034. make up words to songs you used to know [1/2]
Title | make up words to songs you used to know
Chapter | 1/2
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Serena. Nate/Serena, Tripp/Serena
Summary | I"I hope she'll be a fool. That's the best thing a girl can be in this world - a beautiful little fool." -- The Great Gatsby
Driving straight into the sunset, she props her feet, multi-coloured chipping toenail polish and all, up against the dashboard, throws her head back and laughs. Sitting in the passenger seat, arms flung over her head, eyes closed, skirt spilling over her thighs and sliding upward, she lets the wind soothe her warm skin and flirt with her hair, tries and fails to grasp it in her fists.
Nate watches her instead of the road.
He scuffs the toe of his expensive tennis shoes against the ground as she stumbles out of the convertible, greets all his relatives exuberantly, because it’s summer and she’s shining.
She doesn’t miss the knowing looks that pass over her head as she follows Nate’s second-cousin inside for dinner as dusk settles over the property, but she pretends to.
Dinner with the van der Bilts.
(She giggles into her champagne because she thinks they should make it a reality show.)
Tripp smiles at her as if he can read her mind, nudges her shoulder with his own, and she laughs aloud, one hand flying up to cover her mouth. She leans into him a bit, lets her tanned arm rest against the sleeve of his white button-down.
Nate stabs a carrot with his fork hard enough to garner a look of disapproval from his aunt.
(Voted off the island.)
“I want to swim,” she declares, hands planted on her hips, after she loses her fifth game of croquet to a crew of well-dressed, blonde-headed boys.
Nate laughs at her stubborn expression, goads his little cousins to chase her into the house, and she smiles at him across the sun-kissed lawn, squeals obligingly as she darts inside just shy of their reaching hands, catches him watching her until she’s indoors, out of his sight.
They walk to the beach together and he reveals that he snuck two chocolate chip cookies out of the kitchen, and she feels her heart flip over.
“You won’t ever grow up, will you?” she asks him, but wistfully, like she doesn’t really want him too.
“I won’t if you won’t,” he jokes, winks at her and gives her a cookie, makes a deal that has the echoes of the childhood promises that she genuinely though they’d keep.
Somewhere along the walk, her flip-flops kicking up dust and the sun glittering through tree branches, her hand finds its way into his and it feels good.
Nate attacks her from out of her visual field when they’re in the salty water, sneaking up on her from behind and scooping her up, dunking them both beneath the surface.
When they resurface for air he still hasn’t let her go, his hands lingering on all the skin laid bare by her bikini. “Natie!” she protests indignantly, but he’s grinning too big for her to frown. So she giggles, fights her way out of his grasp and splashes water at him as punishment, smiles softly at him before she turns and swims away.
Tripp watches from the shore.
She treats the cottage (an ironic term, as it’s a mansion) like her own home, which is how she ends up downstairs in the kitchen very early in the morning in one of Nate’s t-shirts making herself some decaffeinated coffee because she’s too restless to sleep.
Tripp finds her there, coming in so late from the party he attended last night that he’s home early.
“Hi,” she says, and her cheeks are pink and she’s tugging at the hem of the Rolling Stones t-shirt she’s got on.
“Should’ve known,” he says by way of reply, slouching casually onto one of the stools that surround the island in the kitchen. “You were always awake even before the help.”
Serena lets go of her t-shirt, turns around and plucks another mug from the cupboard, fills it up and slides it across the island toward him. “You remember that?” She laughs, tucks her hair, a tangled mess from the midnight swim she took with Nate, back behind her ears. “I was a baby then.”
He smiles at her with his eyes over the rim of his mug as he takes a long drink.
“Maybe. But you’ve grown up beautifully.”
Dinner with the van der Bilts.
“Episode forty-two. Season finale,” she murmurs dramatically against the shell of Nate’s ear like she’s Mr. Moviefone, and he grabs her hand, his laughter landing on her skin as her kisses her knuckles.
It’s a garden party, for this last night that the family is all together, and it is all the more formal and yet more relaxed all at once. Serena’s hair is gathered up onto her head intricately, sparkling clips holding every strand perfectly, but she’s wearing her bikini under her Grecian dress.
There are lights twinkling in the trees and a string quartet and enough political blood on the grounds to necessitate a few security guards lurking around the periphery of the property, and on nights like these she fully feels like the spoiled little rich girl she spends so much time trying not to be.
She is there as Nate’s friend. That’s how she’s been introduced all summer long (Serena van der Woodsen, Nathaniel’s good friend) and that’s how they both want it to be. It’s the way it is, even if she’s spent the past forty-two days sneaking into his bedroom on intermittent nights and falling into lazy afternoon naps on the lawn with her head on his lap and his hands in her hair. As far as technicalities go, they have declared this a friendship, even if all signs point to it being much more.
So she supposes, technically, there is nothing stopping Tripp from walking over, bowing jokingly, and extending his hand to her.
“May I have this dance?”
And there is nothing, technically, besides the barely perceptible way Nate’s grip on her fingers tightens, to stop her from accepting, letting him whirl her away.
Her heart feels like a butterfly in her chest the next morning when he finds her out on one of the balconies, two mugs of coffee in his hands.
“Enjoy your summer?”
She nods, pushing the sleeves of her flimsy dressing gown up on her arms (she slept in her own pyjamas, and her own bed, for once) before she cups the mug in her hands, enjoying the feeling of the warmth spreading through her fingers.
“It’s been…” She sees a blur as she thinks back on it, blues and yellows and greens, sugary lemonade and too many croquet games, fancy dresses and pleasantries, sunsets and dewy mornings and sandcastles on the beach. It’s airy in her mind, a breeze of thoughts that consist of nothing tangible, nothing worthwhile.
Except maybe Nate’s smile.
Her own lips curve upward as she sips her coffee - lots of sugar and no cream, just how she likes it.
“…um, it’s been wonderful,” she says, tripping - tripping - over her words in surprise at the familiar taste in her mouth and the way he seems to understand her, right down to her coffee preferences.
Serena van der Woodsen’s plans for the early autumn consist of classes at Columbia, maybe, if she can fit them in between snagging shopping time with Blair when she’s home from Yale, afternoons of iced coffee and lattes in Sheep Meadow, and sleeping until noon under Nate’s sky blue duvet.
