Authors: Carol Rose
Max mumbled an assent.
Passing through the door, he got into the elevator wondering how many times he’d walked through that same lobby, past that same man and never even heard the tentative greeting that had surely been offered before. He could never remember responding in kind before.
As the elevator door opened on his floor, Max walked down the hall, his mind mulling over the incident. That and the times he’d gone down to the coffee house. Those moments felt new and strange to him, as if he’d briefly, tentatively reached beyond the wall that separated him from the rest of the human race. As if suddenly, he couldn’t not respond.
A smile twisted his lips as he unlocked the door to his apartment. Nicole. She’d have a field day with the train of his thoughts, he knew.
See,
she’d say confidently,
you’re changing!
As if he’d conjured her up, thoughts of Nicole swamped him, crowding in closer than before. Pushing the door shut, Max leaned back against it, the tightness in his lungs nearly unbearable, his head all at once feeling as if it was splitting.
“Go!” he yelled out, his voice echoing in the empty space. “Leave me alone!”
His head thrown back against the door, he glared into the gloomy hallway as if he could see her standing there tormenting him. But he was alone. Still. Always.
Hadn’t he always been alone?
Shoving roughly away from the door, he crossed the hall and pushed the office door open. When he’d left for lunch earlier, he’d closed it, not admitting to himself how unable he was to bear the yawning emptiness. Now, he snapped on the light and made himself face the room. Her room, her space. Going over to the desk, Max sat down in the chair and gently placed his fingers on the computer keyboard, the monitor screen suddenly flashing to life.
As if groveling for some wisp of Nicole, he rested his fingers where hers had sat.
He’d lived here six years in this building, this apartment. Always alone, except for the typists and Ruth or Cynthia. Even his occasional sex partners had never come home with him. He was accustomed to this aloneness. Why now did the space echo so badly?
Clenching his fists, he bent to rest his head on the keyboard, the damn thing he couldn’t conquer. If only she were here again, how the ache in his soul would ease.
His soul! The woman had somehow altered his very soul.
Lifting his gaze to the ambient space above the monitor, Max replayed his brother’s words.
“
Love is different. You want everything good for a person you love, even if it scares you. I’m figuring that out. It’s about not holding them back, even if you have to learn to deal with your own fears. Fears of losing them or yourself.”
Max sat back in her chair, his fingers sliding off the keyboard as his arms dropped to his sides.
It sounded so damned scary, so impossible, so wrong, to think of changing himself for her. But hadn’t he already been doing that? Not particularly for her, but because she made it seem so obvious and…necessary. He couldn’t quite get it to fit in his brain. Changing for her, changing for himself. It all seemed to mesh together. Not easily though…nothing was particularly easy about this reorienting in his head.
He’d resisted reaching out to Pete, too…but now he could only be glad he’d done it.
Where was she? Max wondered, a jagged jolt of pain ripping through him. He loved her, God help him. He loved her. For the first time in all his life, he’d let a woman matter.
* * *
“Ms. Cavanaugh!” a boy called out, swiveling around as he passed her in the hall. “Who sent you the flowers? You got a man now?”
“Never mind, Shane,” she said, trying to keep her voice level, the threat of tears making her eyes burn. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”
Shane smirked, his adolescent swagger harmless and amusing if she’d been able to find amusement in anything at that moment. “Ms. Tibbons sent me to the office with a message. Oh, yeah! I’m legally in the halls during class!”
“Fine.” The bowl of fragile pink flowers held out in front of her as if it were nuclear waste, Nicole hurried past him, catching his startled look out of the corner of her eye.
Normally, she enjoyed the give and take with teenagers that her job allowed. They could be maddening in their stumbling, awkward earnestness, but she loved being part of their lives.
Right now, however, she could hardly breath for the panic and grief clutching at her heart. Loving and losing someone was bad enough, but loving him and being offered a wisp of a chance to linger nearby and suffer more pain and damage…that was harder. More tempting and more destructive, all at once.
He’d sent her a delicate cluster of pink roses and something that looked like blue bells…in the fall yet. Of course, a hundred dollars or so was small change to a man of his wealth.
Driving home, the damned thing sitting innocently in the seat next to her like a bomb in a teddy bear, she could barely see for the tears streaming over her cheeks.
His card had said simply, “Call me. Max.”
As if that was all it took.
What a simplistic, typical male reaction. As if nothing could be so bad or so ugly that a credit card and a call to a florist couldn’t fix it. As if she were a pet to be given a treat after having been beaten.
Arriving home, she marched straight into the kitchen and dumped the arrangement into the trash, wincing at the sound of the beautiful bowl cracking as it landed.
Without letting herself hesitate, she took the garbage bag out to the curb.
* * *
The next morning, Nicole stared out at the September wind, busily scrubbing the leaves from the trees. She’d made it through another week and that in itself should have been reason to rejoice the coming of the weekend.
From her kitchen window she could see the white garbage bag by the curb, its loose folds flapping in the gusty, frigid air. Today of all days the trash pick-up had to be later than usual. She had to stare at the damned bag knowing it’s contents.
Why would Max send her flowers?
Of course, for all she knew, he routinely sent flowers to his sex partners. Hell, he could have an account with a florist and get a cut-rate.
A particularly strong gust of air hit the garbage bag tumbling it to its side.
Blinking, she tried not to think about the sweet pink roses falling, scattered, out of their bowl, their petals turning purple with the cold.
She should have dumped the thing in the dumpster behind the school. She should have never gone to New York at all.
Forcing herself to turn away from the window over her kitchen sink, she ignored the breakfast she’d made herself cook. It sat now congealing on the table.
