Nothing Can Keep Us Together (2 page)

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?

Nothing Can Keep us Together

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

Nothing Can Keep us Together

“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-colored 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.

“Okay,” Dan responded dubiously. It appeared he had no choice in the matter.

Chuck tapped him on the shoulder. “So guess what? That dykey girlfriend of yours? I heard she’s gonna be single again. Her ‘better half’ is totally moving out.”

Meaning Vanessa or Aaron? Dan wasn’t even sure any-more who Vanessa was living with. All he knew was it wasn’t him. His perspiration-soaked hands began to shake with a mixture of confusion and happiness. Maybe Vanessa had broken up with Aaron. But they were so in love. They even had matching haircuts. He scribbled a series of check marks across the top of the page he’d been writing on. Vanessa broke up with Aaron!?

“So I take it you’re accepting the nomination,” Larry persisted, tapping his pencil annoyingly against his wooden teacher desk. “All in favor say, ‘Yeah!’”

“Dude!” the class of boys responded in unison, perpetuating the not-so-funny tradition that had started on the first day of senior year. Dan blanched as they began to whoop and shriek in a completely unnecessary display of fake enthusiasm. “Go, Dan!”

The minute the bell rang, Dan called Vanessa to tell her how sorry he was.

Yeah, right.

“Talk about misinformation!” Vanessa ranted. “Where do people get this shit? So, how are you anyway?” she asked, sounding kind of glad to hear from him.

“I was just voted senior speaker,” Dan admitted, like he’d been campaigning for it for weeks. Secretly, he was dying inside that Vanessa and Aaron were still together, but he wasn’t about to let her know that.

“Senior speaker? What the fuck!” Vanessa responded. “Wait, is that a good thing?”

“I guess.”

“Look, I have photo lab now, but do you want to come over later or something?”

Dan pressed his cell phone against his ear until it began to hurt. A group of freshmen boys almost sent him toppling down the stairs in their rush to lunch. All of a sudden he realized just how lonely he’d been. Was it really possible that he and Vanessa could be friends again, just like that, with one phone call?

And if they could be friends again, there was always the chance they could be more.

“Will Aaron be there?” he asked cautiously as he wandered down the fourth-floor hallway toward English class. A random, lint-covered rubber band was in his pocket. He pulled his scraggly, light brown hair into a stubby ponytail and then pulled it out again, dropping the rubber band on the floor. His dad, Rufus, was Mr. Ponytail Freak, not him.

“Aaron has band practice,” Vanessa told him casually. “Not that you couldn’t come over even if he were here.”

Hello, threesome?!

Dan felt like a window was swinging open and a cool breeze was sweeping his face. “I’m supposed to go to this stupid AP history cram session for our final next week, but I could skip it.”

Chuck Bass’s monkey scampered past him down the hall with a half-eaten bag of Smart Puffs in his mouth. Chuck was too busy dabbing Aveda pomade into his freshly highlighted hair in front of the full-length mirror he’d installed inside his locker to even notice.

“Okay, I’m in photo lab now. As usual, everyone else cut except me. They’re all probably at some stupid sample sale or something. Shopping for their stupid white wedding—I mean, graduation gowns or whatever. Fuck!” Vanessa exclaimed, sounding like she’d stumbled into something. “It’s dark in here.”

Dan’s ear was sweating now. “I wish I were there,” he blurted out, unable to stop himself.

“Me too,” Vanessa responded eagerly. “Seriously.” Wait, was she flirting with him?

“So maybe I will come over later,” he ventured. “Dad and Jenny are away anyway, so I don’t have to be home at any particular time.”

Is that so?

“Cool.” Vanessa sounded distracted now. “Look, I’m gonna do something dumb like drink fixer instead of my tea if I don’t hang up now. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Dan could hardly wait. “Yeah, okay.” He hung up. Down the hall Sweetie was peeing on the marble floor in front of the door to the history department offices. Dan grinned at him.

Good boy.

Nothing Can Keep us Together