Read Online Only In Your Dreams by Cecily von Ziegesar - Free Book Online

stood up from behind Jenny’s painting easel. The cozy room was still lined with Jenny’s canvases— washed-out landscapes, architectural drawings of famous New York buildings like the Dakota on Seventy-second Street, some nude portraits Vanessa saw Dan avert his eyes from just in case they were his sister’s self-portraits. She wrapped her arms around Dan’s skinny frame and squeezed. “Thank you so much for letting me stay here.”
    “It’ll be great,” he assured her, plopping down on the blue-flannel-duvet-covered bed. “We’ll make it our Big New York Summer. I’ve been thinking all about it. All the things we’ll do together—pedaling those stupid boats in Central Park, bagels from H&H Bagels on our days off—”
    “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