Mr. Personality (27 page)

“Nic, I’m getting worried.” She came in and sat on the foot of the bed. “All you’ve done since you got back is sleep and cry. You’ve got to stop this.”

Squinting her swollen eyes against the August light now streaming through the bedroom window, Nicole mumbled, “I can’t.”

“Well, the least you can do is talk to me about it,” Claire declared, the exasperation in her voice softened by concern. “What happened in New York?”

Nicole climbed into her bed, leaning back against the headboard, covers pulled up as if she could shield herself from the reality of the situation with Max.

Brooding, she stared into space.

“Tell me about it,” Claire insisted with a loving pat on Nicole’s quilt-shrouded knee.

Her entire body ached. Her bones and her head and even her lungs when she breathed. “I…thought I could…make him happy. Or help him change. I thought he was changing.”

She drew in a shuddering gasp of air. “He
was
different. I never would have—I mean he’s sexy as hell, but I wouldn’t have—“

Casting her friend a look of despair, she whimpered, “He’s really a wonderful person…and—and a bastard, you know?”

“I know,” Claire murmured. “In the beginning, he sounded withdrawn and cold and you thought he was wounded like your twisted teenagers. But then you got involved with him and you felt different. You fell in love with him.”

Wiping at her damp cheeks, Nicole tried to make sense. “At first, he was icy and contemptuous and treated everyone like dirt. Not just me. But…later—“

Hesitating, new tears seeping out to replace the ones now dampening her fingers, she said, “No, Claire. He
did
love me. He never actually said it, but he was seeing things, he was different. He really has a heart, somewhere deep inside. He went to that damned banquet for his brother—the one I told you about—and he didn’t want to go, at first. But, we ended up going. And there was no reason for him to do that if he didn’t want to reconnect with Pete, none at all. It’s not like he needs the photographers and the crap.”

“So he felt really bad about messing around with Pete’s wife and he wanted to make up with his brother,” Claire concluded, her face sympathetic.

“Yes!” Nicole traced the stitching on the section of the quilt that covered her up-raised knees. “He was better, happier, you know? He wrote constantly and it was beautiful stuff, no matter what his publisher said!”

“His editor’s an ass,” Claire volunteered loyally.

Shaking her head, Nicole said, “No, I think she was surprised, but she’s really great. She’s one of Max’s best friends. Maybe the money people got panicked. They aren’t worried about letting him grow. He’s a big money maker for them and they’re afraid to let him do anything different. But he needs to, Claire! He needs to move on, to get outside that damned apartment and be with people. He deserves to be happy! The world isn’t a terrible place.”

“I know.”

“He was doing it, too. Meeting people and being more open,” Nicole said, weeping again. “He went to the coffee shop and talked to real people. He did that on his own. I know it seems small, but this guy has people after him all the time. He’d just withdrawn from the world. Then, he…changed. I thought he changed.”

She lifted her hands to cover her face. “I don’t know what happened. One minute, we were so close and connected. We went to Ryan’s ball game and came home and made love. It was beautiful.”

Dropping her hands to her knees, she clenched them there. “I
know
he felt it, too! It wasn’t just me. But then everything went to crap. He changed and it was as if the beautiful soul I saw in him was
gone!
Just gone.”

“I love him,” Nicole said again, “but I can’t be with him. Not when he’s like this. Not unless he lives his life differently and he won’t! It’s like he has to rescue himself and people are conspiring to keep him the same. I tried to rescue him—“

She hiccupped softly on an indrawn sob. “It’s like he’s lost…to me and the world. I don’t know that he can change…I don’t even know if he realizes he can be different.”

* * *

Max sat alone, hunched over a small table at the back corner of the coffee shop. The place was half-full, the
shushing
of the coffee machines a low background to the high-energy chatter of customers placing orders. He wasn’t sure why he was here in this place, but after prowling uselessly around his apartment all day yesterday—the day after Nicole left—he’d come here this morning.

It shouldn’t have been, but his fight with Nicole and her storming out seemed to have left
Tuesday, August 2,
circled in red on the calendar in his mind. She’d left Tuesday…he knew she’d be back within a few days. She had too much to lose for her not to come back, but Nicole wasn’t really his problem right now.

Not really, no matter how empty he felt.

She’d be back,
he reminded his snuffling anxiety, trying to ignore the fact that he sounded like he was parenting his own cowering fears. She’d be back.

Right now he had a damned crisis to deal with. A real one. In front of him lie the manuscript that Cynthia and Ruth and too damned many people of literary world waited for…what there was of it. Maybe writing in a new place would help him get his ass in gear and do what needed doing. He had to fix the damn thing, had to shear out the gossamer crap and gut the silly pink pastel emotions from the story. He had to make it
real.
Real didn’t pull any punches or promise rosy tomorrows.

