Eight Weeks to Mr. Right Page 7

  Yet Andrew was responding to her, and it made me feel sick to my stomach to see. Not being able to talk about the dates with the other women, I’d just assumed Andrew had had the same reactions to them as I had. It had been clear from our dates that he was into me, but now I saw that he was acting in the same flirtatious way with all of them.

  And Isabella even more than the others.

  “I really like you,” she told him as they cooked, though she looked terrified of everything in the kitchen.

  He smiled at her. “I like you too,” he said, moving closer, and then he kissed her on the lips while their sauce boiled and popped behind them on the stove.

  My chest constricted. He liked her. He was kissing her. The day before our date, he had kissed Isabella, while I was trying to convince myself that I was the only one he was into.

  This was hard to watch.

  “So he’s just trying to sleep with as many of these women as possible, right?” Ben said.

  I tried to hide my hurt. “I guess so,” I mumbled.

  The producers had inserted another date between mine and Isabella’s, playing with the timeline in a way that I was sure viewers wouldn’t catch. But then it was my turn.

  There we were in the kitchen, and I was smiling up at him in a way that said, ‘I’m kind of into you.’ He was smiling back at me. We talked about the scents of all the foods, and then the scene cut to the other women in the living room. Brandi was saying, “She thinks she can woo him by talking about smells and stuff.” As though I had no actual interest in scent, but was just putting on an act.

  Then there was a cut back to my early scene in the confessional, the one where I’d said, “I would do anything to get to work for La Joie.” I sighed, hurt. They weren’t going to let that go.

  Back in the kitchen, we were stirring a pot of soup, which we’d made with biscuits, laughing and joking with each other with our backs to the kitchen door. But there were Brandi and Isabella, peeking their heads stealthily in to watch us.

  I gasped. “What?” I said. “I had no idea they were there!” Ben looked worried.

  On the screen, I was saying to Andrew, “You know, you’re a really cool guy. I’m glad I have the chance to get to know you.” It had been true — that was the moment when I’d realized it, that I perhaps, maybe, had some inkling of interest in him beyond what I’d thought. And I’d wanted to be honest and say it.

  Andrew had bent down closer, his lips nearing mine inch by inch, until they grazed mine. It had taken only a split second, but I had taken it as affirmation that Andrew thought I was special. I remembered the way my heart had fluttered, the way I’d wondered whether this could really be happening, whether I could really be falling for this man.

  And Brandi and Isabella had heard and seen it all.

  I knew what was coming now. Back in the living room, they were reporting back to the other women what I’d said. “You’re really cool. I’m glad I can get to know you,” Isabella scoffed, and Brandi rolled her eyes.

  “She’s so fake. She kissed him after admitting she doesn’t even like him!” Brandi said.

  I turned to Ben, devastated. “Why are they ganging up on me?” I asked, feeling tears well up inside of me. “I didn’t do anything to them.”

  He pulled me into a hug there on the couch. “It reflects much worse on them than on you,” he whispered into my hair. His words felt like a soothing balm after the sting of the other women’s mockery, and I held on for a moment too long, breathing in his scent and feeling the strange way my body was reacting to him, the light giddiness in my chest that was settling on top of the heavy hurt.

  And then we sunk back into our original positions on the couch and watched the rest of the episode, which, thankfully, I was not in. Andrew eliminated one of the women at the end, and then I knew it was time, once again, for damage control.

  After it was over, I turned to him. “So what do I do now?” I asked.

  I knew I was relying too heavily on him, but he’d been such a help after last week’s episode, and I just didn’t think I could do it alone.

  Ben helped me come up with a few well-phrased tweets to send out, and when Isabella send out a “Now the world gets to see how two-faced January is,” he helped me maintain my calm and ignore her bait.

  “I think you should start a blog,” he said. “Nothing too in-depth, but just a place where you can talk about why you chose to go on the show, and do what you can to protect your reputation from further damage. After all, regardless of what else happens on the show or how viewers react to it, you will still be applying for perfume jobs again at some point. If this controversy raises any red flags for potential employers, it might be good to just clear it all up now.”

  “Okay,” I said, hanging on his every word.

  Over the next hour, Ben helped me choose a domain and get a first post written. I talked about my love of perfume, and Ben reminded me of what I’d said in the kitchen while we were cooking when I drew a blank on what to write. He helped me explain why perfume was so important to me, and then he helped me move into why I’d gone on the show — a modified version of the truth, in which I said that I wanted to meet Andrew in person after being an admirer of his company’s fragrances, and hoped that our common love of perfume might bring us closer together.

  By the time we were done, I was grinning from ear to ear. Despite how poorly I’d been portrayed on this episode, I was satisfied that we’d done everything we could to defend me online and make me look as good as we could. After that, it was out of my hands. What the producers did I couldn’t control. But with Ben helping me sculpt my every response, I was taking control over the little part of my reputation that I still could.

  “You’re amazing!” I told him, grateful beyond words.

  “I’m happy to help,” he said, his eyes searching my face. “Hey, let’s celebrate a job well done. Can I take you out for a drink?…Or a Shirley Temple?” he teased.

