Nothing Can Keep Us Together Read online

  After walking in on Nate and Serena, Blair had sworn to herself that she would not freak out at the sight of them, grab the nearest sharp or heavy object, and hurl it at their heads, shouting, “Cheating, horny fuckheads!” But she couldn’t help feeling more than a little pissed off by how good they looked together. The natural highlights in Nate’s hair were exactly the same pale gold color as Serena’s hair, and they both had the same healthy, sun-drenched glow, as if they’d spent hours together on a blanket in Sheep Meadow, kissing and getting tan. Serena was wearing one of Nate’s weather-beaten navy blue short-sleeved polo shirts, its collar faded and the hem frayed, and Nate’s cheeks sparkled a little in the bright ballroom light from the glitter in Serena’s pale pink Vincent Longo lip gloss.

  Which might have been cute in other circumstances but was definitely not cute right now.

  Still, there was something amiss in their togetherness. Nate looked thin and depressed, and Serena looked distracted and spacier than usual. Blair satisfied herself with the notion that they were definitely not happy. Nate was probably always too stoned to pay attention to Serena in the way that she passive-aggressively demanded. And Serena probably forgot to call Nate all the time. He pretended not to like constant calling, but he secretly needed it the way only children always need to be reminded that they are the center of the universe. With a private, smug smile, Blair went back to the rack of Ghost dresses she’d been sorting through in a halfhearted attempt to find something original and irresistible to wear for Constance Billard’s graduation ceremony, which was only two weeks away.

  Exactly. Why waste energy on hating them when there were more important matters to attend to, like buying a dress?

  Serena pulled off the hat she was wearing and tried on a black silk one with tiny faux pearls stitched all over it and a cropped black mesh just-over-the-eyes veil. She pursed her glossy lips at the mirror and decided she looked like Madonna in Evita, or some mobster’s trophy wife. That was one of the things she loved about acting so much. She could bat her thick-lashed, deep blue eyes at the audience from behind a veil and suddenly she was a tragic figure badly in need of a little TLC or, at the very least, a stiff cocktail.

  This particular hat was very dramatic, which was exactly the way she’d been feeling lately. Not depressed dramatic, or ecstatic dramatic, but behaving-in-a-way-that-wasn’t-exactly herself dramatic. She stole a sidelong glance at Blair, who was fervently flicking through a rack of dresses, refusing to even acknowledge Serena’s presence. Serena exchanged the black hat for a hideous thick purple velvet headband with fake fruit and leaves sewn all over it. If only Blair would look her way, Serena knew she’d pee her pants with amusement. But Blair kept her back turned. Serena sighed. Only a week ago they’d been best friends again. Now this. She and Nate were together, and Blair wasn’t speaking to them.

  Hooking up in the bathroom at Isabel’s party had been a total accident, and if Blair hadn’t caught them, they probably would have left it at that. But it would have been just plain cruel to hook up in front of her and then not try to make it mean something. Though she and Nate had never actually discussed it, they both cared about Blair too much not to stay together so she wouldn’t think it was just some random, horny hookup between two beautiful, self-centered people who couldn’t control themselves.

  Which, of course, it was.

  Besides, it wasn’t like being together was hard. They were both gorgeous, they loved each other—always had—and Serena’s Fifth Avenue penthouse was only four blocks away from Nate’s town house between Park and Lexington. Plus, all they really ever did was fool around because a) they’d known each other since they were toddlers, so there wasn’t anything new to know, and b) even though Serena would have been happy to, they couldn’t go all the way because Nate seemed to be having a problem lately.…

  Oh? And what sort of “problem” might that be?

  “Hey, Serena,” Isabel called over from the Stella McCartney rack. “I heard you got nominated for senior speaker by Mr. Beckham.”

  Serena propped the purple-fruited headband back on its hook. “Really?” she responded with genuine amazement. Mr. Beckham was Constance Billard’s film teacher. She had stopped taking film in ninth grade and hadn’t even been at Constance the next two years. She’d been up at Hanover Academy, in New Hampshire—until she kind of missed the first few weeks of senior year and they wouldn’t take her back. Why would Mr. Beckham, of all people, nominate her for senior speaker?

