Sermons and Soda-Water Chapter 4
She had a good opinion of advice,
Like all who give and eke receive it gratis,
For which small thanks are still the market price,
Even where the article at highest rate is.
--Lord Byron—Don Juan, Canto XV
* * *
The doors slid open noiselessly, a perfect proscenium framing the foyer of the penthouse. Eleanor Waldorf-Rose stood with elegant stillness beside the pedestal table with its massive arrangement of orange and russet flowers, her smile a Pavlovian response to the ding of the elevator bell.
Chuck watched the smile wither as he emerged from the wood-paneled gloom.
"Mrs. Rose. Happy Thanksgiving."
She folded her arms across the pleated gray of her blouse. "Chuck. Here to make the holiday happier, I see."
"At Blair's invitation."
"Really?" She raised one eyebrow. Given the Botox addiction currently ravaging the dowager population of the Upper East Side, Chuck had to admire the feat, though he resisted its efforts at intimidation.
"Yes. I was told to arrive at five-thirty."
She ostentatiously raised her left arm with its thin gold watch. "Well, right on time, aren't you?"
He nodded his acknowledgment.
"She's in her room." Eleanor gestured toward the staircase. "I'm sure you remember the way. You'll excuse me if I don't escort you there. I have to speak with the caterer about an unexpected addition to our party."
"I wouldn't dream of inconveniencing you," he murmured, layering the honey in his voice as thick as he could make it.
The thin line of her lips tightened, but she turned without responding to the provocation. The clacking of her heels against the marble floors accompanied his stroll to the staircase. He took them two at a time.
Blair opened her bedroom door before he could knock, grabbing him by the jacket and yanking him inside.
"Finally! Were you going to make me wait all night?"
"Blair, it's 5:31 exactly."
"That's one more minute of hell you made me suffer through."
"It was an extra minute of heaven for your mother." He stumbled over his feet as she pulled him across the room, her fists clutching the dark silk of his dinner jacket. "Why didn't you tell her you invited me?"
Blair stopped in front of her chaiseand whipped Chuck around. "It's going to be a night of rude shocks. I figured I'd ease her into it." She shoved him into the seat. "Now start thinking. Solve this. Chop chop!"
She clapped her hands like a Victorian duchess summoning her stable boy. It was the gesture of the old Queen B, and Chuck hid a smile as he tried to smooth the five finger-shaped creases marring each of his lapels. "I don't think well on command. Or on an empty stomach."
"I know you had a very full brunch this morning, Chuck. Serena told me." She perched on the little white chair in front of her vanity.
"Oh, you're not ignoring her calls anymore? She was surprised, by the way, to hear that you got my phone number from her yesterday. She was under the impression you hadn't spoken since Monday." Chuck leaned back in the chaise as Blair's lips parted in confusion. "I guess it slipped her mind."
She swallowed, reclaiming her equanimity with visible effort. "You know Serena. So flighty."
"I do know Serena."
"And I'm in such a state, I hardly know what day it is." Blair pressed her fingers to her temples, leaning one elbow against the chair back. "I'm half-afraid to even show my face downstairs, looking as haggard as I do."
Glinting gold jacquard encased her curves in a tight skirt and strapless bodice. She had tied her hair in a loose ponytail at her nape. It fell over one shoulder, leaving the smooth column of her neck visible from drooping head to curving spine. She was the farthest thing from haggard Chuck had ever seen in his life, and even if his eyes hadn't recognized it, his cock sure as hell did.
"One look at you in that dress and everyone downstairs will forget what day it is, too."
She dropped her glance as a smile flickered in the corners of her mouth. "I try to keep up appearances."
"You do more than try."
She didn't fight the compliment, and he could tell by the way her shoulders relaxed, the way she turned her head, offering more of her bare neck to his view, that she knew just how hard he was.
His hand reached into his jacket pocket and touched the small red box that rested inside.
No. Not yet.
He withdrew his hand from his pocket. "You called for help, and I came. So what do you want from me?"
"You know what I want." She looked at him like he was functionally retarded, and he felt the urge to retaliate with Then get your ass on that bed or Do we have time for that before dinner? or Glad to see I'm as irresistible as ever. An opening like that just cried to be filled.
But he didn't. He was good.
"Say it anyway."
