Only in Your Dreams (Gossip Girl #9)(10)

“Just ignore my friends,” she told him apologetically.

Her skin was the same golden beige as that of every other girl who used the same shade of Clinique self-tanner, but beneath the beige was a smattering of freckles covering her nose, cheeks, shoulders, arms, and chest. Nate had learned from Blair that girls were usually more complicated than they first appeared, and this girl’s prominent freckles seemed to suggest that she was more than just a typical Long Island babe.

Nate grinned as he took her hand and let her pull him to his feet. “Yeah, no problem,” he answered sheepishly.

“You’re going to need to get that looked at,” Freckles advised, nodding at the bike.

“Yeah,” muttered Nate. He wasn’t that worried about the bike. The only thing that seemed worth looking at was right in front of him.

“I’m Tawny. I know a place where you can get your bike taken care of. But maybe I’ll buy you an ice cream cone first.”

Tawny? But isn’t that the color of her self-tanner?!

“Sure.” He’d smoked the roach from his morning joint before leaving Coach’s place—hence the accident, maybe?— and ice cream sounded very appetizing indeed.

“So what’s your story, Nate? I’ve never seen you around,” Tawny asked as she skipped across the street to a tiny, faded blue house that was so small it looked like it was out of a cartoon. A couple of little kids were perched on the steps licking strawberry ice cream cones.

“Two vanilla cones,” Tawny purred to the pimply guy behind the counter. She had the faintest hint of an accent, but Nate couldn’t quite place it.

“No story.” Nate idly kicked the side of the cartoon house with the toes of his battered Stan Smiths. He wanted to run his hands up and down her warm, freckled arms.

Tawny knelt down and smiled and laid a five-dollar bill on the counter, reaching inside the window to retrieve two pointy sugar cones piled high with creamy white scoops of ice cream. She handed one to Nate.

“Thanks.” The ice cream started to melt immediately in the late afternoon sun, trickling down his hand. He licked it delicately.

Tawny touched his skinned knee gently. There was something about the way she did it—a possessiveness? A certainty? A particular je ne sais quoi—that reminded Nate of Blair. But this girl was nothing like Blair: Blair would never wear a pink tube top, or let an ice cream cone melt all over her hands, or . . . pay for food on a first date.

Date? That was fast.

“Are you okay?” Tawny asked, rising to her feet. She licked her pink, swollen-looking lips. “You look so serious.”

The truth was, Nate was wondering what Tawny looked like without her tube top on. Was her chest freckled too? His hands itched just thinking about it.

“I’m just really glad I met you,” Nate told her a little goofily. He dabbed his chin with a napkin. “We should hang out this summer.”

A world record: Nate Archibald managed to swear off girls for three whole minutes.





Gossip Girl 09 - Only in Your Dreams

love don’t live here anymore

Vanessa slammed the rusty cab door and stared up at the weather-beaten brick fa?ade of her Williamsburg apartment building, still mulling over Ken’s job offer. She wished there was someone she could ask for advice, but she knew better than to call her self-absorbed, Vermont-living hippie parents. They’d just lecture her about art and commerce and “creative responsibility.” She wished her sister Ruby was around—she was the only one Vanessa really trusted to talk to about these things.

A white Ford station wagon with a broken windshield was parked in front of the building where it had been for weeks. One of the back doors was missing, and the seats were piled with garbage bags and old blankets. Someone must have been living in it, which would explain the stench of urine that surrounded the car.

Nice.

Vanessa unlocked the building’s complicated array of dead bolts and latches and clomped up the stairs, hesitating halfway up. There were voices coming from inside her apartment. Had she left the TV on? She tiptoed to the door and listened, not breathing. Yes, it was definitely voices, they were definitely coming from inside, and there was something very familiar about one of the voices.

Vanessa’s older sister Ruby had been on a whirlwind tour of Europe with her band, SugarDaddy, for eight weeks. An occasional postcard from Madrid or Oslo had appeared in the mailbox, and they’d spoken on the phone once, but the touring-rock-girl lifestyle wasn’t all that conducive to staying in touch.

Vanessa threw the door open excitedly. “Ruby!” Vanessa cried, taking in her sister in her purple leather pants and her new matching shade of hair. It looked almost iridescent. “I can’t believe you’re back!”

“Hey,” Ruby greeted her casually from the couch. She was straddling a skinny, stubbly-faced guy wearing black leather pants just like Ruby’s purple ones. Ruby touched the tip of her cigarette to the tip of his to light it. She didn’t get up to hug her sister, and her tone of voice was completely nonchalant, like Vanessa had just been at the grocery store to buy milk or something.

“Um, hi?” Vanessa was slightly taken aback. She closed the apartment door behind her.

“What’s going on, sis?” asked Ruby, puffing on her Marlboro as she surveyed the apartment’s Blairified decor. “I see you did some redecorating.”