Challenge: Visit a local winery bar

Chelsea

I had this neat trick. Close my eyes, and I could zip off anywhere in the world.

This unseasonably warm October breeze could spirit me away to beaches along the Mediterranean coast. The not-so-subtle notes of Acqua de Gio and Aramis conjured any random bar from New York City to Tokyo. Broken bits of conversation mingled, indistinguishable from Spanish or French or Greek.

As a kid, I used to summon these mental escapes—from poverty or abuse—or, like right now, from crushing boredom.

Saint-Tropez sounded exotic.

Relaxing into my fantasy, I envisioned some model-perfect Frenchman eyeing me with curiosity, approaching hesitantly, crafting words to invite me to join him on his yacht, moored just offshore, for a week-long excursion along the French Riviera. He’d say…

“Chelsea, are you awake?”

At the sound of Elizabeth’s voice, I opened my eyes and returned to the tedium of ho-hum downtown Charlottesville. My teeth clenched as reality hit me like a cage slamming shut. With a therapeutic breath in, then out, I donned my no-fucks-to-give friend demeanor.

“Just slipping into a coma, E.” At her grimace, I added, “What? Not everyone’s as passionate as you about post-structuralism.”

She crossed her arms, equally bored with me, as we let another Friday night slip by on the Skybar’s rooftop terrace. Elizabeth gave as few fucks about guy-gazing as she had in her appearance—zero—whereas I’d primped in the hopes of picking up some nameless stranger for a night of oblivion.

If I couldn’t get out of town, I’d find other distractions. Sex and alcohol calmed the beast, at least temporarily.

A frat boy glued his eyes to my cleavage until he passed, and I tilted my head to ogle his ass, even though college boys were starting to look way too young lately. They’d always been an easy go-to for a fast, no-strings fix, since they never even pretended to want my phone number. The last thing I needed was some local boy looking for love in all the wrong places.

Give me mind-blowing sex, not a soul mate. Elizabeth, on the other hand, clung to the romantic aspiration that someday her prince would come. I never had such illusions. In my opinion, romance was nothing but a trap.

And I certainly didn’t want to sit there all night talking to Elizabeth about some book on Foucault she was editing. “Come on. Let’s mingle.”

The music from the bar down below snaked up the stairwell with a muffled nn-nn-nn bass. Groups of college-aged boys congregated at tables, hollering loud, incomprehensible inside jokes and bellowing with laughter. I could’ve probably coaxed a free drink off one of them, but the funky mold in the rat’s nest the last guy called home haunted me. I nearly gagged at the memory.

Elizabeth reached for her purse. “I don’t think so, Chelsea. I’ve told you. This isn’t the way I like to meet guys.”

Shit. I hadn’t locked down a hookup, and I didn’t want to hang out alone. How pathetic. I scrambled for a way to get her to stay. “I challenge you to check something off the list.”

She shot me an arched eyebrow. “Are you serious right now?”

“What? It’ll be fun.”

She leaned back with an exaggerated sigh while I slid out my phone and opened the file. I had our list fairly well memorized by now, but I wanted to see our options.

The list started as my therapist’s idea to create nondestructive distractions. Dr. Rubin liked to remind me that “adventure is always right around the corner.” Instead of running away, she’d challenged me to live every day authentically. I’d been trying, but vulnerability was risky as fuck.

Elizabeth insisted we both contribute to the list, and then she turned my therapy into a contest. To keep things interesting, we held a kind of sword of Damocles over each other. The first draft of her novel sat on my hard drive, just ready for me to email to her dream agent. And she possessed the only copy of a letter my therapist had me write to my dad, telling him off in all the ways I never could when I was younger and had no desire to do now. Sure, I fantasized about confronting him for fucking me up, but in reality, I never wanted to see or talk to him again, in any form, and a letter like that could be construed as an invitation to a dialog, however unlikely. Besides, I didn’t want to give him the sick satisfaction of knowing how much power he’d had, how badly he’d hurt me.

If challenged to complete a list item, we had to follow through at the risk of our precious documents being flung at their unsuspecting recipients.

As a reward, however, we’d assigned a point-based system to the world map, and our end-of-year vacation options would improve with every check we accrued. Finishing the list became an obsession for the wrong reasons. I wasn’t jazzed about the ten-point bed-and-breakfast in Vermont when, for forty points, we could be hiking to Machu Picchu or scuba diving in Aruba. I couldn’t outrun my demons within delivery distance of a Domino’s. Between the two of us, we’d amassed enough for Bermuda or Key West, but I was aiming for Europe.