Soon, this blackness had to lift.
People lived through loss. Relationships broke up all the time…and she couldn’t really claim to have had a relationship with Max. More like a collision between a midget car and an SUV. Impervious to anything outside his own dark world, Max had probably barely felt the impact.
She felt flattened. Compacted.
After the first three days back home, she’d refused to let herself sleep all the time, but weren’t weekends for lazing around? Surely, she could be forgiven one morning in bed. But she wouldn’t cry, she told herself fiercely. No more tears, no more agonizing questions about whether or not she should have walked out—
The phone rang just then, interrupting her in the act of climbing back into bed. Searching for the cordless phone through two more rings, she finally located the silly thing and, picking it up, answered breathlessly.
“Hello?”
For one long second, there was only silence.
“Hello?”
“Nicole,” Max said, his voice familiar as nightfall. “I wasn’t sure I had the right number.”
“Hi,” she said.
No matter how searing the pain in her chest, she determined she had to keep the shakiness out of her voice. Hope could be a wicked, deceitful thing, she reminded herself quickly. The stupid, pink roses meant nothing.
Breathlessly, she waited to hear what he might say.
“Hi.” He sounded unusually hesitant. There were many words to characterize Max Tucker, but “uncertain” had never made the list.
“Hi!” she repeated, forcing enthusiasm into the slender syllable.
“I…I’ve missed you,” he said, all at once.
“Oh…well. Oh.” What the hell was she supposed to say to that, Nicole thought, holding the phone in a grip so tight her fingers hurt.
His manuscript was due soon.
Despite her determination to forget him, she had the specific date emblazoned on her brain. He must be getting desperate for a typist. The thought came slicing across her conscious. No matter what, she wasn’t going back. She couldn’t. Not with her job.
Hearing her own thoughts, she cringed. If it weren’t for the job, she would actually struggle with herself not to return to…New York. God, she knew she couldn’t return to him.
What had changed since she’d left him?
“How have you been?” he asked as the silence between them lengthened.
Nicole swallowed against a dry throat. “Fine. Good, really.”
“Good,” he said with that weird hesitation in his voice.
“Yes.” The word forced itself out through the tight muscles of her throat.
“Did you get the flowers?”
Closing her eyes, she said, “Yes.”
“Oh.”
A silence ticked slowly through the phone.
Unable to unclench her hands from the receiver, she sat on the bed, her body tensed to the point of cracking.
He didn’t know how to ask her to come back and help him finish the book, she thought. Begging wouldn’t come easily for Max Tucker.
Some stupid part of her wanted to jump in and help him, at least with the conversation, but she struggled against the urge. She couldn’t go back. Even if she’d come no closer to regaining her enthusiasm for her life, she couldn’t risk getting pulled back into his life. Feeding her hunger for him made no sense. Going back to him would be bad for her and bad for him.
“I guess,” she said, caving into her impulse to ease the conversation, “you’re probably working hard on the book. It’s due when? In a week or so?”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “Yes, I’m working. It’s—it’s almost there. Almost finished.”
Nicole envisioned the stack of notebooks piling up on the desk beside the computer. Switching the phone to her other ear, she found herself pressing her free hand to her chest as if to still her chattering heart.
“Good. That’s good.”
She couldn’t go back, she chanted in her head. Nothing was different. He wasn’t any more or less than the man who’d raged at her, demeaned and dismissed her…after she’d loved him so much. Nothing had changed since she walked out.
“I…really miss you,” Max said, heavy emotion in his voice.
Frowning into the blank space over her bed, she tried to decipher the nuance in his words. He didn’t seem angry, but beyond that, she couldn’t pick up anything besides…fear?
His work was everything to him, she knew. He needed to turn that book in on time. He needed it typed.
“Max,” she said, after a long moment. “Why are you calling?”
He didn’t answer immediately, as if her directness left him taken aback. “Just to say that. I miss you…badly and—“
“Do you have a new typist?” she interrupted abruptly.
“No,” he answered. “Not really. I’m calling you to—“
“I’m sorry,” she cut him off, the room gone hazy with the unshed tears in her eyes. “I’m can’t help you with it. I don’t think I can help you at all. Goodbye, Max.”
Fumbling for the button to disconnect the call, she heard him say her name and then there was silence.
She stood beside the bed, trembling, before blindly dropping the receiver in the direction of her bedside table. Unable to contain the pain coursing through her, Nicole crumpled onto her bed, muffling her tears in her pillow.
* * *
The line went dead, but Max held the phone to his ear for a long moment.
She thought all he cared about was the typing?
Glancing over at the computer desk and the stack of notepads waiting to be transcribed, Max lowered the phone.
“Shit!”
He was an incompetent fool, unable to take care of even the simplest task. For too long, he’d wrestled with this insane limitation.
Nicole didn’t want to be pursued for clerical purposes, he recognized with a grim smile. So he had to remove that problem.
Sitting down in front of the computer, he wiggled the mouse and watched the screen illuminate in front of him. Along the left side of the monitor ran several columns of icons. He’d hated this piece of machinery for as long as he could remember, but he was damned if he would let it control his hope for a future.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Max felt almost giddy. In front of him sat the results of a marathon night, a stack of clean, typed papers haphazardly stacked on the desk. The typing was rough, he knew. He’d never gotten the hang of the spell-check device. But the friggin’ book was finished and he’d done it himself.
Glancing at his watch, he saw it was four-thirty in the morning. He should feel exhausted by an entire night spent pecking away to get it done, but he felt exhilarated.
Free! He’d face the damned monster and whipped it.