AN: And here's part two! One more part to go, which will post tomorrow :)
And everyone says,
this love will change you.
But I ask,
does anything ever stay the same?
What was it about Nate Archibald, Jenny thought as she straightened her flyaway hair, that never failed to make her feel sixteen again? A bumbling, child-woman, who no matter how much she tried, could never quite catch him. For so many other girls—numerous blonds, what felt like dozens of brunettes, and even a handful of redheads—he'd fallen like a ripe plum into their hands with almost no effort at all. But not her. Never her.
Maybe it was just that she didn't like to lose.
Or maybe it was because she'd never been able to move past him, to forget him as easily as he'd forgotten her. Yes, he'd looked happy to see her, even flirting with her only moments after they'd begun chatting, but if the past was any indication, he'd move on eventually without having made any definitive decision one way or the other.
It galled her still, and if he hadn't been so knee-weakingly familiar, she would have shut him down indefinitely. But he was still Nate Archibald and she was still Jenny Humphrey so that was too much to ask for, apparently.
Her phone rang—Blair's ring, which sounded more like an 5 alarm siren than a ringtone—and Jenny leaned over, setting down the straightener on the bathroom counter as she nestled the phone between her head and her ear.
As usual Blair didn't wait for a greeting. "Where are you?" she demanded, that dreaded tone of hysteria trickling through her voice. Everyone had suspected that Blair would raise the concept of bridezilla to new heights, but she'd put even the estimations to shame. Jenny hadn't been able to resist flying out to California right before the wedding to sign the closing papers on the wonderful condo in Orange County that Chuck had found for her—partly because it needed to be done, and partly because she couldn't wait to get away from Blair's mounting anxiety about having the most perfect wedding the Upper East Side had ever seen.
Blair hadn't been very pleased at all by Jenny's last minute trip, but she hadn't said so because she correctly assumed that if she had, she'd lose her #1 bridesmaid.
"At the hotel," Jenny said calmly, hoping it would rub off but knowing it wouldn't. "I just flew in and I'm getting ready now. What's the problem?"
"Eleanor. And Harold." Blair's words were short, succinct, punctuated with a frustration that Jenny more than understood. Weddings were, unfortunately, more about the families than the bride and groom themselves. As high-strung as Blair was, Eleanor was even worse, and though she and her ex-husband no longer had trouble being civil, they almost never agreed on anything. As for the groom, both his real parents might be dead, but Lily Van der Woodsen, Serena, and even Rufus, could be enough of a burden.
"Is Serena there?" Jenny asked.
"Honestly, I have no idea where she went," Blair sounded annoyed and Jenny wasn't sure she blamed her.
"Well, send Harold out. For something, anything. Actually, isn't he going to the bachelor party?"
"Roman didn't approve." Jenny could nearly feel the force of Blair's eye roll through the phone.
"What? Wait. . ." Jenny paused, cursing herself for even caring. "Where's the bachelor party being held?"
"Victrola," Blair sighed. "Chuck bought it for me as a wedding present. I thought I told you."
Jenny personally thought of all the wedding presents Chuck had purchased for his bride—and there were numerous—Victrola was the strangest present of all. An old-fashioned burlesque didn't sound much like the Blair she knew.
"So he's having his bachelor party at the burlesque club you own."
"Yes." Blair's voice brokered no argument and no explanation.
"And what about this does Roman not like?"
"I wish I understood. Maybe he's afraid all the semi-nudity and titillation will scare my father straight."
"Doubtful," Jenny observed.
"Regardless," Blair snapped suddenly, "he's not going. So he's arguing with Eleanor, naturally. Get here, and get them out of my hair before I decide to elope."
Blair clicked her phone shut, so succinctly Jenny could hear the snap of the phone as it shut in her ear. She dug her makeup bag out of her suitcase and proceeded to try to repair the ravages of a cross-country flight before Blair decided to call with more demands.
Yes, she'd told Blair to take care of the problem, but what Jenny had learned over the last six months of wedding planning was that there was a reason she'd been made #1 Bridesmaid—and it wasn't because she'd look lovely in the wedding photo. Serena, though dear, couldn't organize or plan or bully to save her life, but Jenny could. So though she was technically the first bridesmaid, Jenny more thought of herself as the maid of honor; the lynchpin that would guarantee that the nuptials happened at all.
