Brand New Man

by Weston Parker

  I emerged topside and was instantly bombarded with noise. People bumped into me with their drinks in hand as they tried to squeeze by me to get to the door. I ignored their apologies as I spotted Laura standing off to the side by the railing talking to a young woman. They were smiling, but Laura kept checking her phone.

  She’d been waiting on me for two hours.

  Guilt tickled my gut as I crossed the dance floor and approached her.

  She spotted me when I was just a couple feet away. Her face lit up and a beautiful smile spread across her lips. She hurried over and gave me a great big hug, and then stood back to look me over. “Wow, Max. You look great. I’m so happy you made it.”

  I adjusted my suit jacket and nodded, looking around. “This is bigger than I was expecting.”

  “Me too. You remember Ella?” Laura gestured to the young woman standing beside her.

  Ella’s big green doe eyes and heart shaped lips were familiar. She gave me a warm smile and tucked a strand of light brown hair behind her ear. “Nice to see you again, Max. It’s been a long time.”

  “You too, Ella. You both look beautiful.”

  Laura was ravishing. Her dress was a modest length, just to above the knees, and had long sleeves. The neckline was wide, exposing a lot of chest, and the back was open and plunged all the way down, revealing her sexy back dimples. The fabric was black and covered in glitter. Every movement she made was dazzling.

  “Thank you,” Laura smiled. “Do you want a drink? It’s an open bar.”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “You’re sure? It’s New Year’s Eve!”

  “I said, I’m good.”

  Laura blinked and took a half a step backward. “Um. Okay. Is everything alright, Max?”

  “It’s fine. Where’s that DJ you were talking about?”

  Laura looked around the rooftop. She peered over toward the stage in the corner where the DJ booth was set up and frowned. “I’m not sure. He was here a minute ago. Maybe he needed a bathroom break or something. He’s been playing for the last hour or so.”

  “Playing?” I chuckled. “Come on, it’s not hard being a DJ. I thought this party was supposed to be off the hook.”

  Laura glanced at Ella, who gave her a small shrug.

  “What was that look for?” I asked.

  Laura licked her lips. Then she handed Ella her drink. “Ella, can you excuse me for a minute?”

  Ella, her lips drawn in a frown, nodded. “Um. Sure. I’m going to go mingle.” Ella continuously looked back over her shoulder at us as she slipped away to join the rest of the party goers.

  Laura took my hand and guided me away from the crowd. We stood by the railing and she rested one hand atop it, leaning into it casually as she peered up into my face. “Are you okay, Max? Did I do something?”

  “What would you have done?” I asked. I could feel how abrasive I was being, and it made my skin crawl, but the words just spilled out of me and once they were out I couldn’t cram them back in.

  Laura looked away from me and down to the street below. She was thinking. Was she trying to answer her own question? She wouldn’t find an answer. She hadn’t done anything. When she finally looked back up at me my heart ached. I could see hurt written all over her features. And confusion. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “Don’t understand what?”

  “Why are you being like this?”

  “Like what?” I pressed.

  “Like—” she broke off and shook her head.

  “Like what, Laura? What were you going to say?”

  She met my eye and held my gaze. Her jaw tightened with determination. “Like how you used to be. Immature. Mean.”

  I laughed. She nearly recoiled. “I never stopped being those things, Laura. You just wanted me to be different from the guy you used to know, so you blurred the edges a little. I’m the same guy I’ve always been, Laura. I hate to break it to you.”

  “But you’re not. You’ve grown. Changed. We both have. It’s only natural for us to—”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m the same guy. When you came back into my life I started acting how you wanted me to act. I became who you wanted me to be. You always need something to fix, Laura. Whether that’s the kids you work with or the guy you’re dating, you’re obsessed with always having a project. I’m done with pretending to be someone I’m not.”

  “Max—”

  “The only reason you’re with me is so you can slap a pretty bow on me once you’ve made me into what you want.”

  “Max. That’s not true and you know it. Are you drunk?”

  “No. I haven’t had a single drink.”

  “Can we go home so we can talk about this? I’m confused. I don’t understand what happened. Everything was fine—”

  “No, it wasn’t. I just let you think it was.”

  Her bottom lip trembled. Her eyes grew glassy. But then she shook her head as if to shake away her emotions and she took a deep breath. “I’m sorry that my actions came across as me trying to change you. It wasn’t my intention. I think—I think maybe I misread things. I didn’t want to put you in this position, Max. I care about you and—”

  “No. You don’t. You care about the guy you wish I was.”

  “That’s not true,” she whispered. This time she couldn’t stop the tremble of her bottom lip, or the tear that escaped. She wiped it away hurriedly like she could pretend it hadn’t happened.

  I wanted her to yell at me. God knew I deserved it. I deserved to have her scream at me, to hit me, to tell me how much of a worthless piece of shit I was. But she wouldn’t crack. She wouldn’t even bend. Her kindness extended too far for that.

  Laura took a shaky breath and turned away from me to brace herself against the railing. “What does this mean, Max? Did you come here tonight to end things between us?”

  “Is that what you want?” I asked.

