Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

Polar bears and falcons and pigeons, oh my!

The color of the sodden wintry slush piled between the parked cars on Fifth Avenue matched Serena's mood exactly. It was a strange feeling. Usually she was the sunny one, the glass-half-full one, the perker-upper. Today she felt positively bleak. Her efforts to placate herself with reminders that she'd done a very unselfish thing and made her best friend unspeakably happy simply weren't working. The fairy tale of her dreams had been ruthlessly adapted into a film starring different actors, and her part had been written out. The question was, what part would she play next?

The other woman? Just a thought . . .

She'd purposely left her cell phone behind for fear of receiving another one of Blair's stomach-turning I'm-so-happy calls. She walked aimlessly, bare hands stuffed into the pockets of her brown plaid Burberry coat, chin tucked into the buttoned-up collar, chilled to the bone because she'd run out of the house without a hat and gloves or even any breakfast. Her baby blue Uggs were soaked through, and the backs of her Earl jeans were dotted with smatterings of slush. She hadn't realized how far she'd walked until she heard a familiar, well-loved voice call out, "Hey, wait up!" and she'd looked up to find her worst nightmare come to life: Blair and Nate, looking like the cutest couple ever, waggling a miniature light blue Tiffany shopping bag, their arms entwined.

Blair looked like she'd had a face-lift by one of those plastic surgeons who really knows what he's doing. She was positively radiant. Nate just looked like Nate. Serena wanted to be angry with him for not showing any signs of remorse, but as soon as she saw his dear, unspeakably handsome face, the anger didn't surface. She loved him. It was as simple as that. No matter what happened, she would always love him.

Which kind of made this particular moment all the more awkward.

Look what Nate got me." Blair hastily unbuttoned her coat and flashed the gold heart at Serena. "Isn't he just the cutest?"

Ouch.

Serena sensed that Blair was absolutely bursting with news and couldn't wait to bombard her when they saw each other at school on Monday. She could already picture the cluster of girls gathered around her at their favorite lunchroom table as Blair pretended not to want to give them a play-by-play of her glorious night with Nate. Kati, Isabel, Rain, and Laura would ply her with questions while a group of ninth graders led by Kathy Reinerson huddled nearby, eavesdropping. Serena would be required to act excited and intrigued, while every word Blair uttered would feel like a punch in the face.

"It's lovely," Serena responded with remote pleasantness, channeling her British ancestors. Like Queen Elizabeth of England, Serena had been bred and educated to be gracious, not to stamp her foot and pout in the face of adversity.      If only she had a few corgis to cuddle with.

The corner of Fifty-seventh and Fifth was probably the most ill-advised place to try to stand still and hold a conversation in all of Manhattan. Tourists bustled past them, jostling their shopping bags and cursing under their breath in all manner of languages. Normally the three friends would have been walking fast, arm in arm, interrupting one another with the latest gossip or non sequitur. The awkwardness was not lost on Serena.

"So, Natie," she cleverly changed the subject, "whatever happened to that girl you were supposed to escort to the debutante ball?"

"Who?" he responded with genuine cluelessness.

Serena and Blair exchanged glances. Oh, to be young, hot, and thick as a post, at least when it came to girls. Nate was like a hound dog, capable of following only one scent at a time.

"You know, L'Wren?" Serena reminded him, pronouncing the girl's idiotic name with humorous precision.

Blair's amused look morphed into a warning glance. She did not want to discuss that slutty college girl on the best day of her life, so would Serena kindly shut the fuck up? "We're going to the zoo," she announced, taking her friend's arm. "You have to come." As soon as she'd said it, though, she realized with a strange sort of queasy meanness that she really didn't want Serena to come at all. When she was with Nate, she wanted him to herself, because now he was hers—all hers.
"You know how much you love the polar bear," Nate reminded Serena. It was one of the things he adored about her, the way she talked to the polar bear like it was her long-lost twin.

"I have a date," Serena lied, marveling at herself. A date? With whom?

"With Chuck?" Blair asked perkily.

Serena stared at her, horrified. Did Blair actually believe that she'd kissed Chuck last night because she was into him?

"I'm meeting my dad for brunch," she informed them. "He wants to discuss my future," she added, shooting Nate a pointed look as if to say, Remember me? The girl who has a stack of boarding school brochures in her room, put there by her parents, who couldn't wait to get rid of her? The girl who was heartbroken at the thought of going to boarding school because she wouldn't get to see your perfect face every day? The girl who decided to stay in the city to be with you? The girl on the verge of a nervous breakdown right now as we speak?

Nate grinned back at her blankly. His night with Blair seemed to have erased his memory of any quandaries except when and where he and Blair were going to hook up next and how to score the next dime bag.

Serena glanced at her platinum junior Rolex tank watch. "I'm late," she muttered, elaborating on the lie. "Have a good time, guys," she added, thrusting her long, delicate hand in the air and stepping off the curb to hail a cab. So what if she hadn't brought any money with her. Wasn't that what doormen were for?

Blair and Nate waved brightly to her as the cab performed an illegal U-turn and headed east on Fifty-seventh Street. Serena felt like she was seeing them for the last time, like they were waving goodbye for good. And in a way, maybe they were.

Back in her room, she sat on her bed and stared at the silver-framed photograph propped on her bedside table. Ironically, the frame was from Tiffany. Nate stood between her and Blair with his arms around them beside the pool outside the van der Woodsens' Ridgefield country house. All three wore brightly colored bathing suits and were smiling goofily, like they were in on some big secret.

She stood up and went over to the window, gazing across Fifth Avenue at the Met and Central Park. Outside it had begun to sleet. Wet snow fell lazily downward until it melted on the pavement. A horse and buggy trotted by on Fifth, carrying two passengers snuggled together beneath a gray woolen blanket. Serena could have sworn she recognized Blair's creamy white cashmere scarf, and wasn't that a blue Tiffany bag in her lap? Then something moved atop the Met's white limestone roof, and she looked up at it, squinting. It was a large, elegant brown bird with a hooked beak, perhaps one of those peregrine falcons from the news, the endangered ones. It must have really loved the city to want to stay there all by itself in the sleet with no one to talk to but the pigeons and the squirrels. Or maybe it was waiting for another falcon that had been momentarily led astray by some other pretty bird. The lonely falcon looked like she'd been waiting a long time, and, considering the weather, there was a good chance the other falcon wasn't coming back.

But the stubborn falcon wasn't ready to give him up. All she could do was tuck her head under her wing and wait.