Half an hour later, the ting of the elevator doors opening into the Waldorf penthouse announced her arrival. Before the door was even fully open, Dorota was there—obstinately to take her coat, but Jenny knew better. Of all the many people present for this wedding, Dorota was the one with the best ability to calm her Miss Blair down. And if Dorota looked that harried, then dismissing Harold must not have gone very well at all.
"Is everything okay?" Jenny asked in a hushed tone. "Did Serena come back?"
"Miss Serena gone. Miss Blair in a huff. And Mr. Harold. . .he and Miss Eleanor have many fight today. Too many fight." Dorota didn't say it in as many words, but Jenny knew she'd be in charge of making it right—she didn't mind, really, and it was her way of atoning for what they called "The Bad Times."
Pushing from her mind Nate's words from earlier, Jenny walked into the living room to see Blair reclining on the settee, a cold compress on her face, and Harold and Eleanor glaring at each other from either end of the sofa.
"Blair," Jenny asked, though she already knew the answer, "what time are your guests arriving?"
Blair mumbled something but the fabric over her face made it impossible to understand her.
"They'll be here in an hour," Jenny said calmly, but firmly. "Eleanor. Harold. Go take Roman and go out to dinner. Blair, you need to get up, and stop feeling sorry for yourself." Blair removed the compress and rose up, her eyes shooting daggers at Jenny, but she continued, having been around Blair long enough that she'd ceased to be scared of Blair's dramatics. "Get up," Jenny repeated, "and Dorota will help you get ready, while I make sure everything is in place for the party."
Nobody looked happy, but then nobody argued either. As they did her bidding, Jenny thought to herself that it had been a long time since she'd first entered the Waldorf penthouse—and she'd come a long way from being that scared little priss. She'd been 15 years old, new to the Upper East Side, new to manipulation, new to taking control of her own destiny. Now, seven years later, it felt like a comfortable jacket in the perfect size, appropriate for every occasion. She only had to slip it on, and people listened. It only seemed to be missing from her expansive closet whenever Nate Archibald came around.
"I saw Jenny on the plane," Nate said expansively, as he and Chuck laid back on the amber velvet settee right in front of the stage at Victrola. He was three double scotches in, a pleasant buzz building in the base of his stomach, and he was relaxed enough not hesitate to bring up the younger Humphrey.
Chuck didn't appear to be listening though—just as Nate had been since this morning, he appeared to be entirely caught up in the past. "Do you know," Chuck said, turning his glass so the golden liquid sparkled in the dim lights, "that it started right here? On this very couch."
Nate had become very comfortable with the idea of Chuck and Blair. But this was a bit much, even for him. "In Victrola?" he asked, because he knew that regardless of what he did or didn't say, he'd be hearing it anyway.
"No, right here. On this couch. I think it might actually be the very same one."
"Oh." Nate shifted uneasily.
"Did you ever know that the night before her seventeenth birthday, right after she broke up with you, she walked up onto that stage and took her clothes off?"
This was news to Nate. He'd known that Blair had started something with Chuck around that time, but he hadn't been aware that she'd become a stripper to do it.
"She took her clothes off for you?"
"Not exactly," Chuck said, his eyes drifting over to his best friend. "I think it was actually more for her."
Nate thought this conversation wasn't going anywhere fast, and he wanted the dish on Jenny. So he tried again. "Today. Jenny Humphrey. I saw her."
"Right," Chuck said, and Nate realized with a pulse of annoyance that he'd been listening after all, just ignoring him. "What do you want with her?"
Nate supposed he should have expected the question but it caught him off guard.
"It's more like . . .what the hell happened? I mean . . ." Nate trailed off, realizing that he was going to have to bring up the fact that Chuck had been the recipient of what he had wanted all along, and that was where the whole mess had started.
"You mean after I fucked her, and Blair ran away to Paris with Serena?" Chuck shrugged. "Why do you care?"
"Because." It still seemed as good an answer as any.
Chuck's gaze narrowed, and Nate realized that neither of them were nearly drunk enough to be discussing this—especially Chuck. "You want another drink?" Nate asked, trying to be casual, but sure that Chuck could see right through him.
"You really want to talk about UES gossip during my bachelor party? My last night of freedom from the chains of matrimony?"
"You've been eager for that particular bondage for a long time now," Nate replied wryly. " You've been wanting to marry her since we were seventeen."
