Only in Your Dreams (Gossip Girl #9)(16)

“Just listen to Thad,” Ken continued with his finger still up his nose. “He’s not Thad, anymore—is he? No, he’s Jeremy. You hear that—his shyness? His nervousness? He’s terrified of you, you see. Terrified and enchanted. Make us all feel that, okay? Make us all fall in love with you.”

Like that was ever difficult before.

“Let’s go again.” Ken clapped his hands while simultane-ously lighting another cigarette, even though his last one had burned to ash without his even touching it.

Thaddeus snapped back to attention, leaning in close to Serena again.

“Darling. You’re always rescuing me. How can I ever repay you?” she asked, more assuredly this time.

“You don’t have to repay me.”

“You must come to my . . .” She couldn’t remember the rest of the line. She had to glance at her script.

“Party!” cried Ken. “Party! Haven’t you read the script, Holly?”

“Yeah,” muttered Serena defensively, resisting the urge to kick the pile of script rewrites on the floor up and out the large, bright window.

“Okay, let’s skip ahead a little bit.” Ken rubbed his weirdly red forehead. “Let’s do the big morning scene. There’s just a little dialogue there, so you should be able to manage that, right, Holly?”

“Sure.” She felt like she was doing everything wrong, even though she’d only said a few words. Wasn’t there any time to get warmed up?

“Okay, Thaddeus, you begin,” Ken directed, with his new cigarette torched in hand.

“Holly,” Thaddeus recited, from memory—his script was still lying on the couch. “I knew I’d find you here.”

“Will you always know where to find me?” Serena could see Ken shaking his head out of the corner of her eye, so she dropped her script onto the floor. She could do this. She stood on tiptoe and leaned into Thaddeus’s broad chest.

“I will if you stand still,” he pronounced softly. “Never run away again.”

“I promise,” Serena whispered. It was her last line in the film. She craned her neck, lifting her face to her costar’s, offering herself up to him. She could smell toothpaste and nicotine on Thaddeus’s warm breath, Kiehl’s oatmeal lotion on his hands, and Tide on his clothes. She was barely touching him, just resting her hands against his firm chest, but she could feel his body against hers, from his strong, broad back to his perfect abs, from his lean and muscled forearms to his flip-flopped feet. And she could feel something else: a flicker of electricity in the air, in the tiny pocket of space between their two bodies. Was this acting or was it real?

“Okay,” Thaddeus stammered. He took a step back and Serena, who had been leaning all of her weight on him, stumbled a bit.

He laughed nervously. “Ken, a smoke?”

Ken held out a pack of Marlboro Reds and Thaddeus selected one and coolly lit it.

“What’d you think, Ken?” he asked, looping his thumb in his waistband.

“Good. Better. I felt more spark that last time. But Holly needs to pick up the slack. Holly, we can do some rewrites if you’re having trouble with your lines.”

“What do you mean?” Serena sank into the worn couch. She hadn’t made too many mistakes, had she?

“If there are too many words, you know,” he explained, pronouncing the words loudly and slowly, like he was speaking to someone whose English wasn’t so good. “If you’re having trouble remembering all of them.”

Was he calling her stupid?

“No, it’s fine,” she sighed wearily.

“She’ll get the hang of it.” Thaddeus sat down beside her. He rested his soft hand on her bare knee, giving her leg a supportive squeeze.

You know I will, Serena agreed silently. God, was she already in love? Sometimes she was almost too easy.

No comment.

“Of course, of course,” agreed Ken. “We just need some more rehearsal time, I think. What do you think,Vanessa?”

Vanessa hadn’t even caught everything on camera because they hadn’t given her enough time to set up her equipment. “It rocked,” she lied enthusiastically. After all, it was only rehearsal.

And by the looks of things, they were going to need lots more of them.





Gossip Girl 09 - Only in Your Dreams

you think you know someone

“Honey, I’m hoooome!” Dan stuck his head into the doorway of his little sister Jenny’s bedroom. “Vanessa?”

“Hey.” Vanessa stood up from behind Jenny’s painting easel. The cozy room was still lined with Jenny’s canvases— washed-out landscapes, architectural drawings of famous New York buildings like the Dakota on Seventy-second Street, some nude portraits Vanessa saw Dan avert his eyes from just in case they were his sister’s self-portraits. She wrapped her arms around Dan’s skinny frame and squeezed. “Thank you so much for letting me stay here.”

“It’ll be great,” he assured her, plopping down on the blue-flannel-duvet-covered bed. “We’ll make it our Big New York Summer. I’ve been thinking all about it. All the things we’ll do together—pedaling those stupid boats in Central Park, bagels from H&H Bagels on our days off—”