Love the One You're With

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  Gossip Girl novels created by Cecily von Ziegesar:

  Gossip Girl

  You Know You Love Me

  All I Want Is Everything

  Because I’m Worth It

  I Like It Like That

  You’re The One That I Want

  Nobody Does It Better

  Nothing Can Keep Us Together

  Only In Your Dreams

  Would I Lie To You

  Don’t You Forget About Me

  It Had To Be You

  The Carlyles

  You Just Can’t Get Enough

  Take A Chance On Me

  Love The One You’re With

  If you like gossip girl, you may also enjoy:

  The Poseur series by Rachel Maude

  The Secrets of My Hollywood Life series by Jen Calonita

  Betwixt by Tara Bray Smith

  Haters by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

  Footfree and Fancyloose by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2009 by Alloy Entertainment

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Poppy

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue,

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/littlebrown

  Poppy is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company.

  The Poppy name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: October 2009

  The characters, events, and locations in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-07161-1

  Contents

  Copyright

  Part 1: hey people!

  all in the family

  b meets her match

  r gets an assignment

  home for the holidays

  for r, it’s all about the essentials

  r is for… reunion

  up, up and away

  j needs a challenge

  vacation, all a ever wanted

  animal attraction

  Part 2: hey people!

  o hits it up in the hot tub

  love game

  bedroom stories

  Part 3: hey people!

  pooling resources

  besties on the beach

  the sea is not calm for b

  the one time you want to get busy on vacation

  sisterly bonding

  announcement

  fancy meeting you here

  a plans it out

  the young man and the sea

  a’s certainly not getting married today

  tortured romance isn’t as fun as it seems

  a’s never been in love before

  a certain british girl is hungry like the wolf

  Part 4: hey people!

  love is all around

  does b believe in something that she’s never seen before?

  everything comes out in the wash

  Part 5: hey people!

  A Preview of I will always love you

  Appendix

  all b wants for christmas

  make new friends, but keep the old…

  It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

  —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

  hey people!

  It’s November, the time of year when fall drifts to winter and we all start wrapping our cashmere sweaters more tightly around us and thinking about the holidays. In New York, we allow the tourists to enjoy the city, whether they’re wobbling around Wollman Rink wearing their blindingly bright puffer jackets or gawking at a larger-than-life SpongeBob SquarePants balloon during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It’s cold, it’s dark, but the windows in Bergdorf’s are sparklier than the Marni dresses inside, and all of us Manhattan natives are just itching to celebrate the season in style.

  the one thing in our way

  Thanksgiving. Who’d have thought a holiday all about gratitude (my short list: sample sales, Corner Bakery coffee, St. Jude’s swim team boys running in Central Park without shirts) would have evolved into a four-day calorie-fest all about forced bonding with strange relatives? Luckily, many New Yorkers avoid the awkwardness by heading out of town for the holidays. And who can blame them? Why listen to your drunk uncle drone on about his glory days when you could wear your slinkiest, sexiest Malia Mills string bikini on the beach or your new fur-trimmed boots on the slopes?

  So take my advice: Find out who’s going AWOL for the holidays, and make sure you get invited along!

  sightings

  A and J sharing a dressing room at Barneys, trying on Stella McCartney dresses. They’ve gone from bitches to besties in the time it takes most people to lose their late-summer tans…. J, later, at a playground on Bleecker Street, with her on-again boyfriend J.P. and two freckly-faced toddlers. Babysitting, or an early visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future?… R, O, and the rest of the swim team guys, drinking pitchers at one of those sticky-floored dives on Second that don’t card, ignoring the pack of cougars surrounding them…. Lastly, B and her best friend, the pierced, tattooed S, taking photos in Brooklyn. They’re certainly taking Rancor seriously!

  your e-mail

  q: Dear Gossip Girl,

  What’s going on for T-Day? You’re totally invited to my house. ’Rents are out of town. Suh-weet!

  —ponyparty

  a: Dear PP,

  While that sounds delightful, I plan to spend my holidays hanging out with people I actually know. But enjoy the free house!

  —GG

  q: Dear Gossip Girl,

  So, I’m, like, super in love with one of the St. Jude’s swim team guys, but they’re always hanging out together and I feel sort of weird just approaching him in front of all the guys. What should I do?

  —swimfan

  a: Dear SF,

  A hint: Guys are like wildebeests, always traveling in packs for protection and more scared of you than you are of them. They’re not nearly so frightening close-up. Try hunting one down on his own and see what happens.

  —GG

  Just thought of a few more things to add to my list of things to be thankful for: Hot boys, tiny Missoni bikinis, and islands with no drinking age. That’s right, I’m joining the legions of New Yorkers getting out of town. Where, you ask? Wouldn’t you like to know? But don’t pout. You should be thankful that no matter where I am, I’ll be keeping track of what anyone who’s anyone is doing—on this island and any other island worth visiting.

