Blair is five years old when she learns the first meaning of distance. She hasn't been a child for a while now, (If she's honest with herself, she never had a childhood at all.), but it comes at a time when princes and princesses are still only a part of fairytales, just like love, and Nate Archibald is merely her best friend. At least, he is this week because Serena suggested that they paint their own nails the day before and Blair ruined her favorite powder blue dress in the process. Nate will remain her best friend until the next time he chases her and she gets a run in her tights, something Eleanor will certainly not approve of. But in her little mind, he's not her future husband or her destined soulmate just yet. He's the perfect playmate. And he only lives four blocks away.
She obtains this information from Francesca, the current nanny of the week. It seems like Blair has gone through nannies as quickly as she has gone best friends as of late, but it's not her fault. She received her strong will from her mother and her eccentricity from her father, so she cannot be held responsible for the demands she makes of the young women and the one man whom her mother let go after only two days when her father kept making excuses to stick around for the afternoon. But Blair won't see this as being significant until she starts seeing Nate as the future King to her kingdom that is the Upper East Side. For now, she only wants to know how far Nate Archibald lives from her own home, and Chessa's answer is four blocks.
Blair's slightly put off by the answer at first. She's smart enough to know that any distance longer than one block means you have to cross the street, something she's unable to do by herself just yet even though her mother sees nothing wrong in leaving her alone in the penthouse for hours on end. But she also knows that four blocks isn't far at all. Nate lives closer than Serena does, which is another perk to being his best friend even if he really hasn't agreed to be hers just yet. The blonde moved a month ago when her mother ditched Husband #2 and she no longer lives close enough to play with Blair every day. But Nate does. She's sure of it.
Four becomes her favorite number the minute it leaves Chessa's lips and she cherishes this new found knowledge like a secret. A tiny butterfly that she keeps her perfect little fingers curled around at all times, for fear she may lose it forever if she lets it out of her sight. It's the number of books she asks Chessa to read to her before her nap, even when she knows that she will only read one. It's the word that remains on her lips as she closes her eyes every night. The number is permanent. It will not change, unlike her friendship with Serena and her parent's marriage, which she will discover soon enough. It's a constant. And Blair thrives on consistency.
To her, distance is the extent or amount of space between two things: Herself and Nate.
And in reality, four blocks is nothing at all.
- - - -
An amount of progress. It's one of the many defitions that Merriam has supplied to distance, and it's the one running through Blair's mind as one of Nate's hands tugs relentlessy on the zipper of her Eleanor Waldorf Original, the other hopelessly tangled in her chestnut locks. She figures she can at least wait another 30 seconds before she pulls back this time and denies him access to what she has always kept hidden beneath the fabric of her clothing. He couldn't possibly work her dress off entirely in that 30 seconds, she's sure of it. But it's the idea that it may be just long enough to slip the satin away from her bare shoulders that makes her pull back. More than enough progress has been made for one day already.
She stares up at him with those big brown doe eyes of hers and she can already see his slight irritation cloud those perfectly blue eyes of his. They both already know what comes next before she's even parted those swollen, red lips of hers. Even before she speaks, she's sliding the dress back up to her shoulders and zipping it back up by herself, composing herself as she regains her self-control. The back of her hand wipes away the remains of her smudged lip gloss from her porcelain cheeks, erasing their impromptu make-out session altogether. There's no doubt in her mind that Nate Archibald will someday truly have all of her in that intimate manner. But today is not someday.
The truth is, distance is all about progress for her now. She feels like yesterday was the day she gave Nate that timid first kiss. Up until that point, it had always been intwined fingers and smalls pecks on the cheek. But that day, she had boldly set herself in his lap as he sat out on the roof of his building, happily stoned even then at the age of 12. (To this day, she still firmly believes that if he had ever taken her advice and stopped associating himself with Chuck, he would have never developed that bad habit of his.) He had smelled like clean laundry, cologne, and pot, but she hadn't cared. She had realized for once that reprimanding him would be hypocritical, given her own unfavorable tendencies. She had pressed her lips against his, and he had murmured that it was nice when she finally pulled away. But in her mind, it was still perfect. Even if his own memory was still hazy around the edges.
