Dan leaves that afternoon.
Blair sits in a chair across from the bed watching him put his clothes back into his suitcase, her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. She wants to say something but there isn't anything left to say. He's going home. The sun is shining through the bedroom window, leaving a dappled pattern on the bedspread. It falls on Dan's hair and lights up the strands of gray here and there, and all she wants to do is run her fingers through his curls, but she doesn't stand up, doesn't go to him. Blair wants to cry but she won't allow herself. She just sits. Watching.
"There's food in the fridge." Dan says as she watches him. Blair nods. Always watching out for her, always taking care of her. She wants to do the same for him but she doesn't know how. Blair is lost.
She knows how he feels. That's how she felt with Chuck. Always scrambling, always trying to find a way to make him happy, always keeping the truth away. The truth that she wasn't actually happy herself. Getting hurt by him, over and over again. How has this happened? How has she become the one who instigates the pain, who keeps the dull ache alive?
Blair needs to go back.
She doesn't know how, has no clue if there's any way to go back, to experience what Dan went through, but she needs to have a true understanding of what she put him through. If she can understand, if she can feel his pain acutely, then maybe she can finally forgive herself and leave it all behind.
"I'm sorry." Blair says, and she feels like she can't say those words enough, can't feel them deep enough.
"It's okay," Dan answers, folding a shirt and placing it in his carry on. He lies. It's not okay. It's far from okay, but those are the words they say to each other to assuage the pain.
She wants to go to him, to touch him, kiss him, to find a way to make the pain go away with their lips and hands, to feel him inside her again, to fuck, to make love, to feel something, and maybe then he wouldn't leave her, maybe he would stay.
"Are we separating?"
Blair doesn't want to ask the question but she does anyway. The words hurt as she says one, each one slicing her heart like shards of glass. Her voice is shakey and her hands tremble a little. Dan looks up from packing and his eyes are wide and startled. She looks away.
"Are we?" he asks her. Blair wants to cry. How can he even ask the question, but then again, it's not like things are like they were before, only a day or so ago.
"I don't want to." It's the truth. They had promised each other forever. This is part of forever, even if it's hard. She doesn't want to run away from it or end it, she wants to find a way through it. She wants to do it together. Blair plays with a strand of her hair, looks down at the worn hardwood floor, anywhere but his face.
"Me either." Dan says quietly and she knows that he's looking at her but Blair still can't bring herself to look up. Not yet. Relief shoots through her with his words. He still wants her, no matter how fucked up everything is. And she still wants him.
"Then we're not." Blair says, finally meeting his gaze and she sees love and sadness and pain all mixed together, radiating from him, making her feel warm and melancholy at the same time. She wants to run to him, to throw her arms around him, to beg him not to leave. Instead she just sits there, staring across the room. Dan doesn't move, just keeps watching her. They say nothing, then he breaks her gaze and turns to look out the window.
"I love you, you know." Dan says hoarsely. "This is tearing me apart."
Blair finally moves, standing up and crossing the room to stand behind him. She wraps her arms around his chest and rests her forehead on his back, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing, his shirt soft on her cheek, and he feels warm and real and she never wants to let go.
"Me too." Blair whispers. She loves him. This is tearing her apart. They are so far apart but so close together that it hurts.
She doesn't go with him to the airport. It's not like when he's left before and Blair struggled to find a way to let him go. This time she needs to let him go. Dan takes a taxi and she stands on the balcony staring down at the street, watching him duck into the taxi, hoping he'll glance up and see her, tell her it's going to be okay. He never looks up.
Blair manages to make it to the bed before she breaks down, her mouth open as muffles her sobs with the pillows, not caring that she is soaking the expensive Italian linens. Her whole body shakes and she says his name over and over again.
Dan.
Come back.
Don't leave me.
I love you.
No one is there to hear her pleas.
He goes home. Not to their home, not to the airy Parisian loft where everything reminds Blair of him, but the home he's had without her for the last fifteen years. Blair can picture the house in Laguna Beach, and she wants to go there but she knows he needs time to figure this out. Blair returns to Paris the next day, leaving Rome and all notions of a romantic holiday behind. She drops the key in the lock box and promises herself that she'll never return. Rome has become as bitter for her as it has been for Dan. If they make it through this they'll find an entirely new place to build their memories.
