DISCLAIMER: I don't own GG. I'm just a poor, struggling college student who has nothing better to do with her life. Haha. :D

A/N: I actually made this in response to a fic challenge. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this. It's kind of Nate-centered. I think he's one of the most misunderstood/misrepresented characters in the series. I miss the version of Nate in the book. :P

Sometimes, I sit on my bed and wonder how things could have ended up this way. If you had asked me five years ago how I thought my life would turn out, my answer would have been simple. I would go on to Dartmouth, follow in my father's footsteps, marry my girlfriend and live a life of luxurious ease with her and our future children here at the Upper East Side. There would be no dark secret between me and my girlfriend's best friend, no break-up, no anger between me and my own best friend. My father would never become a sort of fugitive and I would never be in a relationship with an older woman. It's kind of funny how all at once, the walls around you can crumble and bury you in a heap.

Perhaps my biggest regret is losing her, the girl from whom all things started and eventually ended.

From the moment we met, I knew that things would never be the same. I was five or six years old then but somehow I felt that the brown-haired little girl's face was one that I would never ever forget. I was right. Blair Waldorf, from the time she entered my life, never really left it. After that fateful day in kindergarten, she and I would grow up to form a very strong bond. Serena Van der Woodsen, her stunning best friend, and Chuck Bass, my notorious buddy, would eventually complete our foursome. We had fun living our crazy and sinful lives of Upper Eastside bliss together. While Serena and Chuck would prove to be important players in my life, it would be Blair, however, who would remain as a constant all throughout my growing up years.

My first mistake was, clearly, sleeping with Serena. Looking back, I see that it was all really my fault. I could have stopped it. I could have pulled away. She was my girlfriend's best friend after all. I should have been immune to her charms, to the magic of her blonde hair, her full lips and those long, long legs. I should have covered my ears so as not to hear her gorgeous laughter, turned away so that the wonderful scent of her perfume would have escaped me. But I didn't. I looked and I heard and I smelled. Worst of all, I lied.

When Serena left, I thought that things would be alright. Our secret would be safe and I would be back to being the perfect boyfriend to the perfect girl. She would never learn of it and our mistake would be buried. I should've known better. I should've known that Serena's departure would only leave me thinking about the what-ifs, even lead me into thinking that maybe I was with the wrong girl and that my true love had gone off to boarding school.

Come to think of it, I caused my own demise. I slept with Serena and I was the one who told Blair. I was trying to be heroic, trying to ease my guilt. It seemed pretty noble. And just maybe it was a little stupid too. No matter how hard she tried to smile and tell me that it was okay after that, I knew that they never would be, not really. I had broken her trust, one that had taken more than a decade for me to build.

It was all my doing and yet I could never bring myself to say sorry. Not completely. I was too used to being the perfect son, the perfect boyfriend. Admitting to that mistake would be to admit that I had failed to become person that I was trying so hard to be. I couldn't do it. When she slept with Chuck, I took it as a chance to make myself feel better. She did it too, that meant I wasn't all that bad either, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I never thought of it then but her sleeping with my best friend was really, in essence, my fault too. I had hurt her, broken her heart, had destroyed her dreams. I knew she was fragile. I should've taken better care of her but I didn't. Instead I jumped onto the opportunity to lay more of the blame on her. I could hear the sadness in her voice, could see the tears she was trying her best to hold back. But I never hugged her, never tried to wipe those tears away.

What I did do was run away. I ran away from her, from the life that I worked so hard to build. I ran into the arms of an outsider, a girl who would prove to be funny and interesting but would never really measure up to Blair Waldorf. No one ever could. Not even an older woman with a lot of money and a knack for hot sex, not even Blair's best friend, who, after the initial sheen had rubbed off, was really just another girl whose chest interested me more than her heart.

After a summer away, I thought that I would be over her. I hadn't seen her for weeks and I was busy with a new woman. But the moment she stepped back in my life, the moment I saw those dark brown curls, it was like I was in kindergarten all over again. Those little glimpses of her, at the parties and even in that library with me on top of her new boyfriend's stepmother, never failed to make my heart stop for even just a little bit. After all that time, I couldn't even look her straight in the eyes.

When she approached me about the deal she had made with Catherine, I felt the whole world disappear around me. There was only Blair, Blair, Blair. God, how I would kill to have her in front of me again! That smirk of hers, the sparkle in her eyes, they were some of the things that I could never really find in all the others. I could be happy without her, yes, but what was happiness when it also meant never feeling your heart flutter ever again or never waking up beside a warm little body whose outline you knew like the back of your hand?

She was more to me than anything else in the world. The sad part is I realized it a few years too late. I am here now, in a dimly-lit ballroom, a drink in my hand and a dark-haired girl on my arm. Neither of them are enough to make me as happy as I was when it was Blair Waldorf I had at my side.

I look up and I see how beautifully she glides as she dances with my best friend. I am left to wonder again if things will ever turn out the way I thought they would five years ago.

My date touches my arm and I reluctantly leave my musings behind.

The socialites around the table, fooled into thinking that I was actually interested in their conversation, look at me expectantly and I put on another one of empty smiles.

"Why yes, Mr. Nichols, pride, I know a lot about that."

END!