Now, it's been nearly four years since that day, but she still feels like they shouldn't be to this point in their lives yet. They were never given the chance to act like children, but maybe this next step is too mature for even them. She's always had this image in her mind of her first time. His touch feels like heaven, slow and soft and perfect. And when his hand slips beneath the hem of her shirt, it causes her stomach to knot instead. It takes her four months to realize that it's because for the first time, Nate longs for her. He wants her like he's never wanted anything else. And when she gives herself over to him, she will have nothing left to give. It's not the sex that keeps her awake at night worrying, it's what comes afterwards.
Blair is used to being needed by now. Until two weeks ago, it was a commonplace to find Serena's number flashing across the display screen of her mobile at three in the morning. Whenever the blonde found herself in a sticky situation, she always called her other half without hesitation. But now, Serena has disappeared completely and Blair feels lost at times. She depended on being needed as much as Serena depended on her. Now, Nate needs her. It may be a physical desire, but it's a need all the same. And no matter how wrong it feels at times, Blair can't satisfy his need just yet. The distance between herself and her best friend is unknown at the moment, but she does know that it is one that has become too large. So she pretends it doesn't exist.
The distance between herself and Nate is trickier. Sometimes, she wants it to be nonexistant as well. She wants to feel his body pressed against her own, marvel at the way they fit together as if they are two pieces to the puzzle that interlock at all the right edges. Other times, she wishes that it had been Nate who was sent away instead. Then she wouldn't have to turn him away time and time again like this.
"Eleanor's going to be wondering where I am," she mumbles more to herself than to him as she slips her feet back into her ballet flats and fixes her hair one last time. Yet another soiree is taking place beneath her feet. Voices already float down the hallway from the parlor downstairs when she barely has the door open at all. Some things never change.
And yet, some things progress until she can barely recognize them at all anymore.
- - - -
Blair knew it was a mistake the minute she slipped out of her clothes and into the silky pink teddy. She knew it was a mistake hours ago when she had vowed to herself that tonight would be the night she would go through with it. Tonight would be the night she finally made love to Nate Archibald. But she didn't press her lips tightly against his the minute he said he had something he had to tell her. She didn't tell him that it could wait. And she didn't try, not even for a moment, to stop him from letting those words spill out of his mouth. Words that were already changing her life forever. Instead, she sat there like an invalid as he told her of his first time with her friend, her best friend. And only seconds after she watches him retreat out of her bedroom door at her request, she wonders how she could have been so stupid.
Serena and Nate. Why hasn't she seen this coming for years now? He's always been watching the blonde from across the room. The way she moves so gracefully with her long, tan legs, the way her blonde hair fans out behind her when she spins on the dance floor, the way her entire face lights up when she smiles. Blair's lucky if she can even fake a decent smile most days. Her best friend has always been prettier, funnier, nicer. It's no secret that her boyfriend would end up giving himself to her instead. She was just too caught up in herself to notice the subtle changes in their behavior, both before and after that night. The way his eyes lit up when she entered the room, the way she still even now avoided Nate like he was the plague. It all makes sense for a fleeting moment, and then, just like that, the reasoning she's been trying to sooth herself disappears completely.
Blair cries until she can cry no more. She feels drained, both emotionally and physically, and she wonders for a moment if she would have felt this way had her plans for the evening gone through as planned. And suddenly, she's suffocating in that light pink teddy. She pulls it away from her skin so quickly that she rips the right strap and her little ruby ring creates a dime-sized hole towards the hem. In her fit of rage, she yanks it off of her finger and throws it in the general direction of the door, the same direction in which he left, but she doesn't care to see where it has landed. It's the first time she has taken the ring off since he gave it to her, and she feels more naked than she would have had he gotten the silky nightgown away from her porcelain skin.
