Rufus shivers some more, nervously and sort of hatefully: "CeCe's in town? That's nice for ... Lily, to have her ... Mom here..." Dan shrugs, having forgotten CeCe and Rufus ever met, pushing Rufus and Lily's history to the side like he and Serena always do, refusing to let Rufus and Lily's unkind memories of CeCe taint the friendship that he shares with her. How she gives with one hand and takes with the other. But Dan's zeroing in on it: "Did you, uh, did you think of going today?" Rufus casually, elaborately shrugs at the idea. "Why not? I mean, you're one of Lily's oldest friends..." Rufus looks his eldest son in the face, and lies to him. "No, I know. It's just better this way."

Nothing feels right when left here on my own
Left last night it seemed like way too long

Rufus leans, casually fake and fakely casual, against the counter: as thought it's not a remarkably transparent and desperate segue but a polite change of topic. "So, how's Serena?" Dan says, in effect, that Aaron won this round of the Boyfriend Wars, and Rufus perks right the motherfuck up. "You two have been spending a lot of time together since the accident..." Dan's getting more and more suspicious, because what Rufus Humphrey knows about dissembling wouldn't fill the white label on a first-run bootleg import: "So?" So like it or not, Rufus explains, death changes things. "Clarifies them. It brings some people closer together, pushes others... Further apart." Like Bart's death, for example: brings me and Lily together, pushes you and Serena apart, and don't you dare tell me otherwise. "I just thought maybe..." Dan assures his father that they are just friends, barely believing it himself, but that's good enough for Rufus: "Oh. Good." Dan asks what the hell he means, and Rufus mumbles something stupid and awful, and Dan reassures him like a colicky two-year-old: "No. We broke up twice, and it's over. It's very much over." Rufus thinks about that; he thinks very fucking hard about it.