I Will Always Love You

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  “After you, ladies,” Pete said as the elevator door slid open. Once they reached the ninth floor, Blair and Pete followed the younger girls into the Bass suite. Blair’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. It looked just like all the dozens of other parties she’d been to at the suite: The hot tub was overcrowded with half-dressed girls, couples were making out on the leather couches, and the lonely, dateless girls were all clustered around the makeshift bar, desperately trying to make eye contact with any guy who passed their way.

  “So, who is everyone?” Pete asked affably, smiling at the room in general.

  Blair frowned, trying to spot any familiar faces in the crowd.

  “Let’s see…” she began, before trailing off in disbelief. Framed perfectly by the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked downtown New York, she saw Serena—kissing someone. She could only see the guy’s back, and Serena’s blond hair obscured her face. Her white halter top was blindingly bright against the sea of black outside the window and her long, tanned limbs were clenched against the guy’s back. She looked like she was trying to devour him.

  For a split second, Blair was transfixed. Then, as if stepping closer and closer to an Impressionist painting, Blair noticed the messy golden hair, the easy posture, the Stan Smith canvas sneakers.

  “Blair?”

  She heard Pete say her name, but she didn’t respond. She couldn’t blink. Serena’s chin was tilted upward, and her eyes were half closed. She looked totally blissful. Just then, the pair pulled apart and Blair saw Nate’s face. He was smiling happily and staring at Serena like the party didn’t exist, like the lame Justin Timberlake song wasn’t playing on the sound dock, like the L’École girls in the hot tub weren’t shrieking. It was like Nate and Serena were in their own little world.

  Blair felt like she was going to throw up. How the fuck had this happened? Were they dating? And how could they just stand there, making out like that, oblivious to the entire world?

  “We have to go.” She dug her fingernails tightly into Pete’s wrist.

  “Ow!” Pete yanked his hand out of Blair’s grip. “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving,” Blair announced. “I don’t feel well.” She would throw up if she stayed an extra minute. She needed to get out. She pushed her way past a gaggle of high school girls standing in a tight circle, not even noticing when she knocked one of the girl’s drinks out of her hand and onto the bodice of her ugly pink dress.

  And that’s what she does to people who aren’t making out with her exes.

  Blair and Pete wordlessly rode the elevator up to the eleventh floor. Blair ran down the carpeted hallway and into their suite, where they’d gotten dressed only a couple of hours before. She stalked over to the minibar and pulled out a tiny bottle of Absolut, unscrewed the cap, and drank it, not caring that she looked like an unstable alcoholic.

  “What would you like to drink?” she asked, trying to stop her voice from shaking.

  “Blair,” Pete said firmly.

  “What? The party was lame anyway. I think we should just celebrate here. And I have stomach cramps,” she lied. “Anyway, do you want vodka? Or Jack Daniel’s?”

  “Blair.” Pete wrapped his strong arms around her waist and dragged her away from the minibar. “Look at me.”

  He pulled her onto the edge of the bed and cupped Blair’s chin. It was a tender, sweet gesture he did dozens of times a day, but now, his touch made her recoil. The tears that were threatening to fall sprang from her eyes.

  “I’m fine,” Blair squeaked.

  “No, you’re not,” Pete said gently. “Last year, it was Tiffany, this year it’s New Year’s. I don’t understand,” he said, a note of suspicion evident in his otherwise concerned voice.

  “It’s…” Blair sighed. “I’m just so tired,” she said finally. She wanted to tell Pete how much seeing Serena and Nate had shaken her. Being back in New York was like pulling a gigantic Band-Aid off her whole fucking life, exposing the raw, oozing parts of her past that hadn’t healed.

  Pete kept his gaze on Blair. “Help me understand,” he said slowly.

  Blair looked from the flat-screen television mounted against the wall to the black and granite wet bar in the next room. She usually loved hotels, but now everything seemed too sterile, too anonymous. She wished they were back in their cluttered New Haven rental.

