Heart Improvement: A Brooklyn Heights Bachelor Romance

Chapter 13 - Chelsea

I lead Scott into my apartment. Thank God I made the bed, not when I got up at 5:30, but when I got back from work, before we went to get the ring.

Right, the ring. I look down at my hand. There’s barely any light in the hallway, but the stone catches what little there is and scatters it in a thousand different directions.

“Chels?”

Oh my gawd, I’m standing frozen in the hallway.

“Sorry,” I say, walking down the hall.

“You were looking at the ring, weren’t you?” He knows I was, he was standing right next to me. “Do you not like it?”

“Oh, no,” I say. “It’s very pretty. I just, it kind of reminds me of the…enormity of what we are trying to pull off here.”

“Yeah. It’s big.”

That’s not what I was thinking about. I was thinking about how it would have felt if he put the ring on my finger for real. If he had actually asked me to marry him, rather than just pretending to be engaged.

Tile, I remind myself. I lead him down to my living room. He puts the pizza box on the counter, and I grab some plates.

“Do you mind?”

“No.”

He opens the box, and the aroma hits me. It smells really good, and I realize I’m very hungry too. I microwave my slice for thirty seconds and get the cheese all bubbly. Then I carefully take a bite.

“Oh,” I say. “Oh, wow.”

“Told you. It’s the best. They’ve been there for, I don’t know, fifty years? And to be honest, I’m not sure they’d take your order if you wanted pineapple on it.”

“Pineapple would be an abomination on this,” I agree.

I finish my slice and help myself to another. When I’m done—Scott is still working on the last of the pepperoni—I open up my laptop. I explain that I had several different options for tile for each of the kitchens and bathrooms anyway.

“Which would you pick?” He looks surprised that I’m asking his opinion. I guess that makes sense, given the stink I made the day we went to see the project, that all the decisions were mine and mine alone. “I’m just curious. Which one?”

“Well, it depends.”

“On what?” He takes another bite of pizza, which I figure is a stall tactic. “There is no wrong answer, you know.”

“Okay.” He swallows hard and points to one. “This one goes with the green in the curtains.” Window treatments, but whatever. “But this one is more neutral.”

“That’s an A plus answer.”

“Really?”

“We got this.”

We go through my presentation together.

“You sound really polished,” he says.

“Practice makes perfect.” I have rehearsed it out loud at least twenty times. “VPs are a big part of 4H.” He blinks at me. It’s obvious he has no clue what I’m talking about. “Sorry, VPs are visual presentations.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “What’s 4H?”

“Kind of…boy scouts for agriculture. I was in the vegetable club.”

He starts to laugh but catches himself.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. There are lots of different clubs. They even have robotics clubs now.”

Not that I have experience with that personally, I’ve just heard. Mom started me in 4H when I was five. She cornered off a portion of the vegetable garden and made it my responsibility. I took it very seriously, filling the watering can from the rain barrel and weeding every day. At the end of the summer, I was thrilled when I won ribbons at the fair.

I didn’t realize then that the Cloverbuds—the youngest kids—basically get participation ribbons. Once you are eight you get judged for real. Over the next twelve years I won plenty of ribbons and not just for vegetables either. Sewing, art—lots of art—baking, photography, food preservation. I have shoe boxes full of ribbons in my closet at home.

A lump forms in my throat. I don’t want to go home, in fact, I think it would be impossible to go home and not miss New York 24/7. But I don’t really belong here, not yet anyway. And, having been here, I don’t really belong at home anymore.

“I should practice too.”

Scott’s announcement brings me back to the present. I excuse myself and go into the bathroom where I blow my nose.

I just need to keep busy,I think. If we get the show—I refuse to let myself think beyond if—the schedule will probably be crazy. I won’t have time to be homesick.

“Sorry about that, where were we?” I say when I come back into the living room.

“You were about to help me with my part of the presentation.”

“I was?”

“Yes,” he says seriously, nodding his head. “I need help. I was going to wing it. But you are so prepared, I will look like a total ass if I do that.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I can definitely help.”

“Can I ask a question, before we get started?”

“Sure.”

“What do you do in a vegetable club?”

I laugh.

“It’s not all about vegetables, that’s kind of the reason to have the club. Though we did trade seeds and start them in peat pots. We met every other week and did a craft and a game. But you have an actual meeting, so you start with the Pledge of Allegiance and the 4H Pledge, elect officers. And we did community service.”

“What kind of community service?”

“Food drives, helping at the library. We would take rakes and clean up people’s yards, you know, if they were elderly and couldn’t do it anymore. And we did visual presentations. I remember when I was a junior judge, this one little girl did a VP on unicorns. She wore a unicorn onesie, and it was just adorable.

“She finished with, if I had a unicorn, it would be my best fwend. Fwend, not friend. I swear everyone in the room almost died from the cuteness of it.”

“Well, I’m not going for adorable,” Scott says. I realize nothing I’ve been reminiscing about is applicable to our presentation. “More like persuasive.”

I reach out to touch his hand and then quickly stop myself.

“I think we should just give them our best ideas and hope they like it.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

We spend the better part of an hour working on his half of the presentation. Because mine is already done, we stagger his comments in with mine. Then we practice. Over and over again.

“I can’t do it again,” he finally says with a groan.

I stifle another yawn. They’ve been happening with increasing frequency. I don’t know what time I’ll have to get up if we are filming the TV show, but I know I won’t mind as much. Right now, however, I am not looking forward to the alarm going off at 5AM tomorrow.

“You’re tired.”

I shake my head just as another giant yawn overtakes me.

“I’m sorry, I forgot how early you have to get up.” He gets up. “You want me to wrap up this pizza?”

“No, I can do it.” He’s already gotten up off the couch and headed to the kitchen. I don’t bother to protest again. “Foil is in the second cabinet on the left.”

I stretch out on the couch and close my eyes, just for a second. The next thing I know he’s spreading the plush throw out on top of me.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Have a good night,” he says softly.

He grabs the empty pizza box and leaves through the back door.

I should get up and brush my teeth,I think. But I’m so comfortable. Scott turned off the overhead lights when he left. There is just the soft glow from under the cabinets. My eyelids feel so heavy and I am way too tired to move.

I turn over and the ring catches on the blanket. I twist it back and forth on my finger. We really do make a good team. The presentation is, in my humble opinion, pretty damn good. He provided the information for his part—things like structural, electrical and plumbing, etc.—and I smoothed out the sentences for him.

He may not be able to find the right words—his assessment, not mine—but when he has a script, he delivers them perfectly. By this time next week, we could have our own show. This could actually happen.

In spite of my exhaustion the excitement bubbles up inside of me. It wakes me up enough that I decide to get ready for bed, properly. I head into the bathroom.

Could this really happen?I think as I grab my toothbrush. Could I really become a celebrity designer? Will Scott get to go back to acting? And if so, where would that leave us?

There is no us,I remind myself for the gabillionth time. But as I crawl into bed, I sneak one more look at the ring before I close my eyes.