Short Story: Not-Quite-Love (Part 1)

Summer Interior - Edward Hopper

Chelsea was certain his eyes were brown.

Or maybe they were blue. Probably brown, since his hair and his beard were brown.

Chelsea liked the sound of his name: Andrew. It was clear and concise, two crisp syllables. Andrew was a solid name that evoked royalty and politics and country clubs and even the New Testament. But instead of a clean-shaven, blue blazer-khaki-wearing man, Andrew looked like a lumberjack. And this is how Chelsea arrived at her secret nickname when talking about him to her friends.

Andrew’s closet seemed to be a never ending supply of plaid shirts. There was the traditional Paul Bunyon shirt, red-and-black checkers. There was the white one with red-green-black stripes. There was even the purple one with orange-blue-black stripes. Instead of baggy pants and thick boots, though, Andrew wore the shirts over skinny jeans, or Lower East Side hipster jeans, either tucked into or covering high-top Converse sneakers (in beat-up black). Still, there was always a peacoat, again in black, and sometimes even a distressed brown leather bomber jacket. Andrew looked like a Lower East Side hipster lumberjack.

Chelsea wasn’t sure why, but she liked him. She liked him even though he had a girlfriend (who he mentioned once in passing), he was 2 years younger than her, and he looked nothing like any of the facial hair-less men she was usually attracted to in the past.

What was it? What was it about him that drew her to him?


Written: 3/18/2009