New Life

by Bonnie Dee

  So this was going to be my life again—dreary days and lonely nights. I’d earned it. A miraculous chance for some real happiness had been right within my grasp, and I’d let it slip through my fingers.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I could have run after Jason and calmed him down. Part of me wanted to, but another very large part was far too angry. After telling me he’d hooked up with some random girl, he’d gone silent again for several days. No messages or phone calls to apologize, not even the night of the fight. It turned out the text that evening had come from Cindy.

  He hadn’t responded to my texts and calls either. How could I not be furious? And then for him to show up at my place of employment, apologize, but end up shouting… Furious was putting it mildly.

  “You okay?” Jules asked after Jason had left.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. That was completely inappropriate, and I’ll make sure nothing like it ever happens again.”

  Jules might be my mentor, but he was also my boss, and I was humiliated at the dramatic scene Jason had made in front of him.

  “I’m just going to go back to work now,” I muttered as I hurried away.

  Gossip would be flying through the firm like a plague of locusts, and all I wanted to do was keep my head down and wait for the swarm to pass. But Cindy almost immediately barreled into my office behind me and closed the door.

  “Oh my God. The hot janitor. I knew it! Spill. Tell me everything you’ve been up to.”

  “Nothing.” I blindly studied the document in front of me. “I’m busy, so…”

  “Nuh-uh. You’re not getting off so easy this time.” She dropped into the chair across from me and tossed a few wilted chrysanthemums from Jason’s bouquet onto my desk. “I’m not being nosy, only supportive, and I won’t tell anyone else, I swear. But you need to talk to somebody, don’t you?”

  Unfortunately, she was right. I didn’t have close friends in Columbus. My old friends were from a different lifetime and already fading into the past. Cindy was the closest thing I had to a gal pal right now, and I didn’t even like her that much.

  “How long’s this been going on?” she prompted.

  “A while,” I admitted. “We met one evening when I was sort of having a meltdown. He was nice to me. We went out once after that, and pretty soon we were dating. Jason’s very sweet but sort of complicated.”

  “How is he in bed?”

  I stared at her. “Really?”

  Cindy waggled her head. “Okay, fine. Not pertinent information. What happened? What was he apologizing for?”

  “Hooking up with some random girl.”

  “So you dumped him, and he’s trying to win you back?”

  “I didn’t dump him exactly, not in so many words, and I’m not sure I want to. He was honest about what happened and they didn’t have sex exactly. It was a drunken mistake.”

  “So you’re punishing him for a while, letting him squirm before you forgive him. I can relate to that.”

  Her words made me wince. If Cindy could relate to anything I was doing, then I must be doing something wrong. If I wanted to cut Jason loose permanently, that was one thing, but if we were going to patch this up, we had to communicate. “You’re right. I need to talk to him.”

  Her face scrunched up. “I didn’t say that. I think you should keep spanking that puppy until he knows he’s done wrong.”

  “He knows. And he’s not a puppy.”

  “Looked pretty puppyish to me with that sad bouquet and hangdog expression. You sure he’s man enough for you?”

  I thought of Jason with all his flaws and issues, and how happy he’d made me most of the time. Since he entered my life, my house had felt like a home. We had some problems to work out, but the good parts were definitely worth it.

  “Yes. I’m sure,” I answered.

  Cindy nodded. “Great in bed, then.”

  I smiled. “Pretty damn good.”

  “Is he mentally stable?” she asked. “’Cause the way he was yelling seemed kind of out of control. I’m just saying. One of my sisters is married to an Iraq vet. He’s a great guy and I really love my brother-in-law, but his issues put a lot of pressure on their marriage. His problems require a lot of giving from my sister’s end.”

  This was the most serious I’d ever heard Cindy, which made me really listen to what she had to say.

  “If you’re going to be involved with this guy long-term, you need to consider what you’re willing to give up, what compromises you’re willing to make.” Cindy stood and slipped her feet back into the high heels she’d kicked off. “Feel free to call me any time you need to talk. That’s what friends are for. Giving sympathy and unasked-for advice.”

  She smiled and gave me a finger-waggling wave before she left.

  I looked at the wilted flowers on my desk, and my heart broke a little at how his attempt at an apology had blown up in Jason’s face. In my heart, I wanted to make up with him, but my head continued to remain cautious. Could I envision a future with him in it? Should I plunge back in before I was certain? Wasn’t it better to let his hopes, and mine, die now rather than later?

  Taking time to consider my options is the only reason I can give for why I allowed several days to slip past without trying to contact Jason. I needed to think hard about what I truly expected from a relationship and what I’d say when we did talk again. I guess I assumed he’d be there, waiting, when I was ready.

  A few days later, I picked up Baby from the sitter, and she seemed mopey and listless. She followed me around the apartment all the time, and I realized she’d been doing it since Jason stopped coming over. She was eating, so I didn’t think she was sick, but I guessed she was missing Jason as much as I was and wondering why he’d disappeared from her life. So it was actually my dog who forced me to come to some conclusions about my love life. I was finished wavering back and forth. I wanted Jason in my life, period, and was ready to work through any problems we might have. It was time to swallow my pride and call him.

