Happy New You

by St John Brown, Brenda

I miss my friend.

  I’ve tried to connect with her a hundred times, but she’s backed out at the last minute on every date. Not that they were actual dates. Though, I’m not gonna lie and say that wasn’t my eventual goal.

  I’ve always been working to better myself, to make something of myself.

  And now here’s my chance, and I’m hiding.

  Good start to the new year.

  I wait a moment and then peer around the corner to see what she’s up to. She’s leaning into another room, and all I’ve got in my view is one heavy boot, a sliver of red from the hem of her dress, and her gloved hand gripping the doorframe for balance.

  When she emerges, her face is red from excitement and she’s holding the most massive bottle of champagne I’ve ever seen.

  Al opens her wool coat and tries to cover the chilled bottle with the flaps of fabric. She shivers against the cool glass but falls back on that well-crafted determination and sneaks out of the apartment, champagne booty in hand.

  I make a mad dash for my coat and race out of the brownstone to catch up with her. No way am I letting her get away. My heart beats wildly as I run after her, my chest squeezing tightly as the cold air hits me like a brick wall.

  She’s on the edge of a deserted cobblestone street when I finally come close enough to talk.

  My voice is miraculously steady when I ask, “So, this is why you’ve been dodging me, Al? You’ve turned to a life of crime?”

  Wide brown eyes look back at me in shock and pleasure, and a zing of electricity races along my spine.

  “Matty?”

  The sound of my old nickname on her lips makes my breath catch.

  “Hey, Al.”

  She smiles, and I know it’s gonna be a happy new year.

  3

  Allison

  New Year’s Eve

  “Nobody calls me Al except you. Do you think I should tell them they can call me Al? Would that help? And isn’t that a bad eighties song?” My words are a bit slurred and I straighten my spine like the reason I’m sagging is my posture and not the sheer volume of alcohol I’ve consumed.

  Mateo furrows his brow. “Who do you think should call you Al?”

  “No one. Except you. You can call me Al anytime.” Mateo is within reach now and I latch onto his arm in an attempt to steady myself. His forearms feel strong through the wool of his coat and I glance up at him. He looks the same as he did before—same tousled brown hair and strong jaw—but the Matty I knew in law school didn’t have the same air of quiet confidence. “Where did you come from anyway? Why are you here?”

  “Deep questions, Al.” He grins. “Where should I start?”

  “No, not deep questions. Actual questions.” I shake my head and it feels like my brain is a little loose in there, both from seeing Mateo for the first time in years and from the champagne I’ve been drinking like it’s water.

  “I was at Dani’s party.”

  Oh God. “You didn’t see my…” I don’t even know how to finish that sentence, so I stop there.

  “I didn’t see you at all. Just decided I’d had enough.”

  Phew. Relief races through me like whiskey over ice, crackling through my veins and settling warmly in my stomach. “I could go for a whiskey, come to think of it.”

  Mateo points to the champagne bottle in my hand and says, “You wanna go back and steal a bottle of whiskey instead?”

  I could have sworn my thinking about whiskey was only that. Thinking. Great. Apparently alcohol has turned my inner monologue into an outie.

  “No!” Good Lord, I can’t go back in there! “I’m a one-theft-a-night kind of girl.”

  Mateo laughs. I forgot he has such a nice laugh, made nicer by the fact he’s laughing with me, not at me. “What are you going to do with your loot, then?”

  “Drink it. Definitely. It’s New Year’s Eve, right?” I raise the bottle in a mock toast. “Are you going to drink with me?”

  “And be an accomplice to your crime?” Mateo grins. “Hell, yes. On one condition.”

  “I’m not very good with conditions tonight.” Or people. Or alcohol.

  “How about food? Are you good with food? Because if I don’t eat something, I’ll be no match for that bottle.”

  “Food. I love food.” I somehow manage to make food three syllables long, but Mateo doesn’t seem to mind. “It’s too bad Gray’s Papaya isn’t in the West Village anymore. I could go for a single dog.”

  “There’s a decent deli over on West 4th. No single dogs but they’ve got a killer pastrami sandwich.”

