Love at First Like

by Hannah Orenstein

  It’s the first time his doorman has remembered my name. That’s no small feat in a big, bustling building like this one. It’s a New York relationship milestone.

  “Thank you,” I say, moving toward the elevator.

  Inside, I fix my gaze on my reflection in the mirrored walls.

  “You got this,” I say out loud. “Everything will be fine.”

  The doors slide open on Blake’s floor, and I jump at the sight of a woman entering the elevator.

  “Oh!” I blurt out.

  Great, so, I’m caught talking to myself. This bodes well.

  The woman pauses in the elevator threshold. She cocks her head.

  “Eliza, right?” she asks.

  It clicks. “Oh, you’re the girl from the coffee shop.” The one who recognized me.

  “Yeah.” She holds the elevator door open for me to exit, then she enters.

  “I was just, uh, talking to myself. I don’t usually do that.”

  “Everything will be fine,” she says with a smirk.

  The doors slide shut. I feel watched and panicked. When I turn the corner, I see the door to Blake’s apartment open. He’s standing in the doorway, looking as handsome as ever. He takes an eager step forward to kiss me, catching the edge of the door with his foot.

  “Hi,” he says, smoothing back my hair. “I missed you.”

  He kisses me again and it feels like a salve. I shouldn’t worry—I’ve never had to worry around him. Blake has always made me feel calm. Inside his apartment, he crosses the living room easily in a few bounding steps and crashes onto the couch.

  “So, ready to do this thing or what?” His energy reminds me of a puppy.

  “You know, actually, I was thinking on the way over here—is now the right time to post the photos? Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, savor it, just us, for a little while longer?” I sink onto the couch next to him.

  His face falls slightly. “We have been savoring it,” he points out. “Do you not want to post anything?”

  “No, no, I do. Of course, I do. I was just, you know . . . checking.”

  He looks at me skeptically, then pulls out his phone and toggles through his photos.

  “I was thinking this one,” he says, turning around his phone to show me the shot of him down on one knee and my hand clapped over my mouth. “I love how surprised you look,” he adds.

  “Ha. Yeah.”

  He screws up his mouth. “Is everything okay?”

  I freeze. I feel caught. “Yeah. No, I’m sorry for, um . . .” I trail off, unsure of what I’m apologizing for.

  “It’s a big step,” he concedes. His fingers drift across my thigh. “I get it if you feel nervous. I don’t want to push you into doing anything you don’t want to do.”

  His eyes are round and bright with concern. I savor this view; this could be the last moment he looks at me with any sympathy ever again. I’m terrified to tell him the truth, but I’ve let this ruse play out far too long. As awful as coming clean could be, the alternative would be even worse.

  “Blake, there’s something I need to tell you,” I say, forcing the words out of my mouth before I lose my nerve. “About how we met.”

  “Yeah?” he asks.

  “I . . .” I inhale deeply. I already feel light-headed. “I accidentally posted a photo on Instagram the night before I met you. A photo of myself wearing an engagement ring. And people thought I was really engaged.”

  “Okay . . .” he says, giving me a confused look.

  “So the night I met you, my plan was to find a guy who could ultimately pose as my fiancé.”

  He cocks his head and furrows his brow. “Why, though?”

  “There was so much more interest in Brooklyn Jewels,” I explain. “I’ve never seen such a spike in sales before. I would’ve taken it down, but we really needed the money, especially since our rent is going up and we can’t afford the new lease. And then . . . and then I met you. And things were going so well. I wondered if a wedding would drum up sales the way that ‘engagement’ did,” I explain, making dramatic air quotes.

  He simply stares at me in disgust.

  “Everything happened so fast,” I add. “A publicist offered me a wedding for free at the Wythe Hotel, and then there was a dress, and there was just never a good time to tell you about all of this because we were falling in love for real.”

  “So you’ve been using me this entire time,” he says flatly.

  “No! I mean, maybe it was convenient at first, but—”

  He visibly flinches.

