Gossip Girl: Fic - If He Leaves You Cold in the City (2/2)
There is a tortured part of her that looks for him at the airport, hoping that he’ll have masterminded one more grand gesture designed to sweep her off her feet. Then again, romance is so dead to her she’s not sure how she’d respond.
Blair thought she had time, time to show up in person and surprise him. Texting your soon-to-be-ex-ex-lover to say, ‘hold up, I’m running late,’ hardly screamed classy, let alone amorous. If her life were a movie, he would have stayed there all night, unable to believe she didn’t love him. He would have fingered the peonies until the petals were all gone…
The image goes sour in her mind as she realizes the unintentional double entendre.
“Blair? They’re boarding first class,” Serena says, gathering her purse.
Blair marks the page she hasn’t been reading with her ticket and rises to her feet, following her best friend to the gate. Serena practically bubbles with excitement, so thrilled to be single and traveling. She views this as some sort of great adventure, a Striking Out on One’s Own. Blair knows this is the image she sold her, but she’s glad when Serena pops a sleeping pill and reclines her chair.
Blair orders a vodka martini and reopens her book. She’s very nearly done, which is a tragedy in itself, because she seriously doubts Humphrey will be providing her with any literary tips in the future. Even if he finally acts on the torch he’s still lugging around for the beautiful blonde snoring lightly next to her, Blair will still be the obstinate preppy bitch who won’t let his precious little sister come home.
Maybe she’ll read the book again. Most of the minutes and hours she’s spent with it open in front of her hasn’t exactly qualified as reading time.
Chuck’s face when Dan punched him. It stood as her first clue, the image that made her stomach twist, even as she screamed indignantly at Dan. Chuck looked at him like he knew he deserved this.
You, tell her.
Blair will never forgive Jenny for the role she played in this, because Blair of all people knows what it’s like to hand over your innocence to a rogue. There’s a line and a decision, and you make a choice and live with it. She can empathize with the confusion, the fear, the sadness, even the regret. But Jenny understood the game and the stakes, and Dan will never be able to see that his sister hasn’t been a little girl in a long time.
But she also won’t forget that Dan was willing to tell her the truth, to do something extremely, painfully hard. And that he chose not to throw it in her face, or let Jenny use it later in some twisted scheme of revenge.
And Chuck just stood there, waiting for Blair to put it together. And she hates him for it. It feels good to admit it to herself, more than hating what he does to her or how he makes her feel. She absolutely loathes that he would have let her go on believing a lie, and, when faced with the truth, that he had no confession to make.
Blair wants him to burn in the bed he made (and slept in). Almost as much as she wants to save him from the flames. But she’s not going to think about that right now.
---------------------------------------------------
Gossip Girl follows them to Paris.
Serena is furious when someone sends her a link to Eurotrip, Anyone?, the Blair-and-Serena feature on Gossip Girl’s homepage. Blair is torn between mild irritation and amusement. She really doesn’t give a shit if people check in on where she’s shopping and snacking, as long as her favorite flats don’t sell out and she can still get a table when she wants one.
Unsurprisingly, the Parisians don’t really care who Blair is at all. She stands simply as an interesting American, a fault forgiven by her nearly-flawless French and her fashion sensibility. Blair finds that a shy smile gets her more here than her last name.
Blair wants to drink everything in, so she drags Serena from museum to museum, admiring the grace of Degas’ fragile ballerinas, then leads them to Notre Dame, to lean against the gargoyles and admire the city from above. Serena talks her into spending a quiet day at a café, and the two giggle over the significance of a crumpled piece of paper on display at le Centre Pompidou. (“It’s indicative of the human experience,” Serena says, in a haughty tone. “It’s what happens to your heart after…” Blair stops mid-thought and says, “It’s a Universal Truth: all men are created like trash” instead.)
Pictures of Nate taking a page out of Chuck’s (little black) book surface, then news of some bizarre spawn of Georgina and Dan comes to light. Serena begs off sightseeing, and Blair complies, for a while, spending her days with a biography of Marie Antoinette.
“S, come on, we’re running out of days to go!” she begs, her face falling a little as Serena waves her off. Blair thinks the promises and goals you set for yourself can be the hardest ones to keep and achieve. But she will not be defeated, not this summer.
So, Blair buys a metro pass and boards a public (!) train, watching Paris speed by as she hurtles into the surrounding suburban countryside. She walks toward a beautifully ornate courtyard, then slips past a palace gate and steps into a fairytale steeped in gold and tragedy.
The palace Versailles enchants her. Blair only half-listens to her audio tour, imagining herself onstage in the theatre, admiring the fountains, sweeping past the gilded mirrors in a stunning gown. She wanders through Le Petit Trianon, then down through the little cottages of Le Hameau.
And her heart breaks a little, because she can understand wanting to play pretend. She has, in fact, for most of her life. Blair pretended that she wanted something until she couldn’t tell if her desire was false or real. Fake it until you make it.
She heads back to the main garden and leans on the railing. She’s watching the ducks slide over the glassy water when it happens. Someone slams into her, startling her into English.
“What the Hell do you think you’re doing?” she snaps, more irritated at her broken reverie than the physical pain.
The kid barely tosses out an apology before speeding off, kicking up gravel as he rushes to join a group of similarly-aged children nearby.
Blair turns back to the water, scanning the shore for the adult responsible. Words of derision die on her lips when she spots a lone, dark-haired boy on the opposite side of the water. Her breath catches, and she swallows hard. Well, she did want a grand gesture, didn’t she? Before she knows what’s happening, her feet have carried her around the pond, and her hand reaches out-
“Mademoiselle?”
“Je suis apologize, j’ai pense…j'ai pensé que vous étiez…quelqu'un que j'ai su…”
“I’m sorry,” he says, tilting his head as he examines her face, “I wish I were the one you were looking for.”
She flushes, because her French is obviously not good enough, and she’s never been spectacular at the easy give-and-take of casual flirting.
The boy before her reaches for her hand, bringing it lightly to his lips and making her smile.
“You should smile more,” he says.
“Excuse-me?”
“Like all beautiful women, you do not know how sad you look without a smile. But this smile is not as bright as the one you wore when you thought I was another man.”
“I wasn’t smiling then,” she retorts, taking her hand back.
“The possibility was there, and it was…dazzling.”
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Serena meets her at the door.
“Your father and Roman stopped by for dinner and a night in the city. I wasn’t sure when you were gonna be back, but they waited.”
Blair nods, looking her best friend up and down. Her BFF looks a little worse for wear, but no longer so defeated, so hollow.
We’re going to be fine, Blair thinks, both of us.
She has drinks with her father and tells him all about her plans to reinstate the French monarchy with herself at the head. Blair makes him laugh, and she smiles easily, freely. Roman kisses her forehead as she leaves, and Blair is grateful, not for the first time, that she has so many people to tell her that she is loved.
Now it’s her turn to tell someone else.
Blair locks her door and heads to her little vanity, pulling a sheet of vanilla-cream paper from the side drawer. She stares at the blank page a long time, trying to find the words. She doesn’t know where he is, or what he’s been doing-or who he’s been doing it with. These things don’t bother her, yet. She’ll figure it out, eventually, and then she’ll worry about what it means, and how she feels about it.
Right now she’s just thinking about him. About the darkness that comes into his eyes at night, and his bemused Cheshire-cat smile. He’s so damn stubborn it’s a miracle she can stand to be in a room with him for five minutes-but then, it’s a miracle she’s been able to breathe without him in her life for all these weeks.
Blair puts pen to paper.
I love you. I’ll come find you. We’ll go home.
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