An Unexpected Love Story: A sweet, heartwarming & uplifting romantic comedy (Falling into Happily Ever After Rom Com)

by Ellie Hall

  Another mover appears with the greeting, “We have to hurry up. Can’t get a ticket.”

  I shuffle past them, hastening down the stairs with boxes, not at all grateful for the rude awakening, but extremely thankful that I don’t have to figure out how to get my stuff to the new place.

  When the guys from Morty’s close the doors on the back of the moving truck, I do, however, have to figure out how to get myself to the apartment...in my pajamas with the polka dots on the bottoms.

  I catch my reflection in a car window...bad, terrible, hideous bedhead. I call after the truck, but with a puff of exhaust that makes me cough, it pulls into traffic, accelerating to catch the yellow light.

  I’m glad I had the presence of mind to remember my purse and laptop. I scuttle past a coffee cart, not counting on anyone loving me for the fine lines around my eyes, my crazy hair, or general dishevelment, unlike the sweet couple in the book I devoured last night.

  I hurry to the subway and like the moving truck, the train pulls away without me. I wait on the platform, smooth down my hair, check my breath and cringe.

  Just before I pull out my phone to text Hazel, a woman with a backpack slung over her shoulder and a worn baseball cap on her head says, “The Franciscan Friars down on Thirty-first Street have a breadline. Seven a.m. Too late today, but there’s always tomorrow.”

  I blink a few times. This kind woman thinks I’m homeless. I start to explain, but the train comes. With a gentle wave, she disappears through the doors.

  When I arrive at our new building, Hazel stands under the awning and brightens when I approach. “Good morning, sunshine.”

  I level her with a flat gaze.

  “Cloudy with a chance of laser eyes?” Anyone else would have looked away with the warning. Instead, as fearless as ever, she says, “Why are you still in your pajamas?”

  “The movers woke me from my slumber.”

  “Ah, Sleeping Beauty. I hardly slept.” She fans herself. “Rooftop hot tub under the stars, but before I tell you all about that… Who. Was. That. Foxy. Beast?”

  The guys from Morty’s comes to mind. “What foxy beast?”

  “The one who hugged you on the street last night? Practically mauling you with his massive honey guns,” she says, flexing her arm. “The one that gave you that look.”

  “The I hate you so much look?”

  She elbow checks me. “No, the I want to buy you dinner look. The I want to kiss you look. The I love you look.”

  My face squishes up as if she splashed me with cold, icy, slushy wastewater from the streets of Manhattan. “First, that’s not at all true. I’m pretty sure he hates me.” I hate me after what we did.

  She glides up the steps of our new building. When the heater over the door adequately blasts us she says, “Catherine, he looked like a kicked puppy when you ran off, and I know you’d never kick a puppy.”

  “Kellan Connolly is neither foxy nor a puppy. But yes, you could say that he is a beast,” I plow ahead.

  The realization that this building, with an elevator (!), is my new home distracts me from the convo. The tile and woodwork are classic and clean. The decorative plants are green and alive. There’s no boiled cabbage smell permeating the air or crying baby echoing from the hall. Fresh pine and lemon-scented polish cover nearly all the surfaces. I can even see my reflection in the gleam of the elevator door.

  “Welcome home,” Hazel says as she opens the front door. “I’ve been dying for you to see this place.”

  Yes, I trust my best friend enough to rent an apartment for us sight unseen.

  Past the wall of moving cartons, I float to the enormous windows spilling generous amounts of soft winter light into the living room.

  Hazel gently knocks into me with her shoulder. “What do you think?”

  I spin in a circle. My mouth hangs open at the full-size kitchen opening to the main living room, the rustic brick wall, the polished wood floors with wide planks, and the windows. Have I mentioned the windows? Lost in a Manhattanite’s dream apartment haze, I drift toward the bathroom that hosts a restored clawfoot tub. At the end of the hall is a single door.

  “Are we bunking together?” I ask vaguely.

  Hazel opens it with a grand, sweeping gesture.