  Blair kicked off one Sigerson Morrison pump, then the other, and folded her legs under her on the bed. She had to tell him. He’d met her weird mom and her gross, fat stepfather. He’d spent hours taking pictures of Blair and her toddler sister, Yale, playing in the pool in the backyard of her family’s Pacific Palisades home. He knew her.

  Blair took a deep breath. “I saw my ex. Making out with my best friend. And we’re not together anymore, obviously.” Blair mustered a weak laugh that came out like a bark. “But it was still weird… hard, I guess,” she added.

  A cloud had passed over Pete’s usually open face.

  “Do I know who this ex is?” Pete asked, taking his hand off hers.

  “It’s Nate. It was Nate and Serena.” Blair said simply. She’d talked about Nate only in vague terms, usually in reference to a story from when they were kids. Before things got so complicated.

  “Nate,” Pete repeated. “The one you used to go to the zoo with.”

  Blair nodded, trying to figure out what she should say next, but all she could do was think about meandering lazily through the Central Park Zoo with Nate. He’d liked the penguins, she’d liked the polar bears. That is, until Serena decided she liked the polar bears more. Serena used to stand in front of the habitat talking to them, as if she knew some sort of secret language only they could understand. Blair laughed bitterly. Why did Serena have to pop up in all her memories?

  Maybe because she was there?

  “We were all friends, and then in tenth grade, Nate and I started dating. And then that summer, when I was in Scotland for a wedding, Nate and Serena slept together, and I didn’t find out until senior year.” A fresh sob escaped Blair’s throat. She suddenly recalled how she’d first found out. It was when she and Nate were just about to sleep together for the first time.

  “Do you still have feelings for him?” Pete asked. Blair cleared her throat a little haughtily. What was with the third degree? His ex-girlfriend, an anthropology bitch named Lindsey, glared at Blair whenever they crossed paths on campus and Blair never complained.

  Blair stood up and wavered over to the minibar. She was determined not to let the image of Serena and Nate fuck up her night. And what better way than to have another drink?

  “Are you still in love with him?” Pete pressed, trailing behind her.

  Blair whirled around, a mini bottle of vodka in her hand. Why couldn’t he just let it go? “No,” she said flatly. She wasn’t in love with Nate. She’d moved on. She had Pete now. Duh.

  “Okay,” Pete said slowly. His blue eyes still looked slightly wary, but he wearily ran a hand through his thick blond hair.

  “I’m in love with you,” Blair clarified. It was true. But she was surrounded by all these feelings from her high school past and it was hard to let them go just like that.

  “I just need you to be honest with me….” Pete pushed away the tumbler of vodka impatiently. “Just tell me that nothing has happened between you since high school.”

  Blair looked at her reflection in the mirror above the bar. Her chestnut brown hair was limp around her face and her black La Perla bra strap had inched down her shoulder. Her small, lean face was blotchy and red. And still, Pete loved her. Real couples loved each other no matter what. He needed to know everything. And then it really would be over.

  She ran her hands through her hair and turned around, waiting until Pete’s eyes connected with hers. “Last winter break, Nate and I hooked up on New Year’s,” Blair said quickly. “I didn’t even know he would be in New York, I thought he was sailing around the world, but then we ended up at the same party, and we were both by ourselves and y
ou were in Costa Rica and ‘no ring, no bring,’ and it just happened. But that was last year, it only happened once, and now it seems he and Serena are together, so good for them,” Blair finished. There. That didn’t sound too bad. She’d acknowledged it for what it was: a dumb mistake that would never happen again.

  Never say never….

  Blair picked up her glass and took a long, relieved sip. She felt like a weight had been lifted from her chest. “I’m really glad I told you,” Blair confessed, reaching out to grab Pete’s hand.

  Pete yanked his arm away as if he’d been burned. His face looked ashen. “You mean, you slept with him,” he finally choked out.

  “But it didn’t mean anything!” Blair said quickly. She hadn’t really thought through what her confession would mean to Pete. “It was just a dumb, onetime mistake that happened because a lot of old feelings got stirred up.”

  “You cheated.” Pete shook his head in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, I’m a fucking idiot! You cheated and you never told me. I gave you a ring!”

