Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

V catches d with his pants on

It was the last Thursday of spring break. Vanessa had finally freed up her schedule enough to bring a DVD over to Dan's house along with some sushi and a bottle of sake, care of Ruby. Vanessa had always thought sushi was sort of romantic, the way everything was so neat and bite-size. You could feed each other without making too much of a mess. You barely even needed a napkin. Not that she and Dan were in the feeding-each-other stages just yet, especially not when she'd barely spoken to him in weeks. But maybe by the end of the evening . . .

Never underestimate the power of sake.

Dan had been looking forward to tonight all week because with Zeke away in Florida he was dying of boredom and loneliness and had even contemplated writing a novel. The thing was, the only thing he could think of to write about was a bored, lonely fifteen-year-old loser, and no one would want to read about that. Thankfully, Vanessa had arrived to relieve him of his navel-gazing. They sat on the floor of the study with their backs against the worn brown leather sofa. He stuck in the DVD and pressed play. A Japanese couple rode the subway, looking tired and greasy. They were Japanese but they were speaking Spanish. "Where are the subtitles?" Dan wondered aloud. "Am I supposed to understand what they're saying?"

Ruby had recommended the movie Mystery Train, which she claimed was the best film ever made, and was all about lost souls finding each other. Vanessa thought that sounded just right. She'd searched for almost an hour and finally found it in the Imports section of the tiny, dirty video rental place down the street from their apartment. Now she knew why. "It's in Spanish," she observed. Ruby hadn't told her it was a foreign film. Then she noticed that the actor's lips were moving differently from the sound. Elvis appeared and his lips were definitely moving in English but his voice came out sounding like Julio Iglesias's. "It's dubbed," she realized, feeling rather stupid.

"That's okay, I can read lips." Dan opened the bag of sushi and began to carefully lay out the containers on the coffee table. He poured sake into two plastic cups, his hands shaking as usual. He handed a cup to Vanessa. She looked just the same as she had when he'd seen her last. Her head was shaved close and she was dressed entirely in black. It was kind of reassuring.

Vanessa watched the way Dan's hands shook as he attempted to pick up a California roll with his chopsticks. She poured more sake into his cup. Maybe it was a good thing the movie was practically unwatchable. He seemed pretty nervous, and she was pretty sure she knew why. He wanted her to kiss him again, but he was terrified he was going to black out again. The way he tortured himself was so damned irresistible. It was all she could do to keep from jumping his pale, skinny bones.

Dan lit a cigarette, getting into the movie despite the fact that he couldn't understand it most of the time. He liked that all the people in it seemed to be up doing stuff when everyone else was asleep. He'd been having some trouble sleeping himself lately. Maybe it was the cigarettes.

Or the instant coffee he drank all day?

He finished his sake and poured himself some more. The little bottle was almost empty. "Dad's out," he observed. "But he opened some Chianti before he left. Should I get it?"

Vanessa nodded encouragingly. The drunker Dan got the more likely he was to let his guard down and kiss her.

Or faint again. Or throw up.

"This movie reminds me of Kerouac," Dan told her, coming back with a liter bottle of red wine with a picture of a black bull on the label. "My dad would love it. Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?" he quoted, puffing out his skinny chest like a jackass.

Here was one of the things Vanessa liked most about him, one of the things that set him apart: he could drop a literary quote without even pausing to think about it. He was a boy out of times past. Her scruffy little Shakespeare. Her bard. Oh, she was glad she'd come. And glad he had more wine.