I Will Always Love You Read online

  Breakup at Tiffany’s?

  it’s not acting if it’s the truth

  “Cut, cut, cut!” Ken Mogul yelled, his bloodshot blue eyes bugging from his head. He threw his bullhorn down, where it clattered on the soundstage.

  It was the last week of filming Coffee at the Palace, the much-anticipated sequel to Breakfast at Fred’s. They were on a set in Queens designed to look like a large New York City hotel penthouse that opened onto a rooftop garden. Thaddeus placed his hands on Serena’s tanned shoulders protectively. They’d worked long enough with Ken as a director to know that once he started throwing things, he rarely stopped with one object.

  As long as he doesn’t move on to the talent, they’ll be fine.

  “Serena, for fuck’s sake, you’re supposed to be Holly. Goddamn Holly who’s in love with her goddamn husband but is tormented by the memory of her goddamn ex-lover, whom she’s supposed to be fucking seeing in five minutes for coffee. Where the holy fucking hell is the passion?” Ken screamed, his freckled face turning as red as his curly shoulder-length hair.

  “Sorry,” Serena sighed, pulling anxiously on the sleeve of her vintage black and white wool Givenchy dress. It had been a long morning. Really, it had been a long week. Nate had hardly said two words to Serena at brunch the other day. And the only words Blair had said to her since then were about Nate.

  “Okay. Let’s start all over again. Take!” Ken screamed loudly, his voice cracking up an octave.

  “I love you.” Serena concentrated on Thad’s large, wide-set, I’m completely gay eyes. “There’s never been anyone else. My dreams didn’t lie. Even when I sleep next to you, I dream about you.”

  “CUT!” Ken shrieked angrily. “You sound like you’re talking to your goddamn guinea pig. Who the fuck cares if you love him? I don’t. Anyone? Anyone on set?” One timid, owlish-looking assistant raised her hand. Ken held up his clipboard as if he were going to throw it. “Great. Fucking Mousy Girl over there will net our film ten dollars. Off my set!” he yelled theatrically as the terrified-looking assistant scampered away. Ken cradled his head in his hands and sighed.

  “You okay?” Thad whispered. Serena nodded, but she could feel beads of anxious sweat creep down her spine. She took a seat on a peach jacquard–covered wingback chair in the corner. A makeup assistant immediately scurried up and dabbed powder on her forehead.

  “Okay,” Thaddeus whispered. “I think you know me too well. Forget about me and just pretend you’re talking to the love of your life. Listen, this is how I would say it if I were talking to Serge.” Thad turned toward Serena and closed his eyes.

  “There’s never been anyone else,” Thad began dramatically, opening his eyes once more and gazing at Serena, as if he wasn’t sure if she were real or a figment of his imagination. “My dreams didn’t lie. Even when I sleep next to you, I dream about you.”

  Serena pulled her hair into a tight ponytail at the crown of her head. It was sweet of him to try to help, but it was useless. “I don’t love anyone that way,” she cut him off. In this scene, Holly was supposed to recognize that the only person she really loved was her husband. That, no matter what, and no matter how many stupid things he did, he was the only person who could ever make her feel happy and complete.

  She sighed and leaned back into the wingback chair. She wished she, and not her alter ego, Holly, was face-to-face with the man of her dreams. She wished the wind was blowing through her hair and that she was holding a real drink instead of a seltzer mixed with food coloring. She wished she was out on a sailboat, in the middle of the deep navy ocean, under the wide blue sky, with him.

  She wished she was with Nate.

  Serena felt a sob rise in her throat.

  “Don’t worry about the scene for right now. Is everything okay?” Thaddeus asked in concern as he perched on the arm of her chair.

  “Okay, princesses, teatime’s over. Let’s work. My sanity’s at stake.” Ken rolled his eyes.

  Serena stood up, crossed toward the camera, and blinked at what was supposed to be the Hudson River in front of her. She imagined Nate, far away, on a sailboat, a tiny dot in the middle of the ocean. She turned her head, her chin grazing her tanned, bare shoulder. “I love you. I always have.” She brushed a lock of hair out of Thaddeus’s eyes, the way she used to after she’d hugged a sweaty and disheveled Nate when he’d just won a St. Jude’s lacrosse game. “I’d never leave you. Sometimes I wake up and I think I must be dreaming. I love you so much. Just—make me the happiest girl ever and love me back.” A single tear trickled down her cheek. “Please?”

