I Will Always Love You Read Free Page B

now resting lightly on Casey’s back.
    “Nice to meet you, Casey.” Serena smiled, holding out her hand to the tall girl, who took it gingerly.
    “Nice to meet you too. I haven’t seen any of your movies,” Casey announced bluntly.
    As if anyone asked.
    “Oh, that’s okay. How’s Kati?” Serena asked Isabel, easing back onto her stool. She couldn’t help but wonder if Isabel was
     really gay, or just going through the fashionable bisexual phase of college she’d heard about.
    Isabel sighed and shook her head. “She has this, like, football player boyfriend and is pledging a sorority that wears pink
     sweat suits to class. It’s awful. Casey and I pretty much do our own thing. But what about you? I saw the movie. You were pretty good,” Isabel allowed.
    “Thanks.” Serena blushed. She hoped Isabel really meant it and wasn’t just being polite. “Things are okay. Just working a
     lot. We’re filming a sequel to Breakfast at Fred’s that’s coming out in the summer, so that’s fun….” Serena trailed off. Even though she’d been on the cover of the October
     issue of Vanity Fair, part of her felt stuck. She’d come home from her big premiere, thinking it would be the greatest night of her life, to her
     same pink childhood bedroom in her parents’ sprawling Upper East Side penthouse. If possible, she almost felt less grown-up than she had before graduating, especially since she now had an agent and a publicist who told her exactly what
     to wear, what to say, and who to be seen with. The real world felt a lot different than she’d imagined.
    “A sequel sounds great!” Isabel cooed. “Anyway, I was just showing Casey all of our old haunts. Remember hours trying things
     on at Barneys, and then so much time just eating spaghetti and meatballs upstairs at Fred’s? That all feels like so long ago
     now,” she mused, nuzzling her head against Casey’s. The guys standing around them were all drooling over the lesbian-chic
     couple.
    “It does,” Serena agreed wholeheartedly. Just a matter of months ago, she and Blair and Kati and Isabel would meet before
     school to smoke Merits on the Met steps and imagine their lives in college. Now, Blair was pre-law at Yale, Isabel was a lesbian,
     Kati was running around with pink Greek letters on her ass, and Serena was trying to make a go of it in the movies.
    “So, have you seen anyone yet?” Isabel asked.
    “No.” Serena shook her head. For her, only two people really mattered: Blair and Nate. She and Blair had kept in touch since
     Blair headed up to New Haven, and once Serena had sent Blair a package full of Wolford stockings and black-and-white cookies,
     in a bow-tied Barneys bag—some of Blair’s favorite New York things. Blair had reciprocated with a stuffed bulldog wearing
     a Yale T-shirt. It was sitting on Serena’s dresser, next to a silver-framed picture of the two of them wearing enormous hats
     at a Kentucky Derby party sophomore year. They’d send e-mails and texts, but never anything long or involved. It was fine,
     though. Blair and Serena were the type of friends who could go for weeks and even, one time, months without speaking, then
     pick up right where they left off.
    As for Nate… Serena hadn’t talked to him since he left, to sail the world for a year. He had left her crushed, and she wondered
     if she’d ever see him again. But she didn’t want to think about that right now.
    Or ever.
    “Are you going to Chuck’s New Year’s party?” Isabel asked, draining the rest of her Grey Goose and cranberry. “I mean, I know
     he’s, like, such a misogynist, but I figured, you can only protest so much, you know? I prepared Casey.”
    “Wait, Chuck is back from military school?” Serena asked, suddenly eager to hear everything. She hadn’t thought about Chuck—with his sketchy history, his trademark monogrammed scarf, or his questionable sexuality—since
     graduation. But the last she’d heard, after getting rejected from