"True," Chuck admitted, his voice finally sounding like he'd drank half a bottle of scotch. "But back then it was more about claiming her for me and nobody else."
"Still."
"I just don't understand how Jenny went from persona non grata, to Blair's #1 bridesmaid. Nevermind the drug peddling and the Elvira getups."
"She was young. Confused. Caught between two worlds," Chuck said whimsically. "I guess you weren't lying when you said you wanted to gossip. You want to gossip and discuss Jenny's teenage psyche."
"No. I just want to understand. For some reason, she's back in everyone's graces and I didn't even know."
"She grew up. Like we all did."
Nate knew Chuck well enough—they'd been best friends since they were five, after all—to know he was definitely not telling him the whole story.
"Chuck."
Chuck sighed. "You must really like her. But then, you've always liked her. Which is why I never understood why I had to take her virginity."
"You know I was dating Serena."
Chuck waved his glass expansively. "And that stopped you? Why?"
"Just tell me," Nate ground out.
"So you know that Blair banished her from New York. And after I came back from Europe, I was trying to be a good person . . .a better person."
Chuck paused and Nate supplied the words he was looking for. "For Blair. You wanted to be a better person for Blair."
"Exactly. Though it turns out she's just as bad as I am, so why bother sugar-coating it anymore? What happened with Jenny was fate just being a bitch. No one's fault. It took me months, but I finally convinced Blair to even see me, and then Jenny came back and Blair heard her out, and after that, by our junior year at Columbia, Jenny was working for Eleanor and she and Blair were close again. Closer than before, even."
"Blair just forgave her?" Nate remembered years of Constance battles, where forgiveness was like bread handed out during a famine.
Chuck shrugged. "I suppose Jenny told her the whole story, and Blair understood."
"You know as well as I do, Blair does not just understand," Nate said darkly as dancers lined up on the wooden stage, all hoping to get the Great Bass' attention, though none of them had yet realized that particular train has sailed the moment Blair Waldorf deigned to glance his direction.
"All I'll say, Archibald, is that Jenny convinced her. Why or how is up to you to figure out."
Nate grimaced in frustration. "Chuck, this is ridiculous. Just tell me."
"it's not my secret to tell. It's hers. For the record, she texted me this afternoon, saying she'd seen you and talked to you. And that you brought up the bad times." Chuck paused, leaning towards Nate, his eyes suddenly deadly serious. "Jenny is my sister, despite our past. And if you harm one hair on her head, I'll make sure you don't go back to California in one piece. She's a good girl, and she's more than atoned for the havoc she wreaked back then. Despite what I know you think of us, we are capable of forgiving and forgetting and I'm going to suggest strongly that you follow suit." Chuck got to his feet and without anther word left in search for a fresh glass of scotch, leaving Nate sitting on the couch, speechless and shocked. Chuck hadn't just defended Jenny—he'd literally claimed her as his sister.
And as much as he didn't want to remember the past—not the lovely, rose-tinged moments when he'd almost fallen in love with Jenny Humphrey, but the times when he'd let her down, had left her in tears and dashed her hopes—Chuck's words pushed him right into it, and he was suddenly in a dark penthouse suite, and he was a breath away from either a horrible mistake or the best decision he'd ever made.
He'd never known which, because before he could, that bitch, fate, had intervened and Jenny had set herself on fire with his best friend as the match.
Chuck returned with two glasses of scotch, and Nate nodded his thanks as he took a big swallow, feeling the liquid slide, fiery and hot, down his throat.
"Now," Chuck said conversationally, as if they'd never discussed Jenny, "are we going to get smashed or what?"
It was 2 AM before Jenny got back to the Empire, half-drunk and exhausted, more ready than she could remember to fall into bed. Blair had managed to pull herself together, as she always did, and they'd enjoyed a near-perfect replica of one of Blair's famous "soirees" from her Constance days. Blair had received enough expensive lingerie to outfit an entire flotilla of Victoria Secret Angels, but she'd drunkenly announced that Bass had promised her an entirely naked honeymoon.
And even though the entire UES had claimed to forgive and forget what she'd done with Blair's fiancée, every single pair of eyes had latched onto her, waiting to see if she would react—but Jenny had learned to keep her expression perfectly neutral, an amused smile plastered on her face.