Her chest rose and fell as she puffed a breath in exasperation. She always hated playing games by other people's rules. "I want you to tell me how to let my parents know I've been expelled." The obviously went unsaid, even if it suffused her tone.
Chuck stood and walked over to her chair, looking down at her.
"They don't need to know you've been expelled. They just need to know you're not going back to NYU. The easiest way to tell them is to give them a reason you're not going back."
"But the reason is my expulsion." She rolled her eyes. "Keep up, Chuck. It's not that difficult."
Annoyance wrinkled her forehead and nose. He wanted to smooth the two deep furrows between her brows with his thumb and taunt her about crows' feet and her mother's plastic surgeon.
Instead, he rested his hand on the dainty white chair, squeezing the carved wood. "This is about managing expectations, Blair. This is about controlling the conversation. Leading them to the conclusion you want them to reach."
She flicked her ponytail over her shoulder in an offhand gesture. "Thank you for that glimpse at your future Business 101 seminar. I don't need a tutorial on tactics of negotiation. I just need you to tell me how to break my parents' hearts and get out of this alive."
"But that is a negotiation. Everything is a negotiation."
Even this, though you don't know it yet.
He let go of the chair and she visibly relaxed, only to tense again when he strolled to her bed. "When something goes wrong at Bass, I don't want my people to bring me problems. I want them to bring me solutions. The board wants the same thing from me. And I learned that from dealing with Bart."
Chuck flung himself on the bed and leaned back against the blue satin pillows, his hands folded behind his head. "I'd come to him and I'd say shit like, you know, I don't look at this as a suspension for smoking in the field house. I look at this as an exciting new opportunity for community service."
Blair swiveled in her chair, eyeing him in the mirror while she fiddled with the brush and comb and lipsticks littering the vanity. "And he bought that?"
"No. But he appreciated the effort."
She picked up a black tube and uncapped it. The rounded pink cylinder rose and sank with the twists of her fingers.
Chuck slipped his hand in his pocket again and rubbed his thumb over the box's rounded corners.
Their gazes met within the frame of the mirror. "Give them a solution, Blair. Come to them with options instead of desperation."
Blair's throat moved as she swallowed. "I don't have any options, Chuck. That's kind of the problem."
"Yes, you do. You just haven't thought them through."
Blair recapped the lipstick without applying it, set it carefully in the rosewood chest that held her makeup, and turned to face him. "Okay, so what are they?"
"You can transfer and finish your education somewhere else."
"I'm a senior," Blair scoffed. "It's too late."
"People do it."
"People." Blair injected as much scorn as possible into the two syllables. Then she looked down at her hands in her lap. "Who would take me? I cheated, and it's on my record. I'd be lucky to get into Hunter."
"You could go to Hunter."
"No, I could not," she squeaked, shaking her head in disbelief. "I just got used to being at NYU instead of Yale. I can't lower myself any further."
"So college is out."
"College is out."
Chuck pictured Blair's mental list—on gilt-edged Smythson stationery, of course—and imagined her crossing of the first item under Options with a gold Mont Blanc pen: College, with a great big hatch through it.
Time to move on to the next one.
"You could work for your mother at Waldorf Designs."
She brightened. "I could. That's a good idea, Chuck."
She shot out of her chair and began pacing around the room. "I could pitch it to her like I should get more involved in the company if I'm going to take it over one day. She'll love that."
Her smile was so sunny, her gratitude so flattering, he almost hated to destroy it.
Almost.
"She would love that. She'd love to have you around all the time, working with her day in, day out. Always by her side. Just an arm's reach away whenever she needed to ask anything or comment on anything."
Blair's smile faltered, her pace slowed.
"And her assistants at the atelier would love to have you there. Someone who really knows Eleanor inside and out. Who can interpret every little squint and twitch, and who's had a lifetime of responding to her criticism. You'd be such a help to them."
She stopped by her desk, her hand on her stomach. "Maybe…"
"Yes?" Chuck prodded.
"Maybe that's not such a good idea after all."
"Why not?"
Blair firmed her chin, a soldier putting on her bravest face. "I have brilliant personal style, of course. But design has never been my strength. And my mother has to put up with all these starlets and models, and it just sounds like such a headache. I don't think I want to work in fashion."