Whether due to the carrot or the stick, I had to confess I’d challenged myself more than ever this year.

Some of the action items were gimmes, so I wouldn’t immediately right-click-delete the file. Elizabeth added Read 15 books, knowing she’d knock it off by the end of February. Meanwhile, I was still working on mine even though I’d counted a reread of my favorite paranormal series as valid.

Some of our suggestions were obscenely out of reach. For instance: Invite a neighbor over. Wasn’t gonna happen. See also: Give your phone number to a guy. Mostly, we pushed each other to stretch. Elizabeth cattle-prodded me to be more open to romance while I tried to inject fun into her life.

We’d each tackled about half the list so far, but the more challenging items remained. And the Venn diagram of what we found difficult was far from a circle.

“Surely there’s something on here you can do tonight?” I mentally rejected anything that wasn’t suitable to the venue, like Take a yoga class.

“I’m not likely to have a party. And I’m not going to run a 10k on the rooftop.”

“How about…” I tapped my fingers together malevolently, loving how she squirmed. My eyes popped open as they landed on something ridiculous. “I’ve got it. Here.”

I pointed at one she hadn’t done yet: Have a 100% bullshit conversation with a total stranger.

“Oh God,” she groaned. She’d spent enough time with me to know I’d get her out of her comfort zone one way or another. “That’s impossible, Chelsea.”

“Oh, like have a deep, authentic conversation with a total stranger is so easy.”

“It might be, if you didn’t wall yourself off, pretending like you’re some heartless robot.”

I held my hand over my heart. “Shots fired.”

She wasn’t wrong. I mean, I wasn’t a heartless robot, but it was easier to pretend to have no cracks, no weaknesses anyone might exploit to hurt me. It was a survival mechanism. Growing up, hiding my anger, my fear, could mean the difference between a peaceful dinner and my plate shattering against the wall.

True, I’d checked off the bullshit conversation almost immediately by convincing a wannabe suitor I was in the witness protection program, but that was for fun—for the list even. And it worked like a charm because I’d never heard from—I wanna say Tobin—again.

Elizabeth was the only person I’d ever allowed inside the fortress. For some reason, she’d hung in with me despite my earliest attempts to brush her off, calling me out on my bullshit, poking fun at my obvious deflections. She loved me, and I was lucky she thought I was worth the trouble. She had my lifelong friendship and trust, and I would do anything for her.

She shrugged. “Okay, then, I’m going to dare you to do that one. Be authentic tonight.”

Fuck. There was no shirking a dare unless I wanted Elizabeth to drop that letter to the sperm donor in the mail. Talk about authentic. That letter contained phrases like, You were supposed to be my safe place, but you made sure I’d never feel secure. Yeah, I didn’t want him to read that, though part of me thought he should know. A bigger part of me refused to feed his narcissism.

I looked around the bar, hoping to escape without explicitly refusing. “You want me to bare my soul to one of these college kids?”
“Doesn’t have to be a college kid. What about that guy over there?”

I turned to check out the bearded man in the Redskins jersey. “Not in a million years. He reminds me of my dad.” I shuddered. “No. If we’re both doing this, let’s do it together.”

“What about those two guys by the bar?”

I took a gander at her proposed prey. Two male twenty-somethings, leagues hotter than the frat boys, chatted with each other, completely unaware they were being targeted. Contestant number one wore dark bookish glasses, but his face was beautiful—perfect nose, pretty lips, eyelashes for days. His friend sported a dorky Doctor Who shirt and an unmistakable air of mischief. I loved mischief.

“Oh, they’ll do nicely.” Maybe I could get laid tonight after all.

We crossed the terrace, and as we approached, Elizabeth clutched my arm and whispered, “Sweet Jesus. Let me have the blond.”

The blond in question had a kind of boy-next-door quality about him, with regular-guy-next-door blondish brown hair, styled in a messy Haircut-Magazine Haircut. His gray T-shirt hung a little loose, half tucked in and half out of his blue jeans. That sexy librarian was Elizabeth’s male fantasy come to life.

As he was too Abercrombie and Fitch for my tastes, I was more than happy to cede him to Elizabeth.

But then I zeroed in on the mischievous friend. Despite his novelty T-shirt, he exuded a sexiness that made my breath hitch. With his black hair, dark eyes, olive skin, and devil-may-care smirk, he was way more my type than the blond. Positively disastrous to my health. As we stood gawking, his head swiveled around like a magnet pointing true north, and his eyes locked with mine. My heart slammed in my chest, and I let my gaze bounce off him, as though I’d been staring at something beyond.

