Chapter Nine
Chelsea
Challenge: Start a new language
I awoke to Bas sitting beside me on the mattress, dressed.
This wasn’t good. There was a man in my house. I started to panic, but then I smelled something interesting. Was he baking? I’d never awoken to such amazing aromas. My body relaxed.
“Good morning, Λατρε?α μου. My worship.”
I smiled at the endearment even though the echo of last night, how he’d taken such care of me, left me hollowed out, vulnerable. I hadn’t meant to show him my wounds, but he hadn’t run away. He probably would once he figured out how deep they went.
“You stayed,” I said, a little hoarse. Morning was always the worst part of my day, the painful return to reality.
When I sat up, he pulled me into a hug, and I wrapped my arms around him, luxuriating in the feeling of his body surrounding mine. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held a man like this—been held—when it wasn’t accompanied by heavy breathing and the shedding of clothes. I wanted to relax into him, steal a little warmth from the cocoon of his strong arms. I breathed in.
“What is that? Honey?”
He poked me. “Yes, dear?”
I snorted. “What smells so amazing?”
“I’m making you breakfast.”
I’d never in my life had a man serve me breakfast. It was outside the realm of my imagination, at least without cursing and slamming cabinet doors.
“Can I help?”
“You can start the coffee.” He looked at me. “You can make coffee?”
“Of course. I work in a coffee shop.”
“Oh, right.”
Once I got the coffee brewing, I excused myself to shower and brush my teeth and change. I was planning on focusing on a graphic design commission, so I slipped on my yoga pants and a worn-out college sweater. I grabbed my phone off the end table and rejoined Bas in my tiny dining room, where he’d started setting plates on the table.
“Sit,” he commanded.
When I took a sip of coffee, I gasped. “What did you do to this?”
He just smiled. “Secret.”
“You didn’t come in it, did you? I’ve heard about that!”
He burst out laughing. I loved the sound of his laugh—joyful and spirited, like everything he did. “Are you saying my jizz would improve the taste of your coffee?”
I curled my feet up into my chair to get comfy. “I hadn’t thought about the logical ramifications of that claim. But if that’s how you made this coffee better, then yes. I’d like to order a sack of your semen.”
He shook his head at me and went into the kitchen to perform magic on whatever was making my house smell like a carnival in the best possible way.
Fifteen minutes later, Bas came back from the kitchen carrying a plate with a tower of French toast, perfectly golden and brown, sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon, and steaming hot.
I carved off a small corner and ran it through the syrup. As soon as it hit my tongue, my body melted in pleasure. “Oh shit, Bas. Are you kidding me? You are welcome here any time.” I caught myself. “I mean—” But the genie was out of the bottle. I wiped some syrup off my chin and asked, “Are you going to get me used to this and then pull some kind of reverse Lysistrata where you withhold food in return for sex?”
“I don’t need to bribe you with food for sex.”
Oh, the cockiness. I kind of liked it. If Old Chelsea were here, she’d want to shut him down before he got too comfortable, taking me for granted. But flirty New Chelsea was in charge because my God, the French toast was seriously magic. “So you’re not wooing me?”
“Wooing you?” His forehead furrowed, making him look like a brooding model in some magazine spread. Bas was easy on the eyes, but then he went and said, “I guess I am wondering what we’re doing.”
“Are you my fuckboy? My booty call?” I nudged his knee with my socked foot. “My casual hookup?”
If I was freaking him out, he only laughed. “Well, I’m not a fuckboy. And I’m obviously catching feelings for you. But it’s not a hostage situation. I can wait to see where things go.”
That checked out. One reason he could be the perfect trial romance for me was because he said things like that. He pushed, but so gently. And I started to think maybe that wasn’t all game. He probably could take it or leave it, like he had with his other abandoned interests, like French and fencing. When things got too challenging, he quit. Why wouldn’t that apply to women, too? To me?
His casual answer reinforced my certainty that he’d leave me if I didn’t yeet him first. And if I let him charm me with his easy warmth, I’d be the fool with the broken heart.
He reached across the table, and I looked at his hand like it was the Rosetta Stone.
He arched an eyebrow. “Take my hand, Chelsea. I’m not going to propose.”
Thank God for Bas. I took his hand, and he dragged his thumb across mine, like he’d done it a million times, like we were old lovers, old friends. Like we could stay this way forever.
“I won’t play games, okay?” At my flinch, he squeezed my hand tight. “And I’m not going to rush you, either.”
I swallowed. My breakfast was entirely forgotten.
“I just want to get to know you better.” He leaned forward and spoke quieter. “I think you want the same thing I do. I see it in your eyes. Until you push me away, I’m going to keep trying. Tell me to stop, and I’ll stop.”
The Old Chelsea would have told him to abandon all hope, but there’d been a glitch in the matrix, and I didn’t want this to end.
“Don’t stop.”
He grinned like he’d won a minor victory, and as a reward, he ducked into the kitchen and returned with a plate of bacon. I licked my lips without meaning to. Then he sat down and tucked into his breakfast.
