Chapter Text
you better watch yourself as you jump into it
the prologue.
New York City is washed aglow: hubris melting into pink open skies. Flames lick the edges of traffic, suburbia a vast wasteland just past the skyscraper. Blair watches teenage girls pile into restaurant bathrooms, arms adjoined, smudging eyeshadow into the creases of folds and kissing lip-gloss through a shared instrument—a vape. Longingly, she looks from her place at the bar, indents in her elbows from resting them on the smudged, dirty surface.
This is a bad martini, she thinks, taking a long sip until the glass is drained.
At twenty-nine, she feels like a washed up hag; a has-been. It's a sign of the times. The end of days. It's a sad, somber thought. How depressing to mourn the loss of a youth that had never been particularly kind to her; how depressing to mourn for a time tinged with a special kind of sadness. It was a youth that reeked of insecurity, of near nervous-breakdowns. Her New York currency has only risen in the intervening years, but it feels like it's diminished through her eyes—that feverish beauty of youth spiralling into nothing more than a broken thought, a broken tag-line, a broken link.
Blair looks at these girls—two twin silhouettes; one blonde, one brunette—and she sees the visual manifestation of the ache of her heart: Serena.
It is so hard to maintain relationships these days. She scrolls absent-mindedly through Instagram, clicking, and liking, and reacting. Trends soaring, internet micro-niches booming, hard-launches, soft-launches, a cute puppy pic from Nate. Blair logs out, uncrosses her ankles, recrosses her legs, orders a white wine. Swipe left, swipe right. Types out an email. Lifts her eyes off of her phone to spy on the cute girls from the bathroom—they're giggling in a corner now, squished in-between two sets of grandparents.
By nine-pm she resolves herself to the fact that he isn't coming. Blair closes up the tab, slings her bag across her shoulder, and slides a pack of cigarettes from out of her pocket.
Dirty habit, she thinks, lighting the slender end of a Marlboro once she is outside. Her coat feels a little like it's choking her; she wraps it tighter against her body, fastening the belt. Heels click down rubbish-infested streets, rats growling through the sewers. She feels foolish for thinking he would show. Blair takes a long drag, pausing in the middle of the street, squinting her eyes to watch Serena's blonde mane fly through the twinkling night-sky, coat flapping in the light November wind.
Blair lifts a palm up to the open city-sky, fingers curling in a scrunched hello. Serena's face glows with recognition, an exuberant smile with bared teeth in the moonlight, a kiss blown from afar. This has what has become of the entwined lives: a distant hello on the street. The closeness of their youth has been lost, broken somewhere down the line. The saddest fact of growing up is outgrowing who you love.
The night is still early, party-goers stumbling out of apartments and it-girls strutting into galleries. Blair dodges long, strident legs, and takes a right down 78th. He had promised to meet her, the way he had once promised to give her the world, the way he had once promised to love her. It's been years since she has seen him—his back in the rearview mirror of nineteen, the failed start of yet another trial run of a real relationship with a boy who couldn't grow up. It feels cruel to still be inside his twisted game, dragged back in through one late-night drink she should have turned down.
It's the way the city works—you fall apart, you fall back into each other.
Otto's is still open by the time she reaches 82nd. His pink fluorescent chandeliers dangling, the smell of zaatar spreading through the street. Blair places an order for a hummus mezze, taking a seat inside as she waits for her order. Taps painted pale pink fingernails against the table, the tagline of a new essay blossoming in her brain. She drags the sentence out, repeating it over and over as she slides her phone out of her pocket, typing it out quickly in her notes app.
"Blair." Her thought is interrupted by the sound of his grating, irritating voice. She lifts her eyes off of the phone and drags them across his frame, noting his dishevelled appearance-that mop of hair, curling viciously around his ears in a way she finds annoyingly charming, the fraying wool of his sweater, a broken hole where his thumb slips through, slacks with smudged pink ink and oil.
Dan Humphrey sits across from her, the docket number 12 laid out on the table between them. She hasn't seen him since the dreaded incident preceding the unfortunate relapse with Chuck, that backsliding all due to the traitor sitting in-front of her. He looks so smug, she can still feel his warm, wet breath on her neck. Against her better judgement, her skin flushes crimson, and she inches forward.
"Humphrey," She bites his name out like she is taking a chomp out of the word, fangs crashing down, "To what do I owe this...pleasure." Her lips curl around the word, the question left without a mark.
He laughs, and it is soft, and it is sweet. Blair can't believe he is laughing like she is telling a joke, like he knows her. The action is intimate; it's sincere. He shakes his head, fingers gliding through curls, and she sinks deeper into the chair, deeper into the oblivion she wishes she could fall into. Universe, open up and swallow me whole! she screams inside her head, wishing that wishes were real.
"I live around the corner," He nods left, "You know that."
"I don't know where you live." Blair hisses in defence, so desperate in its rebuttal it's comical.
Dan stands, moving towards the counter. Blair kicks her legs out under the table, feeling stupid and silly and small. She wants to retract this conversation, and all the rules she has broken, and that drink, and that article—god, the article.
"Bad night?" Dan asks, plastic bag held awkwardly between pinched fingertips. He lingers by her table, and smells like the French vanilla soap in his bathroom.
Bad life, Blair thinks. "I- Dan," Her voice grows soft, "I need to tell you something."