  “But then it felt real! It is real. I know it’s hard to understand, but I’m not lying when I say I love you. You can’t say that what we have together isn’t real.”

  “I can’t? Because to me, it sounds like you manipulated our entire relationship for the sake of padding your own wallet,” he accuses me.

  “You proposed of your own accord,” I say, jutting my chin out. “That was all you. And I was happy to say yes.”

  He looks at me with such bitterness, I could shatter.

  He gets up from the couch and crosses the living room to lean against the kitchen island. He clutches it like it’s keeping him upright. I can’t help the hot tears welling up and threatening to spill onto my cheeks now.

  “You used me to turn a profit and never bothered to clue me in. That’s not love, Eliza.”

  “Please, Blake, listen,” I plead. I’m dangerously close to the verge of hyperventilating. “I know that was wrong. I need to make this up to you. But you said it yourself when you proposed—we would have the best life together.”

  There’s a long silence in which he stares at me with dead eyes. I’m too afraid to break eye contact.

  “Eliza,” he says quietly—so quietly I almost can’t make it out. That’s scarier than if he yelled. “Get out. We’re done.”

  I can barely feel my feet as I rise from the couch.

  “I’m going, I’m going,” I say. I slip my shoes on and grab my purse.

  He’s still stony-faced and frozen in the kitchen.

  “Go,” he says simply.

  So I leave and close my fiancé’s door behind me, possibly for forever.

  • Chapter 21 •

  When I wake on Monday morning, my eyes feel sealed shut with schmutz. They’re swollen like grapefruits from crying all weekend. Everything feels grubby and grimy: the dark smudges of makeup on my fingers and pillowcase, my greasy hair, my sweaty bedsheets. Outside, the sky is alarmingly blue, as if it’s midday instead of my usual 7:30 a.m. wake-up. In a panic, I grab for my phone on the nightstand. It’s nearly noon. Of course, I forgot to set my alarm last night. There are several texts and missed calls from Sophie.

  “Accidentally slept in, coming soon,” I type back, then throw my phone onto the other side of my bed.

  I certainly don’t feel as if I slept in. I was up until at least 3 or 4 a.m. as my mind churned through the same scene over and over again. I replayed Blake’s bitter gaze, the cold horror of the moment he understood what I had done, and the pained way he refused to even sit near me. I couldn’t help but anxiously wonder what would happen to Blake, what would happen to my company, and how this would all play out in the press. I know that I deserve every inch of panic and misery and self-flagellation. I hurt someone for my personal gain, and in the end, it might not even matter. Maybe it’s karma. Maybe I deserve to lose everything.

  I drag myself out of bed, throw on my most comfortable jeans and an oversized, thrifted men’s button-down that’s so shapeless I can get away without wearing a bra, and head into the bathroom. I simply run a makeup-removing wipe underneath my eyes, pull my hair back into a bun, and shuffle out of my apartment. I don’t deserve to look any better than this.

  Jess jumps when I enter the shop. “Oh, hi,” she says. She can’t disguise her alarm at my appearance fast enough.

  “Hi,” I say.

  I’m surprised at how croaky and gruff I sound. Jess is helping a couple try on engagement rings
, and they flinch as I lumber across the shop. A happy couple cooing over my own diamond rings is truly the last sight in the world I want to see right now.

  In the back of the shop, Sophie is slurping a smoothie while using Matrix, a program that jewelers use to develop photo-realistic, computer-aided design models of new pieces. It’s the last step of the design process before turning a sketch into a tangible piece of jewelry.

  “Oh god, you look terrible,” she says.

  “Thanks,” I wheeze.

  Sophie is in Helen’s leather chair, so I take one of the gray folding chairs across from her and sit down.

  “What happened?” she asks tentatively.

  “I told Blake the truth. He broke it off,” I explain.

  It’s the first time I’ve said those awful words out loud. They don’t sound real.

  “Eliza, I’m so sorry,” she says, reaching her hands across the table to grab mine. “I am so, so sorry he did that.”

