Today was the day of Blair Waldorf's birthday. A lady never tells you know, but she was tipsy so to hell with it. Blair Waldorf was 29 years old. Old. Blair used to love her birthday. She lived for it, making lists, planning parties, counting down the days, the hours, the minutes until the clock hands confirmed that she was yet another year older, inching ever closer to that fantastical childhood ideal of being "grown up".
The birthday that really stood out in her memory, separating itself from the gauzy blur of champagne, crystal and muted colour schemes, was when she turned ten years old. It was the first party she ever had and in one of her rare charitable moods her mother relinquished a modicum of control and allowed her to pick the theme. Impressionable, guileless and insanely romantic, she had just watched Breakfast at Tiffany's for the first time the day before and was absolutely besotted with her beloved doe eyed Audrey. And so the theme was settled. She remembered standing in the playground giddy with pride and excitement as she handed out her pearl trimmed invitations. The first person to get one, tearing open the envelope with glee; Serena van der Woodsen. Her best friend to this very day.
Serena. Beautiful. Blonde. The ultimate it girl. Even back then, when most girls were gangly and awkward and plagued with insecurities, Serena somehow floated through it all unscathed. She had this remarkable confidence Blair had only seen a few times in her life. The kind of confidence that said 'fuck you all, I'll do exactly what I want'. It was wise, worldly, as if she'd had some Dickensian style ghost come to her in her Nsync filled dreams and tell her that sacred piece of advice we all wish we had growing up; it's hard but it's not the end of the world. So, while Blair panicked and overanalyzed and agonized over every little detail of her adolescent life, Serena brushed it all off with the confidence of a woman who'd seen it all.
Blair tried to hold onto those memories of her tenth birthday. Singing and dancing and feeling so happy and whole after Serena had finally managed to drag her onto the dance-floor in a whirl of giggles and golden hair. But now, at twenty nine years old, she no longer had those fizzy frissons of excitement that once accompanied the arrival of a new in year in her life. Instead she felt fear. Fear that she was nearing ever closer to thirty. The big one. The age where everything in her life was supposed to be together. All neatly tied up with a Tiffany bow. If life was like a play, your twenties were the time for the rising action, the climaxes, all the drama and the tears and the broken hearts. But your thirties, your thirties were the denouement. The point at which everything magically worked out and you simultaneously found a job you loved and a man you couldn't live without.
At present, Blair was 0 for 2. No amazing job, no amazing guy. Running out of time and whizzing towards thirty like a bullet train. First off, she hated her job. She worked godless hours as an analyst at Morgan Chase. And to top it off, she absolutely detested her boss. Blair had literally lost count of how many scenarios she'd managed to create in which she murdered him and never got caught. When she graduated with her Masters in Business she actually dared to dream of setting up her own. But things didn't work out and her mother, in the way that only Eleanor Waldorf could, crushed any semblance of confidence she had left and told her to "be practical". Hence the job in that carpeted hell-hole. As for men, Blair hadn't been too lucky there either. It had always been the wrong time, or Blair feeling not enough. There had been a few guys that she thought could maybe have been the one, but for some reason there had always been something missing. Something holding her back.
Serena, on the other hand, she had it all worked out - 2 for 2. She adored her job running VDW Communications - one of the biggest PR firms in the city, and which she had also set up herself. She adored her fiancé even more. Chuck Bass, high flying head of Bass Industries, number 9 on Forbes' 40 under 40 and the love of Serena's life. They were introduced by Blair so she, of course, took full credit for their perfect relationship. Not that Chuck and Serena even liked each other to begin with. In fact, they were at each others' throats when they first met. But that was a witty anecdote Blair was reserving for the wedding reception.
As for Blair, she met Chuck in her first year studying at Columbia. She remembered it perfectly. It was her first business class. She had arrived fifteen minutes early so that she had first pick of the seats and could arrange her beautiful, newly purchased stationery across the desk before her professor had even walked through the door. Two other equally nervous over-achievers had done the same. Blair had watched them from her perch in the middle row, hurrying into the lecture theatre with their monogrammed satchels and steaming cups of coffee. But Chuck Bass wasn't one of them. No, he came through the door, not fifteen minutes early, as she was, but fifteen minutes late.