  “No!” Blair said desperately. She had to make him understand that it hadn’t meant anything. “I haven’t thought about him since,” Blair added, her voice rising hysterically.

  “Bullshit.” Pete stood up and paced the room. “You cheated and then you kept it a secret. How do I know this… this love triangle isn’t always going to come back to haunt you—to haunt me?” Pete shook his head sadly. He looked awful, like a kid who’d just seen his golden retriever puppy get run over by a car. “I’m going to take a train to Philly and stay with my brother for a bit. I’ll call you.”

  “Wait,” Blair screeched, gripping a handful of the dark green duvet. She couldn’t believe she was so close to losing Pete. “Are you breaking up with me?”

  Pete grabbed his small wheeled Tumi suitcase from the floor and paused to look at Blair. “I just need some time to think,” he said, a little bit more gently. With one final look, he headed for the door. As it closed behind him with a thud, Blair collapsed into the goosedown pillow, her body racked with sobs.

  They do say the holidays can cause depression.

  d on deadline

  Turtles sleep under the mud, while our hearts break…

  Two zebras together, so separate.

  Dan crumpled the piece of paper and threw it onto the coffee-stained tan rug. The room smelled like cigarettes and incense, which Dan had first started burning a year ago to erase the smell of Vanessa, but hadn’t broken the habit. The alarm clock he’d had since seventh grade read eleven thirty-four in luminous green letters. For everyone else, it was twenty-six minutes until New Year’s, but for Dan, it was less than half an hour until he failed his poetry class and botched his writing career.

  Of course, he’d been an idiot to even sign up for a writing seminar called Poetry and Passion when there was so little passion in his life. But Colm Doyle, the legendary Irish writer, was the instructor. Colm wrote angry, honest poems about love. After his fourth divorce, he’d written a poem called “Hand on the Frying Pan,” and Dan had memorized every line. Besides, he’d hoped he could benefit from taking a class on passion when he wasn’t in love. After all, back in high school, he’d written his best poem, “Sluts,” after he’d broken up with Vanessa the first time. That had been published in The New Yorker.

  It was also submitted not by the writer but by its unjealous subject.

  But now, he couldn’t write anything. It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried, over and over, for the last year. It was just always the same: He’d loved Vanessa, Vanessa had cheated on him, he hated his life, and he wanted to move on but for some reason couldn’t. He was angry at her and missed her and hated the fact that he’d seen a photo of her and that Hollis guy on one of the party pages in New York magazine, looking so happy together. He wished that he’d never met Vanessa, so he wouldn’t have to feel this way.

  Sounds like someone skipped the better to have loved and lost lesson.

  Dan lay down on his bed and pulled the flannel sheets over his head. All he wanted to do was fall asleep so he didn’t have to think, but unfortunately he’d had fourteen cups of black coffee today and his hands were vibrating. He just couldn’t fucking write the poem. And he’d tried. So far, pages and pages were scattered across the room and on his bed. The zebra and turtle poem had actually been one of his better efforts. At one point, he’d thought he was onto something, but then realized he was just transcribing an Indigo Girls song playing on the radio his father had left on in the kitchen.

  “Daniel?” Rufus appeared in the doorway. His wiry salt-and-pepper hair was tucked into a pink beret that was obviously Jenny’s. Jenny had spent Christmas with them, but was spending New Year’s on a Waverly field trip to Paris. Dan wished he could have gone with her. He wished he could be anywhere but here.

  “I was just going to call for some Chinese food. What do you say?” Rufus asked almost tenderly. “I find I work better with a little MSG in my system.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Dan mumbled. He swung his legs out of bed and picked up the half-empty cup of coffee from his night table. It was cold but he gulped it down anyway, enjoying the bitter, acrid taste as it traveled down his throat. That was how he felt.

  My love is like stale coffee….

  Dan sighed. It was official. He sucked.

  “Should I be worried about you?” Rufus asked sternly as he sat down on Dan’s bed. Rufus was one of those dads who believed in a less-is-more approach to parenting, but was always attuned to the lives of his two children. Dan felt bad dragging him into his den of despair. It wasn’t his fault Dan had peaked at seventeen.

