Heart Improvement: A Brooklyn Heights Bachelor Romance

Chapter 31 - Chelsea

Scott turns the truck down Remsen.

“Are you going to park on the street?”

Even in the, highly unlikely, event he can find a spot, the odds of it being big enough for the truck are astronomically small.

He doesn’t answer me and the silence, which feels like it has been suffocating me for the past two plus hours, grows even heavier.

I keep my mouth shut as he pulls in front of a fire hydrant and puts his hazards on. Then he hops out and starts pulling things out of the bed. He sets our suitcases down next to each other on the sidewalk.

I stare at them, the sadness leaking out of my heart and spreading throughout my body. Those two suitcases, side by side. That’s what I wanted. Not matching, but compatible. Instead, I got one night. And we are definitely compatible. Well, I thought so. The sex was amazing. I guess he didn’t feel the same way.

So it’s over. Really, really over. Because I am not going to be his fake fiancée WITH benefits.

He’s looking into the truck bed. I look up and down the road. It’s one way, but I still look both ways. He’s joked that I’ll be a real New Yorker once I only look one way automatically.

“There is so much soup,” he says.

“Sorry.”

He shakes his head.

“No, I mean, just take one bag.” He hands it to me. “I’ll go park the truck.”

I can’t imagine he can carry all those bags back from the garage, but I don’t argue. I grab my suitcase with my free hand. We are halfway down the block from his, mine—definitely not our—house.

He sighs and grabs his bag, setting it back in the truck.

“Just take those. I’ll manage.”

He walks away from me without another word and then drives off.

I trudge down the street. It’s pretty hot. I really miss the smell of the ocean and the cool breeze. This morning when I woke up, before I realized he was gone, before I realized what a horrendous mistake last night was, I was imagining endless summer weekend mornings in bed, lazy afternoons hanging out on the beach.

I can’t believe I was so stupid. He told me explicitly on Friday night he didn’t want to get married. Just his whole ‘Pretend to be engaged’ idea should have clued me in. No one who is serious about marriage, about commitment, would ever come up with that.

I have to set the bag of soup down to unlock my door. Then I lock up, shove my suitcase in my bedroom and carry the grocery bag to the kitchen. I set it on the counter. Putting the cans away seems like an awful lot of work.

Shower,I think. I strip off my clothes and leave them in a pile on the bathroom floor. Myles’s three bin laundry hamper for effortless sorting seems to be sneering at me. I flip it the finger.

Showering also seems way too hard so I just stand under the water for what seems like forever. Time crawls when you are miserable. Eventually I think I can’t smell Scott anymore, so I shampoo and then lather the rest of him away with some lavender scented body wash. Then I stand in the water for a while longer, hoping that he’ll notice it on his bill.

“Brilliant,” I mutter.

I let him screw my brains out and my revenge is what probably amounts to a couple of bucks. I debate leaving the water running when I get out, but I can’t punish the planet because I’m an idiot and he’s a jerk.

I eat one can of soup, but it isn’t enough. I need chocolate. And moral support. I call Sam. I feel so stupid, but I know once I explain the situation, she’ll back me up, a hundred percent.

“Yo.”

“I slept with him.”

“With who?”

“With Scott.”

Silence. No reaction whatsoever.

“Sam?”

“Um, congratulations? What took you so long?”

“What…”

Oh. Oh fuck.

“Chels?”

Scott calls me that too, I think mournfully.

“Okay, I have to tell you something. Everything.”

“I’m listening.”

“Scott and I were never engaged. Not for real. We pretended to get the show.” More silence. “Is that like a crime or something?”

“I don’t think so. Not in Wisconsin. Lying on a reality TV show is probably part of the contract. What did the contract say?”

“I don’t know, I let his lawyers handle it.”

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? You have to read the contract.”

“I need friend Sam, not lawyer Sam.”

“Right, sorry. I’m not a lawyer.”

“You will be,” I say automatically.

She huffs out something unintelligible and I can see the look on her face, the rolling of her eyes. I miss her so much. I want to go home.

You are not going to walk away from FIT because of Scott,Inner Samantha says.

She’s right, but I have real Samantha on the phone.

“I just, it was supposed to be pretend, but I really…like him.”

“So you did it?”

“Yes.”

She doesn’t ask me how it was, thank god. Because I don’t want to get into that. Bad enough it was the best sex of my life and now it’s never going to happen again.

“And then?”

“This morning, well, he couldn’t wait to leave. All he cared about was beating the traffic.”

“Hmm,” Samantha says.

“Well?”

“Maybe he really hates traffic.”

“Sam—”

“I’m sorry, that’s pretty bad. What guy turns down sex because of traffic? Wait, did you like…make it clear you wanted more sex?”

“By the time I woke up he had dressed and packed and even gotten Door Dash, so we didn’t have to stop.”

“Yikes. I’m sorry.”

