New Life (2 page)

Still, my mind nibbled away, refusing to drop
the subject. Maybe someone at the office would know more about
Jason.

And then, because I was half-asleep, drowsy,
and a little aroused, I slipped into a dream about having sex with
Jason up against a wall in the empty office building. Clothes
ripped off, strong arms lifting me, thrusting, stroking, kissing,
panting, bodies twisted together… I groaned and rolled over, my
hand finding its way down between my legs to finish off the fantasy
of sex with a dark-eyed stranger.

Chapter Two

“Jason, Is there anything you’d like to add?”
Maxie, our group leader, asked like she always did, even though I
never contributed to the conversation.

“No,” I answered, thinking about meeting Anna
the other night and, for some reason, wanting to tell about it. But
there wasn’t anything to say. I’d met a pretty woman who was
crying. We’d talked a little bit. I made her laugh. End of
story.

“Why do you keep asking him?” Rob, a
forty-something insurance salesman with anger issues, glared at me.
“It’s bullshit that the rest of us lay our shit out there, and you
think you’re too cool to participate. Why do you even keep coming
here? ”

“Rob, this is a safe place. No one has to
talk about anything he or she isn’t ready to,” Maxie warned.

“You must
want
to lay your shit out or
you wouldn’t do it,” I pointed out to Rob. “I guess I’m just not as
interesting as the rest of you.”

Rob muttered something that sounded like
“fucker,” but Maxie ignored him.

I’d been attending the survivors’ group for
over a year, a couple of times a month, enough so I could reassure
my mom I was still a part of it. She wanted me to go to therapy—not
the physical but the “talking about our feelings” kind. But a
therapist cost money I couldn’t afford, so I came to this informal
meeting. People talked about surviving car accidents, store
robberies, plane crashes, or personal assaults. There was even one
tornado survivor. Everyone talked about their nightmares or
survivor’s guilt if they’d lost a loved one. They usually ended up
crying, and Maxie passed out tissues. I’d rarely contributed to the
discussion. Rob probably wasn’t the only one who wondered why I
bothered coming. Guess I was just too damn happy with my life to
complain.

“Jason,” Maxie said, “you know no one’s pain
is too uninteresting to share.”

I almost laughed out loud at that.

“Anything you want to say is important, and
everyone”—she looked at Rob—“will respect your bravery in speaking
up.”

I should have stayed silent, but suddenly
words came pouring out. “I feel a lot of guilt because it should’ve
been me that died that night. I know my parents think so. My
brother got in the car with me and I…” I covered my eyes. “It was
my fault.”

“Oh, honey.” Nice old Naomi Johnson, the
tornado survivor, reached over to pat my back. “Let it all
out.”

“This is bullshit!” Rob exploded, his
slicked-back, 80’s hair nearly escaping its gel as he shook his
head in fury. “He’s making it up.”

“Rob, we’ve heard enough from you today.”
Maxie never spoke that sharply. I bit my lower lip to keep from
laughing.

“It’s a lie.” Rob’s voice rose, and I half
expected steam to erupt from his ears. “I looked up his accident.
He was alone in the car. Nobody else was involved. I’m surprised it
even made the news.”

For a moment, there was complete silence;
then Naomi asked, “Is that true?”

I took my hand away from my eyes and looked
around at the group. “Just trying to make the story more
interesting.”

“You’re sick,” a new girl named Serena, who’d
survived a convenience store holdup, snapped. “Some of us are
really trying to help each other here, and you come in and make up
stuff? That’s so wrong.”

Put like that, I did sound pretty bad.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “But does anybody else
think it’s weird that Rob researched my accident?”

Rob continued ratting me out. “They tested
his blood, and the guy was completely wasted. Maybe he didn’t kill
anybody, but he easily could have. Drunk-driving asshole.”

“Rob,” Maxie interrupted.

I stood and grabbed my jacket from the back
of the chair. “I should go.”

“Good riddance,” Rob said as I walked toward
the door.

“Jason,” Maxie called, “you clearly have some
issues about your accident or you wouldn’t feel the need to make up
stories. Don’t give up on group.” But she didn’t sound as if she
meant it.