Professor Davis, a short, mean-spirited man who arrived with his briefcase five minutes before class was set to start, was well underway with his lecture on "Growth Challenges in Fragile States", by the time Chuck sauntered through the door, hair mussed and dress shirt rumpled, looking like he'd only just emerged from the club. (He had.) As soon as the door creaked open, a hundred pairs of eyes darted across the room to identify the freshman who had dared arrive late for the first day of class. A hundred breaths hitched in horrified anticipation.
"How nice of you to grace us with your presence." Professor Davis smiled, but his voice dripped with sarcasm, a deadly cobra waiting to strike. "Now, tell me, why the hell are you late for my class!?" Davis' face had turned a violent shade of red in all of two seconds and his voice thundered through the lecture hall. The room was dead silent, a hundred freshmen waiting in mute horror to see how their surely terrified classmate would respond.
"I apologise," Chuck offered cooly, "This place is like a maze,"
Professor Davis started, dumbfounded at Chuck's unruffled reply. Blair would only later discover that it was a special tactic of Davis' to terrorise a student on the first day so as to keep the rest of his students in line. The common response to this humiliation was tears and once even a case of fainting. But Davis hadn't banked on catching a Bass.
"Go - go and find a seat then. You've wasted enough of my time." he spluttered, as Chuck, smirking, walked leisurely up the stairs of the lecture theatre, eyes raking the rows for an unoccupied seat.
In spite of all her stationery and preparation, as a slightly dumbfounded Davis resumed his lecture, Blair's attention was no longer with the professor at the front of the class, but tracking the movements of the boy (or was he a man?) brave enough to make it through the encounter with the terrifying professor unscathed. The entire room buzzed. Everyone could feel it; Chuck had scored a victory for them all.
As he approached Blair's row, moving, she mused to herself, like a panther, his eyes flicked up to catch her watching him. His lips curved into a smirk as he appraised her. His eyes were laughing at her and she wanted to die. Blair's skin flamed bright red and her eyes flew from his like she'd been burnt. Her mother had always told her it was rude to gawp at strangers, and that's exactly what she'd been doing - gawping like a fish when she should have been taking notes. Mortified, Blair picked up her notebook and stared fixedly at Professor Davis as he began the next slide on the Brazilian economy. She tried desperately to concentrate, but in her peripheral vision she could see him making his way down the row towards the seat next to hers. She didn't know why but she felt so intimidated by him. It was something to do with that smirk - he seemed so worldly, so grown-up. And the way he looked at her, so condescending, only served to make her feel even more like the little girl she so hated herself for being.
As it turned out, Chuck was more worldly. While Blair had come to college straight out of high school, eighteen years old and still very much an innocent, Chuck had been round the block more than a few times. Twenty one years old, he had spent the years after high school travelling to the far corners of the earth, engaging in debaucherous acts that her eighteen year old brain couldn't even dream of.
"Hey neighbour," He whispered, as Blair felt him settling into the seat beside her, his leg briefly pressing against hers. Her back involuntarily stiffened in response.
"Hello," she whispered back, sure to keep her eyes firmly focused on Professor Davis.
"Nice notebook," he teased. Blair blushed, but stared resolutely at the slide. Smirking to himself, Chuck stayed silent for the rest of the lecture, and didn't, to Blair's horror, take a single note.
But that was all so long ago now, packed away in some deep, distant past that felt more like a dream than real life to Blair now. She tried her best not to return to those memories anyway. They were too painful - too full of hope. Besides, there was no point; things had changed so much since then. They had changed so much. The wounded boy she'd sparred with all those years ago was now the imposing CEO who'd won the heart of her best friend. And Blair, Blair was a far cry from the bright eyed, bushy tailed 18 year old with the whole world stretched out in front of her. No. She was 29 now. 29 and drowning in cynicism. The future she'd once dared to envision for herself was galaxies away from whatever this mess of an existence was. "0 for 2!" She could practically hear her mother's shrill voice, all judgment and disappointment, ringing through her ears. 0 for 2. And for once Blair agreed with her mother. How the hell had she ended up here?