You're the One That I Want (4 page)

Thank you, La Mer skin cream.

"What's going on?" he asked gently.

"That stupid bitch Serena got into Yale and every other fucking school she applied to, and I only got into fucking Georgetown. Yale wait-listed me, and I got rejected every-where else." Blair rolled over and pressed her face into Nate's leg. Today was the day she was supposed to have lost her vir-ginity, but now it was obvious: she was too big a loser to ever have sex. "Oh, Nate. What are we going to do?"

Nate didn't know what to say. One thing was certain. He wasn't about to tell Blair that he'd gotten into Yale, too. She might smother him with a pillow or something. "I know a hunch of guys who got wait-listed at schools last year. Most of them wound up getting in," he offered.

"Yeah, but not to Yale" Blair moaned. "All the shitty schools have superlong wait lists because the kids using them as their safeties wind up not going."

"Oh."

Typical Blair. Her idea of a shitty school was any school other than Yale.

"Yale knows that almost everyone they accept is going to go, so their wait list probably has, like, two people on it, and those two people are totally never going to get in." She sighed dramatically. "Fuck!"Then she sat up and flicked a piece of lint off her Seven jeans. "So what about you? Where'd you get in?"

Nate knew it was wrong to withhold information from his girlfriend--the girl he loved--but he couldn't bear to break her heart.

Or make her so mad she wouldn't want to fool around?

"Um," he yawned, like this was the most boring conversa-tion ever. "Hampshire. BU. Brown. That's about it."

So he forgot to mention Yale. That wasn't the same as lying, was it?

Um, yes?

Blair stared icily at the bare hardwood floor, twirling her ruby ring around and around on her finger so fast it made Nate dizzy. He lay down next to her and wrapped his arms around her waist. "Georgetown is a good school."

Blair's body was rigid. "But it's so far away from Brown," she complained.

Nate shrugged and began to massage the spot between her shoulder blades. "Maybe I'll go to BU. I bet there's a shuttle from Boston to DC."

Tears welled in Blair's eyes and she kicked at the mattress with her heels. "But I don't want to go to Georgetown. I hate Georgetown!"

Nate pulled her head to his chest and kissed her neck. He and Blair hadn't been on his bed together like this in months, and he was getting seriously horny. "Have you even been down there to check it out?"

As a matter of fact, Blair hadn't visited any school other than Yale. "No," she admitted.

Nate ran his tongue over her earlobe. The peachy smell of her shampoo was giving him the munchies. "I've met a lot of cool girls from Georgetown. You should go down there. Maybe you'll even like it better than Yale," he said, his voice muffled as he nuzzled her neck.

"Right," Blair responded bitterly. She was vaguely aware that Nate was coming on to her, but she was so upset, all she could feel was his spit on her ear. Nate fell back on the bed and pulled her on top of him. His eyes were closed and his lips were pressed together in a stoned, happy, turned-on smile.

"Mmm," he moaned, enjoying the weight of her on top of him.

"I just wish I'd gotten into Yale," Blair whispered. Then she could whip off her clothes and they could finally do it, just as she'd always imagined. She tucked her head into the crook of Nate's chin and breathed in his nice smoky scent. All she needed right now was a good cuddle. Sex would just have to wait.

Nate opened his eyes and sighed heavily. Coitus Interruptus, Part XX, produced especially for him by Blair Waldorf.

Not that he actually deserved sex.

"Just promise me you'll check out Georgetown," he said, trying to sound like a good supportive boyfriend and not a lying son of a bitch.

Blair hugged him tight. Her life was a miserable pit of hell, and her best friend was a deceitful bitch, but at least she had Nate--adorable, caring, straightforward Nate. And he was right. Visiting Georgetown couldn't hurt. At this point she'd do anything.

"Okay. I promise," she agreed.

Nate tucked his hand inside the waistband of her jeans but she grabbed it and pulled it out again.

Well, almost anything. and the winner is...

"He's here!" Dan heard his kid sister, Jenny, whisper as he closed the front door of the apartment. "Hurry!"

He dropped his keys on the rickety old table in the front hall and kicked off his Pumas. "Hello?" he called, padding into the kitchen, where the family usually converged. As usual, Marx, the Humphreys' enormous black cat, lay sprawled on the cracked yellow Formica kitchen table, his head resting on an orange dish towel. Dan's half-empty coffee cup was right where he'd left it that morning, near Marx's lit-tle,, pink nose. The kitchen lights were on, and a half-eaten Dannon fat-free blueberry yogurt--Jenny's favorite--sat on the yellow countertop. Dan tugged on Marx's furry black ears. The usual pile of mail was suspiciously missing from the table, and Jenny was nowhere in sight. "Yo. Anyone home?" he called.

