As he rode up in the wood-paneled elevator, Nate wasn’t sure what he would say to Serena if she even was home. All he wanted was to chill for a while and forget everything that had just happened in the last torturous hour, but knowing Blair, she’d probably already told Serena the news. He strode purposefully to the van der Woodsens’ door and knocked.
Serena opened the door to her apartment almost instantly, as if she’d been waiting for him. She was wearing a crisp white cotton dress, like she was about to go play tennis, except that her golden hair was messily piled on top of her head with a paintbrush sticking through it. “Hey.” Nate grinned. “Want to hang out for a while?” She smiled slowly, then opened the door wide, grabbing his T-shirt and pulling him inside.
A few minutes later they sat cross-legged on the floor by the edge of her frilly white bed, the leather photo album spread out in front of them. Serena leaned forward to turn to a new page, her hair falling across Nate’s shoulder. He breathed deeply. His pulse was finally slowing. All it took was Serena’s signature scent of patchouli and lilies to calm him down.
Nate looked around at her familiar room. There was the tiny glass ballerina atop her mahogany jewelry chest. The kilt-wearing teddy bear from Scotland he used to make say dirty things until Serena squealed at him to stop, even though she was laughing hysterically. The giant mahogany armoire with crazily printed underwear spilling out of it. The little silver box on her night table that he knew was full of her baby teeth.
“Did Blair call you?” Nate asked, resting his head on the bed behind him. He looked up at the white eyelet canopy overhead and recognized the little brown burn mark he’d made in ninth grade.
She shook her head. “Why?”
He squirmed uncomfortably on the carpet. “I don’t know.” Serena just smiled and turned back to the album. An eight-by-ten photo of her in the fifth grade, dressed up as a fairy, peered up at them. “My hair is green.” She blushed and tried to turn the page.
“No.” Nate sat forward and reached for the album, flipping the page back so he could study the picture. Little Serena trapped underneath the clear plastic, wearing a pink satin gown and wings, a sparkling silver wand in her hand. “You look beautiful.” Serena rolled her eyes. “Anyway . . .” she said, turning the pages, “why did you come over here again?” Nate shrugged, Chips’s words still echoing in his brain. If he could only figure out what thinking with his balls actually meant, maybe he could figure some shit out. “I was in the neighborhood.” He looked down at a picture of him and
Serena. He didn’t remember taking this one. Their cheeks were pressed close together, flushed and smiling, and it was taken from above, his arm holding the camera out in front of their faces.
“Is that—” he heard the words tumble out of his mouth. “It’s from the day I came down from Ridgefield,” she said quietly, finishing his thoughts. Serena swallowed hard, looking down at the page. “The day we . . .” Nate knew before she’d even said the words. It was a photograph from the night they’d lost their virginity to each other, more than two years ago. He couldn’t help thinking about her soft skin and the fun they’d had. Some documentary about the Ten Commandments was on TV that night, and when they’d turned it on after they’d made love for the very first time, Serena had yelled out, “You parted my red sea!” He smiled, remembering how happy they were, how they’d stayed in each other’s arms until the sun rose.
“I don’t even remember taking it,” Serena added with a shrug of her shoulders before she reached out and started to flip to another page in the album.
“Me neither,” Nate said, reluctant to let go of the page. Why couldn’t happiness just stay like that—trapped under plastic and hermetically sealed? Why did everything have to get so complicated? He wished more than anything that he could just go back in time to that night and start all over again.
Serena grabbed the book away from him, closed it, and sat up, crossing her legs Indian style. She was wearing a pair of ridiculously tiny white shorts under her cotton dress. It almost hurt Nate’s eyes to look at her.
Sounds like he was thinking with, ahem, something now. “Nate,” she began, taking a deep breath, “I need to ask you something. I . . . I really need to know the truth.” “What?” His heart stopped for a second. Serena’s almost navy blue eyes were so serious that he found himself reaching over and grabbing her hand, squeezing her soft palm in his own to comfort her.
