Thanks for reading the previous chapters and those who have subscribed to the updates, thanks a lot for that.
This the seventh chapter, I hope you guys read it. This is set a little in future. Please review so that I can do a better job.
I am taking it in a different direction and I think its gonna have an impact on the story, let me know how it goes.
London - October 2016
If there is one thing that Blair Waldorf is severely short of, it is time. She runs her own business and helps her mother from time to time in her business, is a single mom to a very energetic young boy and has just gotten enrolled in Goldsmith post grad program for a degree in Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship. People may see her as someone who has it all and she does have it all – well almost – but nothing she has was handed to her on a platter, she worked very hard for everything and is very proud of it all.
Looking back, if anything made it all possible for her, it was her son Jay. He was the anchor to her life, her source of inspiration and her reason to be better and do better. When she arrived at her father's estate with a two week old Jay, she was in a shambles. She was emotionally drained, physically exhausted and just a bundle of nerves- ready to bawl her eyes out. To top it all, she was not willing to let go of her son for a minute and wanted to do everything herself. One day she just fell down of exhaustion and Harold managed to convince her that it is okay to take help from others. Blair did let him hire a nanny for Jay but she cried to sleep after her nanny's first day. She thought she and Dan would raise their child together but her reality was very different from what she had imagined her life to be.
For three months she stayed cooped up in her father's estate but then she realized that she cannot live her life like that. She not only has to face life but also needs to build a new one – a better one – for her son where he can be proud of his mother. She knew that she has to go back to college but she also knew that she could not go back to New York or Columbia, she spoke to her professors and with their recommendations she managed to get her credits transferred to UCL in London for BA in Language and Culture and finished her degree in about sixteen months, two days before Jay's second birthday.
Her style consulting business took off when she helped Eleanor during Milan fashion week. What started off with one Italian Countess wanting Blair to help with her new look, turned into a full blown fashion and styling consultancy. Before she finished college, she had her own registered business and since then, she turned into a British version of Rachael Zoe and is now planning to expand into home décor business because people just can't have enough of Blair Waldorf and her impeccable taste. This year has been particularly good as she dressed Kiera Knightly, Emma Stone and Florence Welch for the BAFTAS and she has been getting some serious clients since then from both sides of the Atlantic.
She recently moved in a 4 story beautiful townhouse in Kensington where she lives with Jay and his Italian au pair Nicola who has been with them since Blair started working full time. Nicola is an art student who is studying part time and is also working on her paintings, in fact Blair has given her the whole of the basement where she not only lives but has also set up her tiny studio where she works in the evenings when Blair is home. She also has a maid service and they come in during all the weekdays but she does not have a full time maid because no one can replace Dorota in her life.
Her son started his preschool and she started her post graduate program together. She has started it part time to begin with but she wants to do it and she wants to do it for her son so that he could be proud of her. One of the reasons that she admired Eleanor a lot is that she was a woman who has accomplish everything on her own and she wanted to her son to be just as proud, if not more, of her. She is also happy that she has achieved it all just short of her 25th birthday.
She has been to New York many times since she started her business but never for more than 4 days and she never took Jay with her because she always feared that Jay would run into someone and it will stir up everything again. She was happy with her life here in London and though it was never really part of her plan but the city has been kind to her – perhaps kinder than her hometown.
It is surprising that the only person she has really stayed in touch with from her old life was Chuck Bass and she credits Jay for that. Whenever Chuck is in London, he would always drop by to see Jay and Blair, often with some extravagant gift for Jay. The only other person she has met during all this time is Nate and that too during social events that she has attended while she was in New York for work. He has expanded his business since then and he now runs two magazines and a news website. Serena is trying her hand at acting and if rumors are to be believed, she is shacking it up with an A lister in California and living a Hollywood dream.
Dan Humphrey was another ball game together. She tried to keep tabs on him through tabloids and facebook but she was not too successful. He has written two more books, one on Jazz age American writers and a collection of short stories called 'Infidelities' which was very dark and quite unlike his two previous novels. But that was all about his work, she had no idea what he was up to, where he was living (she did check him up on Gossip Girl and he has not lived in New York since …well since she left the town) and what he was doing besides writing those two books. He has recently resurfaced and has been pictured in gossip websites because he sold the rights of his two novels to a production house, wrote the screen play for 'Inside' and is busy filming it right now. She may not admit it to anyone but she does have Dan Humphrey on her google alert and she still devours any news she can get about him.
