Disclaimer: I don't own Gossip Girl.
Thank you for reading, and again thank you to all who have left me such nice reviews. You are all wonderful.
--Sarah
Rebound.
Carter has just put his phone in his pocket when he collides with a small figure outside the Waverley Inn and is met by wide blue eyes and a quick-fire exclamation of apology accompanied by a peal of laughter.
The awkward meet-cute introduction commences and he learns her name is Brooke. He's surprised to find himself instantly charmed, because really just moments ago his head was swimming all uncharacteristically as it has been for days and it had almost reached the point where he wasn't certain such pleasant sensations were possible anymore.
She's dressed all in black, patterned tights and patent pumps that are probably two seasons old but he's never been one to notice or care about things like that, and a ponytail. It's the uniform of a cocktail waitress and she unperturbedly informs him she wasn't up to par with the bar's dress code and apologizes once more before moving to head past him.
He catches her by the elbow and she smiles knowingly, like she's been in this position before, because she has dozens of times over, when he wields his power as a Baizen at the door and they head for the bar together.
XOXO
Blair hangs up following her most recent "drunk dial" to Carter and regards herself steadily in the mirror.
"No more."
She showers for what feels like a lifetime, letting the hot water work out the knots in her neck, and tries not to think about how tired he had sounded when he'd dutifully called her back and let her pretend it was all his idea.
Like there was nothing left but yet he'd still picked up to give her something, anything he could.
She probably should read more into that, but then she worries it's just her fooling herself. After all, she's always thought the men in her life were something more than they turned out to be.
She'd meant what she said about distractions, she assures herself, and so even if he and his penetrating eyes were going to insist upon maintaining a permanent residence inside her mind every time she closed her eyes, she was just going to have to evict them with more pressing thoughts.
Tomorrow's the day, she tells herself as she carefully applies a coat of Chanel Paparazzi to her nails because scheduling a manicure has somehow slipped her mind for entirely too long. She's not sure what's been keeping her so preoccupied, and she really has no idea why there's a strange sensation like melancholy when she firmly insists to herself that whatever it is is done, gone, over, the end.
Tomorrow is the day she'll figure it all out, and she doesn't need anyone's help.
XOXO
Brooke drinks Ketel One and soda, like all the Brookes he's known before, and she talks with flushed passion and exuberance about being head over heels in love, and when she does so she means New York.
He had her pegged the moment he laid eyes on her, but as she goes on, all flashing white teeth and glowing cheeks, his smile broadens to a grin as he remembers how much he likes the Brookes of the world.
He doesn't ask because he already knows: She's about his age, recently graduated from college, probably someplace green and rolling and gothic in New England and after she finished her degree in something like Literature or Poly Sci she decided all she wanted to do was see the world and so she started with New York, because it's hard, when you're 22 and not something along the lines of a Baizen, to just take off and do it. And really, New York is world enough for most people.
She tells him she's from Boston and his grin becomes a smirk and he slyly asks what part of New Hampshire or someplace she's actually from, and she laughs delightedly at his insight and informs him that actually, it's Rhode Island, Narragansett at that, and then she surprises him right back when she asks him to tell her where he's been, like, really been in his life.
He was sure she'd have had him neatly boxed in as already being fitted firmly in his father's shoes and pulling 80 hours in a corner office, but she shakes her head and scoffs.
"Please," she tells him. "I've been here 9 months. I've met a million of you, but they didn't have … something. You're different."
He's shocked by his relief, because he's been feeling for a month now that he's been losing that part of him, that something that has kept him perpetually unsatisfied by the narrow-minded life of privilege surrounding him.
He thinks maybe he was in part ready to lose it for something else, but since the something else has been gone he's been desperate to find who he was before again.
So he tells Brooke about Asia, and he tells her about Eastern Europe and South America, and her eyes are bright and she leans in close to hear him and she shakes her head in lots of wonder and asks where to next.