The day before school officially starts her room is a disaster zone (Eric and Chuck put caution: do not cross this line tape up over her door as a joke), books and clothes everywhere. Panic is settling in, making her restless. She feels secure. She has a future - she has a plan.
But she’s never been very good at those.
She’s sitting in the middle of her mess, lazily contemplating sorting it out, when the maid brings her a bouquet of flowers with a note card poking out.
She pulls off her orientation t-shirt emblazoned with her dormitory’s name (John Jay, in bright letters) and cut-offs, exchanging them for a summery dress and espadrilles, her frown during into a coy smile as steps out onto the bustling sidewalk and hails a cab.
It starts with coffee.
Coffee and chocolate-filled croissants (her favourite), laughter and low lighting, the familiar feeling of the unknown, the excitement of it pulling at her like her oldest, most reliable friend.
“You’ve got beautiful eyes,” he tells her across their small table, like he’s been waiting to say it since they danced on that humid summer night, tiny lights captured by her blue eyes.
She blushes. He touches her cheek.
He drops her off at home, tucks her hair behind her ear, and kisses her chastely in her doorway.
Nate goes to Columbia alone.
She fights with Lily, loud voices and ugly words and years of the abandonment she feels slipping into their argument.
(You did it to me over and over again; how dare you accuse me of doing it to you?)
She leaves her home and her childhood behind, taking just the clothes she’s got on and her wallet, sits on steps of the Met until the sun begins its descent and she can’t ignore the way her eyes ache anymore.
“Drinks, my treat,” she suggests, wearing her sunshine smile when he opens his hotel room door, trying to disguise the way her voice quavers.
Tripp looks her up and down slowly, tilts his head to indicate she should come in.
“My treat,” he corrects her gently.
Blair brings her clothes from home and a disappointed frown.
“What are you throwing away?” she whispers, and Serena shrugs off the concern with a thank you kiss to Blair’s cheek and a closed door.
Evenings blur. Tripp pours champagne and she curls her feet under her on the sofa as they talk. Nights blur. His hands learn their way over her body and she gets accustomed to falling asleep on pillows that smell like his cologne. Days blur. She sleeps late, usually wakes up alone, reads the paper.
Days, evenings, nights blur into weeks. Soon enough they will become months.
Time flies but she forgets to enjoy it.
Serena and Nate remain friends.
(Technically, it’s all they ever were, all they’ll ever be.)
There is one week of awkwardness, but then she calls and he answers on the second ring and she can hear his smile right away, it hits her with such impact that her fingertips tingle.
He tells her about Columbia and jokes about the people in his dorm and his profs and she feels her world focus around him again. It’s the same, and yet it’s not, so much that it hurts. There is something off in his eyes when he looks at her, something that makes her want to call take backs! She didn’t mean it, wants to reverse it with a snap of her fingers and a smile.
But they’re not little kids anymore.
Autumn falls into winter, leaves on the ground covered by snowflakes, frost painting the windows every morning.
She meets Nate in Central Park, arrives a little late and finds him wearing a blue toque and laughing with some classmates from Columbia. The girls gaze at him adoringly and the guys look like real friends, the kind he deserves to have. Nate looks happy.
But then his eyes land on her and his face, it - it reaches this whole other level of joy, in his eyes and his smile, and it takes Serena’s breath away.
He jogs over to her, wraps her up in a hug. “Hot chocolate?” he proposes, promising: “Lots of mini marshmallows.”
She takes a deep breath and pretends that the tears in her eyes are just because of the cold. “Maybe…maybe we need to see a little less of each other.”
A storm crosses his sunshiny face, his eyes darker and cloudy, and she has to fight with herself to keep going. He deserves his happiness.
(Without her.)
“So, I’ll just…I’ll go, okay?”
She smiles, big and bright and almost genuine, just before she playfully tugs his toque down to cover his eyes.
A kiss, the quick press of her lips against his.
“See ya, Natie,” she says, and leaves before he can adjust his hat so his last memory of this moment will be of her smile.
She always liked to live without absolutes. She liked to let life pick her up, whisk her way, carry her off until she had to fight to be set free.
Now she lets it pass her by. She spends days in bed, lounging around in silky slips, staring at the smooth walls.
The day Blair’s first-term exams end Serena meets her best friend and her step-brother for drinks at The Empire Hotel, Chuck’s first and most profitable business venture.
She finds herself watching them instead of really investing in the conversation. (She has nothing to say, no news to report, so she simply listens to them speak: their laughter, the harmony of their voices, their stories.)
They look so put together, eyes bright and chins held high, tie and skirt in matching shades of a royal kind of purple. Chuck rests his hand atop Blair’s on the table as his girlfriend speaks and Serena hears a future in her lilting tone.
They look like they could conquer this city, this country, this whole world, if they so desire.
Blair’s concern has spanned Serena’s entire life (what is you is me) and has slipped unfailingly into their hesitant conversations over the past four months. Slowly, Blair has let go, focused her attention on her own happiness. Serena knows she could pull that concern back if she wanted to, and have it until she sorted her life out again, along every step of the way. But they’ve drifted so far apart as they’ve entered adulthood that Serena doesn’t quite know how to reach out anymore.
And what’s more, she still isn’t fully convinced that she wants to.
So smiles and nods and drinks three martinis.
Chuck’s concern - something that surfaced back when they were party pals and men used to look at her like property, something that was refined when somewhere along the line he became her brother - rears its head in the hotel lobby, when Blair has left to use the restroom.
“Leave him, Serena. Right now. You can live here,” he tells her, eyes burning into her own, answering questions before she can voice them. “Call admissions at Columbia. Tell Blair right now when she comes back, she’ll help you. Tell your mother, tell your brother.” He exhales. “Damn it, Serena, tell Nathaniel.”
She can’t look at him. She stares off into space and her eyes land on a discarded newspaper on one of the leather couches; she sees her own photograph on page six, her smile dazzling.
“You’re more than this,” Chuck says, his voice gruff, eyeing her dress, the latest purchase made on one of Tripp’s credit cards, disdainfully.