  Good question.

  “So, are you going to do it?” Isabel persisted.

  Serena tried to imagine herself standing at the podium in Brick Church on Park Avenue, addressing her class, dressed in their pristine white dresses and white gloves. Oh, the places you’ll go. Our future’s so bright, we’re going to have to wear shades, etc. She might have liked acting and modeling, but inspirational speaking wasn’t exactly her thing. Surely one of her other classmates would be way more into it.

  “Maybe,” she replied, noncommittally.

  You bitch, Blair thought, her ears aching from eavesdropping. Ever since the infamous bathtub incident at Isabel’s party, Blair had been obsessively determined to surprise everyone by rising above Serena and Nate’s stupid, hurtful behavior, making it look like she really couldn’t give a damn, and end the school year as the girl everyone most admired.

  Not that she wasn’t already the girl everyone most admired. She’d always had the best clothes, best bags, best fingernails, coolest hair, and by far the best shoes. But this time she wanted to be admired for her courage, independence, and intelligence. And being senior speaker at graduation was definitely part of that package. Right now Vanessa Abrams, Blair’s unlikely, shaven-headed, black-wearing roommate, was back at Constance nominating Blair for senior speaker. But as usual, that sneaky bitch Serena had to go and fucking copy her.

  The tricky part of it was, no one actually campaigned to be senior speaker. And usually there wasn’t even a vote, because usually only one person got nominated. Becoming senior speaker was one of those things that just happened—another mysterious Constance Billard tradition that no one ever quite understood. Things were bound to get a little interesting now that two girls were about to be nominated.

  Especially these two.

  Serena understood instantly that Blair would think that she actually wanted to be senior speaker, which was totally not the case. But how could she defend herself when Blair wouldn’t even look at her? Unable to resist, she pointed at the goth-wears-white Morgane Le Fay dress in Blair’s hands. “Oh my God, that would look so amazing on Vanessa. That’s who it’s for, right?” she asked with a bright smile.

  Oh, so you think it’s okay to talk to me? Blair thought. Wrong. Unable to muster a succinct spoken reply, Blair shrugged and carried the dress over to the makeshift register set up on a banquet table near the door, paying for it with one of her three platinum credit cards, which were paid off by her mother’s accountant, Ralph.

  This isn’t going to be easy, Serena thought with a theatrical sigh. “I’m not in the mood to buy anything anyway,” she added out loud and glanced around for Nate. Fighting with Blair was always so exhausting. Especially when it involved being madly in love with Nate Archibald.

  Or at least, pretending to be.

  He’s come undone

  Nate was outside the hotel with the trunk show security guard, smoking a hand-rolled pot-mixed-with-tobacco cigarette. The sun beat down on Fifth Avenue and Sixty-first Street, and with the masses of European tourists and clouds of bus exhaust, it felt more like late August than the last week in May.

  “Beautiful day,” the security guard, whose gold plastic name tag read DARWIN, remarked. He was huge and bald and probably moonlighted as a nightclub bouncer. He squeezed his eyes shut to ward off the bright, late-morning sun. “Summer is right around the corner.”

  Nate pressed his knuckles into his closed eyelids to keep the tears from streaming down his cheeks. He could blame it on the sun,
or he could blame it on being dragged along to a trunk show with a girl, but the truth was that lately he’d been, crying a lot. It was the end of their senior year, and he was with Serena, the girl he’d loved forever—kind of. It was like he was finally tasting the meal he’d been looking at under glass all those years. He wanted to savor it, but everyone else was eating so quickly, there wasn’t time. And there was also this nagging feeling that he’d ordered the wrong thing.

  Wait, doesn’t he mean the wrong girl?

  “Should I be worried about one of your girlfriends in there stealing something?” Darwin asked. He pulled a silvery blue cell phone out of his pants pocket, scrolled through a few text messages on the screen, then stuffed the phone back in his pocket. He didn’t seem too worried. Then again, why would someone with biceps that large get nervous about a few devious teenage girls?