  “I love pastrami.” Mateo laughs, so I insist, “I do.”

  “Then let’s get you a sandwich.” He lifts the bottle from my hand and crooks his elbow for me to slide my hand down his arm as we start to walk. “Shall we?”

  We stroll in comfortable silence for several minutes, which is good because I need all of my concentration on the uneven cobblestone street. But once we get to Washington Square, I say, “So, how’s the fitness biz treating you?”

  “The fitness biz? Is that what we’re calling it now? Eh, it’s good ninety-five percent of the time.” He makes a face and asks, “How’s the lawyer biz?”

  “I thought it was good.” I mimic Mateo’s expression and he laughs, which lets me change the subject before he can ask more questions. “My mom said you live in Astoria now? She ran into your mother at Trader Joe’s, apparently.”

  “Oh boy. Glad I wasn’t a fly on the wall for that conversation.” He rolls his eyes. “But, yep, I’ve been in Astoria for a while. Rent control is hard to beat. What about you?”

  “My bubbe let me buy her Lower East Side apartment earlier this year.” I lower my voice. “And by ‘buy,’ I mean I took her shopping at Bergdorf’s and she actually let me pay.”

  “That’s pretty sweet. The trains on that side of town are awful, though.”

  They are. As far as I’m concerned, MTA stands for Maximum Transportation Aggravation and that seems to double for the 4, 5, and 6 trains. To Mateo, I say, “Thank God I manage to mostly avoid them. I can walk to work.”

  Is that pathetic? It probably is pathetic in Dani’s eyes, since she thinks I think too much about work. But Mateo just nods. “I try to walk, too, but if I’m seeing personal-training clients, I end up all over the city.”

  “Do you actually meet people in their apartments?” Because that sounds creepy.

  “Sometimes. Apartments, offices, parks. I have a client with one of those secret keys to Gramercy Park and that’s a pretty great place to work out.”

  “Oooh, fancy.” I toss my head back as I laugh, but it throws me off balance and I clutch Mateo’s arm a little more tightly as we turn onto West 4th. A well-lit deli beckons from two doors down, and I hope that’s where we’re going because I’m ready to sit down now. At least the cold has had a slightly sobering effect and I’m not outright embarrassing myself. Unlike earlier.

  To think I forgot for fifteen minutes. My face flames with the memory of my outburst at the party as Mateo holds the door of the deli open for me and I lead us toward the tables in the back. There are a few teenagers crammed around one table who look too young to actually go anywhere cool, and an older couple nursing coffees, but otherwise the deli is deserted. Mateo places the champagne on the dull Formica table and turns to me as he starts to shrug off his coat, saying, “Are you okay?”

  No, I’m reliving my earlier mortification, thanks. It was pretty spectacular on all levels. And why are you being so nice to me anyway? The last time we saw each other, I was mean to you because you were leaving law school. Mean Allison is almost as mortifying in retrospect as Drunk Allison is going to be.

  Aloud I say, “How could I not be? I’m here with you and I’m about to sink my teeth into a big, thick meaty sandwich.”

  “A big, thick meaty sandwich that’s going to be my treat,” Mateo adds.

  “Are you sure we’re talking about the same type of sandwich?” I wriggle my eyebrows because seeing
him in the light of the diner makes me realize all those photos on his Instagram don’t really do him justice. His shoulders alone are way broader in real life, and he obviously practices what he preaches. He definitely doesn’t have eighty thousand followers because he’s all talk.

  “I’m talking about a pastrami on rye, although if you want to bring mustard into it, that’s a different conversation altogether.” Mateo helps me off with my coat and pulls the chair out for me as I gingerly pull off my hat and smooth my hair.

  I beam up at him. “You’re such a gentleman.”

  “Thank you.” He laughs. “I’ll let my mother know her constant nagging worked.”

  At the word “mother,” my face falls. At least one of us is measuring up to parental expectations. I feel the melancholy start to steal over me again as I run my fingernail over the label on the champagne, which is enough to remind me what I’m doing here in the first place.

  “Hey, when you get sandwiches, see if you can get them to give you some cups. Then we can crack this baby open.”

