Only in Your Dreams (Gossip Girl #9)(17)
“Um, that sounds great, but I’m going to be really busy with work, you know? It’s going to take a lot of work to get this movie right.” She nodded toward the computer screen where Serena van der Woodsen’s ethereal face was paused, her eyes half closed. She was reviewing the rehearsal footage from this afternoon, and if it was any indication of what the finished film would look like—well, it wasn’t pretty.
“Right.” Dan pouted a little. “Of course.”
On the up side, the longer Serena fumbled through her rehearsals, the more time Vanessa had to experiment with her camera work. She was going to give him something better. She was determined to do something truly avant-garde and unusual, something that would really wow Ken Mogul and his producers. He’d mentioned Godard. But she was the master of mixing humor with tragedy. She would show the used condom stuck to Holly’s shoe, the tarnished side of the party princess!
“Where’s your dad?” she asked, changing the subject. It was only a matter of time before she ran into Dan’s Beat poet dad, Rufus, wearing his usual stained Mets T-shirt and too-snug tan cargo shorts. She was hoping to see him before they had a middle-of-the-night runin. Who knew what he’d be wearing then?
He shrugged. “You talk to Ruby?” He dug into his pockets and retrieved a battered old pack of Camels, lit one, and then lay back on Jenny’s lumpy, narrow bed. “I hope you guys made up. Life’s too short, you know?”
“Huh?”Vanessa asked lazily, lying down next to him. Ruby had sent a couple of apologetic text messages, but Vanessa was too mad to bother reading them all the way through. She could imagine Ruby squeezing Piotr’s back zits while they did it in his paint-splattered studio—aka her old room. She snuggled her almost-bald head into Dan’s ropy neck and whispered, “I can’t really deal with it now, you know?”
“That’s too bad,” he observed solemnly. “I always admired your relationship.”
“Sure.” She couldn’t resist giggling a little. “Are you feeling okay?”
Dan turned toward her so their noses were almost touching. Vanessa kissed his smoky-tasting lips. Her touched her face. “You know, I never realized it before, but happiness is, like, right there in front of you, you know what I mean? It’s like us—like you’re all I need to be happy, and you’re right here, in my house. I mean, I know you’ll have to work a lot and everything, but it’s so great. It’s actually so much easier to achieve happiness than it is to embrace ugliness.”
Vanessa bit her lip. She loved Dan, but she really hoped he wasn’t about to pull another embarrassing proclamation of undying devotion like he had at his own graduation. Some things were better left unsaid.
You can say that again.
“Did you learn that on the job?” she teased. “I didn’t know they offered free New Age self-help lectures at the Strand.”
“I’m not talking about work.” He sucked on his Camel hard and defensively. “I read Siddhartha during my break this afternoon. Life’s just so short.... I mean, we can only hope to find some meaning in this life, you know?”
The only book Vanessa knew him to have spoken as passionately about was The Sorrows of Young Werther, a creepy book about a moody, depressive guy who kills himself in the end because his girlfriend marries someone else.
“All right, I’m officially confused. What the hell are you talking about?” she asked. Her eyebrows furrowed as she looked into his light brown eyes.
“I’m talking about the meaning of life,” he replied simply.
Or was he talking about a certain perfectly perky round-butted blonde?
Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.
hey people!
I’ve discovered something very important about myself: I’mtotally bi. It’s not what you’re thinking—I’m just torn betweenwhere I want to spend my summer and I’ve decided I reallywant to have it both ways. Thank God for Teterboro Airport. Aquick drive to the runway and I’m on the island in less than anhour. That gives me a chance to ogle the surfer boys and sayyes to every party I’m invited to here at home.
There’s something so exclusive about parties in the city duringthe summer. So intimate, with no unwanted guests. Well,almost. Not that we don’t like to have our picture taken; we’djust like to make sure our beach hair doesn’t have any actualsand in it before the flash goes off. Yes, I’m talking about thepaparazzi. Obviously they have to work all summer, and obviously they’re bored because they’ve been hounding the fewcelebs in town—me included—like every night was an MTVMusic Awards after-party at Lindsay’s loft.
But summer and the beach go hand in hand, and I could nevercompletely forsake the shore, but that heartthrob actor T has donejust that, abandoning his lavish spread on the North Shore (yes,the one you saw on that episode of Cribs) to spend a steaming-hot summer in sticky New York City. Now that’s dedication.
across the pond
I know we started out as an English colony, but we won the war(no hard feelings!) and therefore we do things a bit differently
on this side of the pond. I like the whole royalty thing— especially a certain heir to the throne and his party-monster redheaded younger brother—but there’s a lot about the English that I just don’t understand. For example, I hear that a certain young, foxy, blue-eyed American girl we all know and love has gotten herself mixed up with a titled gentleman who seems to have eyes for his, um, cousin? Apparently, in some grand old English families it’s perfectly acceptable to ask your cousin to move in for the summer, to hold her hand during intimate dinners at London’s finest restaurants, to slip away together to the thatch-roofed country house for a weekend foxhunt. How’s that for culture shock?