  She didn’t look at me as she wiped more tears from her cheeks. “I don’t know anymore.”

  Someone announced that it was ten minutes to midnight. Laura hung her head and her hair fell all around her face, blocking her from my view in a curtain of blonde.

  My heart screamed at me to apologize. To tell her the truth—that I was scared I would never be enough for her and that she deserved so much more. But my brain told me to walk away. Leave her to be loved by someone better than Max Miller.

  And that is what I did. Without a word I turned and walked away. I don’t know if she heard me leave, but I didn’t look back. I locked eyes with Ella when I reached the door to go back inside.

  I think she saw my wall crumble when I wrenched the door open and shouldered someone out of my way. I had to get the hell out of there before I broke.

  Chapter 36

  Laura

  I hadn’t showered when Ella came to my door on New Year’s Day. She arrived at four in the afternoon, and when I opened the door her eyes roamed up and down the length of my body, and she winced. “Wow. You weren’t lying when you said you were having a bad day,” she said as I stepped aside to let her in.

  I closed and locked the door behind her and then we walked down the hall into my kitchen, where she put down the red canvas bag she’d been carrying.

  I sighed. “I know. I’m a mess.”

  “Is that last night’s make up on your face?”

  I nodded.

  Ella let out a horrified gasp. “Oh, girl. No. We have to fix that. Come on. You go upstairs and have a hot shower. Take your time. I’ll meet you back down here and I’ll fix us something to eat.”

  “I’m fine in my PJ’s and—”

  Ella shook her head firmly. “I said go upstairs and shower.”

  Had I not felt so broken and hollow I might have laughed. But I was broken. I was hollow. And I couldn’t even muster a smile. So I said, “Yes ma’am,” before dragging my feet to the stairs. I went up and locked myself in the bathroom. Turning on the hot water, I stripped out of my pajamas and
got in the shower.

  The water pelted my skin and it felt really good. I scrubbed myself clean and emerged feeling a little more like myself. I toweled off, slapped on some deodorant and moisturizer, then went down the hall to my bedroom to put on a pair of sweats and a black tee.

  Then I went back down and joined Ella.

  She was just sliding a pan into my stove when I entered the kitchen. She closed the door and straightened up. “Feel a bit better?”

  I nodded and slid onto a bar stool at my island. “Yes. You were right. Thanks.”

  Ella opened my fridge. “I wasn’t sure what sort of afternoon this was going to be, so I brought over some bubbly,” she pulled out a bottle of champagne. “I also grabbed soda if you were hung over and didn’t want to go near the booze.”

  “Champagne please.”

  Ella popped the cork and poured us each a glass. She slid me mine and I took a sip. It was the first thing I’d put in my body all day, save for the glass of water I drank when I first woke up.

  “What are you making?” I asked, nodding at my stove.

  “Brie and baguette with jalapeno jelly and crushed pecans. Your favorite.”

  “You’re too good to me.”

  “Stop it. No I’m not. You deserve all the love and care in the world, Laura. I’m sorry about last night. I wish there was something I could do to fix it,” she said.

  I tried to smile and failed. Every time I thought about Max and how he had treated me last night I got emotional. My throat started to ache, and then burn, and before I knew it I was in tears. And I wasn’t a crier. I was the polar opposite of a crier in fact. I held onto my emotions tighter than I held on to the hem of my skirt in a windstorm.

  Just talking about him now was already making my throat hurt. “It’s alright, Ella. Just having you here helps.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you want to?”

  I took a big gulp of champagne. “I don’t know.”

  Ella leaned on the counter across from me. One thing I really appreciated about my best friend was that she knew the difference between sympathy and pity. “Are you surprised that you feel this bad?”

  Her question caught me a little off guard, and when I thought about it for a minute, I nodded. “Yes. I mean. I never really thought about how I’d feel if things ended between us because, well, I didn’t think they were going to, I guess. But I never would have expected to feel like this. Like he kicked me in the stomach and then stole everything that brought me joy and ran off with it all.”

  “You’re in love with him, Laura.”

  I looked up sharply. “What?”

  “You are. Girl, I know you better than anyone else. I could see it all over you. You fell for him. Hard. Maybe it was because you guys knew each other so well from back in the day and it was easy for you to go back to that place. Regardless, your feelings were very real. You’re going to have to accept that you’re not going to bounce back right away.”

  “Great.”

  Ella chuckled. “I know that’s not what you want to hear. But the sooner you accept that, the better.

  “I’m just so confused,” I whispered, burying my face in my hands. The waterworks were about to start up again and I desperately didn’t want that to happen. Once they started it would be nearly impossible to stop.

  “I know, babe.”

  “Why would he do that to me? Why would he wait until New Year’s Eve of all nights, and then be a total ass about the whole thing? He hadn’t acted like that once since we started seeing each other again. I wasn’t making it all up in my head. I swear I wasn’t. He was different. And—and now I feel terrible for making him feel like I was forcing him to be that way.”

  “You can’t force anyone to be any way,” Ella said.

  “Here we go. Wise old wizard Ella to the rescue.”