"In here," Jenny's voice rang out from the adjacent dining room.

Dan pushed open the swinging door to the dining room. Side by side at the scratched Pennsylvania Dutch farm table sat Jenny and their dad, Rufus. Rufus was wearing a heather gray Mets T-shirt, and his wild and wiry gray beard was badly in need of combing. Jenny was wearing an expensive-looking silk tiger-print halter top, and her nails were painted bright red. In the empty place across from them sat a stack of envelopes, an unopened box of Entenmann's chocolate donuts, and a white paper cup of deli coffee.

"Have a seat, son. We've been waiting for you," Rufus explained with an anxious smile. "We even got your favorite donuts. Today's the big day!"

Dan blinked. For the past seventeen years his father had complained about the cost of raising and educating two ungrateful teenagers, and constantly threatened to move to a country where medicine and education were publicly funded. Yet he sent Dan and Jenny to two of the most expensive and competitive single-sex private schools in Manhattan, taped their stellar report cards to the fridge, and was constantly quizzing them on poetry and Latin. He seemed even more freaked out about Dan's college acceptance letters than Dan was.

"Did you guys already open my mail?" Dan demanded.

"No. But we will if you don't hurry up and sit down," Jenny told him. She tapped the stack of envelopes with a shiny red fingernail. "I put Brown on top."

"Gee, thanks," Dan grumbled as he sat down. As if the whole process wasn't nerve-racking enough. He hadn't antici-pated opening his mail in front of an audience.

Rufus reached across the table for the box of donuts and tore it open. "Go on," he urged, before stuffing a donut into his mouth.

His fingers trembling, Dan carefully opened the envelope from Brown and unfolded the sheets of paper inside.

"Oh my God, you're so in!" Jenny squealed.

"What'd they say? What'd they say?" Rufus demanded, his bushy gray eyebrows twitching excitedly.

"I got in," Dan told them quietly. He handed his father the letter.

"Of course you did!" Rufus gloated. He grabbed last night's nearly empty bottle of Chianti from off the table, uncorked it with his teeth, and took a swig. "Go on, open the next one!"

The second letter was from New York University--NYU-- where Vanessa had been accepted early admission. "I bet you're in," Jenny anticipated annoyingly. "Shhhh!" her father hissed at her.

Dan tore open the letter. He looked up at their expectant faces and announced evenly, "In."

"Whoo-hoo!" Rufus cheered, slapping his chest like a proud gorilla. "Atta boy!"

Jenny reached for the next envelope. "Can I open this one?" Dan rolled his eyes. Did he have any choice? "Sure." "Colby College," Jenny read. "Where's that?" "Maine, you ignoramus," their father answered. "Will you open it please?"

Jenny giggled and slid her finger under the flap of the envelope. This was fun, like being a presenter at the Oscars or something. "And the Oscar goes to ... Dan! You're in!"

"Cool." Dan shrugged. He hadn't even gone up to Maine to visit Colby, but his English teacher insisted it had the best writing program on the East Coast.

Jenny reached for the next envelope and tore it open with-out even asking for permission first. "Columbia University. Oops. They rejected you."

"Bastards," Rufus growled.

Dan shrugged again. Columbia had a prestigious and demanding creative writing program, and it was so close to home he wouldn't have needed to live in a dorm. But consid-ering the claustrophobic situation he found himself in right now, living at home for the next four years seemed kind of unappealing.

The last envelope was from Evergreen College in Washington State, so far away it had a sort of romantic appeal. He slid the envelope across the table to Rufus and picked up his complimentary cup of coffee. "Open it, Dad."

"Evergreen!" Rufus bellowed. "Abandoning us for the Pacific Northwest! Do you have any idea how much it rains out there?"

"Dad," Jenny whined.

"All right, all right." Rufus tore open the envelope, ripping the letter in the process. He squinted at the mangled sheet of paper. "In!" He grabbed another donut, shoved it in his mouth, and then pushed the box toward Dan. "Four out of five--not too shabby!"

"Let's eat out to celebrate!" Jenny cried, clapping her hands. "There's this new restaurant on Orchard Street that is supposed to be really cool. All the models go there."

