Chapter 39 - Scott
What?
I must have heard her wrong. Tears start running down her face. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. I can’t stand it when she cries.
She goes to go back inside, but I block her path. She steps to the side. I mirror her.
“Let me go.”
“You can’t, not—”
“Fine, I’ll clean up.”
She starts digging in her purse while I stand there, tongue tied.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m going to leave now.”
“You can’t leave.”
“Leave with me then. One last scene for the cameras. I have class tomorrow, they’ll understand I can’t stay late.”
I feel like I’m going to explode. She thinks I’m worried about appearances?
“You said you were in love with me.”
“I’m not doing this.”
She tries to leave again but I block her. And I’m starting to panic. I can’t, I won’t, forcibly restrain her if she really insists on leaving. But I can’t let this go. It’s too important.
“Please, Chelsea, wait. You said you were in love with me.”
“That is quickly rising to the top of the list of the biggest mistakes of my life.”
“Are you in love with me or not?”
She bites her lip.
“Do you really need to humiliate me—”
“Just answer the question. Please.”
Even with the please it sounds more like a command. I can’t talk softly about this. I want to scream. I almost want to grab her by the shoulders and shake the answer out of her. I would never do anything like that, but that’s how desperate I am.
“Yes,” she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Happy?”
Happy? More like euphoric. No, that word isn’t strong enough either. They’ll have to invent a new word to describe how thrilled I am. Beyond elated. But with a twist of confusion.
“There isn’t someone else?”
She narrows her eyes at me and I hasten to explain.
“When I was dropping off the soup.” She rubs her forehead. “I heard you on the phone. Telling…someone, you love him.”
“I have no idea,” she says.
“I heard it.”
“When you dropped off the soup I was on the phone with Sam.”
“Aha!”
“Aha what? My best friend, Sam. Samantha. I cried my eyes out that night. After you, we, after…and then you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”
“What?”
I’m still processing the fact that Wisconsin Guy is just a figment of my imagination.
“I woke up and you couldn’t wait to get out of there. Do you want me to thank you for driving me back to the city?”
“That’s…”
It’s like one of those two D puzzles where you slide the tiles around. I got one as a prize at an arcade once. You realize if you just move this one and that one and then…all of a sudden I see the whole picture. It all makes sense.
“Okay, this is going to sound really stupid,” I say. “But I was trying to be considerate.”
“What?”
“Just listen, okay, Chelsea, please, this is important.” Maybe the most important thing I’ve ever been a part of. “I swear on everything that is holy to me, you, everyone, I was not trying to get away from you that morning. I wanted to stay. But I wanted more to prove to you that I could be a good fiancé for real.”
“Scott, that doesn’t make any sense. You’ve had your fun. I’m not doing the…landlord tenant thing with benefits.” She takes a deep breath. “Sex isn’t…it has to mean something.”
It does. It will.
“Chelsea, if you’re in love with me—”
“Was. Was in love with you.”
“I’ll take it. Please, this is all just a big misunderstanding. I was not trying to leave you. But you thought I was and then you got mad, so I thought maybe you thought it had been a mistake. The past week has been the worst of my life. Absolute hell.”
“I think the arrangement is over. And we should just let it be over.”
She sniffs loudly. It’s not over, not by a long shot. If she feels a tenth, no a millionth of what I feel for her, well, those odds are good enough for me. I grab her—gently—by the shoulders.
“You said you were in love with me—”
“Stop saying that.”
“I won’t, because I’m in love with you too.”
She freezes for an instant, then recovers her composure.
“Since when?”
It’s not a simple answer. The first moment I saw her I felt something, something I identified as lust, but now I know it was deeper. Then when I saw Mary at the grocery store and realized how wrong that was, that made it all the more obvious. Chelsea is the one. We were made for each other. I’m positive.
“I think maybe…forever.”
“Scott.”
“I love you. If you’ll have me, I’m going to screw up, a lot. I never know the right thing to say for starters. But I want you. For real, not for the cameras. So—”
She pulls out of my grasp and my heart drops. But then she crushes herself against me and we wrap our arms around each other.