It was a warm autumn Saturday when she took Jay and Nic out for a lunch one afternoon and they decided to stop by some shops on their way back. Nic and Jay went out to get some more sun while Blair stayed back in the shop to pay and gather her purchases.
When she came out, she saw Nic talking with a tall skinny girl in a beret. They were both laughing and discussing something about Jay. When Nic saw Blair coming, she introduced Blair to her friend but Blair was frozen to her spot and so was the other girl. Of all the people her au pair could be friends with in a city with over 9 million people, she had to be friends with one Jenny Humphrey. Nic stopped in the middle of her introduction when she saw them both staring at each other.
It was Blair who recovered first.
"I know who she is Nic, we used to go to same school in New York, what a coincidence that we ran into each other here in another country," said Blair with a polite smile.
"Really? Jen and I took some drawing classes together as well, what a small world we live in," Nic laughed.
"I know, who would've thought?" Jenny was not so polite. She remembered her distraught brother when he found out that Blair had left with Chuck Bass again.
Nic was a little uncomfortable with this open hostility, after all Blair was her employer and she did not want to offend her. So she hastily said goodbye to Jenny. Blair too smiled a good bye and sighed with relief when jenny left. She squatted down to tie Jay's loose scarf and took off his wooly cap to re adjust his hair. While she was at it, she saw a shadow over her shoulder and she saw Jenny again, hypnotically looking at Jay and then tentatively touching his hair. Blair saw red and hid jay's beautiful bouncy curls under his cap and stood up.
"Blair, is that your son?" Jenny looked like she has seen a ghost.
"Of course he is mine; I am not in the habit of running away with other people's children," Blair thought the best defense is offense.
"And his dad …." Jenny left the rest of the sentence unspoken. She was staring at Jay who is now intrigued and is staring back at the blonde woman."
Jenny's mind is racing doing a million calculations. That little boy was a dead ringer for his father - those curls and brown eyes has Humphrey stamp all over them – if he is anything around four year old, there is a greater likelihood that Blair's son is Dan's son too. Her brother is a dad and she is an aunt!
"Errr his dad is out of town, and if you will excuse me I have to get back, there is so much that needs to be done," Blair tried to move away but Jenny stopped her.
"Blair, stop. You cannot run away. You have to tell him." She was seething with rage at her nonchalant attitude.
Nic was getting curious so Blair picked up her son and thrust him in Nic's arms and told her to start walking home. When both were out of ear shot she turned back and hissed, "He knows. Your precious brother knows because I went to see him with Jay in belly and begged him to be with us but you know what he did? He just left and made it pretty clear that he wanted nothing to do with us, I am sorry if he did not let you in on it but if I recall correctly, the two of you were not that close."
With that, she turned around and started following her son and his au pair. Jenny on the other hand was stunned. Dan knows! She knew she had to do something to make any sense out of it so she ran after Blair. "Listen Blair, stop. I am sorry if I sounded a little judgmental," Blair raised her eye brow at that, "okay, I sounded very judgmental but can I please talk to you sometime and perhaps see your son. I don't even know what his name is!" Jenny pleaded.
Blair looked at her for a full minute and said, "Well my son has turned into a proper British boy and would want his afternoon tea in an hour's time. You are welcome to join us if you want to."
Jenny was grateful and she accepted the offer. If Blair was honest, she wanted to speak with Jenny the minute she saw her but she did not know how to break the ice. Jenny may be the most tenuous and distant and not so pleasant link with her past life, but she made her realize that she wanted to talk about it, reminisce a little and if she dared, she may even ask her about Dan – not because she is interested in him but because she wanted to know what father of her child has been doing.
Once they were all in, she asked Nic if she can help her in preparation of tea and Nic went into the kitchen. Blair after taking layers of garments off Jay introduced him to Jenny. "This is my son Jay and Jay, this is Jenny, mommy used to go to school with Jenny."
Jay stood up and shook Jenny's hand and said, "I am very pleased to meet you Jenny."
Jenny laughed out loud at this display of impeccable manners, crouched down on the carpet and sat at eye level with Jay, "You know what Jay, when I was in school, your mom used to call me little J and now you are her big Jay."
