Only in Your Dreams (Gossip Girl #9)(9)
Hopeless, who was actually probably older than Dan—an NYU student, maybe, or some poor * toughing it out in summer school so he could finally graduate at twenty-three— shrugged.“Boring.”
Dan wanted to punch him in his skinny stomach, but he suddenly realized it was his job—no, his duty—to make this * read. He stood up. “Follow me.”
He led the mindless goth kid into a small back room full of leather-bound classics and found a beautiful Everyman’s Library copy of Joyce’s masterpiece. Dan began to read aloud from a random page: “Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.” Dan paused and looked up. “Come on, you know you want to,” he urged.
The kid looked terrified, probably suspecting Dan was some sort of Strand-lurking literary pervert. He dropped his Batman lunch box and bolted.
Dan sat down on the floor to finish the page. He had to admit that James Joyce did always sort of turn him on.
Yes, it’s going to be an interesting summer indeed.
Gossip Girl 09 - Only in Your Dreams
helmets are almost as important as condoms
Nate stood up on the pedals of his vintage Schwinn, pushing them up and down with his feet, and then eased himself back onto the uncomfortable, unpadded leather seat. He liked to bike this way—pedaling as hard as he could and then sitting down to feel the warm summer breeze on his face. To the right, the waves rippled off the beach. On his left was a vine-yard full of Chardonnay grapes. The air smelled like salt and gas-grilled steak. He listened to the satisfying crunch of the gravelly road under his wheels and grinned lazily.
His morning joint had done just the trick, and by the end of the day, he’d been kind of grooving on what was supposed to be his summer punishment. There was something soothing about physical labor. He’d spent the summer after tenth grade helping his dad build their sailboat, the Charlotte, up at his family’s compound in Mt. Desert Isle, Maine, and the afternoon working on Coach Michaels’s place kind of reminded him of that summer, although the setting—rows of houses and overpopulated beaches—wasn’t quite as serene. Still, there was nothing like tough manual work, bright sunshine, and the reward of a cold Stella Artois when the day was done; and no distractions.
There were no classes to worry about: school was over at last, and Yale seemed impossibly far away. Blair, the girl he was pretty sure was the love of his life but who he could never seem to get it together for, was in England with her new aristocrat boyfriend, probably shopping, eating scones, and drinking way too much tea. Serena was back in the city becoming a movie star, and Jenny, the incredibly well-endowed freshman he’d somehow gotten involved with last winter, had been shipped off to Europe. He was better off far away from those three.
He grinned, realizing that this was how the whole summer would go: days of hard labor; bike rides back home; then a shower, a joint, and maybe some time by himself was just what he needed. Coach’s house was in Hampton Bays, several miles from his own house in East Hampton, but it was like a different world, with its suburban houses and minivans and malls. It was just the kind of place that would help him refocus this summer, which was his plan. He didn’t have his eye on any particular girl, and anyway, they tended to lead him into nothing but trouble. Maybe he was better off as a solo act.
As if he were ever alone for more than thirty seconds.
Nate had to climb off and push the squeaky bike up a particularly bad hill, wheezing from the effort. Sucking down three joints a day will do that to you.
Out of breath and sweating, he climbed back on the bike at the hill’s summit and drifted down, letting gravity do the work. He looked down and poked at his forearm to see if the pink skin turned white when he touched it. It was something Blair used to do to him when they went to the beach together. After declaring him burned, she’d gently slather him with her fancy sunscreen. He pushed at his forearm again. Definitely a little cooked.
That’s what you get for skipping the Coppertone!
Then he looked up and realized he was speeding straight for the road’s shoulder. He pulled on the handlebars, swerving across the road, but he was going so fast that he wiped out. Hard.
There was a polite round of applause, like at a golf match. Nate looked up, realizing he was splayed out in the dirt parking lot in front the Oyster Shack, a gray clapboard seafood joint about halfway between Coach’s house and his family’s hundred-year-old estate near Georgica Pond in East Hampton. A group of high-school-age kids was sitting at a picnic table, strewn with sweating beer bottles and baskets of fried food, and they were all staring at him.
“Shit,” Nate muttered. Tiny pebbles were embedded in the palms of his hands, and he’d torn the faded lime-green Stussy shirt he’d been working in all day. He brushed the dirt from his hands and looked down at his cutoff khakis—no damage there.
Leave it to Nate Archibald to look even better covered with sweat, blood, and grime.
He crouched to examine the bike’s front wheel. It was bent.
“Tough break.”
Nate looked up. The voice belonged to a curvy, blue-eyed blonde who wore her curly dark blond hair pulled back tight and tucked under a red bandana. Her pink tube top was riding dangerously low and her denim miniskirt promisingly high. A lipstick-smeared straw poked out of the Coke she gripped in her left hand. She extended her right hand to Nate, her long, perfectly painted nails exactly the same shade of red as the can.