“I tried to be,” she acknowledges him slowly, finally letting herself look at his eyes. “But you can only fight a losing battle for so long, right?” Blowing out her breath, she admits, sudden tears stinging her eyes: “I’m tired, I just want to…”
He looks at her, intensely, waiting for whatever she’s going to say so that he can rebuke it, and she finds him having such faith in her both touching and exhausting.
“You won your battle,” she comments, tries to laugh and picks at her nails. He’s proven himself so well, become someone so wonderful. I’m Chuck Bass has started to really mean something. If she were the girl she was last summer, she’d giggle and tease him about it, kiss his cheek and calls him bro and declare her happiness exuberantly.
Instead, she tears at her nail so harshly she breaks skin, blood pooling in a teardrop shape; bright, angry red.
“I’m proud of you, Chuck,” she says, and means it.
Sitting with her legs curled up underneath her in the armchair by the hotel room’s large window, she watches New Yorkers bustle around on the streets. She smiles wistfully, feels far-removed from Christmas despite the fact that it’s only ten days away, sitting up here above it all wrapped up in her robe.
Her life is quiet. Painfully so. Tripp is working at the mayor’s office: long hours, mild stress. He comes home - if you can call their (his) hotel room that - every night and insists, over drinks or late-night TV or kisses pressed to her cheek once they’re tangled in the sheets, that she is the very best part of his day, the part that makes him feel alive.
She doesn’t understand how that could possibly be, because she lost her vivacity somewhere in the past few months.
But she appreciates it, when she watches him sleep, moonbeams on his face. It’s nice to know that someone still sees that life she had about her, that his eyes can reach to wherever it has disappeared within her.
Nate finds her on the day of Christmas Eve. Knocks on the hotel room door to the tune of shave and a haircut and she smiles sleepily as she pads over in her bare feet to open it; she knocks back: two bits.
“What’re you doing here?” she asks him, inhaling deeply. He’s brought the winter chill inside within him and it fills her lungs until they sting.
“I hate not seeing you,” he says with a bluntness she doesn’t recognize but a smile she does, a smile that stretches into a grin, a smile that sees all the liveliness she’s ever had (and loves it).
Holiday spirit engulfs her the second she steps outside, having thrown on sweatpants under her short nightgown and a winter coat on top. It’s snowing lightly, pretty, tiny flakes dusting Nate’s deep blue jacket noticeably and dampening her hair.
They walk through Central Park, quiet as they absorb one another’s company for the first time in weeks. She wants to know how he is, what’s happening in his life, what motivated him to seek her out today.
Before she can even begin to formulate a question in her mind, Nate gives her elbow a squeeze with his mitten-encased hand. She’s barely turned toward him when a snowball flies straight at her face, splashing and splitting right across her nose.
Spluttering, she wipes off her face and blinks at him, sees so much hope in his eyes that she lets out a breathless laugh.
“Oh,” she says, and knows that her eyes are probably as shiny as his are. “It’s on.”
She finds herself partially in a snow bank, the weight of his body pinning her down, and she’s revelling in their silliness, the warmth of him, the feel of their laughter -
And he kisses her. It isn’t the typical Nate kiss she’s grown accustomed to in her life, sweet and just a little more emotional than they want to allow themselves, the kind that makes her instantly greedy for more. It’s hard, almost rough in its insistence, full of longing; it says choose me.
When he pulls away, putting the slightest bit of space between them, he’s breathing hard and she’s crying for the first time in months, feeling as though she might break despite the gentle way he pushes her snow-soaked hair from her face.
“Let me take you home, S,” he murmurs, something tender in his voice reaching somewhere deep inside her as he tugs her to her feet. He pulls her close and she braces her arms against his chest, won’t let herself fall into him.
He does not mean a hotel room under William van der Bilt’s name. He means home, whatever versions she’s got, the penthouse of the Palace hotel, or maybe even his Columbia dorm room.
Tripp is waiting in the hotel lobby; he gathers her up in a hug, laughs at the state of her clothes, and tells her to go change.
From his pocket, he pulls out tickets to Paris, her Christmas present.
The private jet takes off on Christmas morning, just a moment or two after midnight, and Serena traces out the sparkling city lights on the chilly pane of the window with her fingertip, squinting to see if she can make out any recognizable buildings.
(She kissed Nate back.)
Spring takes its time, evolving from winter at a slow, slow pace.
Tripp buys a loft apartment and Serena tags along to real estate appointments, picks the one that’s got the most windows, the most air. Rebelling against the icy weather, she wears her short summer dresses and flip-flops inside. She decorates, paints, keeps herself busy trying to make it a home.
He laughs when he comes home to her, loosening his tie, to find her dress splattered with pale green paint or her nose dusted with flour from a failed attempt at cooking.
“You’re perfect,” he tells her as he pours them red wine, pries paintbrushes and spatulas out of her hands and steers her toward the formal leather furniture his aunt sent as a gift.
No one’s ever said that to her before, and she feels the discomfort of it in her throat as she swallows.
It’s a lie.
Boredom leads her to shopping, but she is tired of pretty, flirty dresses and negligee. She buys new jeans and wears them right out of the store, wanders around for something else to buy.
She ends up in a photography store and leaves with a professional camera.
Maybe she is her mother’s daughter, after all.
The sun peaks out and the frost finally disappears during the two weeks Blair and Nate are writing their first-year finals.
Blair calls, and her voice sounds different, older and further away, but the sentiment is the same as always.
“Come out with us tonight,” she says, words that are soft but firm. It’s not a plea or an order; it’s more along the lines of a request.
She sits on the couch, legs draped over the back, her body on the cushions so that she’s upside down. She tips her head back and lets all the blood rush to her head.
“I don’t know, B.”
Blair exhales on the other end of the line. “We want to celebrate, Serena. It won’t be the same if you aren’t there.”
She closes her eyes as if that will prevent the onset of her headache. “It hasn’t been the same for a while now.”
She ends up going to dinner with Tripp that night, drinks afterward in the lobby of the Plaza, celebrating his promotion at the mayor’s office, the take-off of his political career.
