Blair’s mouth twisted slightly in thought as looked at Dan. “That’s true, we did, but it’s just Serena…I love her but let’s face it, investigative skills aren’t exactly her strong suit,” she remarked, sighing heavily before she suggested, “How about if we let her take care of things for now and we arrange to meet up with her tonight after our meetings? At least class is over for both of us now so we have a little more time.”
“I’m sure she’ll figure out at least something,” Dan remarked before intertwining his and Blair’s fingers. “I just don’t want our plans to be ruined by this, and if Serena’s offering to help then I think we should let her. And we can meet up with her after, like you said. Now, in 30 minutes we have an appointment to taste test, and I wouldn’t want to miss it. We can’t have them serving food at our wedding reception that isn’t up to par.”
Blair’s eyes widened as Dan read out his message and by the time he’d hit send her mouth was hanging slightly open. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d been expecting him to do, but it hadn’t been to outright fire Alessandra like that.
“I love you,” she breathed, leaning forwards to kiss him full on the mouth, “Dan, I can’t believe you just did that.” Even as she pulled away she remained close to him, resting her forehead against his as a small smile appeared on her face. “You’re always on my side,” she murmured as if she still couldn’t quite believe it before answering his question, “I don’t know either, but we have to start somewhere and I think we should start by going to my mom’s. That’s were I left all my old diaries. Maybe we can talk to someone or find something that’ll help.”
Dan was slightly surprised by Blair’s reaction, but he returned her kiss nonetheless, somehow feeling that, despite the mess they were in, he had never loved her more than he did now. “Always,” he replied, giving her a smile as she rested her forehead to his, though his smile began to fade when she mentioned what they would have to do in order to find out who had taken her diary. “I guess that’s a good start, but… we had a meeting with the caterers and the florists today, and I don’t know how we’re going to find time for all of our wedding planning now. Maybe we should let Serena help us.”
After Dan had pulled away, Blair leant in a little bit closer and read his message from Alessandra over his shoulder. She had never really minded Dan’s publicist - although she thought she had a tendency to be overly flirty sometimes - but at that moment she found herself feeling as if she wanted to strangle her.
“Yes, Alessandra. It’s all a lie. Running way from a palace, falling in love, coming to love more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life, moving in together, getting engaged, all of it. My life is all just some fabrication so Dan could sell more books and I could gain some publicity,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, before she rested her elbows on her legs and buried her face in her hands. She took a few deep breaths, calming herself down a little before she looked up at Dan again.
“You’re right, we need to fix this,” she affirmed, “I’m guessing whoever took my diary probably still has it, but either way we need to go to the scene of the crime and see if there’s anything we can find.”
“Well, then,” Dan started, hastily typing back a reply and reading aloud his message as he did so.
Don’t bother yourself with worrying about this supposed scandal because you’re officially fired. I’ll find someone else to publish my new novel. If my publicist can’t see that my relationship with Blair is more important to me than her reputation or any sort of public affair, then I don’t see how it’s ever going to work out. Thanks so much for your concern, Dan
“Goodbye, Alessandra,” he muttered, hitting the ‘send’ button on his phone, slipping it into his pocket, and taking Blair’s hands in his. “How do you suppose we go about this? I don’t know how we’re going to track down the person that stole your diary.”
A hint of a smile crossed Blair’s lips when Dan kissed her, but it was gone all too soon and replaced with a slight grimace as she realised he was right. She texted Chuck back to inform him of the mistake on the diary page and then proceeded to send out a message to everybody important in hers and Dan’s lives essentially saying the same thing.
“It’s so utterly ridiculous that I’m having to inform people of the correct version of my own private thoughts and feelings,” she complained out loud, her fingers mashing her Blackberry somewhat furiously as she finished off her message and sent it, “We didn’t purposefully set out to harm Louis. I did everything I could to help soften the blow. It’s not my fault that the European press is apparently completely insane.” Blair was prevented from going any further on her tirade by her cellphone going off yet again, this time with a reply from Serena. She had hoped her friend might have some good news, but reading the message only made her even more concerned.
“Serena says she’s going to take care of all this and told me not to stress,” Blair explained to Dan exasperatedly, “Really? Serena? I love her but I’m not entirely sure she’s capable of handling something like this. And how am I not supposed to stress? What are people going to think when they read this? What’s it going to do to our reputation? How’s it going to affect your book, and your next one?”
“Blair, mon amour, we’ll find some way to make this right, okay?” Dan remarked, placing his hands on her arms and giving her a small smile. He was, internally, freaking out just as much as she was, but it would do no good for them both to stress. “We don’t even know if it’s Louis who did this yet. Sure, the probability is high, but let’s not go blaming this on someone random until we actually know who it is. If we can find the real page of your diary and publish it…” He trailed off, studying his girlfriend’s worried face. “Don’t be upset,” he urged soothingly, leaning in for another kiss and wrapping his arms around her waist. If his words didn’t comfort her, he hoped distracting her would.
