"Hey, you cut your hair!"
Dan looks up at his father, his attention diverted from the cuff of the dress shirt he's been trying to button for over a minute. "Yeah, thought it might be time to look less like a caveman. New book, new look." He reaches up and runs a hand through his now very short curls and studies the bags of groceries Rufus is carrying into the loft. "Do you have a secret bunker somewhere that I'm unaware of? What's with all the food?"
"We do have to eat, Dan," Rufus replies, shrugging off Dan's concern. "You're not going out tonight, are you? I thought you were going to just hang out here with your old man tonight."
"Yeah, well, I was going to, but apparently I am going to someone else's book release party tonight." He returns his attention once again to his shirt cuff. "Alessandra thinks I should be more social, get myself out there more and start talking up my new book."
"Sounds fun," Rufus practically rolls his eyes and takes out two bunches of celery.
"Mmm, no, I'd go with torturous. But it's a necessary evil, according to her, and I figure who am I to turn down free drinks and mingling with other writers? It's just not in my nature." He slides onto a barstool and watches his dad extract carrots, potatoes and onions from his bags. "Okay, no, really, what's going on? There are enough vegetables here to make stew for an army."
"So this party, are you taking anyone?" Rufus asks breezily, pointedly ignoring Dan's question.
"No, who would I take?"
"I don't know. Will Alessandra be there, then?"
"Dad."
"What? I just asked a question. She's about the only woman you see or talk about anymore, I was just curious."
"She's my agent. It's all business. And I'm not really interested in any sort of romantic relationship with anyone right now, but thank you for showing an interest, as borderline creepy as it is."
A knock at the door interrupts Rufus's protest, and Dan smirks at him and walks over to open it, eyes nearly bulging when he sees who is on the other side. "Jenny!"
"Hey!" Jenny drops her two bags onto the floor beside her and launches herself at Dan, hugging him so hard he can barely breathe. He laughs into the mass of blonde waves now obstructing his sight, hugging her tightly and not realizing until this very moment how much he has truly missed his sister.
"Whoa, easy, easy," he gasps, prying her off but unable to stop grinning like an idiot. "What are you doing here?"
"Dad. He convinced me to visit," she answers simply as Rufus comes over for a hug of his own. "And..." Her voice trails off, and Dan notices Jenny and Rufus exchanging glances, suddenly looking at him as if he might turn into a werewolf in front of their eyes. "We have another surprise for you."
"I don't know," Dan tilts his head, mock thoughtful, "I think maybe one surprise might be enough for one day."
"Are you sure you can't handle two?" A new voice asks from behind Jenny and Rufus at the door, and Dan's smile fades when he recognizes it. He doesn't even really need to look at her to see who it is, but he does so anyway, as Rufus and Jenny slink into the loft.
"Vanessa."
~.~
"Look, I know that you hate me, and I get it-" Vanessa begins once she and Dan are in the privacy of his room and Rufus and Jenny are chopping vegetables in the kitchen.
"Vanessa, don't, just stop." Dan holds up a hand to stop her and shakes his head. "I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I'm not...I'm not angry. And I don't hate you."
"You don't? But, when I got Inside published behind your back-"
"It worked out for the best," he interrupts again, shrugging. "And now that the time has passed, and the last year has happened, I realize that you were doing it for me. You're probably the only person besides my family that ever truly wanted to do anything to help me just because you cared about me."
Vanessa sits slowly on his bed, looking up at him with sad eyes. "Yeah, I heard about the last year when Jenny called me. Of course, it was just the abridged version. So things went south fast with Blair? And you were surprised?" She holds up her hands quickly when he narrows his eyes. "That is not meant to be a judgmental statement, it is an actual question."
Dan slumps onto the bed beside her and lets out a chuckle, looking down at his hands. "Yeah. I guess I was surprised. Really, I think in the back of my mind I always saw the end coming, but I kept trying to make that feeling go away. I just thought if I tried harder, if I could make her happy..." He trails off and shrugs again, trying to swallow down the bitterness before it comes bubbling back up. "It doesn't matter. It never mattered, nothing I've done with or for Blair the last year made any difference." He looks back up at her with a sad smile. "You weren't around to tell me what a fool I was being. And that was my fault, and I am really, really sorry for that."
She smiles back at him and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Also, I've known you long enough to know that if you're truly in love, no amount of me calling you a fool would work. And I wouldn't have called you that, anyway. I am really biased, of course, but I think the only fool in this story is Blair. I'm sorry things didn't work out, though. For your sake."
Dan hesitates just one moment before leaning in for a hug, surprising Vanessa, who takes a full five seconds to respond by hugging him back tightly. "Wait," he says when he pulls out of the hug, eyeing her curiously. "I thought you and Jenny weren't really speaking, she's the one that called you?"
"We've both had time to reflect," Vanessa says simply. "I was actually thinking about calling her one day, I even got her number, but she somehow beat me to it and called me last month. We started talking and we both realized that we both just felt happier away from...well, life here. I apologized, then she apologized, and here we are. Visiting you and Rufus."
"That's really great, I really hope..I'd really like it if all of us could just put all the stupid stuff from the past behind us. Be how we were before."
"I'd like that, too, I think Jenny and Rufus would agree." Vanessa beams at him, and Dan returns it, feeling lighter than he has in ages at the prospect of having his friend again. "Now," she says, "tell me why you're so dressed up. I thought we were all having dinner here tonight?"
~.~
"Wow, Dan, thank you so much for inviting me," Vanessa says with a smirk, downing the last of her drink and looking around the room at all the people. Dan laughs when he looks at her face, understanding her sarcasm completely. The party is essentially just a room full of older, stuffy people and he's sure he and Vanessa are the youngest two people by at least two decades.
"You're so very welcome. Hey, come on, look at it this way, we'll be home early enough to enjoy whatever it was Dad and Jenny were cooking when we left and catch up on lost time." She nods and he continues, "Let me just walk around and talk to a few people, get the old Humphrey name out there, and we'll go, okay? Alessandra is counting on me."
"Okay. I'm going to head to the bar, want another drink?"
"Absolutely." He watches her head across the room until he loses sight of her burgundy cocktail dress and upswept hair behind two balding gentlemen, then turns to start making his rounds. He takes about three steps and glances at the door and nearly chokes when he sees who has just arrived. Unbelievable. Unfuckingbelievable. He walks in long strides, pausing just in front of the new arrival with narrowed eyes and speaks in a cold, hard voice.
"What are you doing here, Blair?"