Most of the evening she spends smiling prettily, staring into her martini glass - which, thanks to the attentive bartender and Tripp’s tendency to tip generously, is never empty - and thinking of her friends, probably not all that far away but seeming like they’re separated from her by a whole world. They could be down the street, or in a limo only blocks from here, but she feels so firmly separated from them, and it’s like a crack in her heart.
It feels like boarding school all over again.
It’s worse this time, because then they were kids, stupid kids who were maybe in love, and she’d known… She’d known she could run away and fight for the right to be included again once she was back, and she’d known there would be yelling and crying, guilt and regret, and that everything would shatter. But she’d also known that if she apologized and meant it, and loved them all as fiercely as she always had, they’d pick it all up and piece each other back together and make it alright.
(And she’d torn it all apart, she knows, but only because she needed it all to break in order to reassemble it. She’d thought for a split second that it was worth it, that he was worth it, that it would be okay if in the end if resulted in her and Nate, Serena and Nate, together.)
She blinks quickly, but not quickly enough, and a tear slips out of her eyes, makes it path slowly down her cheek.
A hand touches her arm and she glances up, the words already on her tongue to tell Tripp not to worry (it’s just the angle of the lights, stinging her eyes, that’s all), but she’s struck speechless when she sees it’s not her boyfriend (is he her boyfriend?). Instead, it’s a middle-aged man who’s looking at her, completely enthralled, and holding out a business card.
She’s been pursued by modeling agencies before, and she’s always shrugged them off and waved them away, because her whole life was a fight to be seen as something more than a pretty girl.
They title a perfume after her (Serena’s Tears) and suddenly she’s on billboards and the sides of buses, and she’s getting phone calls with people she’s heard of but never met, and there’s a lot more money in her bank account.
It seems like it only takes days for she and Tripp to fall into an entirely new routine, one that involves less kissing and far less conversation, one that has him getting up just as she’s coming home and most of their communication happening via text messages.
Coming home at three in the morning with her hair teased and too much makeup on, she sits in the living room that she painted pale green and stares at the door leading to the bedroom, and finds herself wishing for home, because this is not it.
In the fall, the political world picks up its pace, a script for a remake of Breakfast at Tiffany’s find its way into Serena’s hands, and her little brother calls her.
“I see your picture on the side of the bus everyday on the way to school,” he says. “You look really pretty.”
A lump rises in her throat. “Thanks, E.”
“You’re famous!” he enthuses, making conversation, because she can’t, and something about the tone of his voice makes her heart hurt.
Serena nods, even though he can’t see her; sucks in her breath and manages to force some joy into her voice when she says, “Somebody even sent me a movie script! It’s called Breakfast at Fred’s. It’s modern-day Tiffany’s, or something.” She hasn’t read it yet.
Eric laughs, the sound bubbling through the phone, a distinct reminder of the way she used to laugh, too. “That’s awesome! Did you tell Blair about it? She’d love that.”
“I don’t…” She breathes out slowly, says softly, “We don’t talk all that much anymore.”
All evidence of cheer dissipates from his words, and he replies in the same blank, cautious tone she’s using: “Oh. Well, I hope…you get the part.”
Guilt hits her like a slap across the face. “Eric, I -”
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” There is a pause, an unasked, are you? “I just don’t…I don’t understand what you needed that we couldn’t give you, I guess.”
Serena chokes on what should be a laugh but is probably a sob. “E, promise me something? Finish school, with honours, and go…go to Yale, or Princeton, and major in…in, I don’t know, psychology or something, and make sure you have fun, but…just make sure you have the life you deserve to have, okay? You deserve it all.”
His words reach out to her through the phone, like a hug he’s longing to give her. “I promise, Serena.”
That was always the plan. She was the screw-up and he was the good kid, and she hates that her messes always forced him to fall into that role.
“I’m okay,” Eric repeats, forgiving her like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
She does audition for the movie; she’s not sure why. And she gets the part (she really doesn’t know why).
Tripp argues about it with her over dinner, red wine and some dish with a pretentious French name. It’s the first real fight they’ve ever had, and somehow, in a way that she might’ve found comedic in another time and place, it disappoints her.
It’s not the kind of fight Serena van der Woodsen has; those include yelling and arms in the air and throwing pillows and breaking out her bitchface. This is a classic, quiet UES argument, hushed and heated voices across their table and smiles in case anyone happens to be watching them.
She’s curled up in bed feeling much younger than she is later that night, facing away from the door, when he gets in beside her and curls an arm around her body, despite the fact that she doesn’t move and keeps her eyes shut.
“You have to understand, Serena,” Tripp murmurs against her cheek. “That I have a political reputation, and that you’re tied to me, so you’re tied to my reputation.”
Something about those words wounds her, and she twists in his arms to look at his face. “I know that. I’m not a child. But I’m my own person - I’m not going to embarrass you, because I don’t want to embarrass myself, but I’m going to do what I want.”
She bites her lip and searches his face.
Why am I not good enough for you? Why am I not good for anybody?
Movies, she learns, for all their romance, are very technical productions. (She thinks Blair would be disappointed; thinks she herself should have known this fact all along.)
Somewhere along the production of the movie, she learns to rein in her emotions when she needs to, and even more importantly, how to produce new ones that mean nothing deep down but look very real on the surface; emotions she can call upon in the blink of an eye, with a camera a foot away from her face.
By the time of the premiere; low-cut dress and cameras flashing and Tripp’s hand resting comfortably at the small of her back, the smile on her lips seems strange, and she realizes it’s not real - it’s yet another thing she’s learned to make up.
The movie is a box-office hit, so much so that she gets a call about a sequel.
No one’s more surprised than she herself is.
The Christmas during which Serena should be on break from her second year of college, learning deep things, she is instead living a life of dinners with the city’s important political figures and days spent dressed up in couture and friends who tell lies about her the second she turns her back, which feels a lot like a life of nothing at all.
Tripp takes her with him to Christmas break with the van der Bilts, and she is overwhelmed when they arrive by air-kisses from his relatives who tell her she’s so beautiful and she must be proud of that movie she made.
They smile, and she smiles, and Tripp smiles.
