Blair picks up the drink and it makes her mouth pucker. She smiles up at Dan still standing above her, waiting for something, and Blair gestures at the empty chair next to her.
"Don't just stand there, Humphrey." Blair grins.
Something in his posture shifts and Blair sees Dan's shoulders relax a little. He folds himself into the chair next to her and they sit, looking at each other, not saying anything. Blair drums her fingers on the white linen tablecloth and wonders if she should talk about something, like the weather, or sports.
"Where is your girlfriend?" Blair finally asks, taking another sip of the drink, liking the warmth is spreads through her chest. She's decided to move past the mundane and plunge into what she really wants to know. Dan laughs.
"Broom Helga?" he asks, "I see you read the article."
Blair nods, not sure if she likes that he knows she cared enough to read about him.
Dan tells her that Helga turned out to be pretty far on the crazy side, more interested in her career than Dan, and not long after the article, they split up. Blair looks down at the table and pretends to examine her hands so her face won't betray the fact that she's happy about this turn of events.
"Speaking of significant others, how's Chuck?" Dan asks wryly, his voice betraying that all these years later Chuck Bass is still a thorn in his side. Blair's eyes snap back up and she finds that Dan is studying her, watching her intently, gauging her reaction to his words. Blair is surprised that no one has actually told Dan that she and Chuck are over, have been over for a long time now.
"You've have to to ask him," Blair says evenly, almost too casually, because inside she's excited that she gets to be the one to tell him that she and Chuck have been over for a long time. "I haven't spoken to him for years."
Surprise flickers through Dan's eyes, and they go from her face to her left hand that is bare of any rings and back to her face. Then Blair sees a small smile forming around the corners of his mouth.
"Wow, I didn't see that coming." Dan murmurs almost to himself, glancing away from her and out into the room. Then surprise morphs into something else, maybe pain, but he looks away too quickly for Blair to be able to read his face. "I thought you two were forever..."
His voice trails off but they both know what he was going to say. She picked Chuck over him, and just like that all the pain from fifteen years ago comes rushing back and Blair finds that she's starting to tremble. She wants to reach out, the place her hand on his and tell him that he has been her greatest regret, that she had been too young to really know what she wanted when she made that decision, too young to really know what love was. Blair doesn't reach out, she just remains there, glancing over at Dan, wishing things were different, but they aren't. Finally she manages to whisper hoarsely the only words she thinks matter at this moment.
"I'm sorry."
Dan turns and looks at her again, and now she can see that it is pain in his eyes, raw and fresh, and she's sorry over again because it's been fifteen years and he's clearly still hurt.
"Me too." Dan whispers back. They still don't touch, just sit next to each other, not talking. Blair takes another sip of her drink and stares down at the ice cubes floating in it, not wanting to look at Dan, not wanting to see the pain again.
"It was a long time ago." Dan finally says. His words are a kind of exoneration for Blair, cutting her loose from the intense responsibility she suddenly feels for what happened and Blair looks up at him, able to meet his gaze again. She is surprised to find warmth this time. He's smiling and suddenly she's happy that everything has led the two of them to this moment. It feels like their destiny, to be sitting at this table, picking at plates of horderves, making small talk that's actually far short of small. Although casual, their words are about everything.
"Yes," Blair agrees. "It was a long time ago."
The band starts another song and Blair recognizes it, and as if on queue, Dan turns to her and says, 'forget it, Blair, it's Chinatown,' a wide smile on his face.
Chinatown. Blair thinks of the end of the movie when Faye Dunaway is sitting in that car, a gunshot to her head and the entire thing is written off with one line. It's Chinatown. It's the cycle everyone is stuck in, the inevitable tragedy that will happen over and over, and each time they strive to change the end of it, each time they're stuck thinking maybe the outcome will be different. It's like Dan and Blair.
Are they stuck again? If this starts again, will it just end with the same heartbreak?
The song is The Way You Look Tonight, whistled by Jack Nicholson in one of the scenes, the bandage across his nose, the anti-hero striving to save the girl and the world, and Blair remembers watching that movie curled next to Dan. She hadn't thought of that movie or that moment for years, and now Dan was bringing it all back to her.
I'll be thinking of you, and the way you look tonight.
She laughs.
"Nice one, Humphrey."
Dan smiles, and they are back to casual and friendly and all the sadness and pain has been packed away for another time and another day. They are back to Humphrey and Waldorf, back to friendly banter. It's a place they haven't been for a very long time, long before she chose Chuck and left town and ended up with a broken heart and regrets. She's missed this.
His eyes soften and something imperceptible shifts yet again and Blair smiles.
"You look really beautiful tonight." Dan says, still looking at her, and Blair's smile fades because the moment is suddenly serious and it feels strangely significant. He says this like he's going to remember this moment forever, and Blair thinks she will. Before she can thank him, his hand is extending towards her and Dan is asking Blair to dance, and she says 'yes' because there's really no reason to answer differently. His grip is firm and Blair feels vulnerable and his touch is the only thing that is anchoring her, keeping her from floating away. She's 36 years old, she runs a corporation, and here she is, entirely undone by holding hands with a boy.