  “Okay.” Mateo glances around and then lowers his voice as he says, “You take the bottle into the ladies’ room and pop it open. I’ll get the sandwiches. Meet you back here in five.”

  I giggle at his whole James Bond vibe, but teeter over to the bathroom as Mateo approaches the counter. I’m carrying the bottle of champagne in front of me like a pregnant woman holding her belly and I push the door open with my hip. The bathroom is your typical I-don’t-give-a-shit New York City bathroom—dirty floor and wads of wet toilet paper on the counter—and I almost turn around and go back to the table. But then I think about the champagne overflowing everywhere as it pops and I feel guilty about making a huge mess at the table—speaking of mothers and nagging—so I start peeling away the foil.

  It’s only once I have the little metal thing off and am slowly twisting the cork to try to get it out that I look in the mirror. My lipstick has faded a bit, but my hair’s held up and, honestly, my dress is killer, if I may say so myself. I look like a successful woman out on the town, celebrating in style. Except for the crappy bathroom. And the salt-encrusted winter boots. But still. I look like the kind of woman younger, nerdier me would have envied. I pull my phone out of my bag to take a mirror selfie but the damn thing is dead. It’s probably just as well because I’m not really a selfie kind of girl, but if I were, this is the look I’d want to capture.

  We need someone with imagination, with life. Allison doesn’t have any personality.

  I don’t think you understand. Now that you’re a self-sufficient adult, your main purpose in life is providing me with grandchildren.

  Dammit, I’m selfie-worthy tonight, not a woman on the verge of spinsterhood, facing a dead-end career. I’m not that woman. I’m not the workhorse Mark Benson thinks I am, and I’m sure as hell not the old maid my mother’s making me out to be. I’m a thirty-year-old—I glance at my tiny gold watch—make that a twenty-nine-year-old woman in charge of her destiny. If that means taking the bull by the horns and shaking up my life, well, it’s New Year’s Eve. The day practically demands it. The cork pops out of the champagne bottle and the cool bubbles running over my hand feel like an affirmation from the universe. Like it’s saying, “You can do this, girl, and you have champagne to help you along.”

  I burst out of the bathroom, champagne still dripping from the bottom of the bottle, and call over to Mateo who’s picking up a tray from the counter, “Can you get a bunch of napkins, too? I need to write some stuff down.”

  He turns to grab a stack of napkins and makes his way over to the table. As he sets the tray down, he says, “Planning world domination, or was that last year’s resolution?”

  “Not quite.” I slip into the plastic chair and grab the empty paper cups from the tray, pouring a generous amount of champagne into each before setting the bottle down on the table with a thunk. I pick up my paper cup and raise it in his direction, chest nearly bursting with determination. “I’m going to change my life this year. I’ve got to get my resolutions down before the ball drops.”

  Mateo checks his watch. “You realize it’s the new year in, like, seventeen minutes, right?”

  “I do.” I take a gulp of champagne. “Which means there’s no time to waste.”

  “Okay, cool.” He shrugs. “What are you resolving?”

  “I want to be...more. Or maybe it’s less? Can I be both? Is that possible?” Mateo’s brow furrows, but before he can ask questions I dig in my purse for my pen—of course I have a pen in my evening bag—and scrawl across the top of a napkin: Be more adventurous.

  Mateo squints at the words like I’ve written them in Greek. “You want to bungee jump or something?”

  “Oh my God, no. Nobody needs to be that adventurous.” I must look appalled, because he laughs. “I was thinking maybe I’d try a new shade of lipstick on my next Sephora pit stop.”

  “I don’t know what a Sephora pit stop is, but is lipstick really that adventurous?”

  “It is if you’re trying a vampy purple when you’re clearly a classic brown sugar kind of girl.” I write resolution number two on my napkin. “You can help with this one.”

  Mateo’s eyes widen and he grunts out a “Hmmph?” over a bite of pastrami sandwich.

  “I could get in shape?” The sum total of my exercise is occasionally running for the subway, which is probably a horrible thing to admit to someone like Matty. Without his jacket, I can see how broad his shoulders are and his white dress shirt does nothing to hide his biceps. I bet when he runs for the N train, he actually catches it.