(And Serena does not let her gaze wander, does not look for Nate.)
tbc.
Chapter | 1/2
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Serena. Nate/Serena, Tripp/Serena
Summary | I"I hope she'll be a fool. That's the best thing a girl can be in this world - a beautiful little fool." -- The Great Gatsby
Driving straight into the sunset, she props her feet, multi-coloured chipping toenail polish and all, up against the dashboard, throws her head back and laughs. Sitting in the passenger seat, arms flung over her head, eyes closed, skirt spilling over her thighs and sliding upward, she lets the wind soothe her warm skin and flirt with her hair, tries and fails to grasp it in her fists.
Nate watches her instead of the road.
He scuffs the toe of his expensive tennis shoes against the ground as she stumbles out of the convertible, greets all his relatives exuberantly, because it’s summer and she’s shining.
She doesn’t miss the knowing looks that pass over her head as she follows Nate’s second-cousin inside for dinner as dusk settles over the property, but she pretends to.
Dinner with the van der Bilts.
(She giggles into her champagne because she thinks they should make it a reality show.)
Tripp smiles at her as if he can read her mind, nudges her shoulder with his own, and she laughs aloud, one hand flying up to cover her mouth. She leans into him a bit, lets her tanned arm rest against the sleeve of his white button-down.
Nate stabs a carrot with his fork hard enough to garner a look of disapproval from his aunt.
(Voted off the island.)
“I want to swim,” she declares, hands planted on her hips, after she loses her fifth game of croquet to a crew of well-dressed, blonde-headed boys.
Nate laughs at her stubborn expression, goads his little cousins to chase her into the house, and she smiles at him across the sun-kissed lawn, squeals obligingly as she darts inside just shy of their reaching hands, catches him watching her until she’s indoors, out of his sight.
They walk to the beach together and he reveals that he snuck two chocolate chip cookies out of the kitchen, and she feels her heart flip over.
“You won’t ever grow up, will you?” she asks him, but wistfully, like she doesn’t really want him too.
“I won’t if you won’t,” he jokes, winks at her and gives her a cookie, makes a deal that has the echoes of the childhood promises that she genuinely though they’d keep.
Somewhere along the walk, her flip-flops kicking up dust and the sun glittering through tree branches, her hand finds its way into his and it feels good.
Nate attacks her from out of her visual field when they’re in the salty water, sneaking up on her from behind and scooping her up, dunking them both beneath the surface.
When they resurface for air he still hasn’t let her go, his hands lingering on all the skin laid bare by her bikini. “Natie!” she protests indignantly, but he’s grinning too big for her to frown. So she giggles, fights her way out of his grasp and splashes water at him as punishment, smiles softly at him before she turns and swims away.
Tripp watches from the shore.
She treats the cottage (an ironic term, as it’s a mansion) like her own home, which is how she ends up downstairs in the kitchen very early in the morning in one of Nate’s t-shirts making herself some decaffeinated coffee because she’s too restless to sleep.
Tripp finds her there, coming in so late from the party he attended last night that he’s home early.
“Hi,” she says, and her cheeks are pink and she’s tugging at the hem of the Rolling Stones t-shirt she’s got on.
“Should’ve known,” he says by way of reply, slouching casually onto one of the stools that surround the island in the kitchen. “You were always awake even before the help.”
Serena lets go of her t-shirt, turns around and plucks another mug from the cupboard, fills it up and slides it across the island toward him. “You remember that?” She laughs, tucks her hair, a tangled mess from the midnight swim she took with Nate, back behind her ears. “I was a baby then.”
He smiles at her with his eyes over the rim of his mug as he takes a long drink.
“Maybe. But you’ve grown up beautifully.”
Dinner with the van der Bilts.
“Episode forty-two. Season finale,” she murmurs dramatically against the shell of Nate’s ear like she’s Mr. Moviefone, and he grabs her hand, his laughter landing on her skin as her kisses her knuckles.
It’s a garden party, for this last night that the family is all together, and it is all the more formal and yet more relaxed all at once. Serena’s hair is gathered up onto her head intricately, sparkling clips holding every strand perfectly, but she’s wearing her bikini under her Grecian dress.
There are lights twinkling in the trees and a string quartet and enough political blood on the grounds to necessitate a few security guards lurking around the periphery of the property, and on nights like these she fully feels like the spoiled little rich girl she spends so much time trying not to be.
She is there as Nate’s friend. That’s how she’s been introduced all summer long (Serena van der Woodsen, Nathaniel’s good friend) and that’s how they both want it to be. It’s the way it is, even if she’s spent the past forty-two days sneaking into his bedroom on intermittent nights and falling into lazy afternoon naps on the lawn with her head on his lap and his hands in her hair. As far as technicalities go, they have declared this a friendship, even if all signs point to it being much more.
So she supposes, technically, there is nothing stopping Tripp from walking over, bowing jokingly, and extending his hand to her.
“May I have this dance?”
And there is nothing, technically, besides the barely perceptible way Nate’s grip on her fingers tightens, to stop her from accepting, letting him whirl her away.
Her heart feels like a butterfly in her chest the next morning when he finds her out on one of the balconies, two mugs of coffee in his hands.
“Enjoy your summer?”
She nods, pushing the sleeves of her flimsy dressing gown up on her arms (she slept in her own pyjamas, and her own bed, for once) before she cups the mug in her hands, enjoying the feeling of the warmth spreading through her fingers.
“It’s been…” She sees a blur as she thinks back on it, blues and yellows and greens, sugary lemonade and too many croquet games, fancy dresses and pleasantries, sunsets and dewy mornings and sandcastles on the beach. It’s airy in her mind, a breeze of thoughts that consist of nothing tangible, nothing worthwhile.
Except maybe Nate’s smile.
Her own lips curve upward as she sips her coffee - lots of sugar and no cream, just how she likes it.
“…um, it’s been wonderful,” she says, tripping - tripping - over her words in surprise at the familiar taste in her mouth and the way he seems to understand her, right down to her coffee preferences.
Serena van der Woodsen’s plans for the early autumn consist of classes at Columbia, maybe, if she can fit them in between snagging shopping time with Blair when she’s home from Yale, afternoons of iced coffee and lattes in Sheep Meadow, and sleeping until noon under Nate’s sky blue duvet.