She wants to hate him so deseperately, it hurts. It's a burning sensation in her chest that makes her feel like she's being ripped in two as she finally finds her way into the bathroom blindly. But no matter how badly she wants to absolutely loath him, she can't. She's loved him too long to ever feel that kind of hatred towards him. Instead, she hates herself for letting this happen. Had she been prettier, less possesive, less bitchy, less like Blair and more like the perfect blonde goddess that was Serena, Nate never would have taken her best friend's at a wedding where he was supposed to be her date. It's that thought, the realization that she was a mere few yards that causes her to drop to her knees on the cool tiled floor and stick two fingers down her throat.
It's not the first time that she's ever done this, she's been doing it for years now, but it's the first time that she feels so utterly empty when she pulls away. Her heart is empty, her heart is empty. No, her heart has gone missing. The only boy who's ever had it in its entirety took it with him when he walked out of her bedroom. Later, she will look back on this moment and hate herself for becoming this vulnerable. Later, she will want nothing more than to pull the blonde's hair until she cries for mercy. She will want to completely destroy the blonde the way Serena so carelessly murdered her love life. But now, she slips into the shower and runs the water so hot that it turns her skin red, raw. It makes her hurt physically as much as she feels like she's slowly dying emotionally.
It's as she stands under the even stream of the water, trying her hardest to hate Nate Archibald with all her heart, the same hear that has loved him unconditionally for years, that the definition from her AP American Lit class comes to mind. The state or fact of being apart in space, as of one thing from another; remoteness. At the time, she had thought it too childish to have to define the word distance in a class that was considered to be college prep. But now, she realizes that the task was even more useless than she first though.
Distance is undefineable, no matter which way you look at it.
Nate Archibald is currently four city blocks away, but it's not even for Blair. She wants a whole damn ocean to separate them. Maybe then she could learn to hate her one true love.
- - - -
It takes time, dedication, and perserverance, but eventually Blair finds her ocean. It's not the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, or even the Arctic. It's name is Chuck Bass. And it's not sand that leaves her skin feeling itchy, it's leather seats that leave behind prominent red marks on the back of her thighs. He smells like pot and cologne, but it's not Nate's cologne, and his kisses leave behind a burning line of fire that makes her feel like he's hurting her as much as she knows she's hurting Nate. When it's over, she has to turn her head to hide the tears threatening to fall, whether from disappointment in herself or just pure exhaustion, she does not know. She accidentally leaves her panties behind in the backseat. She never bothers to ask for them back.
When she passes Nate in the courtyard a week after Gossip Girl finds out about her night of passion, followed by many more mornings, afternoons, and evenings spent with Chuck Bass's hands tracing her every curve, and she doesn't know what to say to him. She expects to be met with pure rage, and she plans to yell right back, pointing out the hypocrisy of the situation for all to see. But instead, his blue irises reflect pain and a sense of betrayal that she recognizes. It's not until later that day that she realizes she saw the same exact stare in the mirror after finding out about the boyfriend and the best friend.
She wants to tell him that it was a mistake. That it felt wrong and that the only reason she kept seeing Chuck was because he served as a distraction. She still can feel the way he kissed her on those nights they laid together on her bed. She still sees the way his eyes shined when she told him she loved him when she closes her own eyes. And all it takes is a glance from across a crowded room to remember the way he drove her wild. The way he continues to drive her wild, even from a distance. Instead, her words catch in her throat, forming a lump that stops her apology from spilling out. "Nate..." is all she manages in a voice that is so quiet, so timd, she expects him to keep walking. She hopes he'll keep walking so she doesn't have to see that glaring anger again.
"Blair," he replies curtly before pushing on to wherever he's supposed to be at this time. An absence of warmth flashes across Blair's mind. Remoteness. He was the person she once felt closest to, now he's walking far, far away. And an absence of warmth is the only way she knows how to describe this distance.
She remembers a time when she wished there would be miles and miles between them instead of a few blocks. She remembers a time when she wanted him gone from her life completely. Now, she wants to feel warm again more than anything. And it has nothing to do with the bitter March air.