  Blair had been known to shoplift, but not in front of her friends. Nate had never heard about Serena shoplifting, but she had a naughty streak. She would do it out of sheer boredom. He shrugged. “Probably.”

  Just then the hotel porter opened the door and Blair skipped down the red-carpeted stairs, brushing past Nate with her pointed foxlike chin in the air and a white shopping bag with white tissue paper sticking out of it swinging back and forth from her hand.

  “She’s cute,” Darwin whistled.

  “Uh-huh,” Nate grunted, as if checking Blair out for the first time. Her silky, dark hair had grown into a very French-looking short and sexy bob that suited her finely featured face and hot little body. Oh, she was cute all right.

  And she was no longer his.

  “Want me to stop her? Check her bags?” Darwin offered.

  Nate puffed on his joint, considering how Blair would react if Darwin called her over. The thought made him smile wistfully, and as he watched Blair disappear down the crowded block, fresh tears began to spill down his cheeks. Bitchy and stubborn and selfish and neurotic, Blair was the epitome of high maintenance, but no matter how many times he’d fucked up, she’d always taken him back. It usually started with a sidelong glance or an irate phone call, and then he’d show up at her door and they’d kiss and make up. But Blair wasn’t sending him any if-you’re-really-nice-to-me-I’ll-consider-it vibes. It seemed he’d fucked up for the last time. Besides, he was with Serena now, everybody’s dream girl.

  Everybody including him?

  The porter opened the door again, and Serena glided out of the hotel sporting a mint green linen Les Best tennis visor. With her pale golden hair cascading down from beneath the visor, her long, tanned, athletic-even-though-she-got-no-exercise-except-for-gym-class legs, and radiant smile, she looked like an advertisement for the type of haute couture tennis clothes that were way too gorgeous to actually sweat in.

  “Taxi back to school?” she asked Nate with a sly wink. She might have been too tired to walk, but she wasn’t too tired to fool around in the back of a taxi.

  Who could ever be too tired for that?

  Then she noticed the tears. “Poor baby,” she crooned, reaching out to dab at Nate’s cheeks with her thumb. The crying had started a few days ago, and at first it had been sort of alarming. What was a handsome stoner stud like Nate doing crying? But then she’d grown to think of it as sexy and extremely touching. Who knew Nate had such a sweet, gooey center?

  Darwin took a step forward. He wasn’t about to let this blond bombshell get away as quickly as the hot brunette had. “You got a receipt for that hat, miss?”

  Serena reached up to touch the linen visor like she’d forgotten she was wearing it. She bit her luxuriously full, cherry-ChapSticked lips. “Oops.” Her dark blue eyes flashed, challenging Darwin to arrest her. “I’m friends with the designer,” she declared.

  Darwin grinned—yet another guy to fall under her spell. “Aw, that’s okay,” he replied bashfully. “I guess I just wanted an excuse to talk to you.”

  Nate realized suddenly that he ought to have been jealous. He took Serena’s dry, warm hand in his damp, tear-streaked one. “Come on,” he urged, trying to sound manly and firm despite the quaver in his voice.

  “God, I love it when you fight for me,” Serena murmured. She leaned her head against his shoulder and kissed his right ear. He put his arm around her waist, encouraged by the strong curve of her hip. They tripped down the steps, barely resisting the urge to tear each other’s clothes off right there in front of the hundreds of fanny-pack-toting tourists mobbing the Brooks Brothers flagship store across the street. Their getting together might have been a total accident, but they were still two beautiful, irresistibly kissable people—why not take every possible opportunity to fool around?

  Exactly.

  “Lucky guy.” Darwin whistled as he headed back inside to hit on Rain or Kati or whichever cute Constance girl had the most stuff in her bag.

  Nate fought back another rush of tears. He was into Yale. The most beautiful girl in the universe, whom he’d known forever, was practically begging him to do it with him in a taxi on the way back to school. He was insanely lucky.

  So why couldn’t he stop the tears from falling?