I limped upstairs to the street, and by the
time I exited the building, whatever amusement I’d gotten from
yanking their chains was gone. I can admit when I’ve been a dick. I
just can’t seem to stop doing crap like that. It’d be easy to call
it part of the impulse control issues brain-damaged people are
prone to, but my little sister, Katie, will tell you I’ve always
been a douche.

By the way, I never had a brother.

After the meeting, I had a few hours to kill
before work so I went to the park across the street from the office
building and hung out with the homeless. Some of them were wasted
or batshit crazy, but others could carry on pretty interesting
conversations. Anyway, I didn’t have any place better to be, and I
wanted to get to work early. I hoped to run into Anna, or at least
catch a glimpse of her before she left. If I arrived early for my
shift, our paths might cross. I’d officially become a stalker.

At about five o’clock, I bid good-bye to the
crazies and druggies and random down-and-outers and headed to the
three-story office building across the street that it was my
nightly pleasure to clean from top to bottom. It was a solid
six-hour shift with decent pay for a menial job, so I couldn’t
complain. I’d vowed to take no more handouts from my parents, who’d
been practically bankrupted by my hospital bills. I was determined
to pay my own way from here on out no matter how cheaply I had to
live.

“You’re here early.” Shelly, the building
receptionist, greeted me in the foyer. Then she turned her
attention back to the e-reader she kept hidden in her desk. No need
to put on a show of being busy for me.

I went to the cleaning closet and gathered
some props. If I was going to the Haggenstern and Lowe offices on
the second floor, I’d need some task to accomplish. That was as far
as I’d gotten in my planning. I didn’t really know what to pretend
to do. I wasn’t as good at creative thinking as I used to be. The
normal routine of my day kept intruding in my mind. Usually around
now, I ate dinner, packed a snack for later in the night, and
caught the bus to work. Today I’d dropped out of group after making
an ass of myself, skipped dinner, and showed up at work early.
Everything felt off-kilter, and I don’t deal with off-kilter too
well.

I spent nearly five minutes in the janitor
closet, staring at bottles of cleaning fluids and trying to figure
out what to do next.
Moron, she’s going to be gone by the time
you get up there
. The thought got me moving at last. I grabbed
a pack of lightbulbs and headed upstairs. The building has an
elevator, but I wanted to see the spot on the stairs where I’d met
Anna last night and relive our conversation one more time. Was I
only imagining there’d been a connection between us? Probably she’d
forgotten me the moment she walked away, while I was obsessing over
her.

When I reached Haggenstern and Lowe, the
lawyers and paralegals were leaving for the day. I went to one of
the wall sconces and unscrewed the lightbulb, burning my fingers
before I remembered to wrap a rag around the bulb. I stood fiddling
with the new bulb and watching the people walk past, chatting about
their day. It’s not easy to appear busy when you’re doing nothing.
I felt like a stalker, hovering there waiting for a glimpse of
Anna. The man I used to be probably would’ve laughed his ass off at
the pathetic loser I’d become.

A flash of blonde-streaked brown hair caught
my attention, and I immediately recognized her throaty laugh. She
was walking down the hall, talking to a balding man in a suit. Anna
wore a tailored jacket and skirt but didn’t look very lawyerly. She
gave the impression of a little girl dressing up in her mom’s work
clothes, but she must be at least in her midtwenties to have
finished her degree and passed the bar.

She glanced up and met my gaze. I turned my
attention to the lightbulb in my hand, studying it as if I’d never
seen one before. I reached inside the wall sconce and began to
screw the bulb in the socket.

“You’re here early.” Anna’s voice came from
beside me.

I let go of the bulb and turned, heart
pounding as if I’d been caught jacking off or something. The man
she’d been talking to had walked on, and it was just Anna standing
there.

“Yeah. Had some…things to take care of.”

Her left eyebrow shot up. Just one. So cool.
She smiled, and I knew I was busted. “Important stuff, it looks
like.”

My mind went blank; then I decided there was
no point in pretending I was there for any other reason besides
seeing her. “Hoped if I came early, I’d see you.”