"So that option's out?"
Blair nodded.
The gold pen glided across number two: Work for Eleanor.
Which left…
"So what does that leave?" he asked.
Blair shook her head. "I don't know."
She stared into the middle distance. She frowned. One hand absently stroked the top of her desk chair, the other picked at the metallic gold threads of her dress. Her feet fidgeted in their shiny gold shoes, the rounded toes kicking at the edge of the carpet.
She looked utterly lost.
It was time.
Chuck pushed himself off her pillows and stood by the bed, the box safe in the shelter of his pocket. "That leaves me."
He waited. Waited for her to realize what he meant. What he was telling her. What he was asking her.
She frowned at the pastel swirls of the carpet, one hand smoothing the glossy curls of her ponytail. "Leaves you where?" She didn't look up.
He let go of the box. His hand felt useless just sitting in his pocket, so he straightened his bowtie.
"Leaves me with Bass. I can find you a position there."
"Really?" She looked up in surprise and then frustration. "Does that position involve me bending over your desk?"
"Only if you want it to." She pouted at that, and he ran a hand through his hair.
Stop fucking this up, Bass.
"That isn't what I'm suggesting, Blair. I promise."
It took her a minute to find her smile. "That's sweet, Chuck. But I don't think it's a good idea. Your board has all the underage executives it can handle at the moment."
"I don't need the board's approval. It's not a salaried position."
Her forehead creased. She shook her head as if to say, what are you talking about? and Chuck wished for a pile of paperwork. He wished for his big teak desk between him and Blair, the light streaming in through the office windows at his back, his phone blinking with messages that needed answering, and a stack of Quarterly Reports demanding his attention. He wished for all the trappings of executive privilege, for American flags flapping over his fucking head and a podium with a microphone and a horde of reporters ravenous for the red meat of his words.
He wished for any—every—reinforcement for his ego other than the little box in his pocket and the pathetic speech stuck in his throat.
He cleared it and took a breath.
"I could use a wife."
Silence.
Or nearly so. Somewhere in the room, a clock ticked. It was probably small and made of silver or porcelain and dainty and antique and delightful, but it marked the seconds with ticks as loud as shotgun blasts and tocks like the boom of fucking cannons. The moments clicked by, echoing in his head, and with every blast and boom, Chuck itched to hunt down that piece-of-shit clock and throw it out the window and watch a taxi drive over it, spilling clock guts all over the road.
Blair sat down abruptly in the desk chair and laughed, her voice hitching at the end.
"Oh fuck you, Chuck."
This was a bad idea. This was a terrible idea. This was the worst idea he'd ever had—worse than that long-ago Gossip Girl blast, worse than calling Bart the night of the Snowflake Ball, worse than almost screwing his former-VP.
But he'd said too much already. He rubbed the back of his neck and dove in.
"My social calendar's gone to shit since you left. The secretaries can't keep track of anything. I don't entertain like I'm supposed to. I can't throw parties at my suite—not the kind of parties the CEO of Bass should throw. Not the kind I can invite the board to. I need someone to figure this out for me, and you're my best bet."
She didn't say anything.
"It's not like you weren't training for this all your life, Blair. You planned to do this with Archibald. Just do it with me instead."
She blinked. And didn't say anything.
He grabbed the box out of his pocket and waved it at her. "There's a ring, if you're worried about that."
"You got a ring?"
"Yeah." He marched over to her and held the box in front of her face. She stared at it, and she looked like she was going to puke or pass out or cry. He shook the box. "Take it."
Her breath caught and her eyes flicked up to meet his, and then she took the box in both hands and slowly lowered them to her lap.
"You can open the box, Blair. Nothing's going to jump out of it."
The hinge creaked and the latch snicked as her thumbnail popped it open, and he couldn't watch. He had to turn away, to stare at her bedspread and her windows and the dark and bright night of the city.
"Oh my God!"
He pictured what she saw. The Ascher-cut diamond would fracture the light of her desk lamp and send it back to her in rainbowed fragments. The platinum would glow cool and quiet against the white lining of the box and the gold lettering inside the cover. If she ever put it on her finger, the four-carat solitaire would shine against her skin, big enough to tell the world I'm Blair Waldorf in the way she deserved, but simple enough show that she wore the ring, the ring didn't wear her.