  V’s first love note of the day

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: idea of the day

  Okay I know I just kissed you good-bye like an hour ago, but I had an awesome idea on the way up to school–man that’s a long-ass subway ride! Anyway, what if we just get done with our finals and skip graduation because a) it’s going to be boring, b) our parents could care less, and c) you said yourself you’re not really a white-dress kind of gal. We could take off in the Saab, drive to the Grand Canyon, watch the sun set, eat some one hundred percent organic wild mushrooms, and dance naked with the coyotes out under the stars. I want to spend the summer exploring the country and holding you in the glorious moonlight. Damn, there’s the bell. Anyway, think about it. You’re my girl.

  Love you,

  A

  D is mr. popularity

  “So, it looks like it’s unanimous. Daniel Humphrey, you’re our graduation speaker this year,” announced Dan’s Riverside Prep senior homeroom teacher, Mr. Cohen, head of the history department, who insisted the boys call him Larry.

  “Huh?” Dan looked up from the poem he was scribbling in his ever-present black-leather-bound book. The poem was called “my highway” and was all about the incredible journey Dan was about to embark on. Since there was nothing keeping him in the city, he’d decided to leave early for Evergreen College, where he was going in the fall. He’d already applied for a summer job there through the college’s employment office Web site. And right after graduation, he was going to drive all the way there to Olympia, Washington. If he ever got a car, or even learned how to drive.

  Oops.

  Dan had decided to model himself after Jack Kerouac when he was writing On the Road. On his journey west, he’d hook up with the most gorgeous local girls in every town, try exotic new food and drink, like peyote and two-hundred-proof tequila, and make detours to bizarre local attractions, like caves with hundred-foot-long stalactites and bleeding rocks, or a cow with quintuplets. He’d already been published in the New Yorker at the impressive age of seventeen and had a brief stint as the lead singer for the popular rock band the Raves, but when he arrived in Washington State, all the hell the way across the country, he’d have a new degree from the College of Life.

  Bucking girls and shucking corn,

  Rodeo bullhorns, Stetsoned longhorns, a Kansas cyclone.

  A Nebraskan girl leaves her lipstick on the dash—

  She salts my beef, stirs my gumbo, spits out my pit.

  Uh-oh. Sounds like he was a rock star for one day too many.

  “The class voted for you and you alone,” Larry explained. “You should feel extremely honored.”

  Dan was mystified. He pushed his chair back, crossed his grubby blue Pumas one over the other, and shoved his hands into the pockets of his worn-in khaki-colore
d cords. “But I didn’t even nominate myself,” he blurted out.

  Way to make it obvious that you have no friends.

  Snickers erupted throughout the room.

  “It’s like, you’re a celebrity, man, and we want you to represent us,” Chuck Bass explained in a mock stoner voice. Chuck’s pet snow monkey, Sweetie, was curled up in a fuzzy white ball in Chuck’s lap, asleep, wearing his favorite tight, cantaloupe-colored T-shirt with a bright pink S on the back of it. Everyone, even the teachers, had gotten so used to the monkey, they didn’t bat an eye, but Sweetie still gave Dan the creeps.

  “We figured it’d be easy for you, since you’re writing all the time anyway,” Chuck continued sarcastically. More snickers.

  Dan tipped his chair back. “Wait. Let me get this straight. You nominated me?”

  Chuck flipped up the collar on his bright purple short-sleeved Lacoste shirt. “It’s like Larry said. It was unanimous.”

  Dan’s hands began to sweat. Senior speaker was an honor, but he felt like he’d gotten it by default. He certainly wasn’t the most popular guy in the class. He’d spent his entire senior year either trying to become famous or hanging out with his former best friend and girlfriend, Vanessa, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He guessed all the other guys in his class were going to be too busy partying or trying not to fail their finals to bother writing a graduation speech.

  “Just keep it light. And remember, everyone just wants that diploma in his hands, so keep it short, too,” Larry advised, pulling on his lame dirty blond goatee like the wannabe teenage boy he so totally wasn’t.