Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

B only comes in one color

It was the Monday after the last day of school and the air was heavy with humidity and the promise of a hot and heady summer. Nate's red duffel bag was packed. Tonight was the last night before Blair left for Newport and he headed up to Maine. This was the night he'd been waiting for, their big summer send-off—the night he and Blair were finally going to do it. Nate had everything ready: Diptyque musk candles, thirty of his favorite songs playing continuously from his iPod SoundDock, a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon he'd stolen from his father's wet bar, and a package of Chips Ahoy cookies—Blair's favorite. The housekeeper had the day off, so he'd even made his bed all by himself. And he'd bought Blair another present from Tiffany.

As if he needed to score more points.

"Since the summer got all messed up and you don't wear the heart anymore," Nate said, pressing the little robin's egg blue Tiffany box into Blair's hand.

She tore the lid off the box and snapped open the black velvet ring box. Inside was a delicate brushed gold band set with a gorgeous deep red ruby. It was the most beautiful ring she'd ever seen. She shoved it onto the ring finger of her left hand and threw her arms around Nate's neck. In the movie that was her life, he'd just asked her to marry him, and the answer was yes, oh, yes. Definitely—yes!

Cue straitjacket.

"I'm not mad at you anymore," she told him in a sultry whisper. She was so glad she'd found another use for that ugly Elsa Peretti gold heart pendant. The ruby ring was so much better.

Nate grinned eagerly down at her, his emerald green eyes glittering. His parents were at the last installment of Wagner's Ring Cycle. All that was left to do now was get naked.

And now that it was summer, there really wasn't much to take off.

Blair's neatly plucked eyebrows arched expectantly. "Are you about to get all romantic on me?" she demanded, loving it.

Nate ran his hands through her dark, luxurious hair. "Let's do it," he murmured, trying not to sound anxious. "I really want to do it with you." Somehow the words were so familiar, he felt like he'd said them before. Or maybe he'd just thought about saying them so much it only felt that way.

Blair eased her hands underneath his light blue Thomas Pink oxford shirt. "I know, Natie. Me too."

His whole body felt prickly with excitement. It was about to happen. It was about to happen. Oh, goody, goody, goody!

Steady, boy.

He pulled her in close and covered her bare shoulders, neck, and collarbone with kisses. Then he tugged the straps down on her yellow Issa palm leaf print sundress. No bra, just Blair.

She took a step back and pressed her freshly manicured palms against his smooth, wonderfully lacrosse-toned chest. "But I've been thinking about it a lot," she told him firmly. "And I think we should wait until August, when I come back from my aunt's wedding in Scotland."

Nate's roving hands ceased their roving. What the hell was she talking about? In Sun Valley she'd said summer; well, it was summer now. He was through with waiting. "But—" he started to say. Just then a Beck song came on the SoundDock. Nate had stopped liking Beck when he found out he was a Scientologist.

"Think about it. We'll miss each other like crazy all summer. We'll be, like, imagining what it's like to finally be together. And then, when I'm finally back, we'll do it, and then we'll totally stay together forever," Blair explained, like she was decoding the meaning of life.

That would be the meaning of life according to Blair.

"But—"

She dug her fingernails ever so gently into the skin on Nate's chest. "It's what I want," Blair insisted, indicating that the discussion was over. She slipped her hands up to his shoulders and down his arms, easing them out of the sleeves of his plain gray T-shirt. "That doesn't mean we can't still kiss."

Nate tugged his T-shirt out of her hands and walked over to the open window. His bedroom was on the top floor of his family's town house, and the window he was looking out of faced the back of the gray limestone building. Three stories below, his mother's coveted Venus de Milo fountain gurgled in the garden. Fireflies flitted in the still night air.

Music and laughter echoed out of a distant open window.

She comes in colors everywhere,

She combs her hair,

She's like a rainbow

The song reminded him of Serena. In his mind Blair was just one color—red—but Serena really was like a rainbow. She didn't comb her hair much, though; she didn't have to.

He and Serena e-mailed every once in a while, but they rarely saw each other anymore. She might already have gone up to Ridgefield—Nate wasn't sure. Apparently the tryouts for some play she wanted to be in were starting tomorrow. Serena suddenly seemed so busy. Or maybe it was he who was busy. 

Having a girlfriend can be pretty time-consuming.

"I have to take a shower," he mumbled to Blair and turned away. He slammed the bathroom door closed and turned the cold water on full blast. Then he opened the bottom drawer of the marble-topped vanity and retrieved his emergency stash: four slim little joints in an Altoids can. He fished his silver Zippo lighter out of his pocket and lit one. Normally he didn't smoke in Blair's presence, but he'd abstained all afternoon because he'd thought they were finally going to do it. This waiting thing was driving him apeshit. What exactly was the point of being together if they couldn't be together?

Boys.

As soon as Nate closed the bathroom door, Blair yanked open the bottom drawer of the antique mahogany armoire he'd inherited from his dead French grandfather. She upended the drawer, searching through the piles of wool and cashmere for the moss green cashmere V-neck sweater she'd given him in Sun Valley. She found the sweater and yanked the sleeves inside out. There it was, the gold heart, still there. She put it to her lips and kissed it. Nate might be sore with her now for making him wait, but he was still wearing her heart on his sleeve—still hers for better or for worse. When they finally did it, it would be so amazingly perfect he'd forget all about being mad. It would be totally worth the wait—she'd make sure of it.

She carefully refolded the sweater and tucked it into his red duffel bag. Maine was pretty far north.

Surely Nate would need something to wear on those chilly nights without her. She righted the drawer and put the other sweaters back as neatly as she could. Pot smoke seeped out from beneath the bathroom door. You know you love me, Blair scrawled with a dark green Sharpie across a piece of blank printer paper. She propped the note up against one of the wooden model sailboats on Nate's desk, grabbed her white Celine seashell clutch and left. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, she reminded herself.

If she's lucky.