She squirmed uncomfortably and swallowed hard. “Did you ever get my letter?” Letter? Nate shook his head slowly.
Serena took another deep breath and looked straight at him. “I wrote you a letter to tell you that I love you,” she said quietly. “I always have.” The room was so quiet that Nate didn’t know whether the sound of breathing in his ears was his or hers. Sitting there with Serena, on the floor of her room, everything felt right. And simple. In fact, when he really thought about it, things between him and Serena had always been simple—it was life that had complicated them.
And somehow it felt totally right for him to kiss her. He leaned forward, his bare knees sinking into the carpet, and pressed his lips to hers. As he breathed in the scent of her, he felt his limbs relax, his body going limp with relief and happiness.
Kissing Serena was the exact opposite of having a pair of stilettos thrown at his head—it was absolutely effortless. They staggered to their feet and she pushed him down on the bed, kissing him back eagerly.
And the rest is history, repeating itself.
TO:
[email protected] FROM:
[email protected] Subject: Changes
Hey Dan,
Dude. I guess you and me are going to be roommates at Evergreen. I don’t know about you, but I’m totally stoked on going out to Washington. I’m from this shit-ass town in the boondocks of Idaho, and after eighteen goddamn years here I need to get the fuck out.
It’s not just that living here bores me to tears, but the people here just have no respect for the earth, right? If the kids I grew up with spent a quarter of the time they spend cooking meth in their basements focusing on the fucking earth, we’d have solved global warming by now. Honestly. It’s like with smokers—why do they do it? I can’t stand people who damage themselves and others for no fucking reason, you know? It’s all about respect.
So what about you, bro? You stoked for school? I hope you’re not bringing too much stuff, ’cause I hear our rooms are pretty small. I’m pretty neat, mostly because I don’t have a lot—I try to simplify, stick to the basics, you know. The only thing about me that’s high maintenance is my allergies—I’m allergic to coffee beans and will go into anaphylactic shock if I’m even near a coffee ground. Trust me, it’s not as cool as it sounds.
Are you signing up for that frosh orientation camping trip? Sounds pretty fucking sweet to me. Getting to know our classmates, spending some time out in the open country, living off the earth—way it should be, man. Way it should be.
Peace, love, and unity,
Urth Greenberg
breaking up isn’t all that hard to do
Dan sat on the curb outside the Strand, a cigarette in one hand and a cup of weak, tepid black coffee in the other. Taxis rumbled down Broadway, pouring black smoke out of their tailpipes. A stream of tourists flooded the sidewalks, mopping their sweaty brows and looking questioningly into the musty old bookstore as if trying to gauge the strength of its air-conditioning. The heat shimmered off the pavement in waves and Dan pushed his long, straggly brown hair back from his forehead with one hand.
For the past few days, he’d bailed on the shifts that overlapped with Greg’s in an attempt to postpone their inevitable talk. He just didn’t know what to say when Greg told him he wanted to be more serious, more official. Avoidance had seemed like a good plan, but then this morning his boss had threatened to fire him if he didn’t come in, so he’d spent the day in stealth mode, hiding out in the gardening section and ducking behind bookshelves whenever he heard footsteps approachi
ng.
“Hello Daniel.” An unfamiliar, elderly voice startled him.
He looked up from his perch on the sidewalk and recognized Aggie, the seventysomething receptionist at Riverside Prep who wore a different wig every day. Today it was black and curly, sort of like Ernie’s hair from Sesame Street.
“Hello Aggie,” Dan mumbled. This was the problem with New York—you couldn’t get a second of peace and quiet without running into someone you knew. Aggie would probably want to have tea with him now, maybe get in one last heart-to-heart before he left for college.
Or take him wig shopping?
“Well, Daniel, it’s lovely to run into you like this, though I can’t stay and chat. Congratulations on your recent announcement, and I’m sorry I missed your party!” Dan watched in shock as Aggie smiled, patting her wig, and then shuffled off in the direction of the discount books racks.