There were a lot of reasons, Jenny thought as she dried her face on a soft, fluffy towel, why she was moving to California, but this was one of them. Sometimes she felt as if she would never be able to leave Bad Jenny behind. She followed her wherever she went in New York, which was why she'd finally decided that maybe it was time to leave it behind. When Blair had banished her, she'd hated leaving the city, but this time she was leaving on her terms. Her choice.
Her phone rang, the soft beep of an unknown caller, and she glanced at it briefly, wondering who would be calling her at 2 AM. But just as she was about to hit ignore, Jenny realized that the area code was from California. Though she tried to stay calm, Jenny knew her pulse was racing and her heart was beating just a little bit faster as she answered.
"Hello?"
The background noise was overwhelming, music and people yelling and clapping so loudly that she could barely hear the caller. "Hello?" she said again, her voice more insistent.
"It's Nate." He was slurring his words, and Jenny couldn't help but smile.
"You're drunk dialing me," she stated with amusement.
"Of course," he giggled. "I don't wanna you to hate me. I'm sorry, Jenny-girl."
Her heart clenched. He cared that he'd hurt her feelings. Nobody else, not a single person at the bachelorette party had appeared sorry that they'd judged her. Not even Blair had said anything. But Nate, dear sweet, darling Nate, cared enough to call her and apologize.
She wanted to melt, but the memories of what had happened before, when she wanted him so badly and he'd never really wanted her, stopped her. "You're sorry?" she asked archly. "For what?"
He sighed, the sound barely audible over the crowd noise. "Don't be mad. Not at me."
Jenny suddenly realized what had happened. He'd asked Chuck. And Chuck had told him. She closed her eyes and tried to will away the sharp pang of humiliation.
"It's okay. I . . .it was a long time ago." And just like that, she was sixteen again, sitting in the dark penthouse, so sure that he would kiss her—that he was dying to kiss her. And the humiliation that had swirled through her when Serena had appeared and Nate had pulled away as if he'd never even thought about it.
"Too long ago," Nate said, his rough voice caressing her despite that she knew better. "Jen . . ." his voice lowered. . ."let me come see you. Let me show you how sorry I am. About today. About before. About what you did."
Jenny's voice caught in her throat. He wasn't saying . . .was he?
He continued. "It never should have been Chuck. That was my fault. I wanted it to be me. It always should have been me."
She was caught up in a fantasy of a past revisited and a past cleansed of all that humiliation and hurt. But before she could get carried away, that annoying Humphrey common sense reared its ugly head and brought her back down to earth.
"Nate, you're drunk." She cursed herself as she said it but it was true, and she didn't want him to regret it and push her away yet again. Even being six years older, she still couldn't take it.
"I know," he murmured into the phone, "but I want to see you."
Jenny paused, the vodka flowing through her veins was too much to fight, and she finally told him the truth. "I want to see you, too."
"Please," he begged, and the pleading tone in his voice was almost too much to handle. But she was Jennifer Humphrey, and she'd made enough mistakes in her life without letting a drunk Nate Archibald seduce her into a one night stand.
"In the morning," Jenny said slowly, kindly, letting him—and herself—down as gently as she could. She'd come too far to be that girl again, even if she wanted to be.
"Jen, please." His voice was slowly beginning to fade against the crowd noise, and Jenny thought she could hear Chuck's voice in the background, asking him what he was doing.
"Make sure Chuck gets you back here safe, and I'll see you tomorrow," Jenny said with authority, trying to end the conversation before he was able to break her down. "Be safe." And she hung up before she could give in to his incoherent pleading for her—she'd believed him before, had been so positive that he'd meant every word of it, and look where she'd ended up. In Chuck's bed, burning every bridge she'd ever tried to build for herself.
As she climbed into bed, Jenny thought that it wasn't that Nate was a bad person; a liar who made false promises to women. It was that he himself had never known what he wanted, and just as soon as he seduced her, he'd get distracted by someone else. Serena, maybe. She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, the sound of Nate telling her how much he wanted her echoing in her head like a lullaby.
Jenny woke the next morning with a horrible pounding in her head and an equally loud pounding on her door. She struggled upright and threw a robe around her body and walked, eyes almost closed, to the door and jerked it open without even glancing through the peephole.
A robe-clad Nate was standing in the doorway, looking just about as disheveled as she probably looked. He was holding a cup of coffee carefully in his hands, as if it was more precious than gold, and in front of him was a room service cart with a coffee pot and several covered plates.