  My bed rests in the middle and I leap onto it, squealing with joy. I spread my arms and legs wide like I’m making a snow angel and say, “I’m in love!”

  “It’s about time. I knew he was a foxy beast but glad to know he’s dating material.”

  I bolt to sitting and make a gagging face before shaking my head. “Kellan? No. Never. Hazel, I’m in love with our apartment. Is this for real?”

  She nods.

  “I want to stay forever. I’m never moving.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize that Hazel has never stayed in the same apartment for more than a year—a year and a half tops. The uncertainty crashes down on me. I want my closet-sized studio back, poorly calibrated heating system and all. “Hazel, what’s going to happen when you’re ready to move again?”

  She inhales, sits down next to me, and leans forward, bracing her head in her hands. She’s quiet until she says, “For all my glitz and glamour, I didn’t start practicing yoga for nothing. I know what you’re thinking. It hasn’t escaped my notice either.”

  “You know that I can’t afford this on my own,” I whisper. “When you leave—”

  “I’m working on commitment, Catherine. Promise.”

  If I have to move in a year, it might mean back to my parents’ house. Unlike the other properties in their neighborhood, they don’t have a guesthouse and since my mother plans on converting my bedroom into a sewing room, I’ll be in the basement. “I can’t go back home.”

  “I don’t intend to move.”

  The truth is hard to speak so I do so gently. “You’ve said that before, every time. I should have stayed at my apartment.” Tears inch their way to my eyes. This was a mistake. A beautiful, airy, spacious mistake.

  “Have you ever heard the saying, fortune favors the bold?” Hazel asks.

  I nod.

  “Or nothing ventured nothing gained?”

  “Of course.”

  “I wanted you to move in with me because you’re my best friend and Mew’s favorite auntie, but also because it’s time for you to stretch.”

  “I’ve tried your yoga classes; I’m not very flexible.”

  She cocks the severest of eyebrows in my direction. “Yes, I know.”

  “Remember the time I fell onto that lady when I was trying to do tree pose? Or when I passed out during the final resting period and was snoring? Or when I farted?!” I say, humiliated anew by the memory.

  “Yes, and that nice lady is one of the partners at your old agency—she deserved to get knocked down a peg. You fell asleep because you were working sixty-hour weeks and needed the rest, and the time you posted, well, everyone does it. You laughed it off and what is life without levity?”

  “You don’t fart.”

  She inclines her head. “My life coach has ingrained a strict practice of chewing my food to liquid and avoiding cruciferous vegetables and beans so no, I don’t generally pass gas, but give me full-fat dairy and I am a methane-making-machine.”

  I giggle despite myself.

  She leans back and crosses her legs elegantly.

  Then we both burst into snorting laughter before flopping on my bare mattress.

  “So, this is home now,” I say when I catch my breath.

  “For as long as you need it to be.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m committed to our friendship and seeing you out of this funk.”

  “Funk?” I ask, sitting up and discretely sniffing. “I should shower.”

  “You’ve been blue for too long. You need love in your life. And not the fictional kind.” She sashays through the door and down the hall, calling, “You took a chance on this apartment, sight unseen. Take a chance on love,” she pauses, and I hear a few boxes
shuffling “Or at least a date.”

  “Do you mean like a blind date?” I ask, following her.

  From behind the tower of boxes she says, “I mean like any kind of interaction with someone you find attractive and has the potential for passion. I saw you smile last night on the street. The big dimpled one.”

  “Kellan?” I freeze, wrapping my arms around my chest. My heart feels colder than the dark side of the moon.

  She nods. “Catherine, I just want to see you smile like that more often.”

  I sigh. I could defend myself, but she’s a top-level debater. Instead, I ask, “Where’s your room?”

  Hazel smirks. “I practically have my own wing. I’m still pinching myself. My room is on the other side of the apartment. I have a lounge, bathroom, and balcony. We’re roommates, but practically have our own apartments.”

  My jaw parts a little and I do pinch myself.

