He was only on his second glass of whisky when the doorman rang up to ask if he was expecting a Miss J Humphrey. He knew he was screwed anyway and his judgement had disappeared before he'd even touched the alcohol, so he let her in.

"You were supposed to meet me at Nobu an hour and a half ago. What's going on Nate?" In answer he tossed her a letter.

"It's from Blair." Jenny frowned

"What, she hasn't heard of email?"

"It's Blair." She gave him a small smile, opened it and began to read. At some point she sank onto Chuck's couch – this was after all the Bass' apartment - and he shuddered at the thought that the two could, even in the most indirect way, be in contact again. Her blue eyes found his.

"Do you know what this says?"

"Something along the lines of, I want you to come and work for Waldorf designs?"

"She'd give me control of my own sub brand. At twenty two." Nate shrugged.

"Yeah, well. You and Blair were always one of a kind."

"Why did you stand me up?" A beat. "Nate?"

"Because you belong here." He spread his arms. "Clearly. And coming back to New York, even after all this time, it's dangerous J. You know what the city does to you."Perhaps the whiskey had impacted more than he'd thought. Her eyes were far too bright for his liking.

"Aren't we a little past that whole thing?"

"What?"

"The whole you saving Little J thing Nate! I do not need your help any more to save me from the big bad wolf."

"He got you." She gazed at him uncomprehendingly.

"What?"

"The last wolf got you." Too late he realised the brightness in her eyes were actually tears.

"Yeah well, you didn't seem so worried at the time."

"Jenny-"

"You sided with Blair."

"I didn't side with anyone."

"That's the point. The one freaking time I actually needed your help to save me from myself, from everyone who hated me, you did nothing Nate. You didn't even care. At least Chuck apologised. After the fuss you made over Damien, you just... "

"I couldn't talk to you."

"Because the holy virgin had been tainted?" He flinched at her tone.

"No. It was my fault. I know," he dropped his gaze "I knew you were looking for me and you found him. But you ended up wanting him instead. Everyone does." For a second he thought she might slap him. She very nearly did.

"Don't you dare make this about you. Don't you – he took advantage of me. And I didn't choose him over you, I chose him because he was there and you were with my sister, Nate." A tear snaked down her cheek and he had to suppress the urge to wipe it away. "I couldn't choose you, don't you get that? It wasn't then that I needed you - I made that decision, I took responsibility for that decision, you fool!" She was shouting now and it felt awful, but at the same time, it felt wonderfully overdue. "I needed you to be my friend, to acknowledge my existence after the fact that I screwed Chuck. And you just stuck your head in the sand and pretended like it never happened. Who does that Nate?! "

He pulled her to him, arms securely around her as she attempted to stifle her violent sobs in his shirt.

"I'm sorry," he muttered into her hair. "I am so, so sorry." He couldn't fault a word of it. From the day he'd run into her outside Blair's seventeenth birthday party, he'd done his best to protect fresh faced Jenny Humphrey from the world, had put her and her Brooklynite freshness up on his untouchable pedestal only to find that the UES got in everywhere and that a pedestal only gave her a greater height from which to fall. And it had been far easier to pretend the Jenny and Chuck debacle had never happened than to acknowledge that his best friend from kindergarten had taken Nate's place yet again.

You're a really special girl Jenny.

She laughed awkwardly as she extracted herself from his embrace and wiped away her tears.

"Sorry about your shirt." Nate smiled at her.

"Friends?"

"Sure."