"Paris," he says, and there's something like disappointment in her expression, though she pushes it away quickly.
"Oh," she replies. "Paris. But it's so … well. Paris."
He knows what she means, and he signals the bartender for another round and changes the subject to European literature because he's just realized he can't simultaneously be Carter Baizen and explain that he's going to Paris because he desperately needs to leave New York but he's still childishly and pathetically hopeful that he can somehow, on neutral ground, run into the only bit of New York that has ever made him want to stay and consider the life he was born into.
And maybe they can start over.
And without asking too many questions the only place he can think of that such a ridiculous pipe dream might be possible is someplace south of Paris.
It's stupid and pathetic and the stuff of much, much weaker men, he thinks, and so he quickly adds two shots of Patron to their drink order and gives Brooke a rogue grin and asks where she lives in the city.
XOXO
Blair wonders how she got here, as she sips her nonfat latte and tries to focus on the blandly handsome face of Fletcher Evans.
Over the last half hour his voice has gone from soothingly deep and distinguished to quite droning and irritating, and she has half a mind to demand to know what exactly he's been prattling on about since she stopped paying attention five minutes in and request that he get to the point and wrap it up.
She'd risen with the sun, ready to take back her life, and it started off quite well, if she does say so herself. Her Philip Lim tulip skirt and the sleek ponytail at the nape of her neck put her in efficiency mode and she'd grabbed a legal pad from Cyrus' study and headed for the park.
After 15 minutes she'd disgustedly tossed aside the paper allegedly outlining her new plan, which read something like a child's fairytale - wasn't she over that by now, after everything?! – and furiously crossed both her legs and her arms where she sat on a bench opposite Sheep's Meadow and closed her eyes to focus.
All that had been behind her lids was a vision of another pair of eyes, though, liquid blue-green and relentless and she'd sucked in a breath and opened her own only to find herself staring into a different pair, light brown and sparkling at the sight of her.
Fletcher Evans' father had been a partner in Harold's firm years ago before starting his own practice, and if there'd been any older crush she'd had that could have rivaled the one they all had but never spoke about because it was something like the stuff of legends on Carter, it was on Fletcher the dashing Dalton lacrosse star.
And now here we are, she sighs to herself.
Brunching at L'Absinthe, though she's not eating and he isn't noticing. She thinks perhaps the crush was best left to junior high, but then she forces herself to smile and push such a thought away, mind racing.
Fletcher is exactly what she needs, she thinks, clearly she's sure, though her thought process is ringing rather hysterically inside her own brain and ears. He's everything she ever said she wanted and then tried to convince herself other people were. He's got Nate's good looks, minus the poor-little-rich boy ennui, and Chuck's confidence, minus the … Chuck. And Carter … well she's not sure what he has that Carter doesn't, aside from perhaps a willingness to abide by all the rules.
Oddly, that quality doesn't comfort her.
"And so you'll be headed to Yale," Fletcher's saying just as she's shaking off a chill that has suddenly come over her. "Will you be looking to study law after your undergrad? You know I was an editor of the Yale Law Journal-"
"No," Blair interrupts him, suddenly, loudly, and he and the diners at the nearest table fall silent in surprise. She attempts to relax her tone. "No, I won't be heading to Yale. I wasn't accepted. I wasn't accepted anywhere."
She takes a sip of water and hopes her breathing is controlled as her heart races with the exertion of saying it out loud, again, and then to herself, again.
I am Blair Waldorf, and I have no idea what I'm doing.
Fletcher nods slowly. "Well," he considers. "What, then?"
She waves her legal pad around and rolls her eyes. "I was getting to that, before I got … distracted …" she trails off as he looks somewhat baffled though not exactly bothered.
She realizes the weight of the word, distraction, taking in the vapid one before her and considering the one she'd described as so just over a week but at the same time a hundred years before – the one who traced the contours of her face and offered to help her figure it all out even if he was just as clueless as she was, and was still there at the touch of a button even after she'd sent him away.