Rufus grimaced at Dan. "Before you arrived, your sister announced that she is going to be a supermodel. Apparently by the end of the month I'll be riding around in my jet buy-ing racehorses and boats with all the millions she's going to make." He pointed a chocolatey finger at Jenny. "You'll cover Dan's college tuition, too, right?"

Jenny rolled her eyes. "Dad."

Rufus squinted at her. "Where'd you get that shirt, any-way?" His forehead grew red and shiny, the way it did when he was excited. "If you don't stop misusing my credit card, I'm sending you to boarding school. You hear?"

Jenny rolled her eyes again. "You may not have to send me. I'll be happy to go."

Dan cleared his throat noisily and stood up. "That's enough, kids. There's a party later on tonight, but before I go, you can take me out for Chinese. At my place on Columbus."

"Bor-ing," Jenny moaned.

"You got it," Rufus agreed, winking at him. "By the way, I vote for NYU. That way you can live at home, I can help you study, and in return you can hook me up with some of your brainy female English professors."

Dan felt like he'd stepped into a corny Disney movie about horny stay-at-home dads. He grabbed a donut out of the box, scooped up the pile of letters, and headed into his room. A blank notebook lay on the unmade bed, waiting for him to pick it up and fill it with somber, tortured verse. But Dan was too happy to write. He'd gotten into four out of the five schools he'd applied to! He couldn't wait to share the good news.

The problem was, with whom?

as long as he's happy, she's happy

"What if he's home all alone slashing his wrists or some-thing?" Vanessa fretted out loud. She glared at her twenty-two-year-old sister Ruby's leather-clad ass. Ruby was leaning in her bedroom doorway, talking on the landline and her cell phone at the same time, organizing her band's upcoming tour.

"Iceland!" Ruby shouted. "We're number five on the indie charts in freaking Reykjavik!"

"Big freaking whoop," Vanessa growled, checking her e-mail for the sixtieth time, even though no one ever e-mailed her. She had convinced herself that Dan had been rejected from every school he'd applied to and was at that very moment standing on top of the George Washington Bridge, writing his postscript before he jumped. Even if he had gotten in somewhere, he was probably having some sort of existen-tial apocalyptic moment and was right now wading naked into the Hudson River near the boat basin to cleanse himself of all the creativity-draining negative karma before he could write again.

If she were being honest with herself, she'd admit that she wasn't really all that worried. Dan was a good student and a brilliant writer. He was bound to get in somewhere. All she really wanted was an excuse to call him up and talk to him again, because ever since she'd seen Dan in the park on Monday, she couldn't stop thinking about him.

She'd thought about calling him under the pretense of another interview for her documentary, but that was so obvi-ous, just thinking about it made her break out into a rash. She'd also thought of calling Dan's little sister, Jenny, under the pretense of asking her to do an interview on what it was like to have a sibling in the throes of getting into college. Then Jenny would blurt to Dan that Vanessa had called and asked about him, and then maybe Dan would call or e-mail her. But come on, how sixth grade could you get?

Ruby was still parked in her doorway, talking on the phone. This was the problem with Ruby sleeping in the living room and Vanessa having the only bedroom: Ruby treated Vanessa's bedroom like her living room.

"Hold on. Call-waiting," Ruby told the person on the other end of the line. She plugged her nose and put on a fake operator's voice. "All systems are busy at this time-- " She paused. "Oh, hello, Daniel. Would you mind calling back? I'm on an important call with my band. We're taking over the uni-verse."

Vanessa lunged for the phone and wrenched it out of Ruby's hand. "Hello?" she said tremulously. "Dan? Are you . . . are you okay?"

"Yup," Dan replied, sounding happier than she'd ever heard him sound. "I got in everywhere except Columbia."

"Wow!" Vanessa responded, absorbing the information. "But you want to go to Brown, right? I mean, you're not even really considering NYU or those other schools?"

"I don't know," Dan answered. "I have to think it over."

They were both silent for a moment. They'd discussed the obvious, but there was so much more to discuss, it was kind of overwhelming.

"Well, anyway, congratulations," Vanessa managed to utter, suddenly feeling incredibly sad. Dan was going to Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, where he'd probably meet some long-haired, skinny girl from Vermont who made pottery and played guitar and knitted him sweaters, while she stayed in New York and went to NYU and continued to live with her freak of a sister.