  “And, cut!” Ken stood up, waving his stubby hands wildly in excitement. “Fucking brilliant, Serena. Love the way you went off script there. You put me through the fucking wringer so you can show that shit off? That’s my girl!” He grabbed Serena’s waist and awkwardly spun her around. “We’ve got a fucking hit on our hands if you keep it up. Now, let’s get back into the next scene. Coast on this moment of brilliance.”

  Serena shook her head definitively. She needed to say those words to the one person who mattered. She needed to find Nate. Maybe he was in love with Blair. But she couldn’t ever be happy unless he knew how she felt.

  “I can’t!” Serena told him. She didn’t care if she got fired. Who cared about Holly? Serena’s life was real. And it was time she stopped pretending.

  “’Bye!” She called, nearly tripping as she ran outside into the cold January afternoon.

  Who doesn’t love a Hollywood ending?

  b’s surprise, take two

  “I have to leave you now. I’m going to that corner there and turn. You must stay in the car and drive away. Promise me not to watch me go beyond the corner. Just drive away and leave me as I leave you.” On-screen, Audrey Hepburn, as Princess Anne in Roman Holiday, turned away from Gregory Peck. The camera zoomed to Gregory, who was eyeing her with a mix of sorrow and awe and sadness on his face. Blair pressed rewind and watched as Gregory’s face built itself back up.

  She sighed. It was so romantic and clean the way Princess Anne broke up with him. She felt bad for Gregory—and Pete—but, like Audrey, she’d known it was the right thing to do. There was no way she and Pete could be together when she and Nate had always been destined for each other. Pete had been a charming distraction, but he wasn’t her leading man.

  Blair turned off the TV and glanced down at her Rolex. It was almost eight. Nate should be back from Le Cirque, where he’d been forced to attend dinner with his parents before they went off to the opera. And Serena probably wouldn’t be back from rehearsal for hours.

  She dialed Nate’s number. “Are you home yet?” she demanded.

  “Yeah, my parents actually—”

  “Great. I’ll be over in ten minutes,” Blair said. She was having a serious Nate craving, especially now that there was nothing to keep them apart.

  She rummaged through Serena’s closet and found a long Dries van Noten black tunic that looked like it had never been worn. Knowing Serena, it probably hadn’t. She pulled it on over a pair of gray Wolford stockings, then eased her feet into her slouchy black Frye boots. She pulled on a gray beret, slung her large Lanvin hobo bag over her shoulder, and ran out.

  Snow was beginning to fall, and Blair wished she’d worn a coat as she walked the familiar path from Serena’s limestone building on Eighty-third and Fifth to Nate’s stately town house on Eighty-second and Park. Blair gingerly picked her way up the icy steps and pressed the button for Nate’s room, relieved that he had his own private doorbell.

  The buzzer rang to allow her in, and Blair gingerly pushed the door open, inhaling the entryway’s familiar scent of floor polish and lilacs. Everything—the Van Gogh above the mantle, the austere chandelier in the main dining room, the white marble kitchen—looked exactly like it had since she’d first started coming to Nate’s house when she was five. She took the stairs two at a time and burst into Nate’s bedroom.

  “Hey!” Nate was seated at his desk in front of his
Mac Air. He wore the moss green sweater Blair had given him in high school. Back then, she’d secretly sewn a gold heart pendant into the inside—the same gold heart he’d given her from Tiffany—so Nate would always be wearing her heart on his sleeve. “I have a surprise for you,” Nate said, swiveling in his Eames chair to face her.

  “Really?” Blair asked uncertainly, tugging her hat off and shaking her hair out around her shoulders. She’d had enough surprises for the day.

  Nate grinned. He couldn’t wait to tell Blair what he’d decided. He hooked his fingers underneath the sweater and pulled it up.

  “That’s the surprise?” Blair rolled her eyes, even though she got a little excited at the sight of Nate’s taut, tanned abs.

  “No, look!” Nate yanked the sweater over his head to reveal a white T-shirt with a navy blue Yale insignia.