The loft is cold and empty when she returns, and Blair knows she should call in to work, tell them she's back sooner than expected, but she doesn't want to. Work isn't the escape it used to be for her. She bumps around the silent empty rooms, small things reminding her of Dan. The art he insisted on putting on the living room wall. A program for the ballet they attended together. She sits in his office, running her fingers over the edge of the desk, find one of his detestable flannel shirts and buries her face in its softness, inhaling deeply because it smells like him. She sleeps cloistered on her side of the bed, throwing her arms out in her sleep, looking for him, only to wake disoriented, panicked, until she remembers that he's not there.
Two days pass by. Blair thinks she's going crazy.
The phone rings. Blair dashes into the kitchen and grabs it, hoping to hear his voice on the other end.
"Hello?"
"B?"
Serena's voice is on the other end and disappointment squeezes the breath out of Blair. She can't answer, just stand in the kitchen, holding the phone to her ear not saying anything.
"Nate told me."
The tears start to flow.
"I'm so lost," Blair manages to whisper. "I'm so lost without him."
"It's not over." Serena says gently and Blair is happy that her friend will lie for her. "It's just a blip."
"I don't know."
"He loves you."
Blair chokes back a sob.
"Heyyyyy," Serena shushes over the phone. "you need a friend right now."
Blair agrees. In that moment she makes a decision. She's going to New York. She tells Serena who agrees that it's a good idea and says that their guest room is available if Blair doesn't want to stay alone in the penthouse, and they can stay up late and drown her sorrows in ice cream and it will be like old times. Blair sniffs, wishing she could manage to get upset without her nose running in an undignified way, and tells Serena that staying with her would be nice.
"It's set then," Serena says with finality.
Blair is on a plane to New York in a few hours, dragging along the bag she'd originally packed for Rome, on her way to see her friend. She gazes out the window of the plane as it soars over the Atlantic, staring out into the eternal nothingness of the night, alone with only her thoughts to keep her company.
She had hurt him. Blair knew that fifteen years ago when she had walked away from Dan. How could someone not be hurt after that, but she hadn't realized until now how long he'd been carrying that pain with him. She'd never really known how much pain he had until she'd read Outside and seen Dan's heartbreak laid out in the undeniable black and white of prose. Now she knew that the pain she'd caused him so long ago had never really gone away.
Blair wants to go back. She wants to make a different choice, to take Dan's hand on that day when he looked at her and told he she needed to decide what she wanted. She wants to make her choice all over again, because she knows now it would be different, and their lives would be different, and she wouldn't be here with her heart shattering in slow motion and with no idea how to keep it together. She can only stand back and watch it happen with no idea how to make any of this stop. She knows now that all she's ever wanted was Dan, but that doesn't undo the damage that she did.
She should have gone to Rome, should have set aside her fears and ideas of what love should be and embraced what love could be. They could have spent the summer together, grown up together, and maybe they would be busy with birthday parties and choosing schools and raising kids instead of trying to figure out how to untangle the past all these years later.
None of that happened. Blair kept lying to herself and went with Chuck. Dan immersed himself in anger and went to Rome with Georgina. Nothing happened how it should have. There's no way to go back.
Blair closes her eyes and she feels like she's going to cry again but there's nothing left but pain. She opens her eyes to look back into the darkness and then a solitary thought jumps out at her.
She never knew what happened to Dan in Rome. She was busy with Chuck, busy trying to be the perfect girlfriend, the perfect business woman. She'd read Outside, but she still had no idea what Rome had been like for him. She wishes she could travel back in time, be there, see what was so bad about Rome for Dan, but she can't. Blair is stuck, trapped by her own decisions, and there's no way to really understand what Dan has gone through. Except...there might be one way...
Georgina.
Blair says her name out loud.
"Georgina Sparks."
She had gone to Rome with Dan. She would know what had happened to him, would be able to tell Blair about Dan's pain. She could help Blair understand. And then she could figure out how to make things right, because Dan can't. He's too close, to hurt. And Blair can't, because she was never there and at the time she didn't care. But Georgie. She was there, she was a witness.
Blair smiles.
The plane lands in JFK and Blair feels like she's vibrating with excitement. She grabs her bag from the overhead and walks off the plane. As soon as she can get a signal she dials the number for Dorota.
"Miss Blair!" Dorota sound surprised to hear her voice.
"I'm in New York and I need your help Dorotoa." Blair says quickly. "I need a phone number."
"Of course, Miss Blair. What number do you need?"
"Georgina Sparks." Blair says firmly, "It's time for me to dredge up the past and Georgina is the person I need to help me do it."
TBC