Blair rolls her eyes at that and said, "Don't get me started on what happened at school Jenny, you wouldn't want the little one to know that?"
Jenny raised her hands in surrender as if saying that that she won't say anything else and asked Jay about his ore school. Jay was such a friendly child that it did not even take him a minute to warm up to Jenny and he started telling her about Miss Pillsbury, his teacher and his new best friend Jason. Blair left the two of them in the parlour and went back into the kitchen. Ten minutes later, Blair and Nic came back with trays laden with tea, cakes and cucumber sandwiches and they all had tea. Nic took Jay to his room afterwards and Blair and Jenny sat down and talked.
Jenny told her about her job at Stella McCartney's as an apprentice. Though Jenny is not designing right now, she is hopeful that she will eventually get there and continues to draw. Blair was quite impressed with her and told her that she will put in a good word with Stella if she wants. Jenny told Blair that she knew that she was living in London and of course about her business but she did not know about Jay . When they ran out of the small talk about their professional lives, Jenny decided to tackle the elephant in the room and asked Blair what happened with Dan.
"Nothing and everything," Blair sighed.
"I mean you said that Dan knows about Jay and it is so unlike Dan to know that he is a dad and not be part of his son's life. How could he do this?" Jenny was still confused.
Blair who desperately wanted to talk to someone about her life, esp her life with Dan needed no prompting and she told Jenny everything. From her visit to the loft when she told Dan that she wanted to be with him, their short blissful months together to her crazy dash across the Atlantic to be with Chuck, her return, her finding out about her pregnancy and her last confrontation with Dan and his refusal to believe that it was his baby she was carrying.
"I thought I should give him some time so I stayed away, but I wrote to him, I even sent him sonogram pictures of Jay so that he would know how his baby is doing but he never wrote back, he never contacted, I thought that he may not ever forgive me for going back to Chuck but he may come around to be with his baby," Blair was openly crying Jenny moved closer to her and was rubbing her arm. Who would have thought that one day, it would be Jenny who would be sitting next to Blair and comforting her.
"Anyways, I realized what a douche your brother is when Serena came over and told me all about their sordid affair. Esp when he did not even know that I was going back to Chuck and he had the cheek to ask me if my baby was his?" Blair was indignant.
"Wait what?"Jenny was confused, "Dan was never with Serena, from what I recall, I met him around Christmas and there was no mention of Serena, in fact he was still quite caught up with you. I know about your letters because I read one of them and then forced him to read them all, in fact he even went after you but you had already left with Chuck, he was heartbroken Blair because he thought you broke his heart again. Serena was not even discussed."
"That's funny because it was just before Christmas that Serena came to me and showed me a video of them doing it! They not only had sex, they filmed it and she wanted to rub it in so she came to show it me, why do you think I had Jay seven weeks before the due date," Blair was sobbing.
"I knew that he wanted nothing to do with me but it breaks my heart every day that he never contacted me to find out how his son is doing, he knew that we were having a boy."
Blair was sobbing all over Jenny's cardigan now and Jenny is more confused than ever. She recalled that Dan went to see Blair and came back devastated with the news that she went abroad with Chuck. There was no mention of either Serena or Jay's existence. Blair here is sobbing like there is no tomorrow so she obviously means everything. She decided not to contradict Blair right now but she knew that she has to find out.
"Okay, we have established that my brother is the douche of highest order and he deserves the deepest pit of hell but I hope that you do not hold my brother against me and let me see Jay again, I would really like that," said Jenny.
Blair laughed amidst tears, "I have turned one Humphrey against another, I think I have just about achieved everything I ever set out to."
"I have another favor to ask Blair," Jenny paused, "Can I tell dad about Jay, it's just that ever since his divorce he has never really had a very happy time with both Dan and I living away from home. He would be ecstatic to know about Jay."
"Oh, so you both lived away from home all this time?" Blair asked very nonchalantly.
"If that is your roundabout way of asking about Dan, well he too couldn't stay in New York after … well after everything. He stayed with me here in London for a few weeks then got transferred to Yale to finish his degree."
"So he finally managed to go to Yale." Blair said.
"You know he was in England for a year after that," Jenny told Blair and was looking at Blair strangely.
