Only in Your Dreams (Gossip Girl #9)(12)

Guess she’ll be taking that job.





Gossip Girl 09 - Only in Your Dreams

s is for spirituality, among other things

“Hey,” Dan whispered into his black Nokia cell as he ducked behind an aging metal bookshelf at the Strand. It was the kind of place only a guy who had read Hamlet five times could love. “I was just thinking about you.”

He couldn’t quite make out Vanessa’s response: she sounded out of breath and near tears.

“Wait, wait,” he soothed. He stacked up a pile of Ronald Reagan biographies and sat down on them. “Slow down. I didn’t catch any of that.”

“I said I’ve been kicked out of my apartment,” Vanessa shouted. “Ruby’s back from Europe and she has this new * Czech painter bullshit boyfriend and she told me to get lost.”

“Shit,” Dan muttered, looking around. He wasn’t really supposed to be on his cell phone on the job.

“What am I going to do? Where am I supposed to go?”

“What about my place?” Dan asked, before he even had a chance to think about what he was saying. He fingered an old dusty hardcover about Walt Whitman and considered taking it home.

“Your place?” Vanessa repeated, pitifully. Dan wasn’t sure he’d ever heard her sound so weak, and even though he kind of knew it was wrong, he sort of liked how it made him feel.

Like he was some macho stud and she was frail and helpless. He made a mental note to use the feeling for a poem.

Rice paper girl, I’m the quill, the ink, the well. . . .

“It’ll be fine,” he assured her. “Take your stuff, get on the subway, go to my place. The door’s unlocked—you know my dad always leaves it open. I’ll be home in a couple of hours.”

“Really?” Vanessa asked tentatively. She’d always been so fiercely independent. Dan knew she hated asking for any favors. “Are you sure it’s okay with your dad?”

“It’ll be fine.” He rubbed some dust off the top shelf and it sprinkled in his eye. “You’ll see. I’ll be there soon. Don’t worry.” He rubbed his eyes, listening to Vanessa breathe on the other end of the phone.

“On the plus side, Ken Mogul offered me a job today.” Vanessa laughed bitterly. “It looks like I’m going to have to take it.”

“That’s awesome!” he cheered, though he couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. He was working, and now Vanessa was going to work too. That would definitely put a damper on his romantic plans. When would they have time to ride the tram to Roosevelt Island and drink sake in the park?

“Shit, that’s my call waiting,” she mumbled. Dan heard her take the phone from her ear. “It’s Ken. I better get it. I’ll see you at home, then? Your home, I mean.”

“No,” he corrected her. “Yours too.”

Aw.

Dan pressed the end button on his cell and slipped back into the narrow aisle of the biography section. He smiled. Maybe Vanessa getting kicked out was actually the best thing that could happen to them. Living together would make their last summer before leaving for college so intimate. It would be even more memorable.

He grabbed a few of the Reagan biographies and crouched, trying to find a place for all of them on a shelf.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for a copy of Siddhartha and I just can’t seem to find one. Can you help me?”

Dan rose from his crouching position, his knees cracking from bending over, ready with a clever barb about where to find enlightenment. But once he saw the customer, he swallowed his words.

She was about four inches taller than he was, with long wavy platinum blond hair pulled back in a no-nonsense pony-tail. She wore a faded gray gym tee and white denim cutoffs and had matching green-and-white wristbands on both of her arms. She furrowed her brow a little, but even worried, her blue eyes twinkled. She looked like Marsha Brady, only sexier and dirtier looking, like Marsha Brady on her way home from her aerobic striptease class.

“Um, yeah,” Dan finally replied, flustered. “Yeah, we should have a copy of Siddhartha. I’m sure we have one.”

“Oh, good,” Dirty Marsha cried, reaching out and squeezing his bony upper arm. “I really want to read it.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, leading her away from the presidential biographies and toward paperback fiction. “It’s actually one of my favorite books.”

It is?

“Oh, gosh, really?” Dan had never encountered a girl who managed to say “gosh” and not sound like a complete moron. “It comes so highly recommended by my yogi.”

“Here it is,” he announced, standing on his tiptoes and tugging on the book’s thin blue spine. He handed it to her.

“Cool.” She turned the book over to examine the back cover. “This looks really great. Thanks so much for your help. So you really liked it?” She gazed at him, her almond-shaped eyes matching the twilight blue of the book’s faded cover.

“Well . . .” Dan paused. Books were his area of expertise— why couldn’t he think of anything to say?

Maybe because he never read it?

“It was, um . . . inspiring.”

“Great. I’m really looking forward to it.” She cradled the book against her chest and leaned into Dan a bit more closely. “Maybe I’ll come back when I’ve finished it and you can recommend another book for me?”