It's a no-frills hook up; a quick fuck on the way back from the washroom at an engagement party.

Been there, done that, took a picture and sent it in to Gossip Girl, right?

Except that it's Blair Waldorf's engagement party (her second one) and she's hardly marrying Dan Humphrey (who's improved). Her fiancé doesn't wax poetic about every two-minute sins she commits.

"Is fucking an ex after you get engaged another one of your traditions?" asks Dan. He is very drunk and a little bitter. Or perhaps very bitter and only a little drunk.

"As if," is the best she can muster. Her lipstick needs reapplying. Her hair is dishevelled. She cannot concentrate on comebacks at the moment.

"What about fucking your ex twice?"

Blair doesn't wait for him to kiss her. She ropes her arm around his neck and conquers him as fast as she can.

Dan isn't invited to the wedding. Officially, it's because of a trophy wife story he wrote for the New Yorker. But Blair knows that story is about a different prized wife.

The brandy is a cheap imitation of quality stuff, but it goes down easily after a banquet's worth of '96 Dom Perrignon. Blair wasn't looking for quality when she strolled into this airport-hotel's bar; she was looking for Dan. He isn't hard to find.

"Having second thoughts?" he calls to her from across the bar (very bitter and very drunk).

Blair takes a seat next to him, orders two shots of the bad brandy in question, and proposes a toast.

"To tradition!" Dan laughs hoarsely, but drinks anyways.

"I can't believe you got drunk at an airport hotel in Queens when you could have crashed my wedding," she says.

"It's been done too many times," he says, "there's no romance left to yelling I object at exactly the right time." (As if furtive, emotional conversations in the outer Burroughs are romantic).

They sit in silence for a moment, Blair's hand slowly inching towards Dan's, until she suddenly jerks it back, wraps it around a second shot of brandy and downs her drink.

"I'm going," she says, standing up. Dan hands her an envelope.

"A wedding present," he says.

Blair stuffs it in her bag and rushes to find a cab that will take her back to the Upper East Side.

Blair comes up with a weak but not implausible excuse for her disappearing act (Dorota wanted to give her a traditional Polish...something). She smiles at her new husband (maybe she can make this work). She goes to bed in the Empire Hotel.

She wakes up early, orders strong coffee and finds her purse. A quick glance at her sleeping spouse and she rushes to open the envelope Dan gave her.

The envelope contains two things.

One is a piece of yellow-lined paper. Here's to new traditions, it says.

The other is a return plane ticket to the Dominican Republic. Coach.