Blair blushes.
They wind their way through the tables, Blair's hand still in Dan's and finally reach the dance floor. Dan takes Blair into his arms, and for a moment they are both stiff, formal, a little unsure of what to do, then his hand slides from her waist around to her back and pulls her towards him until there are mere inches separating them from each other.
This feels so right.
Blair wraps her arms around his neck and looks up at him, and everything between them slips away, all the betrayal and pain that lives under the surface despite being dulled by years of separation, and Blair thinks maybe all those years weren't really wasted. Maybe they were bringing them both to this moment.
I have never stopped loving you.
It's not a shocking revelation. She's always known that losing Dan was a kind of pain that never leaves, and he was her biggest regret. But as he pulls her even closer and his fingers find the skin on her back exposed by the cut of her dress, she realizes that her feelings for this man have never waned in the past fifteen years. As she sways in his arms to the beat of the music, she feels just as intensely as she did before everything got mixed up and confused and she chose what she thought was love. Maybe it's more intense than it ever was before. Now she realizes that she had the kind of love she'd always wanted all along.
It's almost like the last fifteen years didn't happen.
Dan doesn't break her gaze and Blair fights the urge to look away because everything is suddenly intense and overwhelming, and she is unraveling bit by bit, but she stays there, face upturned, looking up at him.
"You know what I won't ever forget?" Dan murmurs and she's even closer, the inches between them erased, her body pressed against his, and they sway slowly.
"What?" Blair smiles, feeling happy. How long has it been since she's felt happy? She's expecting him to dredge up some memory from the past, some random moment on some random day, but Dan surprises her when he tells her something different.
"This. You. The way you look tonight. You have always been so beautiful, but tonight, you take my breath away."
Blair feels tears start to well up in her eyes. She whispers his name and he smiles at her, then Blair dips her head and rests it on his shoulder, and his arms tighten around her and they are completely tangled up in each other, still swaying, and the music shifts, the tempo speeding up and suddenly the dance floor around them is alive, women and men twirling about, laughing and having fun, and Dan and Blair don't move, just keep swaying, holding onto each other, lost in the moment, until Blair feels someone bump into her from behind. She breaks their embrace and turns around to see Serena in Nate's arms, her face glowing from exertion and Blair is sure she made Nate take dance lessons just for this moment. It's something Blair would have done.
Serena laughs and she is again golden, and after all this time she can still be the most beautiful, untouchable person in the room.
"You two are the best wedding present I could have gotten." Serena gasps out just before Nate twirls her away and Blair feels the heat rise up her cheeks. Dan clears his throat and she feels him stiffen. Blair turns back to him only to find him looking away from her, avoiding her gaze, and she's filled with sadness because the moment has slipped away. They are standing there, people dancing all around them, not touching anymore, and all Blair wants is to get that moment back, to be in Dan's arms, her cheek resting on his shoulder, his arms warm around her, his voice deep and rumbling in her ear, and his fingers absently tracing a path across the bare skin of her back, making her shiver a little. She wants that back, but it is gone.
"Well, thanks Humphrey." Blair says, trying to keep her voice casual when she feels so far from anything remotely like casual.
"It was nice, Waldorf."
Nice. He was right, it was nice. But it was so much more and now it's gone. Blair doesn't know how to get it back, doesn't know how to bridge this sudden awkwardness. They break apart and Blair stands in front of Dan feeling out of sorts, not knowing what to do now, so she mumbles something about being hungry and starts walking back to the table, Dan trailing behind her.
Blair feels her bottom lip tremble and she tells herself that she's too grown up to cry, that she will not let herself become unhinged here and now. She's glad Dan can't see her face and she lets her hair fall forward to conceal the devastation ripping through her, wanting to grab her clutch and flee from the room, but managing to keep it together.
It was a momentary thing. Blair had been foolish to let herself think differently as she relaxed against Dan, taking in the way he smelled, pretending it could be some sort of beginning. She'd been kidding herself, pretending that they hadn't written their final chapter a long time ago. How could she have thought it could be different.
"Blair."
She is back at the table and trying her best to avoid his gaze, and his hand is on her shoulder, and Blair flinches.
"Don't." she says quietly. "We can't go back."
He wants to argue with her. She can tell by the way he opens his mouth to say something, and she raises her hand and Dan falls silent. All the things unsaid drift between them, pushing them further apart. She was foolish to think that fifteen years didn't matter. There is too much distance, too much damage done.
Blair can do this. She can return to Paris and pretend that this, this moment, the two of them swaying together, hearts beating in time, never happened. She has a life. She has a business to run. She has made it this long without him. He can go back to California. They can keep living their lives because if they've made it this far, there's no reason why they can't go on without each other. It's not like when they were twenty one and the world hung by a thread and everything was so desperate.
This way it hurts less.
"Thank you for the dance, Humphrey," Blair manages, not knowing if she can stand in front of him much longer without letting the tears that are on the edges of her eyes spill over onto her cheeks. She picks her clutch up off the table and turns away from him. Then without looking back, she walks away.
TBC