So maybe today won't be the day she'll figure it all out, she thinks, as a numbing wave of loss spreads through her entire body, save for a burning sensation in her chest.
She leaves the restaurant and walks uptown.
XOXO
Brooke lives on the Upper East Side, exactly where he knew she'd live – the Upper East Side for recent yuppie graduates, not for Manhattan's elite. Far enough up in that a few more blocks would put her in Spanish Harlem, but then again if it had only been a couple of blocks west toward the park she'd have been in Carnegie Hill. As it stands she's someplace in the low 90's between First and Second, at once brilliantly close but light years away from the Upper East Side of the world he's supposed to exist in, in a walkup, and he loves this neighborhood and thinks rather ruefully that he's sure her apartment is delightfully miniscule and may even have a cockroach or two sneaking around in the walls.
But despite hanging out with her straight through after hours at the bar and then having Bloody Marys for breakfast as the sun rose, he's not going up.
He likes Brooke. He's liked many a girl like Brooke, and he thinks she's a lot like him. New York's been her playground like the world's been his, but he can't meet in the middle with her because of late New York has somehow become, for him, what it was always supposed to be: Home.
But there's no place for him at home, and so he has to flee.
Brooke smiles at him without a hint of disappointment or confusion because she gets it, and because when it's not quite yet home, New York is all about falling in love for the night and then starting over the next.
It's something he knows well, and suddenly, sickeningly, realizes he never wants again.
She thanks him for bringing her home and points him in the direction of a coffee shop she thinks he'll like, and then she casually mentions, without meaning it like she's seeking an invitation, that Paris is not a place one goes alone, and then she disappears forever.
XOXO
Blair is pretty sure she's never believed in signs of any sort, because she and fate have really never gotten along considering fate always seemed to be of the mind that it was in charge.
And everyone knows that despite her penchant for occasionally taking large drinks from a cup of crazy, Blair Waldorf is in charge of everything.
That considered, though, a current runs through her body when she recognizes tousled brown hair and the curve of a set of shoulders beneath a rumpled white dress shirt in a coffee shop foreign to her someplace uptown she's not even sure how she ended up in, and she holds her breath and lets fate have this one.
He turns, and she exhales and does the only thing her racing heart will let her because it's completely shut down any function her brain might have and so there's nothing left to suggest an alternative: She crosses the distance between them in fewer steps than her slight stature and 4-inch Choos would suggest possible and thoughtfully removes his coffee from his hand and sets it on the counter before flinging her arms around his neck and kissing him like it's the end of the world.
He's smiling as she finally breaks away, just far enough to gasp for breath, her face still touching his, and he holds her at her waist in a way that feels to her he'd hold her through anything and nothing would get him to let go.
"I'm sorry," she tells him. "I'm done, now. I'm done trying to plan, I'm done trying to fix. The only thing I want to fix is this."
He moves one hand to tangle it in her hair and raises his eyes skyward in mock-consideration.
"Well," he tells her. "You're a little late. I was just on my way out of town. This evening, actually."
"I'll go with you," she replies instantly, and he laughs.
"You don't even know where I'm going!"
"It doesn't matter. Wherever it is, it's the only place I want to be," she explains, her own lips curving in a smile when she takes in the light in his eyes.
His grin softens and he brings his other hand up so that both can cup her face and she holds his gaze, nodding, sure. He kisses her forehead, and then meets her lips until they both run out of breath again, and then he takes her hand and reaches for his coffee.
"Let's go home," he says, and she nods.
They've made it back down to the '80s when turns to him, tone nonchalant but eyes a bit worried.
"It wasn't Cambodia or someplace, was it?" she asks. "I mean, at least say it was Singapore or something with decent hotels, I don't even have a backpack …"
He laughs for the better part of two blocks and then stops on a corner to kiss her again.
Note: Oh, that was long for this series. Hm. Hope no one minded.