Their kiss was interrupted however, by a buzzing on Dan’s phone. With a heavy sigh, he pulled away from Blair to check the message which was from his publicist.
You have some explaining to do. No one is going to believe the improbable love story between a writer and his muse if you don’t snuff out whoever posted that diary page. If this whole thing between you and Blair has been a ploy for the sake of publicity, it looks bad on me too. I suggest you find a way to fix this before it gets too out of control, otherwise I might have to drop you. Best regards, Alessandra
Dan’s mouth fell open as he read the message, certain that everyone had to be blowing this out of proportion. Did he really have to prove to the world that he was in love with Blair? That just didn’t seem fair, but unfortunately their jobs and the future Waldorf-Humphrey name depended on it.
“Yes, I do,” Blair said simply, wrapping her arms around Dan’s neck, “I love you so much. And thank you for trusting me.”
She nodded in begrudging agreement with her fiancé’s words about Chuck, and then her eyes widened just as his as done following the question he ended up posing to her. She had blocked out most of her memories with Louis but some of the good ones were still there, and she had a sneaking suspicion Dan was onto something.
“Yes, I think so, maybe. I was writing in it a lot back then,” she admitted, her brow furrowing, “Oh my God, if it was him…how could he do this? I know when we last saw him he seemed bitter of what happened after you and I left the palace, but…he has his fiancée and he still has his kingdom and he’s going to be just fine. I’m happy for him. Why couldn’t he just be happy for me?”
Blair heard her phone go off with another message and she unhooked one arm from around Dan to take it out of where she’d put it in her coat pocket. She pulled a face when she read a text from Chuck with the words: “Is that really your diary page?”
“It’s none of your business, Chuck,” she muttered in annoyance, shaking her head at the screen.
“What if he’s not really happy? What if what we did unintentionally ruined his image?” Dan asked, frowning a bit. “And now he’s trying to ruin ours. Whoever did this may not have done any damage to us as a couple, but if the public thinks what you wrote is true… Well, it’s not going to be pretty, that’s for sure.”
He watched Blair read the text from Chuck on her phone and he gently took her by the hand, leading her over to their couch so they could sit down. “I think you should text him back and let him know what’s going on,” he suggested. “The last thing we need is Chuck Bass trying to be a hero and swooping in to try and win your affections again. In fact, we should probably text Jenny, Serena, Nate, and our parents to let them in on the loop as well.” He leaned in to give Blair a quick kiss, realizing that their customary greeting had been ruined in their state of worriment.
“I know. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Blair whispered, breathing a sigh of relief as she leant in against Dan. Any other damage control she felt like she could probably handle, as long as Dan knew the truth and he wasn’t hurt. She reached up to press gentle kisses to his jaw and cheek as he held her close.
“I don’t even keep a diary anymore. I haven’t since we moved in together and all the old ones are back at my mom’s. Living my life became a lot better than writing about it,” she admitted softly, “I don’t know who’d do this, and I don’t know why…could it be Chuck? He really seems like he’s moved on lately with Vanessa.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Dan commented with a small smile. “Those words you said are kind of beautiful in a heartbreaking way when you switch the names back. They remind me of how much you mean to me.”
They stood there in silence for a bit longer as he thought about who might be behind this scheme. “I doubt it’s Chuck,” he spoke up, shaking his head slightly. “I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but he seems above that sort of thing now. It has to be someone who is truly against us being together, and someone who knows you kept a diary…” He trailed off, his eyes growing wide with realization. “Blair, did Louis ever see you writing in your diary?”e
Although she had recieved his text in confirmation, Blair nonetheless still felt immensely relieved when she opened the front door to her apartment after her cab journey and saw Dan there. There had been a tiny part of her that was worried he might not show. She immediately walked over to him, eager to sink straight into his embrace, but she kept a slight distance as she rested her hand on his arm, wanting to gauge his reaction first.
“Dan, I’m so sorry,” she breathed, the words practically tumbling out of her mouth, “I don’t…they switched the names. I don’t know how they got hold of my diary, but they did and they switched your name with Chuck’s. It was from back when…I wrote it when I was holed up at the Empire during those horrible days when we were apart.”
Dan was filled with an instant sense of relief upon seeing Blair, and his mind was put at ease when she told him someone had switched his and Chuck’s names. Everything seemed to click in that moment, and he wrapped his arms around his fiancée, pulling her close to him.
“I believe you,” he said softly, finding he could finally breathe easy again. “It just… didn’t feel very good to read those words in your handwriting,.. I can’t believe someone would do this to us and try to sabotage our relationship less than two weeks before we’re supposed to get married. I love you, and whoever assumed that releasing some fake diary entry would change things couldn’t be more wrong.”