  Blair gasped. He was coming back to school with her? This was way better than any ring. “Oh, Nate!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around his neck.

  Nate smiled happily. He couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to realize that he and Blair were meant to be together. Sure, she could be a pain in the ass, but she was his pain in the ass. And after his conversation with Chuck the other night, college suddenly seemed like a good option. He couldn’t sail around the world forever.

  “I don’t want to say goodbye to you again. Maybe I can even get placed in your dorm.” He grinned. He still couldn’t believe how easy the decision had been.

  “I’ll arrange everything,” Blair said matter-of-factly. She couldn’t believe how, after her shitstorm of a year, her life had finally settled down. Everything was perfectly in place. “We’ll get an apartment together. Then we can have a huge party and I’ll introduce you to everyone!”

  Blair ran her hands over the Yale insignia across his strong chest. “I love you, Nate,” she whispered.

  Looks like someone got a Bulldog for Christmas.

  les liaisons dangereuses: upper west side edition

  Vanessa slammed down the top of her MacBook Pro in frustration. It was now totally dark outside, and she’d spent the past two hours sitting at the laminate counter in the Humphreys’ kitchen, Googling Hollis. She’d found out he ran track in high school, that his mom was a sociology and gender studies professor at UCLA, his dad was a pioneer in philanthropic microlending to developing countries, and that he’d won several film contests as an undergrad. He’d also showed up in a couple Tribeca Film Festival party photos, above the caption “The Sexy Side of Celluloid.”

  She couldn’t stop thinking about him. She wondered what his bedroom looked like and if he had a girlfriend and what he was doing now. And, of course, what he thought of the kiss.

  The kiss.

  It shouldn’t have happened. Vanessa knew that. She’d immediately broken it off and run all the way down the four flights of stairs and hailed a cab. It wasn’t until she was halfway home that she’d realized she’d left her video camera at his apartment. She’d sent him a quick e-mail asking him to drop it off at the Cantor Film Center, where she’d pick it up next semester, but hadn’t heard anything back. Which was a good thing. Maybe Hollis regretted the kiss just as much as she did. After all, Dan would be back in a few days—back for good. They were about to start a new life together. Entertaining a crush on her former TA was not a promising start.

  The loud screech of the buzzer yanked Vanessa out of her reverie. She slid off the steel stool and ran over to the ancient intercom system.

  “Hello?” she asked curiously. Maybe it was one of Rufus’s Beat poet friends. They sometimes stopped by without warning.

  “Vanessa?” a gravelly voice asked. Hollis. Fuck. Why had he come here? Was he stalking her?

  Asks the girl who’s spent the entire afternoon on a Googlefest.

  “Hey,” Vanessa said. She tried to sound casual, but it came out more like a bark.

  “I have your camera. Buzz me up?” Hollis yelled into the intercom. Vanessa looked around in panic. The general level of cleanliness of the Humphrey apartment always hovered somewhere between dusty and disastrous, and it was closer to the disastrous end of the spectrum today. With Rufus and Dan away, Vanessa had gotten lazy. There were half-empty mugs of tea everywhere, her clothes created a messy trail from the living room to the bedroom, and she was in her pj’s, a cut-up black sweatshirt and boy shorts.

  She quickly ran into the bathroom and combed her fingers through her short black hair. Right now, the back was misbehaving, turning up in a little ducktail no matter how many times she smoothed it down. She frowned as she noticed a deodorant stain on the outside edge of her sweatshirt. She hurriedly threw the sweatshirt on the floor and ran into her bedroom. She rifled through the dresser drawer and picked out a gray long-sleeve thermal T-shirt and an old Marc by Marc Jacobs jean skirt she’d co-opted from Blair Waldorf during the few weeks they’d been roommates the year before. She just finished buttoning the skirt when she heard a knock on the door.

  She swung open the door and stood in the entrance. Hollis wore a messenger cap and square Prada glasses. His gray eyes looked slightly tired, like he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in a few days.

  Vanessa grinned firmly, but kept her body wedged in the doorframe. It probably wasn’t a good idea to let him inside.

  “Ever heard of e-mail?” she challenged, crossing her arms over her chest. In her haste to get ready, she hadn’t put on a bra, and hoped it wasn’t obvious.