  “Me, too,” I say, sniffling.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  The expression on her face is one of pure pity. I shake my head; I’m too overwhelmed to speak. All I want to do is crumple up on my big sister’s shoulder and bawl. I want to cry big, fat sobs and have her rub soothing circles on my back and stroke my hair. I lean forward and let her envelop me in a hug.

  Ultimately, though, I can’t relax in her arms. We have more pressing problems than my heartbreak. I try to inhale evenly to calm my jagged breath.

  “Sophie, you realize what this means for us, right? For the business?” I ask.

  Her face falls. “Oh,” she says grimly. “Talk to me.”

  I straighten up. As upset as I am, my feelings aren’t my only priority right now. I’m the one who got us into this mess—I have to be strong enough to pull us out.

  “I thought we were on track to making enough money to re-sign the lease in October,” I explain, willing myself to stop whimpering. “But that was when I was factoring in a wedding and banking on a huge spike in sales and press coverage and new customers.”

  I open my laptop on the table and show her our finances.

  “See, everything looks fine here,” I say, showing her the page with our current numbers. Then I click to another page. “I recalculated everything with predictions for what would happen with an increased rent and a smash success of a wedding.”

  “That looks pretty good,” she observes.

  “But then . . .” I click to the next page. “Look what happens when I calculated for a rent hike and no wedding.”

  Her face falls. “We run out of money,” she says softly.

  “We run out of money fast,” I confirm.

  She bites her lip and hesitates before asking, “You don’t think . . . you don’t think there’s any way to get Blake back, do you?”

  The thought of facing him again makes me want to disintegrate. “I’m not giving up just yet, but I think we need to prepare for a reality in which the wedding is off,” I say.

  She smooths her hands over her furrowed brow and is quiet for a moment.

  “What if we lay off Jess?” she asks, just softly enough so that her voice won’t carry into the other room.

  “I would feel so guilty doing that,” I whine. “And we really do need her help. You have more than enough on your plate with design and filling orders, and I can’t always be available to do sales. We rely on her to make this place run—you know we do.”

  “What if we shut down the brick-and-mortar store and went online only?” she asks.

  We’ve talked about the merits of a physical storefront versus a digital-only presence before, back when we were first planning to launch the company and weren’t sure how big we dared to dream. Back then, we agreed: a storefront brings in foot traffic and lends a covetable air of legitimacy. It’s a sign of a healthy business. And selfishly, we both felt that we grew up in a store—so damn it, we wanted one of our own.

  Not all of our competitors have brick-and-mortar stores. Some rent tiny work spaces in nondescript office buildings where they see customers by appointment only. Some work with clients over FaceTime, though I’m not sure that would require enough man power to necessitate keeping Jess employed. There’s a precedent for this; I’ve seen other jewelry businesses make it work. But it wouldn’t feel as special. I’d feel like a failure.

  “I know it’s not ideal, but it seems like our only real shot right now,” Sophie says.

  “I worry about what that would do for our reputation,” I reply.

  “What, because being forced out of business entirely would be better?” she points out.

  I can’t help but think back to a few months ago, when I was brimming with limitless, optimistic energy for everything that could happen. Sure, I had a diamond ring and no man and no plan, but I felt full of possibility. It was exciting. I had choices. Now it seems as if I made the wrong ones. Like Sophie said, the cat’s out of the bag, I’ve gotten emails from writers and editors at various wedding magazines and women’s sites offering to cover my wedding if I agree to interviews. Hell, there’s a seamstress out there somewhere making alterations to my wedding dress right this minute to tailor it exactly to my body. Whether it’s well-advised or not, there is a wedding under way, and that could still save the business.

  “I’m not ready to give up on our store just yet,” I say finally. “I don’t know how I’m going to fix this. But I have to try.”

  “Coming over for a drink,” I text Raj the minute I leave the shop that night. “I seriously need one.”

  “What’s wrong?” he writes back.

  “Ugh. I’ll tell you in person,” I respond.