Dan gave her a slight wave and then sighed, pressing his back against the brick wall, which felt like it was searing his flesh through his damp T-shirt. Well, that was weird. Did his mom invite the entire world to his coming-out party? He adjusted his butt on the hot pavement and pulled a notebook from his ratty black Timbuk2 messenger bag. If he didn’t get something written for the wedding soon, he’d be seriously screwed. But the trouble was, nothing was coming to him. What did he know about marriage anyway? How was he supposed to write about loving someone for the rest of your life when he couldn’t even figure out his own love life?
Good point.
As he looked up from the blank white page, he saw Greg stroll around the corner, wearing a white button-down shirt and stiff white jeans. Oh God. Greg stopped when he saw
Dan sitting there and smiled. Then he smiled and hurried over.
“Hey.” He touched Dan on the shoulder. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been wanting to talk to you.” His voice sounded genuinely concerned.
Dan looked at the cement. He could feel his T-shirt sticking to his back with sweat. “I’ve been sick,” he mumbled, coughing into one fist and looking away. He noticed a group of tourists approaching en masse and he wondered if he could duck in with them and make his escape. “Really sick.” His gaze shifted tentatively to Greg, who was staring at him with something like amusement, his blue eyes creasing at the corners. “I just didn’t want to give it to you—I think I’m still pretty contagious and—” Greg cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Listen, I really wanted to talk to you about something.” He sat down next to Dan on the sidewalk.
Dan stayed silent, fiddling with the pen in his hand. The throng of tourists came and went, but he knew he had to sit there and stick it out. He dreaded the words that were sure to fall from Greg’s lips any second now. Let’s do this thing. I want you to meet my parents. I want to show you things only another man can.
Greg cleared his throat and continued. “I thought that me and you had a pretty good thing going.” He stopped, his words hanging in the air above their heads. “But . . . I’ve kind of met someone else.” Huh? Dan stared at Greg, his mouth open. He felt like he’d just been smacked in the head with a two-by-four. Two girls dressed all in black stepped around them, practically trampling them with their combat boots and giving them a dirty look for blocking the sidewalk.
“I met this amazing guy at . . . um . . .” Greg looked down at the pavement, his cheeks flushing bright red, and ran a hand through his hair before continuing. “A party . . . and, well, we kind of just had this really intense connection.” He put his hand on Dan’s forearm, squeezing hard—but in a brotherly, reassuring way. “I’m sorry.” This time, Dan didn’t squirm at his touch. “Don’t worry about it.” He patted Greg’s hand. “It’s totally fine.” He sighed, breathing in the heavy August air, which suddenly felt a whole lot less oppressive.
A look of relief swept over Greg’s face. “I know you’ll find somebody special,” he declared in a rush, removing his hand from Dan’s arm. “And I hope we can still be friends,” he added, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
“Absolutely,” Dan enthused. “Totally.” He looked out at the bustling city traffic and wondered briefly whether his “somebody special” could be right here, before his very eyes, among the masses. Two girls sat at an outdoor table in front of the Così restaurant across the street, sipping lemonade as they surveyed the passersby from behind huge sunglasses. Across from them sat a guy in a baseball cap, iced coffee in hand, reading a magazine. He looked up and caught Dan staring, and Dan quickly averted his eyes.
“Soooo . . .” Greg looked over at his closed notebook. “What are you working on? Another future New Yorker poem?” “Hah.” Dan snorted, opening the notebook and holding up the blank page. “I’m supposed to be working on a poem for Vanessa’s sister’s wedding, but I can’t think of a thing to say. I mean, what do I know about marriage?” Greg wiped his hands on his jeans. “All you have to do is envision the person you love most in the world—the person you want to wake up with in the morning and go to sleep with at night.” He paused, blushing deeply and running his hands through his hair. “Even if you haven’t met that person yet—you just have to imagine them! I mean, with me and . . .” Greg looked sheepishly at the ground. “I can’t imagine wanting to do those things with anyone else, you know?” “I guess.” Dan stared at the cracks in the cement. “I just don’t know if there’s anyone I feel like that about . . . any-more.” He closed his notebook and tucked it back inside his messenger bag.
