She woke to the driver rattling the barricade that divided the car. She jerked upright at the sound of his voice. "Miss. 455 Madison Avenue, the Palace," he dictated in broken English, pointing out the window.
Jenny nodded clumsily and shuffled outside. Closing the cab door threw off her precarious balance and she stumbled back a few steps under the elaborate Palace awning. The doorman skillfully ignored her altered state and graciously held the door for her, welcoming, "Good evening, Ms. Humphrey."
Jenny tried to reply but the bright lights of the entrance seared fresh pain through her temples and she slumped forward, ducking her head and moving to the lobby elevators as quickly and cleanly as she could. In the dim glow of the trolley, her eyes cleared and she pushed the button for Chuck's penthouse suite. She rested her head against the cool marble of the elevator car and the feeling was like salve to a burn. Her breathing calmed, the fog shrouding her mind lifted for a brief moment—and the car came to a halt, the telltale 'bing' of the bell sounding.
Prepared for the worst possible reception to her visit, she tried to pull herself together but the pharmaceuticals coursing through her system fought back. She stepped out as the doors opened, rounded the corner slurring terribly but soldering on, calling, "Chuck!" as forcefully as she could muster—and registering, in the recesses of her drug-addled mind, how specifically unpleasant an ending to her misguided evening an encounter with a teddy-wearing Blair might be.
"Chuck!" she rasped a fourth time, her voice sounding more like sandpaper with each successive try. "Chuck!" she called, clumsily pulling her beret from her head and slowly, sloppily shrugging her shoulders until her jacket relented and met the hardwood with a 'swoosh'. "Where are you?" she added, her voice breaking despondently as she rounded the apartment and reached the kitchen.
The yelling made her head pound and now her vision swam. She brought a hand to her face as if that would stop the world spinning. She leaned back and the cool marble countertops of the kitchen island caught her. Her whole body felt like it was on fire. Why was it so hot in this apartment? She swallowed hard against the permeating nausea.
"Chuck!" she called out. Jenny opened her eyes again with the hope that she could conjure him through sheer willpower. A tall, brunette boy stood in front of her in only a well-worn pair of blue plaid pajama bottoms, bare-chested and bare-footed. He almost wasn't holding a tall glass as he made eye-contact with the lanky, distressed, blonde standing in the kitchen of his best friend's apartment at 12:30 a.m. His heart almost didn't ricochet into his throat, effectively cutting off his air supply and reducing him to a mute statue.
***
He stared—shock staining his features—and he just stared. His mind should have been racing—compiling cutting questions and vicious retorts to finding her in the kitchen; her with her blonde hair and long legs that shook and buckled now as she stood. His heart should have been colder, harder than the marble she leaned on. He wanted to scream. He wanted to yell and berate and 'what are you doing here' and 'what did you do to yourself' and 'I won't save you anymore'and finally, when he forgot to forget to remember to forget, 'what did you do to me' because, let's be real—Jennifer Humphrey had always had Nathaniel Archibald, inside out, upside down, out of place. He wanted to square his shoulders and lie until they both believed. 'Go home Jenny. There's nothing here for you anymore.' He wanted to grit his teeth until his jaw ached and his neck protested and then keep gritting them until his eyes believed and his vision ran clear and his heart stopped leaching poison to his veins that made his chest constrict and the pain pull him under where it was numb, utter nothingness. He needed to cut her like she cut him. And then everything stopped. For one terrifying moment, Nathaniel Archibald ceased to breathe. Jenny's eyes rolled in her head and she gripped tighter to the countertop. The NateandJenny piece of Nate clawed its way from his stomach to his throat, screaming and cursing for him to 'get to her'! But he pressed his arms tighter to his sides and set his jaw against any traitorous words that might escape.