"Breakfast?" he asked, sending her a crooked smile.
Automatically raising a hand to her undoubtedly messy hair, Jenny attempted to smooth it down. "Good morning," she said self-consciously. "And um. . .yeah. That would be nice. Coffee at the very least." She opened the door wider and he pushed the cart into her suite.
"I uh. . ." Jenny hesitated, gesturing awkwardly to the bathroom. "Make yourself comfortable." She turned towards the bathroom, but he caught her hand.
"Wait, Jen. How do you want your coffee?"
Jenny froze. "Um. Black. Preferably pitch black."
He laughed, and she crinkled her forehead. "Loud," she whined, as her headache intensified. "How are you standing here and functioning and walking and talking after the night you undoubtedly had?"
"A mystery to both of us," Nate said way too cheerfully. "But I think it's probably has something to do with how much I wanted to see you."
Jenny's eyes widened and she gave him a half-hearted, deer-in-the-headlights smile before rushing to the safety and normalcy of the bathroom.
With a muffled string of swear words, she looked in the mirror and felt her stomach sink at the angry-looking halo of her hair—some of which was sticking straight up. And that wasn't even the worst of it. He was here. In her room. With coffee. Wanting to see her.
She'd had problem enough resisting him last night, when he'd been blocks and blocks away, only connected by a weak cell phone signal. If they were alone in a room together, Jenny was fairly certain that it would only be a matter of time before her walls came crashing down.
Her defenses had been strong last night—at least taking into account his not-inconsiderable charm—but under the weak December morning light, they felt as flimsy as cardboard, and it dawned on her that maybe she shouldn't even care.
So what if she took what he was so clearly offering? So what if he never talked to her again afterwards? She'd finally know what it was like to be with Nate Archibald; as much as she tried to deny it to herself, that was an experience she wanted to have at least once before she died. She was a grownup now, and she could handle whatever he decided to toss out at her. After all, she wasn't a weak, silly sixteen year old who tried to be tough, but couldn't help the gooey, sensitive, secretly romantic parts deep inside of her.
She wasn't the silly little girl who'd loved Nate Archibald from the first moment she'd seen him.
Neither was she the girl who'd cried buckets of tears after giving her virginity to Chuck instead of who she'd really wanted.
If Nate Archibald loved her and left, then so be it. It would be his loss, anyway.
When Jenny left the bathroom, her hair combed, her teeth brushed, and a light dusting of powder on her face, she was ready for whatever he wanted. And this time, she couldn't help but hope that this time it was her.
Nate handed her the coffee, and she gratefully took a long sip. "Dark as night," he said with amusement. "As soon as the kitchen heard who I was making an in-house delivery too, they knew exactly what you wanted."
"I did live here," she pointed out, plucking a lid off of one of the plates. "French toast, of course," she observed, drizzling syrup over the plateful of food. "My favorite."
"I thought you liked waffles," Nate observed, spreading a bagel with cream cheese. "Aren't waffles a Humphrey tradition?"
She gave him a steady look. "And here I thought embezzling, coke, and political corruption were an Archibald tradition."
"Touché."
Jenny toyed with her fork, her stomach still vaguely unsettled not only by the copious amount of vodka she'd drunk last night, but the presence of the man in front of her.
"Jenny," Nate said softly, and she was finally forced to look up and meet his gaze.
She took a bolstering breath of courage. "What are you doing here, Nate?"
"You said . . ." he paused and cleared his throat. "You said last night that we'd see each other tomorrow, and I didn't want to wait until the rehearsal dinner." He looked right into her, as if those baby blue eyes could see straight into her soul, the soul she'd had to mend after breaking everything so that he'd notice her, see her. But he'd only been able to see Serena.
He wasn't seeing Serena now. He was seeing her. Finally.
"I thought you wouldn't be able to remember any of that," she said hesitantly.
"I did, and Jen, I've got to apologize for that. It was . . .not alright. Not okay at all. I shouldn't have been so pushy. I was . . ."
"Drunk," Jenny finished for him, the sting of what he didn't want starting all over again. She was cursing herself—how could she have been so incredibly stupid as to think that he'd come here this morning to start what he'd wanted to last night. He'd only come to apologize for his "inappropriate" behavior. When was he ever going to see her, and want her, and not feel guilty about it because she was Dan's sister?
