Golden Locks, Champagne, and Silver Smiles
“I don’t want anyone else, I want you.”
“I do care about you Serena, so much…”
The date was September 19, 2007.
Her name was Beth. Sweet, kind, docile Beth. The dress was Monique Lhuillier. The Flowers were bought just that afternoon from Richard Salome at 1034 on Lexington Avenue. And the ring. Well, the ring was a lie. A tool. A weapon of deceit. And, sitting on a bench in the cold weather on that drowsy day, Carter Baizen could not conceive what he had done, or what he was about to do. Or how an inanimate object, such as something so simple as a ring, could possibly seem to carry and symbolize every horrific thing he had ever done, every terrible falsehood that he had ever concocted.
He still remembered the first time he ever laid eyes on her. She was fourteen. And even at such a young age she was a goddess, exuberant, and he never forgot the way her hair literally glowed in the moonlight. She blushed ever so often; the ruddy red color climbing it’s way up her cheeks, saturating them with a light pink shine. He found this to be amusing, just in the simple fact that it was so rare. The world was at her disposal. She was Lily Van der Woodsen’s daughter, after all. And her name was Serena.
She wasn’t ever shy. Some would have thought that she would have had reservations towards young boys or just the entirety of the opposite sex in general, having seen her mother go through men like Elizabeth Taylor went through husbands, or how The Who went through rock guitars after obliterating them on stage when on tour. But even at just 14, Serena seemed confident in her sexuality, almost frightenly so.
Once, Carter caught her at the coat check at Bendels, just in time, before she was to be taken advantage of by some snide jock. After that it almost became like a bad habit, rescuing her. An addiction. He found it quite startling, the peculiar high after holding her safely and securely in his arms, as she would thank him earnestly, resting her tiny head and tear-stained face on his broad shoulders. She was a lovely crier, with that vulnerability that would emanate from her baby blue eyes. And with her being this close, he could smell her hair; it smelled of roses. He found it strangely sexy. And sooner or later Carter decided to go in search of a new bad habit because this one was just unhealthy. And driving him mad.
The first time he kissed her it was an accident. She was 16. He was 18. And they were on a boat looking for her father, in Santorini. As if fate would have it, she had passed him in the stairwell, on the way to the bathroom, she was seasick or drunk (maybe a little bit of both) and he was just totally, incoherently, and madly in love. Although he would never admit it. The boat swung one way, and Serena swung another, finding herself falling into Carter’s arms, and her lips, almost strategically and (of course) accidentally, landing on his own.
And, in that instant, he felt himself crack, felt himself unravel. His arms wrapped themselves almost instinctively around her back, his hands grasping at her small hips and his lips staying on her’s, his tongue plunging into her mouth. Serena moaned, sinking into him, and holding his defined jaw line in her soft palms. And they found themselves falling onto the bed, the minute his cabin door swung open then closed; a mess of tangled limbs and discarded clothes.
The next morning she disappeared. No trace, no note, nothing. Jumped on a boat. And he was alone, in the middle of nowhere, to rewrite the end of some sort of unfinished adventure with her, as always. He wouldn’t see her for several more years, until he was used by her grandmother to sabotage her relationship with Dan, at her cotillion. He was almost jealous, seeing her with the clean-cut and put together boy from Brooklyn. He was a writer, a poet, and she was the bohemian princess of the Upper East Side, always trying to rebel. And Carter could see Dan made her smile. They were a perfect match in every way. But he didn’t mind being used; after all, he loved seeing her in gold.
His debts were paid, so what was keeping him there? Was it that he actually felt genuine affection for Beth? (No, it could not be that…) Perhaps a shred of decency? (But he was the stone cold bad-boy of the Upper East Side…)
And it was on that bench in the park, on that cold day on September 19, 2007, just as he was about to go to the wedding rehearsal, at the St. James Cathedral, that Carter Baizen experienced a moment of clarity. That he was in love with Serena Van der Woodsen, and probably always would be. So he did the most terrible thing he had ever done, he split.
They found their way back to each other the summer that Serena graduated high-school, going to Fiji; again, to search for her father. And, of course, they eventually succumbed to their need for each other (although neither would admit that’s what it was.) She split, again, and he tracked her down in New York. He knew how he felt, while she simply denied her feelings. And when he was used again (this time by her) as revenge against Chuck, then he had had it. He didn’t care how he loved seeing her in blue. Now it was Serena’s turn to track him down, to apologize, to own up to her feelings, and to tell him that she wanted no one else.
“I just want you.”
And in that moment, although he planned on leaving, he ended up staying.
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