  But Jason’s phone went straight to voice mail, and my texts went unanswered. Maybe his battery was dead, or maybe he was ignoring me. I’d rejected his apology, and he’d retreated into silence. I decided I’d go after him this time.

  When I waited after work and tried to catch him on the night shift, a new guy wearing janitor coveralls was mopping the foyer floor.

  “Excuse me.” I addressed the Hispanic man with thick glasses. “Can you tell me where the guy who usually cleans this building is? Jason?”

  He put his mop in the bucket and shook his head. “No se. Not here. I clean.”

  One of Jason’s rare nights off, then, so maybe I could catch him at home. I thanked the man and drove across town to Jason’s place. I could see from the street that no lights were on in his apartment, and when I buzzed him, there was no answer.

  A woman carrying a grocery bag in each arm trudged up the steps and struggled to get her key into the lock.

  “Hey, I’m waiting here for a friend,” I said. “Can I help you with that?”

  She accepted my help in unlocking the door, but when I tried to follow her into the building, she said, “You can’t come in unless your friend buzzes you. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m a friend of Jason’s. You know him? He lives in the front apartment on the second floor.”

  “That guy with the limp? He’s gone.”

  “Yeah. But I’d like to wait for him to come back.”

  “You’ll be waiting a long time. He moved out.” She shifted the bags in her arms.

  “Wait. Are you sure? It’s only been a few days since I talked to him. Do you know where he’s moved to?”

  “I don’t know. I never talked to the guy. Thanks for holding the door, but I gotta go now.”

  She went inside, and I caught the door with my toe before it could close behind her. I waited until she’d disappeared into one of the first floor apartments, then I went inside and ran upstairs. I knocked on Jason’s door until one of
his neighbors came out and yelled at me. I needed to actually see his empty apartment before I would believe he was gone. But the neighbor reiterated what the lady had said—Jason had moved out a couple of days earlier.

  I tried his phone again—still no answer. What the hell had happened during these past few days? Had he had some sort of relapse? Had he moved back in with his parents? Had he lost his job? Maybe that last was one thing I could find out fairly easily.

  I drove back to the office building. Of course the front door was locked, but the cleaning guy had to pass through the foyer at some point. I was determined to wait until his shift was over to catch him, if that’s what it took.

  Nearly a half hour passed as I sat on a bench within sight of the brightly lit foyer. I huddled in my coat, shivering, until a flash of movement caught my eye. I sprang from the bench and raced to the door, pounding until the glass shook in the frame.

  The janitor came to the door and spoke to me through the glass. “What you want?”

  “What happened to the guy who usually cleans here? Jason Reitmiller?”

  He shrugged. “Not here. I clean now.”

  He started to move away, and I slammed my palms against the glass. “Wait. Please. You must know something. I’m a friend of Jason’s. I need to talk to him.”

  The guy stared at me, then nodded slightly. “Jason don’t work here no more.” He drew a finger across his throat. “Fired.”

  “Oh no! Can you tell me where he might be?”

  “Don’t know. Sorry.”

  He walked away, taking my hope with him. What the hell had happened to Jason? Lost his job, abandoned his apartment, and stopped answering his phone—or maybe his service had been cut off. How could I find him? Where would he go if he was broke? Back home to Pickens made the most sense. A little voice that sounded too much like my mom’s murmured that maybe that would be for the best. Just let him go.

  Questions swirled around in my brain as I drove home and took Baby for her last walk of the night. By the time we’d gone around the block, I knew I wasn’t going to give up on Jason so easily. I was a lawyer, for God’s sake. I had investigative skills to track down details about clients and cases. Finding Jason shouldn’t be difficult at all.

  “We’re not letting him go, Baby,” I assured the dog as I ruffled her fur and met her trusting gaze. “I’m getting Jason back for both of us.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  When you’ve hit rock bottom as many times as I have, you start to redefine what “bottom” means. Is it the moment when you wake up from a coma and realize you’ve lost half your memories? Is it the time when you collapse during rehab and seriously doubt you’re ever going to walk again? Is it the look in your girlfriend’s eyes when she tells you to go away? Or is it later when your boss fires you, you realize you’ve been more or less drunk for days, and you can’t pay your bills and have to move back in with your parents?

  My shitty apartment and low-paying job may not have been much, but they were mine, my first step toward regaining independence. Now both were gone, and I was swept back to those humiliating days of recovery when I had to depend so heavily on my family. I hated myself for screwing up yet again. I hated the stifling cushion of home when I should have been grateful. I basically hated everything and threw myself a giant-ass pity party for the better part of a week.

  One day, Katie came to my room, stood in the doorway, arms folded, and stared at me as if I were a zoo animal in a cage. “You suck.”

  “I know.” I rolled over in bed and stared at the motocross poster on the wall of my teenage room. The jumper was frozen in a perfect moment of flight, never changing, never crashing and burning and breaking his legs.

  “You can’t just give up. Get out of bed and stop being a little bitch.”

  “Hey, watch the mouth.”

  “Everybody at school says bitch. Kiera says it all the time.” Katie strode across the floor and bounced on the edge of my bed.

  “Is she one of the mean girls?”