  You know you love me,

  gossip girl

  all in the family

  “So, what’s up for Thanksgiving? What does your family usually do?” Avery Carlyle asked her friends Jack Laurent and Jiffy Bennett. They were wedged into a cozy leather booth at Amaranth, the café popular with any socialite who needed a cappuccino or a vodka gimlet as a post-Barneys perk-up. It was exactly the type of place Avery had always imagined hanging out in New York.

  “Any parties going on?” she continued hopefully, sipping her cappuccino.

  In truth, Avery could have done without Thanksgiving. It was just a four-day interruption of her life, which already had everything she could possibly be thankful for.

  Well, almost everything.

  In September, when she left her childhood home in Nantucket and began
her junior year at the ultra-exclusive Constance Billard School for Girls, it seemed like Avery was destined to be one of those unfortunate girls who spend the entire lunch period in the library because they have nowhere else to go. To start with, she and Jack had taken an immediate dislike to each other after fighting over a limited-edition Givenchy satchel at Barneys the day before school began. Tensions quickly escalated until they were outright enemies at Constance Billard, and Avery was completely ostracized by her classmates. Then when Avery scored a coveted internship at Metropolitan magazine and was asked to rat out Jack’s secrets to a pushy gossip reporter, she’d proved to herself and her Upper East Side peers that she was better than that. She’d finally won them over.

  Now she and Jack were friends, and for the past month Avery had finally been living the New York City life she’d imagined, full of cocktail parties, gallery openings, and café dates like the one they were having now.

  “God, I don’t even want to think about Thanksgiving. I have to go with my parents to Beatrice and Deptford’s house in Greenwich. If Deptford doesn’t die first, that is.” Jiffy shrugged as she shoved a slice of avocado in her mouth. She was a petite pug-nosed girl with long bangs that fell over her brown eyes, and five stubborn pounds that kept her from fitting into her older sister Beatrice’s discarded couture. Beatrice was thirty-two, a constant fixture on the society circuit, and had her own column in Page Six magazine, where she overshared details about her marriage to her seventy-five-year-old fiancé.

  As if we really want to know.

  “I’ll be in hell with the stepbrats.” Jack stabbed her napoleon pastry with a fork. The chocolate crumbled on the delicate white plate in a cloud of cocoa powder.

  “It can’t be that bad, right? I mean, at least they have a nanny,” Avery offered, eyeing her friend. Jack was always beautiful, but lately, she’d had shadows under her eyes that even La Mer under-eye cream couldn’t hide.

  Jack’s life was sort of like an H&M dress: From far away, it looked really fashionable and put together. Not only did Jack actually make bitchiness and vanity seem like character attributes, but she was practically a professional ballerina and was dating J. P. Cashman, the son of one of the wealthiest real-estate moguls in the world and a genuinely nice guy. But up close, Jack’s life was basically coming apart at the seams, particularly her home life. Her mom was a French former ballerina who was currently filming a reality show in Paris, and Jack was now living with—and serving as an unpaid babysitter to—her dad, stepmom, and two stepsisters in her dad’s West Village town house.

  “Hey gorgeous!”

  Avery looked up, even though she automatically knew it was J.P., there to pick up Jack. He was the only guy Avery knew who could use the word gorgeous and not sound totally lame or totally gay.

  An important quality in a boyfriend.

  J.P. plopped down on the empty chair next to Jack. He had brown hair and brown eyes, and was wearing a black wool overcoat and black dress pants. He looked like a young stockbroker rather than a Riverside Prep junior. “So, what are you guys up to?” he asked conversationally, his fingers playing in Jack’s auburn hair.

  “J.P.!” Jack’s tone was playful, but she batted his hand away and carefully hooked her auburn hair behind her ears.

  “Discussing Thanksgiving plans.” Avery smiled shyly. Even though she was happy J.P. and Jack were back together, she always felt a pang of loneliness when she saw such a cute couple. Why couldn’t she find someone who loved her like that?

  “We were actually just heading out,” Jack said, already scraping back her chair. She rifled through her mist gray leather Chloé wallet and tossed her AmEx on the table. Instantly, a white-shirted waiter picked it up.

  “Sure.” Avery glanced at her reflection in the gold mirror above the bar and pulled a black-and-white checkered wool Marc Jacobs hat over the tips of her ears. Even though it was only November, the temperature had been freezing, and the weather reports had been forecasting snow all week.

  The four of them tumbled outside into the cold twilight.

  “Brrr!” Jiffy shivered and pulled her green felt Marc by Marc Jacobs coat closer around her shoulders. “Do you guys want to come to my place?” she asked hopefully.

  “We’ve got to go. We’re grabbing a cab downtown.” Jack grabbed J.P.’s elbow and held up her leather-gloved hand. “See you guys!” she called as a taxi screeched to the curb.

  Avery watched as J.P. opened the cab door and Jack eased her willowy body onto the cracked vinyl seat. It was like a carefully choreographed dance they’d done many times before.

  Unlike some things, which they haven’t done at all.