The day before school officially starts her room is a disaster zone (Eric and Chuck put caution: do not cross this line tape up over her door as a joke), books and clothes everywhere. Panic is settling in, making her restless. She feels secure. She has a future - she has a plan.
But she’s never been very good at those.
She’s sitting in the middle of her mess, lazily contemplating sorting it out, when the maid brings her a bouquet of flowers with a note card poking out.
She pulls off her orientation t-shirt emblazoned with her dormitory’s name (John Jay, in bright letters) and cut-offs, exchanging them for a summery dress and espadrilles, her frown during into a coy smile as steps out onto the bustling sidewalk and hails a cab.
It starts with coffee.
Coffee and chocolate-filled croissants (her favourite), laughter and low lighting, the familiar feeling of the unknown, the excitement of it pulling at her like her oldest, most reliable friend.
“You’ve got beautiful eyes,” he tells her across their small table, like he’s been waiting to say it since they danced on that humid summer night, tiny lights captured by her blue eyes.
She blushes. He touches her cheek.
He drops her off at home, tucks her hair behind her ear, and kisses her chastely in her doorway.
Nate goes to Columbia alone.
She fights with Lily, loud voices and ugly words and years of the abandonment she feels slipping into their argument.
(You did it to me over and over again; how dare you accuse me of doing it to you?)
She leaves her home and her childhood behind, taking just the clothes she’s got on and her wallet, sits on steps of the Met until the sun begins its descent and she can’t ignore the way her eyes ache anymore.
“Drinks, my treat,” she suggests, wearing her sunshine smile when he opens his hotel room door, trying to disguise the way her voice quavers.
Tripp looks her up and down slowly, tilts his head to indicate she should come in.
“My treat,” he corrects her gently.
Blair brings her clothes from home and a disappointed frown.
“What are you throwing away?” she whispers, and Serena shrugs off the concern with a thank you kiss to Blair’s cheek and a closed door.
Evenings blur. Tripp pours champagne and she curls her feet under her on the sofa as they talk. Nights blur. His hands learn their way over her body and she gets accustomed to falling asleep on pillows that smell like his cologne. Days blur. She sleeps late, usually wakes up alone, reads the paper.
Days, evenings, nights blur into weeks. Soon enough they will become months.
Time flies but she forgets to enjoy it.
Serena and Nate remain friends.
(Technically, it’s all they ever were, all they’ll ever be.)
There is one week of awkwardness, but then she calls and he answers on the second ring and she can hear his smile right away, it hits her with such impact that her fingertips tingle.
He tells her about Columbia and jokes about the people in his dorm and his profs and she feels her world focus around him again. It’s the same, and yet it’s not, so much that it hurts. There is something off in his eyes when he looks at her, something that makes her want to call take backs! She didn’t mean it, wants to reverse it with a snap of her fingers and a smile.
But they’re not little kids anymore.
Autumn falls into winter, leaves on the ground covered by snowflakes, frost painting the windows every morning.
She meets Nate in Central Park, arrives a little late and finds him wearing a blue toque and laughing with some classmates from Columbia. The girls gaze at him adoringly and the guys look like real friends, the kind he deserves to have. Nate looks happy.
But then his eyes land on her and his face, it - it reaches this whole other level of joy, in his eyes and his smile, and it takes Serena’s breath away.
He jogs over to her, wraps her up in a hug. “Hot chocolate?” he proposes, promising: “Lots of mini marshmallows.”
She takes a deep breath and pretends that the tears in her eyes are just because of the cold. “Maybe…maybe we need to see a little less of each other.”
A storm crosses his sunshiny face, his eyes darker and cloudy, and she has to fight with herself to keep going. He deserves his happiness.
(Without her.)
“So, I’ll just…I’ll go, okay?”
She smiles, big and bright and almost genuine, just before she playfully tugs his toque down to cover his eyes.
A kiss, the quick press of her lips against his.
“See ya, Natie,” she says, and leaves before he can adjust his hat so his last memory of this moment will be of her smile.
She always liked to live without absolutes. She liked to let life pick her up, whisk her way, carry her off until she had to fight to be set free.
Now she lets it pass her by. She spends days in bed, lounging around in silky slips, staring at the smooth walls.
The day Blair’s first-term exams end Serena meets her best friend and her step-brother for drinks at The Empire Hotel, Chuck’s first and most profitable business venture.
She finds herself watching them instead of really investing in the conversation. (She has nothing to say, no news to report, so she simply listens to them speak: their laughter, the harmony of their voices, their stories.)
They look so put together, eyes bright and chins held high, tie and skirt in matching shades of a royal kind of purple. Chuck rests his hand atop Blair’s on the table as his girlfriend speaks and Serena hears a future in her lilting tone.
They look like they could conquer this city, this country, this whole world, if they so desire.
Blair’s concern has spanned Serena’s entire life (what is you is me) and has slipped unfailingly into their hesitant conversations over the past four months. Slowly, Blair has let go, focused her attention on her own happiness. Serena knows she could pull that concern back if she wanted to, and have it until she sorted her life out again, along every step of the way. But they’ve drifted so far apart as they’ve entered adulthood that Serena doesn’t quite know how to reach out anymore.
And what’s more, she still isn’t fully convinced that she wants to.
So smiles and nods and drinks three martinis.
Chuck’s concern - something that surfaced back when they were party pals and men used to look at her like property, something that was refined when somewhere along the line he became her brother - rears its head in the hotel lobby, when Blair has left to use the restroom.
“Leave him, Serena. Right now. You can live here,” he tells her, eyes burning into her own, answering questions before she can voice them. “Call admissions at Columbia. Tell Blair right now when she comes back, she’ll help you. Tell your mother, tell your brother.” He exhales. “Damn it, Serena, tell Nathaniel.”
She can’t look at him. She stares off into space and her eyes land on a discarded newspaper on one of the leather couches; she sees her own photograph on page six, her smile dazzling.
“You’re more than this,” Chuck says, his voice gruff, eyeing her dress, the latest purchase made on one of Tripp’s credit cards, disdainfully.