  “Are you kidding? Do you ever listen to anything I tell you? Kiera’s my best friend, not one of the mean girls.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Could I do anything right? I was a bad listener, a bad big brother, a bad son, a bad boyfriend, a loser who couldn’t keep a job or an apartment or a girlfriend or—

  Katie grabbed the covers and hauled them off me. “Stop it! You’re sighing again.”

  “Leave me alone.” I tried to pull the blanket and sheet out of her hand, but she stood and snatched them all the way off the bed.

  “It’s Mom’s birthday today. Try to think about somebody besides yourself for a change. I bought the gift, but you’re going to help me make a card to go with it, and you’re going to smile and make Mom’s birthday happy.”

  I sat up and ran a hand through my hair. It felt oily.

  “And take a shower. You stink.”

  I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stared down at my bare feet.

  “Seriously. Do you need meds or something? What’s the matter with you?” Katie had dropped the bedding and stood with her arms folded, a scowl creasing her smooth forehead, unmarked yet by pain or misery or even acne. “That girl dumped you, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry. That sucks.” Her voice softened for the first time since she’d marched into my room. “I know how it feels. I loved Connor Tinesdale all last year and he never noticed me. He just saw me as a friend, and then he started going out with Kiera.”

  I looked into her sad eyes. “She’s your best friend, and she didn’t know you had a crush on him?”

  She shook her head. “I never said. Not even to her. So I couldn’t be mad about it. But it hurt. A lot. So, I’m sorry about you losing your girlfriend.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And I guess you have a right to whine for a while, but not today. Today you’ve got to get it together.”

  “I will.” I stood and felt a little dizzy after lying down for so long.

  Katie was right. A shower made me feel more human, and I tried to focus on the positive. I had loving parents who forgave my multiple screwups, a pretty cool little sister, and a home to live in so I wasn’t out on the streets. Count the blessings.

  After I was showered, shaved, and dressed, I went to find Katie and helped her by wrapping the present—a new pair of gloves and a bottle of perfume.

  “You owe me forty bucks, but you can pay me when you’re not broke.”

  “I got it,” I said, pulling out my wallet and handing her the money. “Damn, that’s some expensive perfume.”

  “The good kind always is. I wasn’t going to buy something from the Dollar Store. How does this look?” She showed me the card she’d made on the computer using various photos of our family with cartoon bubbles coming from our mouths.

  I smiled as I read the funny captions. “Mom will love it.”

  Katie started the card printing and leaned back in her chair. “I’m glad you’re home again. I missed having you here.”

  “Glad to be here. I missed you too.” The last part was the truth.

  “That girl was a bitch to dump you.”

  “Naw. I deserved it. I did something stupid.”

  “Well, did you apologize and try to make up for it? Did you bring her flowers or something?”

  “Tried the flowers. They didn’t work so good.” I watched the brightly colored card shoot out of the printer. “Anyway, I don’t think it could’ve lasted. We’re too different. Better to end it now. If it hurts this much now, imagine how bad it would’ve been six months or a year down the road.”

  Katie started to fold the paper into a card. “Being in love sucks.”

  “Yeah. It kinda does.” I handed her the two clumsily wrapped boxes and she added bows to the top of each.

  The rest of the day, I followed my little sister’s advice and pulled my shit together, concentrating on making my mom happy. I insisted on cooking dinner for all of us, and even though it was o
nly a simple omelet and salad, my mom acted as if I’d created a feast. She exclaimed over our gifts with equal enthusiasm, and I felt like a shit for all the times I’d ignored her calls or texts. It took so little to make her happy.

  Later that evening, after cake and ice cream and after Katie had gone to a friend’s house, my parents and I were in the living room. I leaned over to give my mom a big hug and told her how much I loved her.

  She pulled away with tears in her eyes. “I love you too.”

  “I’m really sorry I messed up again and lost my job,” I said, realizing I’d been mute on the subject since my parents came to move me back home. “I’m sorry for a lot of things, but I’m going to do better.”

  “I know you will,” she affirmed with a smile.

  “In fact”—I looked over at my dad sitting in his usual chair—“I was hoping maybe you could put me to work at the store, if you still want to. I’m sure there are plenty of things I could manage to do.”

  Now it was Dad’s turn to beam as if I’d presented him with an autographed José Acevedo baseball. “Of course there are. I told you I thought you’d be well suited for retail. You don’t have to focus on the business end or even work the register, just schmooze with the customers and point them in the right direction to find what they’re looking for. That’s an important part of a small business. People want that personal connection.”

  I was pretty sure most would have preferred the lower prices of mega stores, but my dad’s local hardware was handier for picking up small items for home repair projects. I kept that thought to myself. The old man must be doing something right, because his business was holding steady despite the recession.

  “When can I start?” I asked.

  “How about this week? You can come in and help out where you’re needed. Later on, after we figure out what you can do, I’ll work you into the schedule officially.” My dad looked at me with serious dark eyes that people had said were exactly like mine. “I know you’re feeling pretty bad about whatever happened while you were out on your own. But I know, until recently, you were being responsible. Everyone makes mistakes. You’ll get back on track.”