She Will Be Loved
The Bodleian library was at its most beautiful in autumn. Blair mounted the stairs with a sense of wonderment. Her days at Yale seemed far behind. A loud tumultuous fight with her mother had led her to abandon New Haven and even New York, turning down Columbia Law School; choosing instead to float across the pond to her new school, her new home. Oxford was a wet dream, the rainy English summer washing away memories of her belligerent parent and scorned lover, Charles Bass; who had by now cheated far too many times for comfort. Memories of a boy called Nathaniel and the glittering Vanderbilt ring were even more distant, though she knew for a fact that he was only hours away, managing his ancestral estates in France. He had yet another leggy blonde in tow, on whose skinny finger the family heirloom would soon find its place.
Blair bit back the bitterness. She was as much to blame as he, for how sour their relationship had gone and she tried hard to forget the way the Archibald heir could make her knees go weak with a single .smile. Bass, however was right about one thing. He had never been able to get her blood going with quite the same urgency as Chuck managed to do.
She settled down into a quiet nook, with the text she was supposed to read but something about the rain outside, so eerily reminiscent of Holly and her Paul made her nostalgic about her own failed relationships. The two men her life had both briefly been considered as candidates for Mr. Varjak but neither had quite come up to mark. Nathaniel was her first love, her childhood sweetheart. Sure he'd been stoned and love stoned with some one other than her but back when he'd had his head in the game he'd been romantic and that was why she'd never been able to let go. Always hoping Hamlet would disappear and Romeo would re-emerge. In the end however she'd drowned in her hopeless love for him, with broken promises and heart pins substituting for the "crow flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples" that had accompanied Ophelia to her watery grave.
With her dead eyes and dead soul, Blair had arrived at Victrola. She was tired of maintaining that façade of prim perfection, tired of pretending that she wasn't a real woman, with needs wants and dreams. The whole Virgin Mary charade had exhausted her. She wanted her boyfriend to look at her the way he looked at Serena. She wanted to be wanted.
Slightly tipsy and very desperate, Blair had dropped all of her clothes on the burlesque stage, and all of her pretense too. Intoxicated with the prospect of wielding the sexual power that the dancers around her reveled in, Blair Waldorf had set out to seduce Chuck Bass. The champagne lit up her eyes as she shimmied across the stage, showing off the moves she had boasted of earlier. She was trying her best to pretend she knew exactly what she was doing and a speechless playboy toasting her was the victory party they both needed. He thought she was amazing and she thought his voice sounded a hell of a lot sexier when she was drunk.
So she'd scooted across the seat and pressed her lips to his, disappointed when he drew back so fast. Only to ask her if she was sure. The words were so unexpected, so pure from those tainted lips, that she lost her breath and moved back in to steal his. And then suddenly, the warmth they shared, the oxygen flowing between them was more than just physical. His lips on hers were coaxing her back from the edge and tumbling her over a new one. She was coming back to life but she was not the same Blair Waldorf anymore. This fire that he'd lit within her was glowing through her skin, liquid heat running swiftly in her veins and shining through. He made the world brand new and it's too sudden to seem real.
She got scared and she ran away. He was supposed to come after her but he was too late so she kissed Nate instead, because the conflagration inside her was too bright to be ignored and she was going to spontaneously combust if he didn't calm her down. His kisses soothed her and she slipped off the gown and wiped off the smeared lipstick. She didn't take off the necklace. She wasn't sure she could.
And the days passed by and she drifted over the memories that really sting. Memories of Arabian horses and yogurt in her hair, memories of abandoned vacations and sluttish interior designers, and memories of British Lords and stolen back heart pins are all tucked away in a box because none of it mattered except a fateful limo ride with New York's very own Casanova reviving her in a way no one else could and an eventful debutante ball where old lovers reunite.
She turned the pagers of Ovid idly as she continued to reminisce. She had to admit that Chuck was a big part of her decision to flee the country. They'd burned too brilliantly, too fast. The sort of flame that just couldn't last. He'd loved her and tossed her, then loved her again and lost her again. They'd always been on and off, but the last time had a note of finality she'd never felt before. The loud thud of the door closing on all of her imagined lives and all of her elaborate dreams and especially the very last one so bright and hot that it had been, could be heard all the way across the Atlantic.
Blair slammed shut the Greek tragedy and stormed out of the room, leaving behind the smell of musty old books that was supposed to comfort her and opting for mocha instead. She perched the coffee cup next to her elbow and gazed out into the country side, trying to forget how much the murky brown sky reminded her of a certain boys hair and the Hummer driving by wasn't even remotely like her ex boyfriend's. Blair Waldorf lied to herself just as she's done all her life, but this time there was no bubbly blonde best friend to pick up the pieces, no devilish lover lurking in the shadows to ravish her and no Prince Charming making his final attempt to sweep her off her feet. The Non-Judging Breakfast Club that was is now far behind her and with enough stories to fill a million Greek tragedies, they'd finally parted ways. And she knew that it was one of those moments; like the infamous limo ride of '07. One of those moments from which there was no going back because she was past the point of no return. And she could have had an Eleanor Waldorf meltdown but she swore she wouldn't become her mother so she pulled a Harold Waldorf instead. Dear Lord, she spent so long trying not to be her mother that she turned into her father. If only a dashing French model were on the cards for tonight.