Not that he'd thought about it or anything.
"Oh my God," she breathed again. "When did you get this?"
"This morning. Before brunch."
"It's Thanksgiving. Cartier's isn't open."
"They were for me."
"Chuck…"
He turned at that, braced himself for her no.
"I—" She licked her lips. "Can I try it on?"
"It's yours. Do whatever you want with it."
She pulled the ring from the box with delicate fingers, and snapped the box closed, placing it on the vanity next to her brush. And then she slid her finger into the cool loop of metal.
"It's so beautiful," she gasped. And it was, like he knew it would be. She stared into the diamond's glittering facets with rapt, almost euphoric attention. She smirked.
"Chuck Bass, this would have been a good opener." She raised her hand to him and pointed to the ring.
For the first time in what seemed like decades, he felt the urge to smirk himself. "Does this mean…"
"It doesn't mean anything," She interrupted. "I don't know what it means. Don't ask me. I don't know what to think."
The little clock chimed six times. A much friendlier little clock than it had seemed before.
"Shit." Blair dropped her hand to her lap. "We have to go down for cocktails." She grabbed the ring box and sighed. "I don't want to take it off."
"Then don't."
"I have to. I can't waltz into my mother's dining room wearing"—she glanced down at her hand—"four carats on my ring finger and not expect her to notice."
"Good eye."
"Thank you." Closing her eyes, she pulled the ring from her finger with one quick tug. "My hand is so lonely now," she sighed. "Can I…?"
"Yes?" Chuck encouraged.
"Can I keep it in my pocket?" Blair touched the faint diagonal lines of fabric at her hips. "I won't lose it, I swear."
"I'm not worried about that, Blair."
"I just—" she stood, slipping the ring into the nearly invisible pocket at her hip. "I'll feel better if I can keep it close to me. Then I can look at my mother and think, I have four carats in my pocket right now, Eleanor, and you have no idea."
Chuck smiled. "Whatever works."
She smiled back. "Okay." She breathed, chest rising and falling, and headed for the door.
"Blair." He stopped her with a hand on her elbow as she passed. She turned to face him, brown eyes curious, maybe a little wary.
He had no clue where this impulse ranked on the bad-idea scale. Probably at Catastrophic, but quite frankly, he didn't care anymore.
"Fuck it." He grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her closer and kissing her.
She felt like…Blair. She smelled like…Blair. She tasted like…Blair. The only word he had for everything desirable and wonderful and worth the fighting and failing.
Blair. Blair. Blair.
His hand tightened on her shoulders as his mouth moved to her neck and her head fell back. He pressed his fingers into her flesh, wishing he could pin her in place, fix her right here with kisses and diamonds and the blood pumping through his body.
His lips found the place where her pulse beat beneath her jaw. "I still love you," he breathed against her skin.
She stiffened under his touch. She raised her arms between them and pushed, stepping out of his reach. Her eyes watered. "Another good opener, Bass," she managed through quivering lips. "You should really write these down."
She gritted her teeth and blinked the tears back, tilting her head toward the door. "Come on."
He followed the gold beacon of her back into the hallway, his hand in his empty pocket. He'd offered her his company, and his diamond, and his… he cleared his throat, clenching his fist.
He had nothing left but his table manners, and not even an etiquette freak like Blair Waldorf would find the way he held a fish fork enticing.
At the head of the stairs she stopped. She set her shoulders and turned, whirling past him down the hall, grabbing his hand and dragging him behind her, pulling him out of sight of the foyer.
"I still love you, too, you jerk," she spat out when they'd stopped. Her fist punched his shoulder, and as he recoiled from the blow, she launched herself against him, arms wrapping around his neck, body pressed tits-to-chest against his.
Mouth on mouth, he bit her lip, felt her tongue graze his own. He pulled her closer, with a hand cradling her neck and a hand cupping her ass. Closer—Jesus, as close as they could get—and he felt her arms doing the same, pulling his head down, as if he needed any encouragement to taste her lips or feel her body. As if he ever did.
She stepped back at last, and her face was flushed and her hair mussed, and neither of them knew quite what to say. So they didn't say anything. And she took his hand and led him down the hall to the staircase and her mother's Thanksgiving dinner.