  Party Animals

  Catherine

  Two vanilla spice lattes, a pair of bagels with cream cheese, phone calls from both of our parents, a bag of popcorn, several broken nails—both the painted kind and the metal ones that do not want to be hammered into a brick wall—and let me not forget several broken pieces of Balinese sculpture later, phew! The boxes are in their respective rooms or unpacked and broken down, leaning against the wall in the hallway by the door.

  Most of my clothing is in my closet. My closet! Having a closet again is such a novelty and having Hazel’s closet nearby is thrilling, even though half of her stuff doesn’t fit. Some of my books are on the shelves, though I’m in deep debate whether to arrange them by color to create a rainbow—like I’ve seen on Pinterest instead of the hodgepodge they were in my old place.

  There’s a semblance of order, at least, when I come across a box I haven’t opened since I moved out of my parents’ house and into the dorm.

  I pull up on the flaps to find my high school yearbook, a few framed photos, my field hockey jersey, diploma, tassel, a few keepsakes, and old journals and diaries. I leave the ratty T-shirt at the bottom. I don’t dare look at the yearbook or photos. There’s no chance I want to read my naïve and old broken-hearted musings.

  I’m about to close the box and toss it down the garbage chute when Hazel enters.

  “I want it to be known that I hate unpacking. No, I take that back. I hate packing, but I really, strongly, extremely dislike unpacking. It’s such a chore,” she agonizes, sitting down next to me and then looking around my room. “Whoa.”

  “What?” I ask, tempted to kick the box away, so she doesn’t glimpse the contents.

  “You’re almost done.”

  “Just in here. I’ll help in the kitchen and stuff,” I say.

  “I’ve only emptied three boxes, Catherine. They contained dirty laundry. I’m hopeless.”

  I raise my eyebrows in disbelief. It’s been hours and the feeble winter sun dips ever lower behind the buildings.

  “I’m so indecisive. I want everything to be just right. I can’t decide if I should hang my sweaters or fold them. If I should get a new comforter—the one I have now camouflages with the floor. I was also thinking maybe we should get plants and then I was looking up which ones don’t need a lot of water because you know I’ll forget to feed them. Oh, and I’m worried about Mew and the heating grates. What if he gets a paw stuck?”

  “I thought I was the over-thinker.”

  She puffs an exhale.

  “What did you do with your sweaters before?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “No, it’s not.” I inhale a deep breath. “You have commitment issues.”

  “Yeah,” she says sadly.

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “That may be my problem, but I don’t think that’s yours.” Hazel taps her foot against the box containing my past.

  My phone beeps from across the room. I ignore it. It beeps again. I’m more than happy to delve back into her commitment issues and not leave her alone with the box, but she says, “Are you going to check that?”

  “Nah.”

  It beeps again.

  “Someone really needs to get ahold of you,” Hazel urges, rising to her feet and making toward my phone.

  I scoot past her.

  “Sheesh,” she says, sitting back down.

  “It’s my mom.”

  “Checking in?”

  “Of course. It’s only been three hours.”

  “She needs to make sure you haven’t run off and eloped.” Hazel laughs.

  I do not. That’s something crazy people do. Teenagers fueled by passion and idiocy.

  Hazel is well versed in my mother’s intense desire on marrying me off to someone wealthy. Our family is what my mother calls very comfortable, but my father, who still hasn’t retired from the Navy, isn’t what you’d call rich.

  After moving around, my mother inherited her grandmother’s home and from there, I grew up among the Cape Cod and Boston elite, though always on the edges. Like a D-list celebrity. My mother made it her job to be the perfect wife and hostess to keep up appearances, but they never quite reached the zenith she aimed for.

  I don’t intend to marry for money. If things continue as they have, I probably won’t marry at all, but Mom doesn’t see that it’s not up to a man to give me a better life. If I break it down, men are the source of my problems and not the solution. Or rather, a specific man, guy, boy, whatever.

  Hazel holds a spiral notebook from the box. She turns it over and reads the cover, printed in the faded bubble letters of a seventh-grader, “The Boyfriend Book. Ooh. I’ve never seen this before.”