“…and you should see the wedding cake topper. It looks so much like me and Dan, it’s almost scary,” Blair declared, adding with a laugh, “It even has his sideburns.”
Most of the girls surrounding Blair as she walked out of her very last final of the year at Columbia joined in with her laughter, although a couple a bit further back pulled faces and rolled their eyes. From their point of view, all the other girl seemed to talk about outside of class was her wedding, and since they weren’t invited they really couldn’t care less.
“I’m sure it’s going to be such a beautiful ceremony,” one of the girls near Blair piped up, looking as if she was getting emotional from the mere thought, “Whenever I see you and Dan at Italian class I just think you seem like the perfect couple. It’s like something out of a fairytale, or like out of the book he wrote about you.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. We have our little arguments and we make mistakes sometimes, like everybody does. But I like to think we’re perfect in our imperfections,” Blair replied, feigning humility with a content sigh before she heard the sound of her cellphone go off in her bag, “I bet that’s Dan now.” When she took out her phone and glanced at the message, however, Blair was surprised to find it wasn’t from Dan but somebody who she certainly hadn’t expected to hear from.
Dearest B, I am writing to you because of a matter of utmost urgency. One of your diary pages has seemingly been posted online expressing feelings and thoughts that are not exactly in your fiancé’s favor. I suggest you try to put out the fire with him before it really starts blazing. If you’re wondering why I’m deciding to help out now, it’s because a) the rat/s who did this are stealing my limelight, and b) I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog. Good luck. - GG
Blair felt her blood run cold. Her first thought was to wonder how anybody had managed to get hold of her diary, and her second thought was to wonder what exactly they could have possibly published that could be bad for Dan. Sure, she reasoned there might have been things she wrote about him before they were friends, but she was certain Dan of all people would understand. She quickly navigated on her phone to one of Gossip Girl’s competitors who never really had very much success, and her hand came up to her mouth in utter shock at what she began to read.
“Dan is around all the time, and he’s been so good to me, but I just can’t stop thinking about Chuck. I miss him so much it hurts. What we had was everything to me and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to move on. I don’t even want to. I just want to tell him how much I love him and how I never, ever should have let him go.”
It was a genuine scan of her diary, and the words were real, but somebody had done a very good job in Photoshop of switching two very important names. Blair stood frozen to the spot for a second or two, her mind reeling, before she realised that as Gossip Girl said, her very first course of action needed to be to get into contact with Dan immediately. She sent him a hasty text with the words: “Don’t believe anything you see or read or hear. Meet me at home?” Taking a few deep breaths in and out, Blair barely noticed the girls around her giving her worried looks as she headed as fast as she could to the sidewalk to hail a cab. Gossip Girl seemed to have warned her just in time, because behind her a couple of the girls who had been rolling their eyes earlier seemed to have stumbled across the very same diary pages Blair had just read.
“You’re right, Erin, it’s exactly like in the book he wrote about her,” one of them remarked with a laugh, “If by that you mean pure fiction.”
Dan had just finished having lunch with his dad when he got Blair’s text on his phone. He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, wondering what on earth she could possibly be talking about before the alert on his phone went off once again, first with an email from ‘anonymous’ sending him a link he ‘might want to read’ and several texts from Nate, Serena, and his sister. Nothing seemed to be revolving around Gossip Girl, so he was still slightly befuddled as he opened his first email and heeded its directions. What he read next made his heart sink and his eyes grow wide. Though Blair’s text was still fresh in his mind, it was hard to deny the fact that the entry posted from her diary was clearly written in her handwriting; he knew it well.
He ran a hand through his hair, typing a hasty agreement to his girlfriend, and shoving his phone in his pocket as he hopped in his car to drive back to their apartment. He, of course, wasn’t going to believe what he saw was real if Blair had told him not to. He trusted her above anything or anyone else. But it still didn’t hurt any less to read what he did, and, above all, he was upset that something like this would have surfaced ten days before their wedding.
“You’re a very strange woman, Madame Sparks,” Louis remarked, raising his eyebrows ever so slightly at the woman in front of him. “But from everything I’ve heard about you, I know at least that you’re effective. Do whatever you have to do. I don’t think I need to remind you of the debt you owe me,” he added, “And there is more where that money came from if I end up satisfied with your work.”
Georgina shook her head. There was no way Louis had to remind her that his powerful and influential family had taken care of her problems. The fact that members from the Russian mob weren’t standing over her shoulder with meat cleavers right now was enough of a reminder for her. “I’ll find some way to get Blair’s diary and publish it tonight. We have no time to waste.” She gave the prince a smile before gracefully exiting the room.