  Hollis grinned. Vanessa tore her eyes away from his broad, easy smile. “Hey yourself, Cinderella.”

  “Sorry about that,” Vanessa apologized. It must have seemed pretty weird when she’d run away at the stroke of midnight.

  Hollis gently brushed past her and into the apartment, surveying the surroundings. A large abstract charcoal portrait Jenny had done of Dan and Rufus hung above the lumpy, mustard-yellow couch. “So, this is your place.” The way Hollis said it, she couldn’t tell if he was making fun of her.

  “Sort of,” Vanessa said defensively. “I mean, I live with my friend’s family.”

  Doesn’t she mean boyfriend’s family?

  “For some reason I always thought you were a Williamsburg girl.” Hollis shrugged off his coat and hung it over the back of one of the rickety wooden chairs in the kitchen. He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in the corner and squinted at the book spines.

  “Um, I used to live in Brooklyn,” Vanessa said nervously. What was her problem? Even Jenny at her most awkward would have had more poise. “Anyway, do you want something to eat?” she asked lamely. She needed something to do besides stare at Hollis.

  She opened the fridge. There was a half-eaten tub of hummus that had turned an odd green color, a coagulation of some sort of stew, three cans of a strange red Bavarian beer Rufus liked, and a mysterious protein shake. “Scratch that!” Vanessa hastily slammed the door shut. “Do you want to go out and get a drink? Or a snack? The diner on the corner has really good cheese fries,” she babbled.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I watched the footage on your camera,” Hollis said, ignoring her nervous chatter. “It’s really fucking good, Abrams.”

  Vanessa blinked in confusion. Hollis sounded like her TA again. Had the kiss even happened?

  “Can we watch it together? I’d love to talk to you about it,” he prodded.

  “Sure. Sorry it’s a mess.” Vanessa pushed open the door to Dan’s room and kicked a pile of dirty laundry away. She awkwardly stuck her hands in the pockets of her skirt. Dan’s bags from Evergreen were stacked against the wall, and the bed hadn’t been made. She knew she should feel weird about having Hollis in the apartment, but it was really hard to think about Dan when she could sense Hollis’s eyes on her, watching her every move.

  “I like it here. You saw my apartment, and that was before complete party carnage. I’m twenty-five and I live in a shithole.” Hollis busied himself with attaching the camera cables to the computer, then sat on the edge of the bed expectantly. He took
off his hat and ran a hand through his thick jet-black hair.

  “Okay,” Vanessa muttered, pressing play. She took a seat on the floor, as far away from Hollis as possible. The screen sprang to life, panning out from a MetroCard stuck to the floor of the subway car to a homeless man on the plastic orange seats, surrounded by all of his belongings, peacefully reading a book.

  Next, the camera zoomed wildly, capturing the faces of people as they were rushing to the subway. Hollis sat up. “This is my favorite part.”

  “Really?” Vanessa asked, flattered. He’d critiqued her work before, but this felt so much more personal.

  The bedroom setting can have that effect.

  “Yeah. But sometimes you’re so removed. I just want to know more about your subjects. Why you chose them. Who they are,” Hollis mused as the camera jump-cut from an old lady feeding pigeons in Union Square to a group of revelers spilling out from the subway.

  Vanessa continued to watch as the camera shakily followed two girls wearing matching silver sequined dresses trip up the First Avenue L station stairs. From their backs, you couldn’t tell how old they were. They looked like they were searching for danger.

  Hollis tenderly cupped Vanessa’s chin and pulled her into him. “This is what I’ve been wanting to do since the party,” he whispered. She felt his stubble against her cheek. They weren’t kissing, but their lips were millimeters apart. Vanessa leaned in, and her lips touched his.

  Cut!

  “We’ve had a great day together, haven’t we, sonny?” The truck driver, whose real name was Hank, asked as he rested his beefy arm on Dan’s shoulder. The truck pulled onto the West Side Highway.

  Yeah, right, Dan thought. The whole time, Hank had given Dan life lessons on women. “You can just drop me off at Ninety-sixth Street,” Dan said hurriedly. “Actually, here’s fine.” Close enough.