When Blair kept looking at her hands and did not respond, she told him that he was at Oxford for his post grad degree and this is where he researched for his book on Jazz age American writers – well in Oxford and in Paris – you cannot write about the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald without spending some time in Paris.
Blair agreed to Jenny telling Rufus about Jay – with the promise that neither Rufus nor Jenny would say a word of it to Dan.
Neither of them knew how it happened but it did. Jenny and Blair became very good friends over the course of next few weeks. Whether it was because they were each others links to a life they had left behind, their mutual love for fashion, Jay and Dan or the fact that Jenny had always admired Blair, but they became friends and were spending a lot of time together. Once the four of them went to the zoo and spent the whole day there, there were Museum outings, at least once a week, Jenny would tag along Jay for his twice weekly riding lessons. Sometimes, Jenny would have dinner at their home and Jay would play piano for his mother and Jenny (It goes without saying that any child of Blair Waldorf would be an over achiever, that is why Jay is multi lingual – speaks English and French fluently and is learning Italian thanks to Nic – and takes riding, swimming and piano lessons besides spending his mornings at preschool. Sometimes Jenny would just loiter at Blair's workplace offering her opinion and would wonder why Blair is letting her hang around so much but neither questioned that and they just went with the flow. Blair's first telephone conversation with Rufus was awkward but after the skype chat where Blair, Jenny and Jay talked with him for the first time and where he was introduced to Jay as Jenny's dad who cooked great food, Jay became friendly with him. Rufus promised that he would visit them in December and cook everything Jay liked.
It was the second week of November when Jenny came back from the riding lessons with Jay and Nic casually mentioned about Blair's birthday next week. The two of them decided to give Blair a surprise dinner. Blair was at work when they decided to spruce up the place a little, with some additional flowers, a new portrait of Jay that Jenny has commissioned on his pony, some food they have ordered and some good quality. Blair was genuinely touched by their display of affection and laughed out loud when she saw a cake with bright red stilettos on top. Just when she was about to cut her cake, the door bell rang. Nic went out to see and Blair asked Jenny if she has invited anyone else. Blair knew that none of her parents were visiting her because they will be coming next month for Christmas and jay's birthday. Jenny went after Nic to see who is there and was flabbergasted to see Chuck Bass with a bottle of wine taking his coat off. Chuck too was startled to see her but he did not show anything in front of Nic and just nodded her way in greeting. He went in first with jenny and Nic trailing behind him.
Jay beamed when he saw who the guest is. "Look mommy has got shoes on her cake Uncle Chuck," Jay was too excited to notice the discomfort of his mother and his aunt at the arrival of the new guest.
'Uncle Chuck' Jenny was not so certain she liked the sound of it.
Chuck wished Blair a happy birthday, gave her the bottle of champagne and kissed her on the cheek. Blair did not say a single word and was aware of Jenny's glare and Chuck's raised eye brow but she decided not to say anything. She cut her cake and fed it to her son, thanked Jenny and Nic once again and went in the kitchen to fetch another set of cutlery and plate for Chuck. Jenny followed her with and mouthed the words, "What is he doing in here?"
"He drops by from time to time. In fact he spends almost half the year here in Europe, sometime in London, sometimes in Paris and Barcelona and he drops by," Blair said while taking the cutlery out.
What followed was one of the most awkward dinners that any one of them ever attended. Jay was chatty but no one else seemed to talk to him apart from Chuck. Blair was quiet, jenny was hostile, Nic was bewildered the way the evening turned and Chuck was in his element, as if he is happy that people are squirming because of it.
Once the dinner was over, Blair took off with Jay to put him to bed and Nic decided to retreat to kitchen and offered to make them all some coffee to avoid even more awkward conversation. Jenny was just sitting when Chuck said, "Who would've thought I will end up seeing Little J at Blair's London house one day?"
"I am neither little nor familiar enough with you to warrant any familiarity where you call me by nic names," Jenny was not too happy.
Chuck laughed at that and said, "Prickly, are we."
"Very." Jenny responded.
When Blair came back into the parlor, she saw a hostile looking Jenny glaring at Chuck and an amused Chuck looking back at Jenny. She coughed when she entered and said that she was a little tired and would want to retire, she could see that Jenny wanted to stay back and ask her about Chuck's arrival but she had no energy to deal with her. In order to make sure that Jenny leaves straight away, she actually asked Chuck if he could drop Jenny off. Jenny was a not too happy with the arrangement but she complied.