  My best friend smiled at me. “You didn’t force Max to be someone else. If he interpreted that, it’s on him, not you.”

  I sighed. “I just don’t know what made him snap like that. I keep going over everything in my mind trying to figure out where it all went wrong, and nothing makes sense.”

  “Max is under a lot of pressure, Laura. He always has been. And he deals with it differently than some people. He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and the only way he knows how to protect himself from hurt is to keep people at arm’s length. Am I wrong?”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. She wasn’t wrong. Max had been like that for as long as I’d known him. I knew a lot of it was tied up in the fact that his dad walked out on him and his family. He had abandonment and trust issues from that. Maybe things were harder for him now that he’d lost his mother, too. “You’re not wrong, Ella.”

  “I didn’t think so. Maybe he just panicked? Maybe things were moving too fast between you two and he got cold feet?”

  “But he seemed so happy—we were both so happy. I wasn’t imagining it. I swear.”

  “I don’t think you were either, babe.”

  “Then why would he just—” I broke off and shook my head as the tears came.

  Ella walked around the counter and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Just let it out, Laura. You need to let it out.”

  I buried my face in my hands when the first sob came. Ella held on to me and I leaned into her as I let the grief and confusion wash over me. I let it all consume me and swallow me up. Ella didn’t say a word. She waited until the crying wound down and I was able to get myself back under control.

  I wiped at my eyes and sniffled. Ella grabbed me tissues from the box on one of the end tables in my living room and brought it over to me.

  “Thank you,” I said, after blowing my nose.

  “Feel a bit better?”

  I shrugged. “A bit.”

  The timer on the stove went off and Ella hurried over to it. She pulled on my oven mitts, opened the door, and pulled out the tray of cheese and bread. It smelled heavenly. I inhaled a deep breath as she set it on the stove and pulled the mitts off. She turned off the stove and grabbed plates down from my cupboard. “I was thinking we could watch a stupid movie and stuff ourselves full of cheese and carbs. Then we’ll figure out what to do from there.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  I slid off my stool and grabbed one of my wooden cutting boards. Ella brought the pan of cheese and bread out into the living room behind me. We put the hot tray on top of the wooden cutting board on my coffee table, and we both took the pillows off my couch to sit on while we ate. We chose a goofy comedy and didn’t pay much attention to it while we ate and talked.

  For a while I was able to forget about how heartbroken I was. The movie and Ella were a good distraction. I was almost feeling normal when the movie ended. Then the sadness crept back in.

  Ella put her hand on my knee. “It’s okay, babe. It will get better.”

  I nodded. “I just wish he’d let me in. Let me help him.”

  “You can’t help everyone. No matter how much you want to.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?”

  I bit my bottom lip.

  Ella chuckled softly. “Max is a grown ass man. If he wasn’t ready to be loved by a woman like you, that’s not your problem, your doing, or yours to fix. It’s his. But I don’t for one second think he’s a bad guy. I think he’s lost. And I think he’s afraid of getting you mixed up in his mess.”

  “I wanted to be part of that mess.”

  Ella shrugged. “Maybe it’s not over.”

  I sighed. “All I wanted was to show him a new way to see things. To see people. I wanted to show him how to let the joy in. And I thought he was finally getting to a place where he could do that. How could I have misread all the signs?”

  “Laura. Stop it. There probably weren’t any signs to read.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I knew that wasn’t true. The first sign had been on Christmas night, when I told him he’d changed. That�
��s when it all started to unravel. I was sure of it.

  I stood up. “I’m getting some Christmas cookies out of the freezer so I can eat my feelings.”

  “Bring me some,” Ella said. “You’ll need help eating them all.”

  “Damn straight I will.”

  Chapter 37

  Max

  I was flipping through a contract for a new client I’d been in contact with for the last two months. They’d finally decided they wanted to use Nova Corp for their security software and I needed to have it all signed by the end of the day. My brain was pounding against the inside of my skull and I was in no mood to be going through such a thick document.

  I’d been in no mood for anything for the last week, actually. Ever since I left Laura on that rooftop.

  The guilt was crippling. As was my anger, shame and embarrassment. I’d behaved like the ass that I was, and in the process had hurt the girl I was in love with.

  I tried to convince myself that it was for the best. Laura would be better off without me in her life.

  But, as the days passed, that thought seemed to make less and less sense. Maybe that was because my own sadness was distorting how I felt about the whole thing. I had to stick to my guns and trust that I made the right call.

  The five intern kids had been on my case all week about where Laura was. I hadn’t heard from her and had no idea if she still planned on coming in to check on them. I assumed that if she did want to pop by it wouldn’t be for a while still. I’d hurt her so badly she would never want to set foot in this office.

  So, when they asked where she was, I gave them weak hollow answers and said things like, ‘She’ll be here when she’s here,’ and ‘It’s only been a few days.’ Their suspicion was evident though, so I avoided them by spending my days in my office rather than out on the floor.

  It was three in the afternoon on the fifth of January when Casey came and knocked on my door. She let herself in and came to sit in front of me as I flipped through the contract. She sat down with her knees pressed together and waited for me to look up at her, like she needed permission to speak.