  For a split second, light as air, I imagined going back with him to the bar where we’d first seen each other. Sitting under the dim, low-hanging lamps suspended above each table. Making toasts to each other while sitting close together, accidentally touching his knee with mine under the table as I shifted in my chair.

  But then my feeling of accomplishment fizzled along with the fantasy as I remembered Maria’s stern warning. “I can’t,” I said, deflating with the words. “I promised the producer I wouldn’t be seen on anything that looks like a date.”

  “Oh,” he said, taking a step back stiffly. “Of course.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really do appreciate your help. I wish I could…”

  “I understand.” After a moment of silence, he added, “I think I’m just going to head to bed.”

  I sat in the living room for several minutes after he left, staring at the wall and feeling like I’d ruined everything.

  WEEK 4

  The live episode was still several weeks away, but I needed a distraction. So on Friday, I went to the mall to search for a new dress to wear to the final taping.

  As I looking through rack after rack of dresses, my mind wandered.

  I was just trying to follow orders by not going out with Ben for a celebratory drink. We could still celebrate at home as much as we wanted. So why did I feel like I’d rejected him?

  I found myself thinking about the end of our relationship, way back when I was sixteen. We’d had sex for the first time only a month earlier, though in my memory it felt like ages. I’d felt vulnerable afterward, and especially soft and loving toward him. It had happened a couple more times after that, but then he’d come over to my house one evening when I wasn’t expecting him, and had told me he couldn’t see me anymore. I asked why. He had no explanation. I remembered him looking down at the floor, and I remembered crying for hours.

  Afterward we’d avoided each other for the rest of high school. As a teenager, I’d thought he must hate me, that maybe I’d even done something horribly
wrong, and that I should know what it was. I’d scoured my memory of the previous few months for clues, but couldn’t find anything. For a few months, wanting to know what had happened consumed me. Had I ever asked, after that first day when he came to my house? Or had I just assumed that his staring down at the ground was his final answer?

  But eventually I’d moved on. I’d dated in college and in the years since, though never seriously. Ben was still my longest relationship. And if I was honest with myself, still my best. At graduation, he had given me a big hug that seemed to suggest he still thought well of me, but we hadn’t spoken again after, hadn’t seen each other.

  It had taken a few years for the warm, fuzzy feelings to return when I thought about him, but since my early twenties, I’d been able to chalk up the breakup to “we just weren’t right for each other.” It had been impossible to hold a grudge against Ben, not when the entirety of our relationship he’d been so kind, so giving, so caring. I simply chose to remember all the good parts, not the part that didn’t make sense. I’d come to think of it as the inevitable end to a happy period in my life, maybe because it had seemed so out-of-character for him to dump me, and so sudden. I didn’t have a long period of arguments to remember, insults that still burned; I had only our happy two years and one difficult conversation.

  So what had happened? I still didn’t know. But I was happy to have Ben back in my life, happy that we’d managed to move past our high school selves’ awkwardness into this friendship we now had. Even if at times my body responded to his as more than just a friend.

  I tried on a few dresses and chose a navy blue one for the final taping. It was neither overly revealing (I thought of Isabella’s first-date dress) or overly professional (I thought of my own), but it felt just right for me.

  But as I started to make my way back through the maze of the store with my new purchase on my arm, I paused.

  What if I just smelled a few of the perfumes before I left? I’d never been able to pass a perfume counter without stopping by for a sniff. I switched direction, away from the exit and deeper into the store, until I was wandering through the curving aisles, seeing the familiar names pop out at me. Chanel, Dior, Hermés…and then there it was. La Joie.

  Part of me wanted to keep going, not to get sucked into missing Andrew and thinking about The Horrible Day all over again. But I couldn’t resist. I needed to smell the scents that reminded me of him, to re-immerse myself in this man in an attempt to get straight on just how I felt about him. So much had happened since I’d seen him last in person.

  I greeted the woman behind the counter, a woman in her forties with makeup so heavy I inadvertently thought of the circus. “I’m interested in the La Joies,” I told her, and sniffed a few of the cards to remind myself of them.

  I was transported back to New York, to those days after I’d first applied for the show, when I thought there was no way I’d actually get chosen. I’d spent a lot of time with Andrew’s company’s perfumes in those days, trying to imagine what he’d be like in person based solely on the scents La Joie produced.

  I picked up the card for the cologne Andrew wore, a heavy, musky scent with hints of tobacco and cherry. But I couldn’t bring myself to sniff it. It was too painful. But how could I just walk away?

  I hesitated, then asked the saleswoman, “Would it be possible to get a sample of this cologne? I’d like to see how it smells on my boyfriend.” I needed some piece of Andrew to bring home with me, something I could smell at my leisure, when I was alone, when I needed help getting my thoughts and feelings straightened out. Later.

  “Sure,” she said, and prepared a tiny sample vial of the fragrance. I found myself thinking of Ben then, how much he would hate Andrew’s cologne. It was heavy, overwhelming. It was a scent that overpowered.

  Ben had his own scents, of course, from his shampoo, his body wash, his deodorant, the orange-pine hand soap in the bathroom. But what I smelled most prominently on him was just…him. It was honest. It was a scent that followed him through time, letting me know that the essence of him was still the same as that scared boy I’d dated in as a teenager, even though he’d grown and matured and turned into the strong, compassionate man I now knew.