  “I’m trying to write a poem, and I can’t do it,” Dan admitted.

  “What do you mean?” Rufus roared. He stood up, placed his hands on his hips, and looked down at Dan in exasperation. It was the same gesture Jenny would make when she wanted to prove that Dan was being ridiculous. “You’re brilliant, boy!”

  “Thanks,” Dan mumbled, glancing away. “I’m going to fail this class unless I write a love poem, and I just… can’t,” he said miserably. “I was supposed to finish last week but the professor gave me an extension until midnight tonight. After that…” He trailed off.

  “Ah, the poet under pressure.” Rufus shook his head. “I remember one time upstate. Summer of ’67. But instead of Woodstock, we were creating art. We were free-versing around the campfire, and I didn’t know what the hell to say. So then I used some of my old stuff knocking around my noggin. Toast of the evening,” Rufus said proudly.

  Dan smiled tightly. His dad’s hippie free-versing wasn’t exactly the same as a poem he had to turn in for a grade at a class at Columbia.

  “I’m off to order. I’ll get you the chicken fried rice and let you know when the grub’s here.” Rufus stood up and wandered out, leaving Dan alone.

  Thankfully.

  Still, maybe there was something to what his dad was saying. After all, Colm hadn’t said specifically to write a poem. He’d said to turn in a poem. And Dan had just been musing that he’d peaked in high school. He stood up from the bed and padded across the stained carpet to his makeshift desk, made from milk crates and an old door. Maybe he could find a poem from the past. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice.

  He picked up one folded loose piece of paper on top of a pile of Moleskine notebooks and spiral-bound pads, unfolded it, and began to read. Blonde coming out of the store/ Whatever you buy, I want you more. It was one of the first poems he’d ever written, after he’d seen a picture of Serena online, coming out of Barneys. It was terrible.

  He shuffled through more of the papers. Each poem reminded him of another piece of his past. He’d been in love with Vanessa, dated Serena, had had a torrid affair with a kinky, yellow-toothed poet named Mystery Craze. He’d even had a fling with a sensitive gay guy named Greg—if you called Greg trying to kiss him one night after drinking way too much absinthe a fling. He’d had experiences with almost every type of love there was. But now, he just
felt empty.

  Maybe that was his problem. He’d forgotten what it was like to love and lose and love again. After all, the poems about Serena were about untapped desire, about ideal love, about a love that could not be consummated. They were sad and desperate and longing. They were real poems.

  He pulled out one, from when he and Serena had just broken up in the fall of senior year.

  Perfect blond celluloid teen queen

  Heart of glass, Wyeth-stark Kansas landscape.

  Dan grinned. That wasn’t bad. He turned on his MacBook, jiggling his leg as it powered up. The clock read eleven fifty-one.

  Quickly, he typed with two fingers, pulling the best lines from different poems to create an impassioned, pleading poem to love. Outside, he could hear neighbors on the street. For as long as he could remember, everyone on his block had gathered outside to count down to the New Year. But Dan didn’t have time for that. Instead, he logged into his Columbia account and quickly composed an e-mail to his professor. At eleven fifty-eight, he pressed send.

  Well, at least he didn’t wait until the last minute.

  the morning after is never as magical as the night before

  Serena stretched her arms over her head, surprised when her elbow hit something hard. She opened her navy blue eyes and realized her elbow hadn’t connected with something, but someone: Nate.

  Scenes from last night came floating back to her. She’d only had one drink, but everything seemed cloaked in a golden, glowy haze. As soon as she and Nate had kissed, it was as if the whole party had faded away and the only thing that was left was the two of them. It was only the countdown to midnight that had broken the spell. They’d found a cab and gone back to Serena’s apartment.

  “Morning!” Serena whispered, even though she wanted to scream for joy. She’d never been so happy on a New Year’s Day. It was the perfect start to the rest of their lives.

  Doesn’t she mean year?

  “Uh,” Nate grunted sleepily and turned over, throwing his arm across Serena’s golden, naked body. “I’ve got farm duty,” Nate murmured. “The cows are hungry.”