Chapter 3 : Serena Van der Woodsen

Being paired up with Nate, was the best thing I could wish for. No unnecessary conversations. No awkward silences. Just me and my friend. Together. Enjoying the time we have together before we're off to college. In the first half hour of the period we had answered the first 3 questions. We were now on our last one. 'Tell each other a secret'. Since Georgina Sparks had made sure there wasn't any secret left in the vault last fall, I really hadn't anything to tell. And with Nate, well, he was pretty simple really behind the façade. What could he been hiding. A lot apparently. I was obligated to know these things; his secrets. I was his friend after all.

"So you're going to Europe with Vanessa because she likes you, but you don't like her?"

"No I like her…"

"As a friend?" I gestured towards him. I could feel where this conversation was going.

He looked up from his cup of coffee. And let his bagel drop down a bit. "You remember Blair's 17th birthday party?"

Surprised as I was by the sudden change of topic, I decided to go with it anyway: "Pretty hard to forget. I got food poisoning from that sushi, or was it maybe just nausea from seeing Chuck and Blair make out?" we laughed.

"Well, I wasn't there right?," I nodded in agreement, "I was here, on these steps, talking to," he paused for a millisecond, but that millisecond was enough to make me realize that whoever he was referring to, was the girl who he'd been thinking about all day long, "… someone…" he finished.

"Is that why you took me here? Was that the reason why this was your favourite spot? Because you talked to … someone…?" I asked.

He looked down again, taking a bite from his bagel. "Jenny, I ta- I talked to Jenny"

Jenny, hmm, so she was the mystery girl? It only figures they'd have to be together at some point; I mean he was Nate Archibald after all. "Oh" was all I could say. He repeated my words with a slight sense of disbelief; "Oh?". I smiled at him. "We talked about my dad and Blair, and it felt as if she really understood me you know?" He made that face again, the one of disbelief. Was he afraid of thinking that Jenny might actually have understood him? Was he scared that if he admitted to that fact that it would mean he would actually have to settle down? That he'd actually found someone he could trust, that he could talk to? Was he so scared of that? "Ever since that night I've been coming here every Saturday evening. Sometimes it'd be 4AM, other times it'd be just past 11. But every Saturday night I come here, and sit to think"

"About what?" I asked, intrigued by his story. "Stuff, and other – stuff" he replied, inhaling deeply and exhaling and back again. "Why do you come here?" I felt kind of stupid for asking all these questions, but I had to get inside his mind to figure out what was really going on with him. "Because it reminds me of her"

"Of Jenny?" he nodded. "Do you miss her that much?" I paused, "I mean, I didn't even know you were into her…" I sympathised. "I didn't know myself" he said. "But when we kissed everything became clear to me and I, I, I wrote this letter" he handed me the letter. "Read it" he ordered me.

I can't hide the way I really feel about you. The emotions are too strong for me to just pretend they don't exist… I think about you all the time. Now that your brother knows about us, I have to stay away from you, but I don't want to. I really care about you. I just don't know what to do.

"Wow" I whispered. "Did she read this?" I held the letter tightly in my left hand. "No, Vanessa took it before she could"

"So basically Vanessa is to blame for all of 'this'" and as I said 'this' I made my arm fly up in the air to gesture towards the current situation. "What does that mean?" confused, he shot me a look. "Look, I know what Jenny did to Vanessa at the Snowflake Ball but when I hear you talk – I mean – it was kind of her own fault right? She had it coming on her"

"No she didn't, Jenny shouldn't have done that. Isn't friendship supposed to mean more than some guy, I mean that's what they say in movies." He sipped from his latte.

"But that doesn't that also go for Vanessa?" I reasoned with him, trying to make him see what it was that he really wanted, needed. "You're kind of setting up a second standard for Jenny, it doesn't seem fair" he pressed his lips in a thin line and spoke; "It's just worse with Jenny, because it seems so unlike her"

"We all have our flaws Nate, and if you're willing to deny yourself the right to have what you want just so you won't have to come true about your feelings and owe up to the fact that you were wrong, then you're not who I thought you were"

After I said that last part his face changed expression; almost as if he'd seen the light. Finally he'd come clean and devoted himself to who he was again; a loving, caring, wonderful guy. And as the last of school-hours fell; his cover did too. And in that moment I realized Nate was very much in love with Jenny.