  “I hope your boyfriend will like this,” the saleswoman said, handing me the cologne vial, and I blinked, still thinking of Ben and surprised at the word “boyfriend.”

  “Oh — yes, thank you,” I said, remembering, and tucked the vial into my purse.

  I asked to try on one of La Joie’s perfumes, a scent I’d always liked, and the woman sprayed my wrist. “This is one of my favorites,” she told me, and I agreed. But when the scent hit my nose, something was off.

  I waited for the alcohol to evaporate before smelling my wrist directly, thinking that I was surely mistaken. When the damp spot disappeared, I lifted my wrist to my nose, breathing in. There it was again: it was the same scent I’d known and loved, but some small part of it was different, more chemical.

  Could it just be that the alcohol hadn’t dissipated completely? I waited a moment and smelled again.

  The saleswoman began telling me about the perfume, apparently taking my hesitation as indecision. Green apple and citrus, bergamot, amber.

  “Have they changed the formulation on this perfume?” I asked. There was a distinctly synthetic smell to it, I was increasingly sure.

  “You have an excellent nose!” she said, spraying her own wrist with the perfume. “I could hardly smell it myself when my manager told me that. In fact —” she sniffed at her wrist “— I’m still not sure if I actually smell the difference or just think I can.”

  “It’s a slightly more fake scent now,” I said.

  She nodded. “But still wonderful. This is one of our best sellers.” I knew she was pushing for the commission, but I was done.

  I thanked her, picked up my dress, and went back to Ben’s place — our place. Thank god he was at work, because I didn’t want him to smell this perfume on me. As soon as I got inside, I stripped naked and got straight in the shower.

  “Hey, let’s go wine tasting on Monday,” Sophie suggested later that day on the phone.

  “On Monday?” I repeated. “Aren’t you a teacher or something?”

  “Summer break,” she reminded me.

  “Of course! I’m so sorry.” I’d gotten so caught up in my own life that I had completely forgotten what was going on in my sister’s.

  “Come on, it’ll be fun. We’ll go up to Sonoma. The wineries won’t be too crowded on a Monday.”

  Remembering my recent antics after drinking too much at Ben’s apartment, I hesitated. But what else did I have going on these days? I imagined it: endless fields of vines, rolling hills, sunshine and giddy feelings from wine during the day.

  “Sure, let’s do it,” I said.

  “Great! I’ll drive. See if Ben can come.”

  “Soph, you know I can’t be seen with him again,” I protested. Unfortunately. I reimagined the scene, this time with Ben, and the image my brain conjured was of us holding hands, walking through the vineyard. Stop it! I chastised myself.

  “No, you just can’t be seen on anything that might look like a date,” she corrected me. “Wine tasting with your sister could hardly be considered a date.”

  “I guess.”

  “Besides,” she continued, “anyone who cares about that stuff knows you live in San Francisco. They won’t expect you in Sonoma. And they’ll be too buzzed to notice anyway.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll ask him,” I promised. Knowing what the consequences could be, the idea still made me nervous. He’d have to work anyway, though, so it wouldn’t matter.

  But to my surprise, when I told Ben about Sophie’s plan, he was enthusiastic.

  “I have a ton of vacation days saved up,” he said. “This’ll be fun!”

  “Great!” I said, giddy at the thought of him coming along despite my fears, and then added, only half joking, “But if anyone pulls out a camera in our vicini
ty, we have to hide.”

  On Monday morning, Sophie picked us up at our apartment and we headed north to the wine country. It was a beautiful, clear day, warm with a cool breeze, perfect for forgetting our troubles and enjoying what Northern California had to offer.

  When we pulled into the first winery, I was nervous at first, glancing around me every few moments to make sure no one was staring. But soon I realized that Sophie was right: no one was paying any attention to us; they were just here for the wine.

  I was glad Ben had been able to come along, even if I was nervous about what could potentially happen. The sommelier poured us a series of crisp chardonnays and fruity pinot noirs, and with each sip I got more relaxed, less worried about being recognized or photographed.

  “Many people taste buttered popcorn in this wine,” the somme commented. “With a hint of caramel.” We sipped and nodded. Yes, there it was.

  Ben turned to me. “You must be really good at wine tasting,” he said.

  I laughed. “Good at it? I didn’t realize drinking was a skill.”

  “I mean because you’re good at recognizing scents,” he clarified.

  I swirled my glass and took a deep sniff of the white wine. “Nah,” I said. “It’s all so subjective. With perfume, it’s made up of all these specific compounds, and I’m pretty good at figuring out what’s what. But wine?” I shrugged. “It’s all just made of grapes. I don’t know the first thing about wine, but I know that when someone says a wine tastes like tar and leather and black pepper, there’s none of that actually in there.”

  Ben sniffed his wine, feigning seriousness. “I don’t know, I think someone dropped a leather boot in this one.”

  “Do you not like the wine?” the sommelier asked, coming over to us, and I tried hard to suppress my giggles as Ben rushed to assure him he did.