“I tried to be,” she acknowledges him slowly, finally letting herself look at his eyes. “But you can only fight a losing battle for so long, right?” Blowing out her breath, she admits, sudden tears stinging her eyes: “I’m tired, I just want to…”
He looks at her, intensely, waiting for whatever she’s going to say so that he can rebuke it, and she finds him having such faith in her both touching and exhausting.
“You won your battle,” she comments, tries to laugh and picks at her nails. He’s proven himself so well, become someone so wonderful. I’m Chuck Bass has started to really mean something. If she were the girl she was last summer, she’d giggle and tease him about it, kiss his cheek and calls him bro and declare her happiness exuberantly.
Instead, she tears at her nail so harshly she breaks skin, blood pooling in a teardrop shape; bright, angry red.
“I’m proud of you, Chuck,” she says, and means it.
Sitting with her legs curled up underneath her in the armchair by the hotel room’s large window, she watches New Yorkers bustle around on the streets. She smiles wistfully, feels far-removed from Christmas despite the fact that it’s only ten days away, sitting up here above it all wrapped up in her robe.
Her life is quiet. Painfully so. Tripp is working at the mayor’s office: long hours, mild stress. He comes home - if you can call their (his) hotel room that - every night and insists, over drinks or late-night TV or kisses pressed to her cheek once they’re tangled in the sheets, that she is the very best part of his day, the part that makes him feel alive.
She doesn’t understand how that could possibly be, because she lost her vivacity somewhere in the past few months.
But she appreciates it, when she watches him sleep, moonbeams on his face. It’s nice to know that someone still sees that life she had about her, that his eyes can reach to wherever it has disappeared within her.
Nate finds her on the day of Christmas Eve. Knocks on the hotel room door to the tune of shave and a haircut and she smiles sleepily as she pads over in her bare feet to open it; she knocks back: two bits.
“What’re you doing here?” she asks him, inhaling deeply. He’s brought the winter chill inside within him and it fills her lungs until they sting.
“I hate not seeing you,” he says with a bluntness she doesn’t recognize but a smile she does, a smile that stretches into a grin, a smile that sees all the liveliness she’s ever had (and loves it).
Holiday spirit engulfs her the second she steps outside, having thrown on sweatpants under her short nightgown and a winter coat on top. It’s snowing lightly, pretty, tiny flakes dusting Nate’s deep blue jacket noticeably and dampening her hair.
They walk through Central Park, quiet as they absorb one another’s company for the first time in weeks. She wants to know how he is, what’s happening in his life, what motivated him to seek her out today.
Before she can even begin to formulate a question in her mind, Nate gives her elbow a squeeze with his mitten-encased hand. She’s barely turned toward him when a snowball flies straight at her face, splashing and splitting right across her nose.
Spluttering, she wipes off her face and blinks at him, sees so much hope in his eyes that she lets out a breathless laugh.
“Oh,” she says, and knows that her eyes are probably as shiny as his are. “It’s on.”
She finds herself partially in a snow bank, the weight of his body pinning her down, and she’s revelling in their silliness, the warmth of him, the feel of their laughter -
And he kisses her. It isn’t the typical Nate kiss she’s grown accustomed to in her life, sweet and just a little more emotional than they want to allow themselves, the kind that makes her instantly greedy for more. It’s hard, almost rough in its insistence, full of longing; it says choose me.
When he pulls away, putting the slightest bit of space between them, he’s breathing hard and she’s crying for the first time in months, feeling as though she might break despite the gentle way he pushes her snow-soaked hair from her face.
“Let me take you home, S,” he murmurs, something tender in his voice reaching somewhere deep inside her as he tugs her to her feet. He pulls her close and she braces her arms against his chest, won’t let herself fall into him.
He does not mean a hotel room under William van der Bilt’s name. He means home, whatever versions she’s got, the penthouse of the Palace hotel, or maybe even his Columbia dorm room.
Tripp is waiting in the hotel lobby; he gathers her up in a hug, laughs at the state of her clothes, and tells her to go change.
From his pocket, he pulls out tickets to Paris, her Christmas present.
The private jet takes off on Christmas morning, just a moment or two after midnight, and Serena traces out the sparkling city lights on the chilly pane of the window with her fingertip, squinting to see if she can make out any recognizable buildings.
(She kissed Nate back.)
Spring takes its time, evolving from winter at a slow, slow pace.
Tripp buys a loft apartment and Serena tags along to real estate appointments, picks the one that’s got the most windows, the most air. Rebelling against the icy weather, she wears her short summer dresses and flip-flops inside. She decorates, paints, keeps herself busy trying to make it a home.
He laughs when he comes home to her, loosening his tie, to find her dress splattered with pale green paint or her nose dusted with flour from a failed attempt at cooking.
“You’re perfect,” he tells her as he pours them red wine, pries paintbrushes and spatulas out of her hands and steers her toward the formal leather furniture his aunt sent as a gift.
No one’s ever said that to her before, and she feels the discomfort of it in her throat as she swallows.
It’s a lie.
Boredom leads her to shopping, but she is tired of pretty, flirty dresses and negligee. She buys new jeans and wears them right out of the store, wanders around for something else to buy.
She ends up in a photography store and leaves with a professional camera.
Maybe she is her mother’s daughter, after all.
The sun peaks out and the frost finally disappears during the two weeks Blair and Nate are writing their first-year finals.
Blair calls, and her voice sounds different, older and further away, but the sentiment is the same as always.
“Come out with us tonight,” she says, words that are soft but firm. It’s not a plea or an order; it’s more along the lines of a request.
She sits on the couch, legs draped over the back, her body on the cushions so that she’s upside down. She tips her head back and lets all the blood rush to her head.
“I don’t know, B.”
Blair exhales on the other end of the line. “We want to celebrate, Serena. It won’t be the same if you aren’t there.”
She closes her eyes as if that will prevent the onset of her headache. “It hasn’t been the same for a while now.”
She ends up going to dinner with Tripp that night, drinks afterward in the lobby of the Plaza, celebrating his promotion at the mayor’s office, the take-off of his political career.
