she thought she just might throw up after all. “Bullshit.”

Isabel rolled her curly-lashed brown eyes and sighed as if she were already totally bored with the subject matter. “Well, almost. He’s engaged. He’s been engaged since he was, like, ten years old. You know, like Lady Diana and Prince Charles?”

Blair spun away from the mirror, her fists clenched tightly to keep from strangling Isabel’s ostrichlike neck. “And where exactly did you hear that?”

Isabel shrugged her shoulders maddeningly. “Everybody knows. It’s, like, a fact.”

Depending on your definition of the word fact.

“That’s the stupidest—” Blair was about to try and defend Lord Marcus’s honor, but she stopped herself. They were young, they were in love—who cared what anyone thought? Even if there was some boring girl back in England that Lord Marcus was supposed to marry, she probably looked like Queen Victoria and sat on her fat ass in her castle eating crumpets all day, wondering why Lord Marcus never called.

Isabel smiled at her reflection, finally satisfied. “I just thought you should know.” She shrugged her shoulders and then cocked her overwaxed eyebrows at Blair. “Wanna come have a cigarette with us?” she offered, as if they were all still thirteen years old and only smoked in groups.

“No.” Blair pushed past her and out the bathroom door. She peeked into the insanely crowded lounge, but the chair where she and Lord Marcus had been sitting together was now occupied by Nate’s loud, stoned, skinny friend Jeremy and some skanky French girl trying to teach him how to blow heart-shaped smoke rings. Lord Marcus was nowhere to be seen. Blair fingered the Bvlgari pearl choker and teetered down the hall to the elevator.

All night she’d wanted to get Lord Marcus alone in his suite. Now was her chance.

Nothing Can Keep us Together

Dan’s cigarette hand shook violently as he watched his sister disappear into the men’s room, followed by that arrogant stoner prince of the Upper East Side, Nate Archibald. Jenny seemed to be getting bolder and more self-assured as the year progressed, while he seemed to be regressing back to the girl-less, friendless loser he’d been up until this year. She’d even wrangled her way into boarding school way after admissions for next year were closed, while he’d whittled his options down to nothing.

The music was really loud now, and Vanessa and Serena had inspired half the room to get up and dance. Vanessa had kicked off her wedge-heeled shoes, baring her black-polished toes and pale, deeply arched feet. Dan loved to kiss the arches of her feet. He could write sonnets about the arches of her feet. But that was back when Vanessa didn’t drink or dance or wear white or anything but black jeans, black kneesocks, and Doc Martens. She seemed so different now—if he were to write a poem about her, he wasn’t sure where he’d begin.

Vanessa danced over to him and snaked her arms around his neck. Her pale skin was slick was sweat and her eyelids were heavy from all the vodka she’d consumed. “I do love you, Dan. I really do,” she breathed hotly into his ear before shimmying away again, her whole body aglow. Dan stared after her, honestly believing that she did love him. She just didn’t need him with her—not all the time. She was too busy shedding her lumpy black cocoon and transforming into a shimmering, white-winged moth.

But he’d already deferred his admission at Evergreen. What was he supposed to do now?

Lighting a Camel, he thought about barging into the men’s room to rescue Jenny just for old times’ sake and because such a noble act might make him feel better, but he was sick of always being the responsible older brother. Why couldn’t someone rescue him for a change?

Okay.

“Son? Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Dan dropped his cigarette on the burgundy-and-gold oriental carpet, nearly jumping out of his faded blue Vans sneakers in surprise. It was his dad, in his favorite purple cotton sweatpants and black Mets T-shirt, looking ruddy-cheeked from too much red wine.

“I guess,” Dan responded slowly. The music in the lounge was absurdly loud. Dan led Rufus outside. Out on Vanderbilt Avenue, the air was steamy and the sidewalks glittered black. Across the street, Grand Central Station looked like a giant relic of the city’s past. A metallic blue ’77 Buick Skylark—another relic from the past—was parked outside the Yale Club, looking completely out of place. Two skinny L’École girls were sitting on the curb having a fight over who was prettier or who smoked Gauloises with more panache. Behind them, their gold Gucci toe-ring sandals lay discarded in a pile. Suddenly they started kissing.

“Jesus,” Rufus muttered, tugging on his matted salt-and-pepper beard, which resembled a used Brillo pad.

“What, Dad?” Dan whined impatiently. It was kind of embarrassing standing outside the party with his father. He felt like he was eleven years old.

Rufus tucked his hands inside the stretched-out waistband of his purple sweatpants and Dan flinched at how unattractive the gesture was.

“After you left you got a call from some raving Greek professor at Evergreen. First he was going nuts about how you were supposed to sleep in his hammock and eat grape leaves with him, but then he started waxing philosophical about how kids your age can’t differentiate between sex and love. Apparently he’s quite an expert on the subject.

“Anyway, I talked to him for a while, and what it came down to was, he’s going to make them hold your place open for the fall a) because I asked him to and b) because he was supposed to be your advisor and he wants you to help him with his book and c) because we both like you, even though you’re a knucklehead.”

Dan resented his dad’s fond, vaguely patronizing tone. “You can’t tell me what to do,” he countered, crossing his hands over his chest and sounding younger by the minute. “You can’t.”

“That’s true,” Rufus agreed. He gestured toward the funky vintage Buick parked outside the Yale Club. “But I already got you the car. The least you could do is let me teach you how to drive it this summer and then get the hell out of here.”

Dan had read about epiphanies and written about epiphanies, but he’d never actually had one. He’d gotten into nearly every college he applied to. He’d had a poem published in the New Yorker. And what was he going to do next year—work at a bookstore or wait tables to keep busy while Vanessa was in class?

“I could take the summer to work things out,” he allowed, unwilling to let his father think he could be that easily persuaded. He and Vanessa could spend the summer hanging out whenever she wasn’t busy working on that movie and he wasn’t busy driving around in that … chick magnet. Who knew? Maybe there’d be other girls to love besides Vanessa—all he had to do was get his license and drive out west to find out.

Rufus reached out to clap him on the back, but Dan opened up his arms and gave his dad a hug. “This party was kind of lame anyway,” he confessed.

Rufus grunted and led him over to the car, which was basking in its own coolness under a streetlamp near the curb. “Then how ’bout I give you your first driving lesson?”

Aw. Don’t you just love happy endings?

Nothing Can Keep us Together