"I don't want to be irrelevant"
The words she had said to him still rang in his head. In that moment, he had seen the Serena he knew and loved. The one who could open up to him and be vulnerable even though it was the very thing she despised.
Dan sighs, his head falling back onto his pillow. He's leaving for NYU next week and he isn't sure he's ready to leave his past behind. Though he doesn't want to admit it, he still thinks of the blonde that had captured his heart.
Sitting up once more, he focuses his attention on the notebook in front of him. Tapping his pen on the blank page, he searches his mind for something to write about, but all he can think of was Serena. She plagues his thoughts, as she did with every other man, but it was different. Serena is his world, his first love and most importantly, the one person he loved the most. But now, she's going to Brown and he's going to NYU. She's moving on, leaving New York behind. Leaving him behind.
Shaking his head, he sets pen to paper and starts writing. He's not sure what it is exactly, but he knows that each time he scrawls another word, his memories of her become clearer and clearer. Strangely, he finds himself remembering the times that no one else would. The times where they had their moments.
He writes of the time they fell in love; the time where he confessed his love for her and got a reciprocation several hours later. He writes only wonderful things of her, every flaw of hers becoming a perfection in his eyes. Her mistakes turn into things she could be saved from and her lying became a way to save himself from heartbreak. A voice inside says he's writing lies, giving the world the perfect girl they want. But he knows that everything he writes, every single word, is true, even if it took him that long to realize it.
Three hours later, he finds himself stuck on their last meeting. The moment where she'd confessed to being afraid of being forgotten. The moment where she had looked so vulnerable. He wonders why he's able to write every other thing, but is unable to write this. He doesn't understand. He managed to write his cheating incident, but this, this is something he can't handle.
Two hours later, he has skipped writing that part entirely is writing more of the past. He writes of how she evokes him, how she inspires him. He writes of Christmas. After half an hour, he starts typing the document and realizes why he couldn't write earlier. He wants to keep her vulnerability to himself; its something he cherishes, something he loves about her. He adds a line to the document and to the paper itself: And as long as Dan Humphrey was around, Serena van der Woodsen would never be irrelevant.
Satisfied, he saves and prints the story, scanning over it. He tucks it in his drawer and returns his attention to the hand written one. After pondering what to do with it, he finally gets an envelope, scrawling Serena's name and address on it, leaving it without a return address. He slides the crinkled paper in, sealing it shut. He posts it and he knows that in twelve hours, it would be in Serena's hands. His only hope is that she'll like it because it means more to him than 10-8-05. Because its their love story.