Once we’d devoured most of the food, he asked, “What are you doing for the rest of the day?”
“I have an eight-hour shift at the coffee shop starting at noon. This morning, I have to finish designing a website for a debut author. And if I have time”—I hesitated—“I need to make some earrings.”
“Earrings?”
I hopped up and went into my bedroom to grab my stash. I found the box with my best ones and brought it back to the coffee table. “I have an Etsy shop.”
He came over to sit on the sofa. After perusing the jewelry, he slipped out a lapis earring and ran a finger across it. “You made this?”
I loved him for not asking me, You can make money this way? because the answer to that was uneven. “It’s just a hobby,” I lied. My shop did very well, but I didn’t like to talk about it, usually. Maybe because Bas met the most honest me, or maybe because he’d proven trustworthy so far, I wanted to share some of my secrets with him.
Out of all the earrings I’d laid out, he picked up the drop earrings bearing two flowers, one in silver, the other, slightly larger, in pink gold, dangling below. “These are unusual.”
I took one of them and traced the curve in the metal. I hesitated, but after everything he’d told me at the picnic the day before, he’d earned some honesty.
“My mom had this necklace I coveted. It was a simple chain with yellow, white, and rose gold flowers. She rarely wore it—just when she and my dad would go out on dates, which they did sometimes. She always looked so pretty when she dressed up, and I can picture the two of them like that. A normal-looking, beautiful couple.” A tear slipped down my cheek, and Bas reached over and caught it on his index finger.
“What happened to the necklace?”
“One night, my dad—” My voice gave out, and I couldn’t go on.
“Did he break it?”
I nodded. I fought to get out the words. “He tore it right off her neck and threw it against the wall.”
I heard my dad’s voice, angry about things outside my understanding. I pictured the Band-Aid on the back of my mom’s neck the day after, covering a nasty welt.
I pulled my knees up under my chin like I did when I was ten. Like I could curl up and hide in a corner of my bedroom and make the yelling stop.
Bas wrapped his arms around my entire body, knees and all. “That’s a terrible memory. Why did you keep the necklace?”
I thought, I should get a bonus point for opening up , and let out a raspy laugh. “I’m sorry. You’re probably regretting asking, right?”
He ran his hands over my hair. “You want to talk about it?”
How did he get me to open up about this stuff? “They represent where I came from—the good and the bad. It’s more honest than the bruises or the bouquet of flowers that followed.” I unclasped my hand and showed him the earrings, now biting into my skin. “These are what’s left. I picked up the pieces. This is the first pair of earrings I ever made. I’ll never sell them.”
“They’re beautiful, Chelsea.” He sat back and let me lean against him, relaxed and comforted. I’d never told any of this even to Elizabeth.
I buried my head against his shoulder, his scruffy chin inches from my nose. He always smelled deliciously edible, and I wondered if my mom ever sat like this with my dad, before. If she’d fallen in love with a better man. “He had to have been different at the beginning, right? She wouldn’t have chosen a man like that.”
He didn’t try to answer that. It was a rhetorical question anyway. I knew they’d been in love, even after things began to crumble.
“Is she still with him?”
“No, he left when I was fifteen. I haven’t seen him since.”
“I’m so sorry, Chelsea. You deserved better.”
His arms tightened around me, like he could absorb all the bad memories, and I realized how intimate our bodies had become, how easy it was to take physical comfort from him. The contact touched something deep within me, but I didn’t want to get used to a temporary indulgence.
I pulled away. “I need to get moving. Time to earn the money to pay the rent. What are you doing the rest of the day?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. I might take my roommate’s dog Pepper out for a run. She needs some exercise. I might see if Evan is up for kicking around a soccer ball with some guys I know.”
The unstated question hung in the air: When will I see you again?
Bas stood, found his shoes, then dropped back on the sofa to put them on, saying, “Evan’s first TV appearance is tomorrow.”
I leaped at the opening. “You want to stop by and watch together?”
“Definitely.”
“Come over after work. I’ll make dinner.” What was I doing? “Be forewarned. It won’t be anything to write home about, but I owe you a meal.”
“I look forward to it.”
As soon as he left, I fell into a funk. It was like, as long as he was here, I was in a spell, but when I started to clean up the kitchen, I cursed my weakness. I tried to distract myself from the confusion I was feeling by throwing myself into some design work, completely aware of the irony of needing a distraction from my distraction.
When I finally got dressed and started walking into work, I pulled up the list to check for something I might do later to blow off some steam and couldn’t help smile with fondness when I saw how many checkmarks were thanks to Bas.
My eyes fell on Start a new language. The library had free access to Rosetta Stone, so I shoved my headphones in and loaded up the course for Greek on lesson one. This would more likely compound my problem, but I couldn’t help myself. I legitimately loved learning new languages. It was the next best thing to travel.
“Γει? σα?!” I repeated after the speaker, assuming it meant hello. It sounded like yes, ass —a vivid mnemonic. Yes, Bas had a very, very fine ass.
Elizabeth was totally going to say, I told you so .