It takes all of her strength to make it to the bathroom before the tears begin to cascade down her pale cheeks. When it rains, it always pours.
- - - -
It's supposed to be one of the happiest days of Blair's young life. Next to her wedding day and the birth of her first child, Blair is told that it is this day that will stick out in her mind the most. It's a time of new beginnings, a time of changes. It's a time for her to finally receive the fresh start she wanted so desperately a year ago that she contemplated leaving the life she had always known behind forever. But instead, she can only see it as an ending.
For four years, she wanted nothing more than to escape the confines of the Constance Billard School for Girls. And now that this day has come, she wishes that it never had. She graduates first in her class. She gives the perfect speech which quotes both Dave Matthews Band and Dr. Seuss, a feat not easily accomplished. But now, the community service hours, the school dance prep, the date nights, the sleepovers, the social events... They're all a distant memory. And she has nothing to show for it as she stands alone in the corner at the party her best friend threw. The party she should've been throwing herself.
She used to envision this day when she was younger. Her mother and father would be so proud, they wouldn't even know what to say, a first for Eleanor Waldorf. Instead, her mother was on her phone during the entire ceremony with a client and her father's plane was delayed. She would be going to Yale in the fall, but Yale didn't want her. Not after her grades slipped when she had let Chuck Bass walk all over her and ruin her life the year before. He left her high and dry, and she had been the one forced to pick up the pieces to her perfect life once again. And Nate was always there by her side. Instead, as he approaches the bar that she's currently leaning against, it's the first time she's seen him all day.
Besides a few events that they were dragged to by their parents, she has only seen the golden boy in passing since they finally called it quits more than a year ago. But as he approaches the bar, he has a smile, and she finds herself reciprocating the gesture even as the ice in her glass clanks against the edges as her hands shakes. She doesn't remember his eyes being so blue or his hair being so blonde or his smile being so perfect. And as he drawls "Hey" so melodically that it makes her knees weak, she wonders how she thought Chuck Bass could ever measure up.
It's not a physical distance this time that makes her feel so inadequate. In fact, it's the complete opposite. There were times when she wished he was on another continent. Now, she has never felt so far away from someone when she was so close. She can reach out and touch him, yet she feels like there really is an ocean between them now. Time. The interval between two points of time; an extent of time. Time has become the distance that manages to separate them this time around.
He makes small talk with Blair like they haven't been avoiding each other for the past 18 months before asking the question that everyone's been asking her all year. Where are you going next year? She grimaces as she tries to prolong her answer without seeming hesitant. He knows her dream school is Yale. Or, at least it was at one time. He expects her to answer surely, confidently. Instead, she sighs aloud with the tiniest roll of her eyes. "Brown."
"Really?" he asks, and she wants to knock that smirk off his face before he continues. "Me too." And it doesn't make sense to Blair. Dartmouth, he's supposed to be going to Dartmouth and then law school. They're supposed to buy their own penthouse, get married before they're 26, and have two children before they've both turned 30. But then again, she's supposed to be a Yale Alum as well. And that's not going to happen anytime soon. "Serena said we would go there together. But that was before she started seeing Humphrey again." He motions across the room to where the two were dancing, and she notices her best friend for the first time that evening. She looks happy, really happy. And Blair figures she can forgive her for attending NYU in the fall instead of doing the whole Ivy League thing along with the rest of them.
"It was the next best choice after Yale," Blair finally relents, even though she really owes him no explanation at all.
"Well, I guess I'll be seeing a lot more of you next year, then, huh?" She nods eagerly in response before he's being called over for a picture by a lacrosse teammate. It's a question, but it sounds more like a promise when she remembers it later on. When she recalls it that night as she lays awake in her bed. There was a time when she searched the number of miles separating Dartmouth from Yale. Now, it'll be a matter of blocks. Just like it has been their entire lives.
A distance has settled between them, separating them from the relationship they once shared so intimately. But who's to say it's not a distance that can't be closed with time?