“And the worst part is I still have to finish the show and pretend to be engaged to him.”

“Do you?”

“I think they’ll sue me or something if I don’t.”

“You really should have—”

“Read the contract, I know. Not helpful.”

“Sorry.”

“We can do this. Just text me lots and call me every night. It will be over before you know it.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. Uh, best friend promise, not lawyer promise.”

We talk a little more, mostly about how she’s going to come to New York, and we will have the time of our lives and she’ll be sure to glare hard at Scott, if we run into him. Which we most likely will.

When we hang up, I decide to get dressed and get out of the apartment. I can’t be here, not with Scott on one of the floors above me. I refuse to think about the ramifications of that realization.

I have no other options. Dorms at FIT are impossible to get into. And if I’m living rent free here, I can’t move. I have the money from the show, but I have to save that for future tuition. Just because I made my living situation super awkward doesn’t mean I can afford to be stupid about money too.

Just get through the show,I think. After that I should only bump into him occasionally. Hardly ever. That will be much easier.

I walk down to the Promenade, hoping it will be cooler with the breeze from the river than on the street. It’s not. I peer down at the Greenway. Scott told me his dad said it used to be a naval yard. Mayber it’s cooler down there, it’s literally right on the water. I stare at it for a while before sighing and heading back to my less-than-optimal apartment. I’m way too tired and depressed and also too hungry for a longer walk in this heat.

Montague Street beckons with the possibility of ice cream or another dessert. I should get a salad or a sandwich. Maybe even a giant burrito. But in the end I just go home.

This is my home, I think as I walk in the door. And nobody, not Scott—I glare at the ceiling—or anyone else is going to send me running back to Wisconsin with my tail between my legs.

“Hey! Wait!”

My heart jumps, but my brain is already determined it’s not Scott’s voice.

“I’m looking for Chelsea Macafee.”

“Mullavey,” I say automatically.

He shoves a platter at me. The cover is clear so I can see it’s full of assorted pastries.

“I didn’t order this.”

Which is too bad. This is exactly what I need.

He shows me his phone.

“This you?” I nod. “There’s a note,” he says, pointing, then turns to go.

“Wait, let me get you a tip,” I say, fumbling with my purse.

“They already tipped me.”

Then he’s gone. I can’t wait to read the note, but I also want to get inside the air conditioning rather desperately. I use the time spent getting down to my kitchen to speculate on what the note says.

Scott must have realized in our two hours apart that he’s madly in love with me. He could just walk downstairs and knock on my door and say it. But he’d want to do it grander. Make it up to me, with lots and lots of chocolate. God I love him.

I rip off the envelope and open it.

Fuck him. Not literally. That’s an order. Love, Sam. PS I hope you don’t know the guys at the deli because they read that.

It’s like a punch in the gut. I take off the cover and select the chocolatiest option. I have to pick from two, but I don’t worry about it.

“I’ll eat you next,” I promise the second chocolatiest. “And you never,” I say to some plain vanilla thing in the center. Blech.

I take a bite and sigh with relief. The agony of the day blurs while my brain screams, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

I grab my phone and call Sam.

“I guess it got there.”

“Oh my gawd, yes,” I say, cramming another bite into my mouth.

“They thought I was nuts. Did they put the one shitty cookie in the middle?”

“Mm-hm,” I say, and then swallow. “Wait, you told them to do that?”

“It’s a metaphor. It’s…him.”

“Huh?”

“When all the good stuff is gone it will be old and stale. Then you take it and stomp it into smithereens. No more cookie. No more Scott. Nothing but crumbs you can sweep up and…flush down the toilet preferably. Then you get on with YOUR life.”

“I love you,” I shout.

Then I turn around and scream.

“What?”

“Nothing. There’s a man at my backdoor.”

“Is it him?”

“Hold on.”

I put the phone on the counter and open the door. He’s leaving, walking away from my door, from me.

“Scott?”

He stops but doesn’t turn around. Then he mumbles something.

“What?”

“Your soup,” he says loudly.

I look down. It’s all there. Bags and bags.

“Thank you.”

He turns.

“You should thank me. It took me three trips. The guys at the garage are calling me Soup Guy now.”

“I’m—”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Right.”

I slam the door with some satisfaction until I remember I left the soup outside. Oh well, it’s under the deck. I’ll get it later. On my counter Sam’s voice is squawking out of my phone. I pick it up.

“Chelsea, Chels—”

“I’m here.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. He was just dropping some stuff off.”

I tell him the whole story and we laugh. Sam says long after I’ve forgotten him, he’ll be stuck with the soup guy moniker. He’ll spend the rest of his life, or at least as long as he parks at that garage, ruing the day he mistreated me.

She stays on the phone with me for hours. I eat way too much chocolate and when I finally go to bed, I feel pretty sick. I hope that’s enough to keep the tears from coming. It’s not.