I winced. As if she’d be pleased some guy
like me was stalking her.

Anna glanced around the office, probably
hoping no one had noticed her talking to me, but the lawyers seemed
more focused on getting out of work as early as possible on a
Friday night.

“That’s sweet,” she said.

It was better than
get lost, weirdo
.
“Maybe there’s something in your office you need me to fix,” I
said.

“Like replace a lightbulb?” She paused, then
said, “Why don’t you come and see what you can do about the stuck
drawer in my file cabinet?”

I guessed Anna wouldn’t want me trailing
after her for everyone to see, so I finished screwing in the
lightbulb while she retraced her steps back down the hall. Then I
followed her to her office.

****

The moment I caught a glimpse of that blue
coverall, I knew I was in trouble. Instead of pretending to be
involved in my conversation with Jules and ignoring Jason, I
stopped to talk to the janitor.

A shapeless coverall doesn’t do anybody any
favors, but on him… I don’t know. There was something about his
long, lean build and the breadth of his shoulders. Or maybe it was
his eyes, which had seemed to pierce right through me last night. I
wanted to look into them again, if only to convince myself they
were nothing special.

But when Jason turned toward me, I realized
I’d been completely right about those amazing eyes. A flutter of
anticipation shot through me. After my meltdown in court the
previous day, I didn’t need more scrutiny from my coworkers. The
last thing I wanted was for anyone to see me flirting with the
janitor. I should’ve offered a polite greeting to Jason and moved
on, but instead I asked him to fix my stuck file drawer.

As I walked to my office, I had time to ask
myself at least a dozen times what I was doing. We’d had a
two-minute conversation last night, and, just because the man had
cheered me up when I was feeling really low, I was crushing on him.
It was inappropriate. I decided to play it cool, show him the
sticking drawer, but put a halt to any more flirting.

Still I couldn’t stop the fluttery nervous
feeling when he followed me into my office. The limp in his right
leg made me wonder again what had happened to him. Perhaps he’d
been in the military and gotten injured in war. I showed Jason the
file cabinet and stood back, watching him struggle to slide it
open.

“See? Stuck,” I said.

He was able to wrestle it halfway out and
peered inside. “I thought files were on computers these days.”

“Not everything. There still have to be hard
copies. So, can you fix it?”

He reached into the drawer and messed with
something, then easily slid it closed. He grinned at me with such a
devilish smirk I wanted to kiss it off his lips.

I smiled back. “Show-off.”

“I
am
the fixit guy.”

Before the moment of silence that followed
could grow too charged, I interrupted it. “I wanted to thank you
again for stopping to talk to me last night. After such a bad day,
it was nice to have someone bother to try to make me feel
better.”

“No problem.”

“I did the sheep-counting thing the rest of
the night. Couldn’t stop thinking of the damn things, but you’re
right, they were a distraction and calmed me down.”

Another little smile quirked his lips. “Never
tried it myself.”

I laughed. “So you’re dispensing untried
mantras? Quack.”

He frowned. “Quack?”

I wasn’t going to take the bait if he was
teasing me, but the uncertainty in his eyes convinced me. “Quack
doctor. A faker.”

His confusion cleared. “Oh, right. Some
words… I don’t remember everything I used to know.”

It was the perfect opening for me to ask
questions. “You said you had a head injury?”

“Car accident.”

“I’m sorry.” I searched for something to add.
“It must have been a very difficult recovery.”

“Yeah.” Jason changed the subject back to me.
“Anyway, it seems like you’re doing better today.”

“I just had to pull up my big-girl pants,
stop feeling sorry for myself, and get back to work.”

He glanced around my office. “Still wondering
if you made the wrong career choice?”

“As you said last night, I could be doing
something worse.”

“Like cleaning office buildings.”

Before I could amend my insult and say what
he did was as necessary as what I did if not more so, he added,
“Don’t bother pretending being a janitor is anyone’s career
goalie.”

I blinked at the word “goalie,” but Jason
didn’t seem to notice. I figured it was another symptom of his
disability. I’d spent some time that afternoon researching brain
injuries and their issues which might include memory loss, mood
swings, motor-control issues, or depression.