  Golden Years is unusually crowded when I walk in; every bar stool is taken, and a party of customers stands and nurses drinks while hungrily eyeing seats along the bar. When Raj spots me, he waves me over to the seat farthest from the door. I weave my way through the crowd and am greeted by a tower of mozzarella sticks and an entire pitcher of beer.

  “I figured you needed more than just one drink,” he says, beaming at the spoils between us. “And I saved you a seat from the birthday party brigade.”

  For the first time in more than twenty-four hours, I actually smile. I settle onto the stool and immediately jam the topmost mozzarella stick into my mouth while Raj pours me the first glass of beer.

  “Ugh, yuh uh ah-ul,” I say, attempting to call him an angel with my mouth crammed with fried cheese.

  “So what happened?” he asks.

  I mumble an explanation into my plate so I don’t have to see Raj’s expression. “Blake and I broke up,” I say quietly. I can practically feel the girl next to me straining to listen, and I don’t have any interest in winding up in her viral tweet about the heartbroken mess she overheard at a bar. “He was ready to announce our engagement, and I just couldn’t let him go through with it. Not before he knew the truth about why I pursued him and the wedding I’m planning. So I told him, and, well, he got upset.”

  “Eliza, oh no,” he says, grimacing. “I’m so sorry. That really sucks.”

  It’s what he says next that catches me off guard. “How are you holding up?” he asks.

  I don’t deserve any sympathy. I shrug and look down at my plate so I don’t have to see Raj’s expression.

  “Hey, hey. Breakups are the worst. You don’t have to put on a brave face,” he says.

  “Yeah, but I deserve to feel this awful,” I point out.

  “Maybe this wasn’t your finest idea, but you’re a good person,” he says. “I know you are. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come clean to Blake at all.”

  I don’t know if I believe him. I have a sudden craving to bite my nails or pick at my cuticles—anything to distract me from my feelings—but I know I can’t.

  “So that’s it? The wedding is off?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. Probably. I just—I don’t know. I wonder if I can talk to Blake.”

  He grimaces again. “That might be tough. After, you kn
ow, stomping all over his feelings.”

  His words spur me out of self-pity and into motion.

  “Oh, shut up,” I say, lightly tossing a mozzarella stick at his forehead.

  He ducks just in time and flashes jokey finger guns my way to let me know he doesn’t actually think I’m a dick. Or at least I hope that’s what he means. He darts off to help a customer.

  While he works, I scroll morosely through Instagram. It looks like Holden and Faye went to a wedding together this past weekend. He posted a photo of them posing in formal wear; she commented underneath, “My forever wedding date ♥.” I grind my teeth so hard they could shatter into dust.

  Raj is still working. I feel frantic with desperation. If anyone would know what to say to make me feel better right now, it would be Helen—she’s the one I should be talking to about this. I draft an email to her:

  Hi Helen,

  How are you doing? I know it’s been a while. I’m sorry I haven’t called more often. I miss you.

  Brooklyn Jewels isn’t doing well. Our rent is going way up this fall, and I don’t know if we can necessarily afford it anymore. Well, that’s not quite true—I know that we can’t. I thought I had a plan to work it all out, but everything has fallen through, and—

  Raj sails back toward me with a hopeful look in his eyes. “You look miserable. What would make you feel better? Drinks? Distractions?” he offers.

  “Distract me, please. That would be perfect,” I say, saving and closing the email before I can finish it.

  There’s nothing I can say to Helen without sounding like a failure anyway. I don’t want her to see me like this; she’d be disappointed.

  “Well, my day has been a little less dramatic than yours, but I got to make some awesome progress on Carmen’s MVP—the minimum viable product,” he reminds me. “It’s not finished yet, but I think she’s going to be really happy with it. I mean, I hope.” He knocks on the wooden bar.

  “Cool,” I say, wishing I could sound as genuinely enthusiastic as he deserves.

  “I considered working out this morning, but then just got honest with myself and canceled my gym membership, which I’ve used maybe twice in the past two months,” he adds.