  “I could definitely help with that,” Mateo says after he swallows. “What are you thinking? Running? Weights? Yoga?”

  “How about we save the specifics for the new year? I wouldn’t want to peak too soon.”

  “Good point.” He laughs and points to my still-untouched sandwich on the table. “I thought you wanted a slab of meat?”

  I pull the plate in front of me and take a bite, groaning with pleasure. As I chew the last bit of bread, I say, “This is so good.”

  “Maybe you should make that one of your resolutions? Weekly meat sessions?” Mateo says, laughing.

  “I’m not sure that’s resolution-worthy, but I do want to start dating. I mean, I don’t want to—I wish I could skip the awkward dating phase—but I want to go out more. With men.” On the napkin I simply write, “3. Dating,” because based on my word vomit, the awkward part of that equation is me. No wonder I haven’t had sex in nine months. Although, can a one-night stand even be considered sex if all we did was manually get each other off before I made a lame excuse to leave? Probably not, and further proof why I need to date, because I’m clearly not a one-night-stand kind of girl.

  “You realize that to date you actually have to go out?” Mateo asks. “Because, you know, we had plans to meet up a few times and you always seemed to cancel. Which isn’t great for a guy’s ego, I have to say...”

  It’s not the shrug of his shoulder, or even his brown eyes shifting toward the door, as if someone’s just come in. No. It’s the unmistakable, always-reliable, forever-winning Matty smile.

  It slips. For only a second. But it slips.

  Guilt crashes through me and I reach over and put my sticky hand on his white shirt. “I know and I’m sorry. It’s just work is always so busy, which I know is a shitty excuse. But that’s another one of my resolutions. Work less, live more.”

  I write it down on the napkin and I can see Mateo out of the corner of my eye, watching my hand move across the crinkly paper. When I look up, he says gently, “Dani says you work a lot, so this could be a good one.”

  It’s hard not to be snarky with the mention of Dani, but time’s a-ticking, so I just narrow my eyes and say, “Are you being dismissive about my Sephora resolution, Mr. Ramirez? Because I am not here for that.”

  “Ms. Gottlieb, I would never be dismissive. Your resolutions, especially the ones focused on acquiring new lipsticks, are the stuff
Lifetime movies are made of.”

  I’ve just taken a sip of champagne and it almost comes out my nose. When I swallow, I let out a laugh loud enough for the old couple to turn around and look at us, so I whisper loudly, “You know why I want to try new lipsticks? So I can practice kissing them off.”

  The older woman behind Mateo straightens in her chair. Ha. I knew she was listening. Then again, Mateo straightens in his chair, too. “You want to practice kissing?”

  “I don’t want to practice. I want to perfect. There’s a world of difference.” I write, “5. Perfect art of kissing,” on my napkin and then look up. “Although I guess if I’m going to perfect the art of kissing, I’ll need to learn to flirt first.”

  “You know how to flirt.” Mateo says this like I’ve flirted with him lately. Or ever.

  “Maybe I used to, but unless it’s like riding a bike- which I haven’t done since I was twelve, by the way - I need a refresher course.” On my napkin I write, “6. Flirting refresher.”

  “That’s a lot to accomplish in a year, Al.” He bites his lip and loosens his collar, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was imagining us flirting. Or kissing. Thank God I’m sober enough to know that’s my less-than-stellar ability to read people and not what’s really happening here, because I’m not sure which one of us would be more aghast if I brought it up.

  I peek at my watch. Five minutes until midnight. And year thirty. Like the Whole30 diet that was all the rage at the office last year, but without the weird recipes. Thank God. Aloud I say, “Maybe I could learn to cook something. Miriam says everyone should have a signature dish.”

  “What’s hers?”

  “Coq au vin.” I make a face. “I wish I could say that it’s disgusting, but I actually wake up craving it sometimes.”

  “That’s how I feel about Mama’s arroz con dulce. I’ve tried making it, but...” Mateo makes a face. “Not everything should have a healthy version.”

  “Truer words, my friend.” I take a small bite of my pastrami sandwich and with my free hand write, “7. Learn to cook signature dish.”