Most of the evening she spends smiling prettily, staring into her martini glass - which, thanks to the attentive bartender and Tripp’s tendency to tip generously, is never empty - and thinking of her friends, probably not all that far away but seeming like they’re separated from her by a whole world. They could be down the street, or in a limo only blocks from here, but she feels so firmly separated from them, and it’s like a crack in her heart.
It feels like boarding school all over again.
It’s worse this time, because then they were kids, stupid kids who were maybe in love, and she’d known… She’d known she could run away and fight for the right to be included again once she was back, and she’d known there would be yelling and crying, guilt and regret, and that everything would shatter. But she’d also known that if she apologized and meant it, and loved them all as fiercely as she always had, they’d pick it all up and piece each other back together and make it alright.
(And she’d torn it all apart, she knows, but only because she needed it all to break in order to reassemble it. She’d thought for a split second that it was worth it, that he was worth it, that it would be okay if in the end if resulted in her and Nate, Serena and Nate, together.)
She blinks quickly, but not quickly enough, and a tear slips out of her eyes, makes it path slowly down her cheek.
A hand touches her arm and she glances up, the words already on her tongue to tell Tripp not to worry (it’s just the angle of the lights, stinging her eyes, that’s all), but she’s struck speechless when she sees it’s not her boyfriend (is he her boyfriend?). Instead, it’s a middle-aged man who’s looking at her, completely enthralled, and holding out a business card.
She’s been pursued by modeling agencies before, and she’s always shrugged them off and waved them away, because her whole life was a fight to be seen as something more than a pretty girl.
They title a perfume after her (Serena’s Tears) and suddenly she’s on billboards and the sides of buses, and she’s getting phone calls with people she’s heard of but never met, and there’s a lot more money in her bank account.
It seems like it only takes days for she and Tripp to fall into an entirely new routine, one that involves less kissing and far less conversation, one that has him getting up just as she’s coming home and most of their communication happening via text messages.
Coming home at three in the morning with her hair teased and too much makeup on, she sits in the living room that she painted pale green and stares at the door leading to the bedroom, and finds herself wishing for home, because this is not it.
In the fall, the political world picks up its pace, a script for a remake of Breakfast at Tiffany’s find its way into Serena’s hands, and her little brother calls her.
“I see your picture on the side of the bus everyday on the way to school,” he says. “You look really pretty.”
A lump rises in her throat. “Thanks, E.”
“You’re famous!” he enthuses, making conversation, because she can’t, and something about the tone of his voice makes her heart hurt.
Serena nods, even though he can’t see her; sucks in her breath and manages to force some joy into her voice when she says, “Somebody even sent me a movie script! It’s called Breakfast at Fred’s. It’s modern-day Tiffany’s, or something.” She hasn’t read it yet.
Eric laughs, the sound bubbling through the phone, a distinct reminder of the way she used to laugh, too. “That’s awesome! Did you tell Blair about it? She’d love that.”
“I don’t…” She breathes out slowly, says softly, “We don’t talk all that much anymore.”
All evidence of cheer dissipates from his words, and he replies in the same blank, cautious tone she’s using: “Oh. Well, I hope…you get the part.”
Guilt hits her like a slap across the face. “Eric, I -”
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” There is a pause, an unasked, are you? “I just don’t…I don’t understand what you needed that we couldn’t give you, I guess.”
Serena chokes on what should be a laugh but is probably a sob. “E, promise me something? Finish school, with honours, and go…go to Yale, or Princeton, and major in…in, I don’t know, psychology or something, and make sure you have fun, but…just make sure you have the life you deserve to have, okay? You deserve it all.”
His words reach out to her through the phone, like a hug he’s longing to give her. “I promise, Serena.”
That was always the plan. She was the screw-up and he was the good kid, and she hates that her messes always forced him to fall into that role.
“I’m okay,” Eric repeats, forgiving her like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
She does audition for the movie; she’s not sure why. And she gets the part (she really doesn’t know why).
Tripp argues about it with her over dinner, red wine and some dish with a pretentious French name. It’s the first real fight they’ve ever had, and somehow, in a way that she might’ve found comedic in another time and place, it disappoints her.
It’s not the kind of fight Serena van der Woodsen has; those include yelling and arms in the air and throwing pillows and breaking out her bitchface. This is a classic, quiet UES argument, hushed and heated voices across their table and smiles in case anyone happens to be watching them.
She’s curled up in bed feeling much younger than she is later that night, facing away from the door, when he gets in beside her and curls an arm around her body, despite the fact that she doesn’t move and keeps her eyes shut.
“You have to understand, Serena,” Tripp murmurs against her cheek. “That I have a political reputation, and that you’re tied to me, so you’re tied to my reputation.”
Something about those words wounds her, and she twists in his arms to look at his face. “I know that. I’m not a child. But I’m my own person - I’m not going to embarrass you, because I don’t want to embarrass myself, but I’m going to do what I want.”
She bites her lip and searches his face.
Why am I not good enough for you? Why am I not good for anybody?
Movies, she learns, for all their romance, are very technical productions. (She thinks Blair would be disappointed; thinks she herself should have known this fact all along.)
Somewhere along the production of the movie, she learns to rein in her emotions when she needs to, and even more importantly, how to produce new ones that mean nothing deep down but look very real on the surface; emotions she can call upon in the blink of an eye, with a camera a foot away from her face.
By the time of the premiere; low-cut dress and cameras flashing and Tripp’s hand resting comfortably at the small of her back, the smile on her lips seems strange, and she realizes it’s not real - it’s yet another thing she’s learned to make up.
The movie is a box-office hit, so much so that she gets a call about a sequel.
No one’s more surprised than she herself is.
The Christmas during which Serena should be on break from her second year of college, learning deep things, she is instead living a life of dinners with the city’s important political figures and days spent dressed up in couture and friends who tell lies about her the second she turns her back, which feels a lot like a life of nothing at all.
Tripp takes her with him to Christmas break with the van der Bilts, and she is overwhelmed when they arrive by air-kisses from his relatives who tell her she’s so beautiful and she must be proud of that movie she made.
They smile, and she smiles, and Tripp smiles.
(And Serena does not let her gaze wander, does not look for Nate.)
tbc.