My gut twisted into knots. I wanted to trade with Elizabeth, for my own self-preservation, but she’d already claimed her guy. Besides, since I was unlocking “authentic” tonight, I didn’t worry this exchange would risk a romantic entanglement. Nobody could sustain interest in the real me.

I stopped myself. That was Old Chelsea thinking. Dr. Rubin constantly reminded me I needed to challenge the lies I told myself. New Chelsea believed someone could love her, warts and all. Fake it ’til you make it.

With a gentle nudge, I squared my shoulders to hide my own panic. “You planning to wait until he leaves?”

“He’s too beautiful, Chelsea. It’s painful.”

“He’s just an ordinary guy, E.” But I wasn’t immune to the nervous butterflies. At least we were in this together. “I bet he has a business degree with a minor in economics.”

“Right. His name is something common like Chris or Daniel.” She was always fictionalizing total strangers on the fly. “Probably a salesman or something boring.”

“Go on. I’m right behind you.”

She flicked her eyes heavenward. “Okay, fine.”

“Remember: nothing but utter bullshit.”

Her sour expression melted into a wicked smirk. “And you’re sworn to complete, authentic truth.”

She squeezed my hand, then strolled past the guys as though on her way to order another drink and turned sharply around, her face transforming from idle curiosity to astonishment as she approached Chris-Daniel and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh. How long has it been?”

I stifled a laugh at the classic haven’t seen you in years gambit. Easy to pull off, and the stakes were low. She could always claim she’d made a mistake if he called her on it. More than likely he’d go along. Only an asshole would immediately rebuff a pretty girl claiming to be an old acquaintance.

“It’s Elizabeth. I was in your class with, uh—”

I held my breath waiting for him to bite, to mouth the easy lie, with the usual, “Oh, yeah, hey. How are you?” and a wrinkled forehead of confusion.

But then…

Holy shit, he dropped a name.

“Lizzy? Lizzy Graham?”

Oh my fuck. Had he just confused her with someone real? I wanted to scream, “Abort! Abort!” but before I could even round my lips into a vowel, she picked up the fuse and lit it. “That’s right! I can’t believe you remember me.”

His bright, church-boy smile dazzled. “Well, how could I forget? I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you right away.”

I groaned at the disaster in the making.

With guileless enthusiasm, he turned to introduce his very fine friend to Elizabeth. “This is my friend, Bas. Bas, Lizzy and I were close friends in middle school. Small world, huh?”

Whoever this Lizzy Graham was, Elizabeth was about to step into the role.

There was no way out but through, so I joined the fray. “Lizzy, were you going to introduce me to your friend?” I held out my hand to the blond. “Hi. I’m Chelsea Abbott.”

He was even hotter up close. Like magazine model pretty, and I shot a glance of pity at Elizabeth because she hadn’t signed up for this catastrophe.

The pretty boy reached out to clasp my hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Evan Spurlock.”

The devil got into me, and I couldn’t help ratcheting up Elizabeth’s lie. “Not the Evan Spurlock.” He looked baffled, of course. I snickered as the blood drained from Elizabeth’s face and added, “Oh, I probably shouldn’t tell you this.” I locked eyes with Elizabeth, sadistic executioner persona on standby, and she blinked, horror and curiosity vying for dominance. “But it has been a long time, right?”

And here was why I loved hanging with my copilot, Elizabeth. Despite the blush crawling up her cheeks, she gave in to curiosity as though transfixed by a flaming train car plunging off the cliff. “Go ahead.”

I licked my lips, enjoying her delicious anxiety. “Lizzy used to tell me about a guy named Evan Spurlock she had a major crush on in high school.” I considered Evan a minute. “I can see why.”

Seriously, this was the boy Elizabeth would have created from clay and magic if she had the gift. He had integrity and beautiful offspring written all over him.

Elizabeth could go toe-to-toe with me when shenanigans were on the line. Through her mortification, she had the presence of mind to direct my attention to Evan’s right and engage my own agreed-upon dare. “Chelsea, have you met Bas?”

I cast my eyes at the Mediterranean morsel stretching his hand out to me in greeting and could’ve sworn I’d seen him somewhere before. “You look familiar. Have we met?”

Elizabeth’s eyes flashed accusations of cheating, but I wasn’t bullshitting. I couldn’t place where I’d seen that face before. Possibly in my dreams.

Bas accepted my outstretched hand and didn’t let it go. “I think I’d remember you.”

A flutter gripped my insides, and I breathed in to kill it. God, this was going to be a shit show.