  I swipe for it, but she holds it over her head with her long arms.

  “What do we have here?” She flips through the pages.

  I don’t want her to read it. I try to grab it again, but she’s too tall and nimble. She dashes out of my room and down the hall, sequestering herself behind her bedroom door.

  I chase after her, calling, “Come on. That thing is stupid. And old. I was in seventh grade.” And eighth, ninth, tenth...

  She’s quiet when I lean against her bedroom door, my palms sweating over what she’ll read in there. Theories, couplings, ratings, private musings. I stumble when the door opens. The last golden light of day spills onto the wooden slats on the floor.

  She points at a line in the book. I know with certainty the name her eyes have landed on. “Wait a minute. Catherine Kittredge, what aren’t you telling me?”

  An unpleasant knot twists in my belly as Hazel reads the entry. “Is this the Kellan? As in the foxy beast? As in the guy who swept you off your feet yesterday? The guy I just met? Well, I didn’t meet him formally, because you didn’t introduce me, instead running off like a scared rabbit. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Kellan is an unusual name, am I mistaken here or is he a member of the—”

  I cut off her long interrogation. “Yes. The same. Kellan Connolly.”

  “As in The Connollys?” she follows up.

  I sigh. “The, capital C Connollys.”

  “I suddenly regret never taking you up on the invites to your house for Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

  “Those were my mother’s invitations.”

  “Ouch,” she says, feigning insult.

  “I’m kidding. I would have loved it if you came home with me, but you had exciting and exotic locales to visit.”

  “This development is juicier than the private island in the Pacific, the boating adventure off Antarctica, and the numerous tours through Europe.”

  “The difference is your mother isn’t a crazy, bossy pants,” I tell Hazel, recalling the stunning, yet sweet woman I’ve met several times over the years.

  “Oh, but she is. Trust me.” Hazel shivers.

  “Touché.”

  Hazel pauses and then says, “Tell me everything.”

  I waver, reaching for the incriminating notebook.

  “Did you have a thing for Kellan?”

  I make a non-committal shake/n
od/turn/twist of the head because I cannot lie.

  “Was this, like, an arranged thing between the Kittredges and the Connollys?” Before I can do the weird bobble headshake again, she says, “Or was it like the Montagues and Capulets? Forbidden love because of a longstanding family feud?”

  “Nothing like that,” I say, backing her toward my room.

  Hazel taps her finger against her chin. “High school sweethearts?”

  “Hardly.”

  “I’m dying here. What was it?”

  “Nothing. I was friends with his sister.”

  “And under penalty of breaking up the friendship she forbade you dating him,” Hazel guesses, stepping through my doorway.

  “No...”

  Her eyebrow lifts to a previously unforeseen height.

  I make a swipe for the notebook again, but she grips it to her chest, rushing to the far side of my room.

  “You know the details of every single one of my romantic endeavors, ever. Well, almost,” she says.

  I give a very distinct shake of my head.

  “Please, pretty please tell me.” She bounces excitedly on her toes.

  “It’s over. In the past.”

  I expect her to continue begging, speculating about the connection I have to Kellan, but her almond eyes soften around the edges and she lowers her voice. “Catherine, I’ll agree with you that it’s in the past, but I think we both know that it’s not over and done with.”

  I swallow back anger and hurt and humiliation and other unnamed emotions.

  “Sometimes talking helps,” she adds.

  I recline on the bed, clutching a pillow to my chest. I take a deep breath. This is going to be worse than slowly prying off a bandage. I may as well tear it quick. “I was best friends with Claire Connolly since Kindergarten. She had five brothers. Two younger—the twins Kurt and Keagan. Three older—Colby, then Cal, and the one closest in age to us, Kellan.”

  “Sounds like that family had a thing for C-names.”

  “And K. Kellan and Keagan. The dad’s name was Calvin, and they started with C so the sons would have the same initials K.C. and then the twins were a surprise so they got K like Mrs. Connolly, Karen.”