Butterflies and Hurricanes

final Chapter 9: Daylight

Dan had never been more thankful for the school year to end than he had been at the end of his junior year. Luckily, there was a summer internship in Los Angeles that would take him away from everything. A couple of guys from his fraternity caught wind of the situation and offered him a place to stay next year so he wouldn't have to face his best friend and the girl he loved on daily basis.

His flight left two days after his last final, and he spent most of the time locked in his room. If he left the door open, Nate would pace back and forth in front of it waiting for Dan to acknowledge him. But he never did.

His flight left early on a Monday morning. The sun had barely started to rise when he dragged multiple suitcases outside to the curbside where his taxi was waiting for him. Dan shoved the last bag in the trunk and he caught something in the corner of his eye that made him stop. Blair.

She still looked the same, he thought, a little uneasy. Her gaze was slightly unreadable; it was like he didn't know what she was thinking anymore. Before he could say anything, she silently turned around and walked away, tossing her coffee in the trash as she went.

The cab driver tapped Dan on the shoulder, snapping him out of the daydream he was in. He handed him a folded up piece of paper, telling him that a girl had asked him to give Dan the note. He unfolded it and recognized the almost perfect handwriting immediately.

I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you. Please, don't be mad.

Dan received an invitation in the mail from Serena right before winter break. It was to a party her mother was throwing in celebration of her engagement to Carter. He smiled when he got it, glad that Serena had found someone who could really treat her the way she deserved to be treated. He had always liked Carter and the two of them together had made sense to him from the beginning.

He knew his way to her Upper East Side apartment well, and bundled up in a suit and jacket on a cool mid-December night. The past six months had been half spent in Los Angeles, the others finishing up the start of his senior year at Yale. The book he had been working on was well on its way to being finished. He found that he had a lot more time to himself these days to write.

The apartment was full of people, when two UES families joined forces, that was usually the case. He spotted Lily Van Der Woodsen politely discussing something with someone he didn't recognized. She smiled at him and waved pack before placing a bottle of champagne on a table.

He felt a pair of eyes staring into his back, and he turned around to see Blair. She had let her hair grow longer, her skin get a couple of shades darker, and she was even more beautiful than she had been before, if that was at all possible. He thought he had gotten her out of his system during the six months he had spent avoiding her and Nate, but any progress he had made in that department was now gone. She slowly and cautiously approached him,

"Hey stranger."

Her voice sounded timid.

"Hey, yourself."

She fidgeted with the ruby ring on her finger, he laughed to himself, some things never change.

"How are you? I haven't seen you in forever."

Dan shrugged. The truth was, he was doing a lot better than he thought he would be doing.

"Not bad, the book is coming along pretty well. The summer in LA really helped, I learned more than I've learned in three years at Yale I think."