"I was hoping it would go away."
...(I was humiliated.)
Dan Humphrey spent the summer slumming it in the Hamptons.
The fact that he called it "slumming" may have been the first indication that he had truly and finally followed the metaphorical rabbit completely down the hole that was the Upper East Side. While everyone he knew was out having worldly adventures - California, Monaco, Barcelona, some random Slavic nation - Daniel Humphrey donned as much cliché white as he could find and cruised the tourist-ridden Main Street of New Yorkers' favorite go-to summer lodging.
(At one point, he even found himself using the word "vaca" - mostly ironically, of course.)
Gossip Girl had called his choice "pedestrian". But seeing as she still tracked his every move on a UESpotted map, Dan never lost sleep over the slight.
He said the city was getting him down. Truth was he was down, and unfortunately, no amount of white clothing was making it better. The past few months had dragged slowly and painfully along like nails on a chalkboard, only highlighted by too-short moments online he knew he shouldn't even be enjoying in the first place. But to a writer and first and foremost New Yorker, he knew the city was never to blame. New York was a dark-haired version of Serena van der Woodsen - beautiful, electrifying, alive, and somehow never accountable for the chaos within. The truth was pretty obvious and so incredibly sad.
Deep down, Dan knew what was causing his sudden and debilitating ennui. For the first time in his life, Dan Humphrey was lonely.
In all his years as "Lonely Boy", Dan had never actually felt alone. Even in the social Siberia that was his St. Jude's life pre-Serena, he was always well adjusted enough to know he had people to go to when in need. Maybe it was his somewhat healthy upbringing or his appreciation of life's events no matter how tragic. Maybe during his constant quest for art and culture, he didn't have the brain space to worry about his social unimportance. Maybe books and films and art galleries and his father's tidbits of warm wisdom kept him company. Hell, maybe it was Cedric.
He met a girl while reading on the beach one day. She had kicked sand on him to get his attention. It was childish but distracting, and she was cute enough to request an explanation for her rudeness and he was bored enough to actually listen.
"Thanks for the exfoliation. I'm sure my pores needed it," were his first words. He stared up at a leggy red head, her head tilted fortuitously blocking out the sun.
"My friends and I figured you could use the dust," she said, smiling at what even she deemed as a lame response. She surveyed his bizarre expression in response, and then she pointed to his book. He had picked up a copy of Soul Dust by Nicholas Humphrey. The study of consciousness was interesting and at times numbing - exactly what he needed at the moment.
"I would point out how weak that excuse is, but to be honest, I mostly picked this book from the store because the author shares my last name. I suppose that discredits my judgment." He smiled. Lopsided in the way he knew most women found charming. She took it as a cue to sit down next to him.
"Well then, Mr..." she said peering at the cover, "Humphrey, it's nice to meet you. My name is Sam." She stretched her pale, almost porcelain-colored legs out and extended her hand for an overly dramatic handshake.
What Dan had said wasn't the truth. He had picked a book debating consciousness because he had always found philosophy and psychology to be the world's best arguments for futility. While often pointless, they still entertained for several hours and made him look intelligent when he alluded to them in polite company. However, his calculated comment had found him a companion. Samantha was a townie (although the word was really a disservice to the people affluent enough to afford living all year in the Hamptons) who often complained about city inhabitants who had no clue how to drive because they did it so rarely. She took Dan to local stores and provided him with something less pathetic to do than read alone and write emails.
One day, while seemingly trying to impress him, she took him to a local gallery. The exhibit was called "Couture Shock" and she openly admitted after two minutes that perhaps this was a bit too girly even for her. "It's alright," he had responded. "A friend of mine has recently helped me appreciate a certain elegance to the moving architecture you see in fashion."
It was the first time he had openly referred to Blair all summer. In the beginning of his stint in the Hamptons, Eric has pressed the topic once or twice, but seeing Dan's resistance, he quickly relented. Eric had since left the Hamptons to prepare for Sarah Lawrence. And maybe to get away from Dan's self-imposed gloom. Either way, he didn't begrudge Eric the early departure.
The summer had been filled with reading and walking, swimming and drinking iced coffee, and recently Samantha. Blair had only existed on a computer screen. A fairly extensive Gmail conversion that proved his affinity for bad habits especially when it came to women.
"Elegance to the moving architecture? You are from the Upper East Side, aren't you?" she mocked, fully in jest.
"Brooklyn, actually. That's somewhat better, right?"
"I guess," she said, linking arms with his. "Tell me more about how fashion is art."
Sam was cutting and at times derisive. And if he was completely honest with himself, that bitchiness turned him on more than her obvious physical beauty. As the summer was drawing to a close, he stopped reading and walking. He swam less and usually only drank his iced coffee with Sam and occasionally her friends. She started to spend every night at his house - a house so large and empty that they could make as much noise as they liked as they entertained themselves through the lingering days of summer.
One particularly hot Tuesday in the last week of August, Samantha has shown up early in a sun dress and nothing else. Particularly disgruntled after checking his email all night to no avail, he began to plan a day to brighten his mood with his hands placed firmly on Sam's hips when the foreign sound of the doorbell echoed into the bedroom they had fallen into.
"Who's that?" Sam asked breathlessly. Dan pushed off the bed, adjusting his shorts.
Opting not to find the t-shirt he had flung somewhere en route to the bedroom, he said, "You stay there - just like that - and I'll see."
His feet padded quickly across the floor as he ran through a list of possible visitors. (The current top of the list being a vacuum salesman because honestly, who else would come to see him?)
Opening the door, Dan couldn't help but smile. But then as the peculiarity and awkwardness and perhaps the astonishment started to materialize in his mind, the smile never faded, but perhaps a question mark began to dance around the edges of his lips. Standing in front of him, in an orange sun dress, far more stylish and fitted then the one he had imprecisely been in the process of removing just moments before, was the one person he had wanted to see all summer - even though he refused to speak the words out loud. In fact, he was so dead-set against missing her that he had banned her name from his vocabulary.
Ironically enough, the only thing he could think to say was the one word he had been avoiding all summer, "Blair."