  “So, what are you doing for Turkey Day?” Jiffy asked Avery as they turned up the street.

  “I don’t know. I guess it’ll just be our family.” Avery wasn’t really certain. Ever since her mom had gotten serious with her new boyfriend, the triplets weren’t sure what the holidays would be like, and so far no one had had the guts to ask. Plus, Avery had been having too much fun getting to know the real New York to nose into her mother’s plans. For the past month, she’d been spending every minute not at school with Jack, Jiffy, Genevieve, and Sarah Jane. She loved everything about it: finding the cool restaurants, the parties, the bars and clubs that didn’t card. But recently, she’d had an antsy feeling that something was about to change.

  By something does she mean a boyfriend?

  “Are any of your brother’s friends single?” Jiffy asked, as if reading her mind.

  “A couple,” Avery replied.

  They walked companionably uptown, past the plate-glass windows of the Madison Avenue stores, all of which were already decorated in festive reds, silvers, and greens. Jiffy hurried to catch up to Avery’s long stride, switching her two shiny black Barneys bags from one arm to the other. “Do you like any of them?”

  “Not really,” Avery said evasively. She didn’t want to tell Jiffy that she actually had a teeny-tiny crush on her brother’s best friend, Rhys. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Jiffy. It was more that she was worried if she actually admitted that she liked Rhys, nothing would happen.

  Avery was a romantic at heart, and lately she was beginning to think it was something of a curse. Back when she was thirteen, she used to write actual messages in bottles and throw them into the ocean, certain that some European royalty would find her message, washed up on some faraway shore on the other side of the Atlantic. Obviously, she wasn’t writing messages in bottles anymore, but for some reason, she couldn’t figure out how to find guys. Sure, there were tons of guys around, but she went to an all-girl school, and it wasn’t like she could just advertise that she was looking for a boyfriend.

  Is the Internet the modern way to send a message in a bottle?

  “Well, we can’t all be like Jack and J.P.” Jiffy shrugged. “You know, Beatrice knows some good guys.”

  Avery cringed, imagining the types of guys Beatrice would try to set her up with. Eighty-year-olds? Ninety-year-olds? No thank you. She might be desperate, but she wasn’t that desperate.

  Yet.

  “Maybe,” Avery said noncommittally. They were already on Seventy-second Street. “Have a great Thanksgiving! Call me if you get bored.” She air-kissed Jiffy on both cheeks, then hurriedly walked west toward Fifth, her head bowed against the cold and her shoulders hunched in her bright blue Theory peacoat. She pushed through the revolving door of her building, enjoying the blast of hot air that greeted her in the lobby.

  “Miss Carlyle.” Jim, her favorite doorman, offered a grand-fatherly smile.

  “Hi,” Avery said as her patent leather Miu Miu Mary Janes clicked on the polished surface of the floors. The sprawling yet tasteful green-marble-and-gold lobby was already decorated for the holidays, with a small tree in the corner and garlands of holly winding around the doorman’s desk. She really didn’t want to spend her first Christmas season in New York alone. Maybe Jiffy was right and she did need a boyfriend plan.

 
Perhaps the doorman has a son…

  “Hold the elevator!” a male voice boomed from several feet away. Avery stuck her hand between the doors.

  “Avery!”

  “Hi!” Avery squeaked, looking up at Remington Wallis, her mom’s six-foot-two boyfriend. His face was ruddy from the cold and his arms were laden with vegetable-filled plastic bags. His salt-and-pepper hair was almost George Clooney–ish and he wore Patagonia khakis, a pink button-down shirt, and a black Gore-Tex vest. He looked like he’d just returned from Aspen, though judging from his haul of groceries, he’d been at the Union Square greenmarket. No one would ever imagine that his net worth was in the billions and that he was a regular on Fortune’s list of wealthiest people. He just looked like a goofy suburban dad.

  “The bag is ripping. Can you do me a favor and hold this?” Remington asked as he plucked an oblong butternut squash from the bag and held it toward Avery. “Your mother loves squash.”

  Avery smiled fondly. For other Upper East Siders, that sentence would have referred to the game, not a root vegetable. But Edie was different, always preferring homemade batiked dresses to a closet of couture.

  Remington and Edie had known each other growing up in New York City. They’d dated in high school, but after graduation, Edie had headed to San Francisco to follow the Grateful Dead and had soon gotten pregnant with the triplets after a freewheeling summer of selling hemp jewelry with some hippie friends. Remington, on the other hand, had followed in the footsteps of his Wallis forefathers: Yale for undergrad and Harvard for business school. He’d set up a hedge fund and became a Wall Street wunderkind, married a socialite, then divorced her once her notorious cheating blew up in scandal. After that he retired, spending time with his daughter and using his money to fund art projects—the more eccentric, the better. He and Edie met again when Remington underwrote a Brooklyn exhibit that featured one of Edie’s abstract installations of oversize chinchilla-shaped sculptures.