The Dark and Light of It
The sun crested the horizon of the Hudson and filtered in through the windows of the Waldorf apartment. The sun kissed the sheets of the beds where lay a sleeping girl, still wearing last night's outfit, a lace slip. Usually despite the brightness of the morning she would have slept on, her blindfold enclosing her within her own world, but she had forgotten to put it on the previous evening. The light intruded dreamless sleep and she awoke, lids heavy with the aftermath of too much drink.
She awoke and instinctively, she knew something was wrong, unbalanced. The lack of blindfold tipped her off first, but it was the slip that confirmed her suspicions. Memory came flooding in with the light. The headache, the only remnant of the copious amounts of alcohol she had consumed, was not so kind as to allow her to forget the previous night's events.
Chuck.
The detail poured back in, the implications too vivid, too terrifying for her to fully fathom.
She remembered the limo - his limo. The leather cushion so comfortable and the alcohol that bubbled, made her see strange things. Like notice him as a man or how his suit gloved him or the way he looked at her like Nate never had. Like she was perfect, deserving, worthy.
It must have been the alcohol too that made her do strange things. Like lean in. Scoot so close to him that she could almost taste his cologne on her tongue. She remembered kissing him, exploring him. She remembered clothes slipping off quickly. She remembered his hands skimming over her breasts like cream. She remembered him thrusting inside her. She remembered trembling, coiling heat. She remembered...
She sat up sharply at this, squeezing her eyes shut. Sorrow, she told herself. It was nothing more. Sorrow over Nate had made her act rashly, impulsively. Chuck was a mistake. That was all. She would find a way to make things right, to repent for what she had done, to cause the universe to right itself so she could be Blair Waldorf, prim, proper, virginal. And what better place to do that than a church?
Blair showered off the night. Blair picked out a headband. Blair found shoes.
But these distractions, this show she was putting on for herself, could not compel her to forget really the way he traced her, like an artist memorizing his subject. That even though they were in a limo, how it was still gentle, how he treated her like something breakable, pristine, beautiful. How he panted beautifully and the sheen of sweat that coated his brow. How much she still wanted him.
But she was Blair Waldorf. She put on her coat and clicked the door shut.