Jenny and Blair lived in London for over three years but they never crossed path before they met for the first time in October. Now Blair ran into her, again, at The Savoy's Beaufort Bar, after a meeting with a client. What surprised her more was that she was not alone, she was with Chuck Bass and from the look of it, it seemed that they were out, on a date. Her first reaction to seeing them together was the question that popped in her head, "How will Dan react to it" and she remembered the time when Dan punched Chuck. Her second thought was an abject sense of misery and self loathing that she is thinking about Dan's reaction even after four years, especially after what he did to her with Serena and her eyes were suddenly filled with tears. Jenny saw her in the mean time and she got up to invite her over to their table but Blair was in too condition to see her, or anyone else for that matter. She just waved her hand and ran out of the hotel for some fresh air. She went home, spent some time with Jay, had an early dinner and put him to sleep earlier than usual after much resistance from him. She was in the middle of her quarterly crying session (On an average, every three months something would trigger in her and she would have a full on crying session and then she would be okay for the next few months) when the door bell rang, it was Nic's evening off and she was out. She thought that if she is not going to respond, the person at the door would just go away but who so ever was at the door kept pressing the door bell. She feared that Jay would wake up so she went and was horrified to see Jenny and Chuck and looking at her red nose and puffy eyes.
Jenny came in and demanded to know what is wrong with her Blair, when Blair said that everything was fine, Jenny just took her hands in her own and said softly, "I know that you ran off Savoy when you saw me with Chuck, I never meant to hurt you. It was our first date and if you don't want me, I will never see him again. He insisted that there is nothing between the two of you except friendship, a fragile one at that, but I should never ever have listened to him and I am sorry. You and Jay are too important for me. In fact you and Jay are like my family and I would never do anything to jeopardize that." Jenny started crying. A startled Blair was looking at her and then Chuck and then back at Jenny again.
"What is this? Who said anything about me being upset with you two? You guys are adults and can do whatever you want to," said Blair.
"See I told you, Blair has no interest in my love life, we are not an item and have not been one in a very very long time," Chuck touched Jenny shoulders and then as a way of explanation told Blair that when Blair left the hotel in a hurry, Jenny assumed the worst that Blair was jealous and she has been fretting over Blair's reaction since then.
Blair started laughing at that. "Seriously Jenny, if I were really jealous, I would not run away. I would probably have marched up to your table and would have insulted the living day lights out of you."
"I only up and run when it has something to do with that stupid brother of yours," and then she started crying.
Jenny who was relieved that Blair is okay with Chuck and her dating got worried, hugged Blair and asked her to explain.
"When I first saw you two, my first thought was about Dan's reaction to you two being together. The second thought was a sense of self loathing that even after all this time and after what he did to me, I still think about him. Why am I so hung up on that Brooklyn Benedict who broke my heart so badly that I cannot even date anyone, let alone fall in love with anyone or have a family. I tried, I tried to move on but I just cannot. I want to hate him but I cannot, I want to forget him but everything he ever said to me is printed on my mind," She cried.
She picked up a copy of People magazine where Dan was photographed with Saoirse Ronan and Jennifer Lawrence at a film premier and screamed, "I am bawling like a crazy person over a man who cannot be bothered to pick up the phone and ask about a son whose only picture he has ever seen is a sonogram while he is living it up with Hollywood beauties," she waved the magazine over Jenny's Chuck's faces and then tore it to smithereens. "No matter what I tell myself, I am still tied to him and because he is not around, I feel all the more alone. NOTHING sucks more than feeling all alone, no matter how many people are around, I feel alone and it is all because of him. I hate feeling this weak and miserable, I hate the fact that I am friends with his little sister because I want to know more about him, and I hate myself even more for wanting what little morsel of information I can get about him. For all I know, he probably thinks I am dead and is happy about it," I hate him for reducing me to this shell where everything I do or think is about him even when I have not seen him in over four years," Blair collapsed in Jenny's arms and she shot a worried look over her shoulder to Chuck and said, "This cannot go on, we have got to do something about this."
A/N: I know there was no DAIR in it but the next chapter is all Dair, if you want anything particular to happen in the next chapter, let me know :)
Once again, thanks for reading and please review.