"You know," she continued, amazed and rather pleased that her voice was so steady and so sure, and not full of the hurt she felt, "I'm a big girl, Nate and I can take care of myself. Apology not necessary."
"That's the whole problem," Nate said in a rush before she could continue. "I see you again, and all I can think that it's my fault that you went through what you did. And I not only want to make it right, but I want you."
Jenny thought that this was one of those moments in your life when you could either sit back and let that bitch fate take charge (which is what she'd done before, hesitating that last moment before their lips touched) or you could tell fate to fuck off, and take exactly what you wanted.
She'd been too scared to even attempt the latter last time they'd been alone together, but this time, she was too frustrated, too fed-up, too determined to let the opportunity slide a second time. She set her fork down on her plate with a decided click, and stood, walking over to where Nate was sitting.
"Jen, is something wrong?" he barely managed get out before she leaned down and kissed him. Not an iffy kiss, or a hesitant kiss, but a determined, we-are-going-to do-this-finally kiss.
He was surprised, Jenny could tell from the way his muscles suddenly tensed, but his hands gripped her waist instinctively, delving into the soft folds of her robe as if they belonged there. Then he was kissing her back, with more hunger than she'd imagined possible, and they were hurtling together, their mouths fused together, back to that rainy sidewalk, back to that gala she'd crashed with her models, back to the intimate darkness of the penthouse.
She could taste coffee and frustration as his grip tightened on her waist, her robe, and she pushed her fingers through his hair, not as long as it had been long ago, but different. And better just because back then she hadn't been able to touch it, not like this, as their tongues brushed together, and now she could.
Nate broke the kiss first, and for a terrifying half-second, she was afraid he'd pull the rug out from under her again, but then she saw his smile, and knew that if it was going to happen, it wasn't going to happen right now.
"Wow," he murmured softly, his fingers reaching up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
"Wow is right," she giggled, sounding exactly like the sixteen year old he remembered—and now was never, ever going to forget. He'd never felt anything like that before, not with Blair, not with Vanessa, not with Serena. Never with anyone else, even Jenny herself so long ago. Suddenly he knew why Chuck had pursued Blair, despite all the good reasons not to. When you met her, you didn't let her go ever, even if it was a fight to convince her that what you had together was real.
Jenny's phone rang, breaking the intensity of the moment and as she answered it, moving into the front room of the suite, Nate sat back in his chair, contemplating the food in front of him that no longer looked as good as Jenny herself.
He'd told her, albeit drunkenly, that he wanted to make up choosing the wrong girl. Now, after that kiss, that game-changing, life-changing kiss, he couldn't. Matrons all over the Upper East Side had told him under giggling innuendos for years, that he couldn't screw the right girl on the first date. Jenny and him, well, they hadn't even had a date yet. He supposed their first date would be the wedding. He would have to be good, restrained, until then. He didn't want her to get the wrong idea and assume that she was just some other wedding one-night stand.
Jenny walked back into the room, an inscrutable expression on her face. He was honestly hoping that he'd blown her mind as completely as she'd blown his. "That was Serena," she explained. "She's apparently put off shopping for Chuck and Blair until the very last minute."
"Sounds like Serena," Nate said carefully. The last thing he wanted Jenny to think he and Serena were potentially anything—though he had a feeling that Blair had already dropped enough hints that it was going to take a lot of kisses just like that one to convince Jenny that he and S were done for good.
"I know, right?" Jenny rolled her eyes. "But I have to go with her on a Manhattan-wide search for the perfect gift. I tried begging off, but . . ."
"It's Serena. No explanation needed. She's relentless when she wants something."
"Exactly. But I've got to take a shower and be downstairs to meet her in forty-five minutes. So . . ."
Nate caught exactly what she was saying, and though he hated to leave her, he knew he should. Before he threw her down on the bed and made sure she was ruined for any other man, ever.
"I'll see you later tonight? At the rehearsal dinner?"
"Of course. It's a date."
"A date?" Nate quirked an eyebrow. "I thought the wedding was our date."
"Oh right," Jenny said, a twinkle in her eye betraying her serious expression. "My bad. Yes, I'll see you there."
"Good." Nate picked up his bagel and coffee and as he passed by her on the way to the door, leaned in and gave her another hard, quick, fierce kiss. "Then I'll see you tonight, Jenny-girl."