It is four o'clock in the morning. She trips getting into the limo and snaps a heel, but it's okay because he catches her, and then later he picks her up and carries her inside, the both of them still laughing.
When Blair calls at five he tells her he doesn't know where Serena is. No, he doesn't, he swears. Well, she certainly isn't at his house - has Blair tried Eric's mobile, the Ostroff centre, Lily even? No? Well, maybe she should, it's not like she has a problem waking anyone up, obviously. Just one jumping to conclusions.
She tells him she's sick of the lying, sick of pandering to her best friend's every whim, sick of pretending, to save Blair's broken pride. He promises her no more. He tells her he loves her and she cries. Somewhere between getting out of the car and falling asleep she has lost her unbroken shoe completely. The other lies by the side of the bed, unwearable.
She wakes up again at seven to find that she's alone. It's still dark outside, still will be for another hour or so. It is as she reaches over to inspect the level of damage inflicted on her shoes that she hears him. He's in the next room, on the phone again. The phone didn't wake her, like last time, so she presumes he called. It is when she hears her own name that she stops to listen. It's Blair, that much is certain. It couldn't be anyone else. He's lying again. He asks if she ever located Serena, tells her it's his guess she was with her brother, he says he's sure she'll be around today. He denies all knowledge of her over and over and over, tells the voice on the other end of the phone line that he'd tell her if Serena was with him, of course he would, but she isn't. There is a strangely long pause as Blair reels off some speech and it is all she can do not to interrupt their cosy conversation. Then she hears him again, telling this girl, who isn't even there, that he loves her too. Only her. Serena? He doesn't even like her any more.
She presses her fist into her mouth to stifle her gasp. She knows the situation with Blair. But he didn't have to go that far. She remembers she only has one shoe, and that one is impossible to wear now. She doesn't even care any more. She walks out anyway, leaving her bag behind, lipstick rolling across the floor as she knocks the clutch from the bedside table. She hears, rather than sees, the mirror smash as she shuts the door. Seven years bad luck, she thinks. It is only when she's walked halfway back to their suite, barefoot, in nothing but last night's dress, trying to guess how many of the passers by think she's spent the whole night on drugs, that she wonders if she gets credit for time already served.
She has given up on sleeping, decided that there is no point going back to bed now, at almost eight thirty, when she's just hauled herself out of the shower. So instead she lies draped across her bed, replaying that phone conversation in her head. She thinks of his voice when he promised he loved her, and compares it over and over to when he said it again. There is little to no difference. Her mother had always said eavesdroppers only ever learned things they didn't want to know. Trouble is, she doesn't even know what it is she learned. She lies back and wonders for the umpteenth time just which one of them it is he's been lying to.