Looking at Greg’s feet, Dan noticed he was wearing black socks with little white Paul Frank monkey faces on them. Dan didn’t know exactly what his type of guy—er, person—was yet, but he was pretty darn sure his soul mate didn’t wear monkey socks.
“I mean,” he started again, looking over at Greg, who was listening intently, “how will I know when it’s the right person?” Greg held Dan’s gaze for a moment before standing up. He slapped the back of his white jeans with both hands. “You’ll just . . . know,” he said quietly. “You’ll know when you know.” Dan looked out again at the sea of people on the street—the wide-eyed tourists with their cameras, the skater kids who flocked to Union Square in the summer, the NYU students who were moving into their apartments a few weeks early, lugging hand-me-down furniture, arms loaded with boxes. In the few minutes that he and Greg had been sitting here, hundreds of people must have walked past. If he stayed a little longer, those hundreds would soon be thousands. How could you find one out of thousands? Wouldn’t it take forever?
Greg stuck his hands into his pockets. “You’ll know when you can’t imagine seeing anyone else after the day’s over, and even though you just saw them a few hours ago, you can’t wait to see them again that night.” Dan nodded mutely, still dizzily watching the crowd on the sidewalk as if it held all of life’s answers.
“Well, I’d better get back to work,” Greg said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “I’m not even on break yet—I just snuck out to talk to you.” Dan remembered himself and stood up, slinging his messenger bag over one shoulder. He grabbed Greg’s arm before he walked away.
“Hey,” he said, moving closer. “Thanks . . . for everything.” Greg smiled. He wrapped his arms around Dan’s back and squeezed tight, clapping him on the shoulders before they both pulled back.
As Dan watched him walk away, he couldn’t help feeling a little sad. Not about Greg, but about love in general. He wanted what Greg had described: someone to sit around and drink coffee with in the morning. Someone he could do all those dopey, ridiculously romantic New York things with before he left for Evergreen—like watch every Woody Allen movie filmed in Manhattan, or take a carriage ride through Central Park under a full moon. Someone to wake up with every morning, the light covering their bare skin like a golden blanket . . .
Pale fury.Why did you leave me?
He pulled out his notebook and scribbled furiously, unsure of what he was writing.
Eyes closed, our bones ache.
This isn’t chemistry or geography.
It’s
physics. Pure physics.
Dan still wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but it was something to do with friction, and friction caused heat, and when he thought about heat he couldn’t help but think about a certain prickly-headed girl lying next to him in bed. His hands began to sweat as he continued to write.
Not feeling so gay anymore, eh?
maybe a leopard can change her spots
“Watch where you’re going, man!”
A yellow cab swerved on the shimmering black asphalt, almost grazing Vanessa’s arm as she crossed Broadway, squinting into the annihilating afternoon sunlight. The cabbie’s rude, grating voice lingered in her ears. Did he say man? Vanessa smiled smugly to herself. Well, she thought, picking up the pace, that’s what you get for having such a sleek, aerodynamic hairstyle.
Doesn’t she mean androgynous?
She’d gone downtown around noon to film some of Ruby’s East Village hangouts in the daylight, but now, faced with the sweltering heat of the day, she was ready for a break. She rubbed her stubbly head with one hand as she waited for the light to change.
The Strand bookstore was half a block away, its carts of moldy discount books parked out front. Vanessa wondered if Dan was working—she’d been avoiding him the last few days after the whole romantic-gay-poetry incident, but maybe she’d just stop by and say hi. She watched the little red hand warning her to stay put.
College was just around the corner, and soon Dan—along with just about everyone else—would be gone. Well, Ruby would be around, but it wasn’t exactly the same between them anymore—now that she spent every waking second with Piotr. Vanessa couldn’t help feeling kind of . . . obsolete. Maybe it had been a mistake to stay in the city, but she’d wanted to study film at NYU for as long as she could remember, and now she finally had her chance. Plus, she loved New York. The trouble was, it was going to be a whole different city without Dan.