Not that the story he’d written hadn’t had emotionally-difficult moments. The conflict between his two primary characters had fairly sparked, but in the end somehow they’d grown…together. Rather than having a bittersweet ending where his heroine learned the hard way about love and loss and the ways of the world, his protagonists had actually chosen to commit to each other. They’d “fallen in love” and, as he uneasily eavesdropped on them, had persisted in concluding they somehow made each other better people.

Since when did that sort of thing really happen?

Nicole had said she cared for him. She’d said it in every glance, in the sheer passion and sweetness when they were making love. But it wasn’t real, that sort of emotion. He knew it.

In the real world, couples who chose to remain as a unit for any length of time usually did so only after years of corroding conflict. They were maimed by their battles but had decided having a mate, like having a pet, would extend their years. Someone should do a study of whether marriage or pet ownership made for a longer life, Max thought, his mouth curling sardonically.

His book—this piece of shit he couldn’t beat into shape—however, had become possessed of a sweet and joyous feeling…God, the bookstores would want to shelve it with the romances. He’d become an anomaly like that guy who’d made millions on the “Bridges” book, a sappy story of illicit love and loss. Having loved deeply and extramaritally made all the bullshit in their lives worthwhile, Max mocked in his head. Crap. Only his book didn’t require the hero to die or wander off.

He had to change the book. Had to.

What had he been thinking when he’d written this?

He’d been thinking of her, his brain answered immediately. Thinking of Nicole and her smile. Nicole and the funny, sarcastic lift of her eyebrow. Nicole, warm and mewing beneath him as he loved her…or her body, anyway. Her laugh, her repetitive, simple-minded questions that left him thinking way too much.

Expelling the short, hard breath lodged in his throat, Max snapped his pencil down on the table top and wrestled to dislodge her from his brain. He didn’t have time for all this idiotic pining. He had to fix this book. Transform it, somehow, into an approximation of his former work. Even being derivative of himself would be better than publishing a laughable sappy, “happy” book.

Knowing what he had to do and doing it were definitely two different things in this case, however. The book had to be revised. He had to excise the crap and straighten out the kinks…and he’d come here to the coffee shop to do it.

“Good morning, Mr. Tucker.” An elderly lady nodded as she left the table next to him.

“Morning,” he responded gruffly, still not accustomed to total strangers acknowledging him. Over and over, Ruth had told him to get it into his head that the world felt like they knew him, like he was a neighbor or a friend. For years, he’d been telling Ruth and Cynthia that the world didn’t know diddly-squat about him, but he was starting to accept that the world saw it differently.

In front of him, the pages Nicole had so neatly typed of his rough outline for the new book lie on the table…scoffing at him. He had to edit the damn thing, had to rip out the goofy “warm-hearted” shit and replace it with…what?

Words he’d written before? He had nothing else. Nothing. All the themes of emotional insanity and self-delusion, he’d written before. Done it all before.

Was he really now in the position of having to plagiarize himself?

“Did you want another double latte, Mr. Tucker?” the fresh-face waitress paused beside his table, a tray of empty, used coffee cups in her hands.

His gaze focused on the words and he followed them across the page, falling again under the spell of the story. For three pages, he read, each sentence slotting in so well after the other…and the pencil in his hand never moved.

What if he didn’t change it? What if he couldn’t? Maybe this book—maybe it only existed in this form. Would it be so intolerable to let it be published…as is?

“I can’t change this book,” Max told her without preamble. “I’ve tried gutting it and shifting the focus, but I can’t get it there. The damned book refuses. It may be a risk and I may get bludgeoned by the critics, but this book just won’t be changed. Maybe you should take a shot at it. If you highlighted the worst parts, I might be able to get something different.”

“You’re changing the book?” she asked. “I didn’t think—I didn’t say you should change it.”

Annoyed, he said, “You told me there had been a meeting and several people there were worried that my reader base wouldn’t accept it.”

Cynthia hesitated. “Max, I never said the book was bad. In fact, I…kind of like it. Really. What I said was that there are some people who are worried about how the numbers on a book this different are going to play, but I don’t think I can change it, either. I mean, I’ll look at if you want me to.”

“You don’t think it needs changing?” he asked, his strained voice not sounding right to his ears.

“No,” she said, “Honestly, no. If it’s up to me, I say let’s leave it as is and throw it out to the universe. Who knows? It might be received as the best thing you’ve ever done.”

“You don’t think this book is tripe?” he asked suspiciously.

“No,” her voice was startled. “You don’t, generally, write ‘tripe.’ I don’t know how the readers will receive it, but I still think you have to stay with the vision, particularly since it’s so strong. You know, just because you’re so damned successful, doesn’t mean you have to keep saying the same thing over and over.”

Max looked sightlessly out the coffee shop window. “Then maybe if the powers that be don’t think it’s a good investment, I’ll give my advance back and take the project elsewhere. The money means shit to me.”

“No.” The smile in Cynthia’s voice filtered through the word. “No one is rejecting the book. They won’t accept your money back. We’re going ahead with it. As a matter of fact, I’ve already worked up some cover suggestions.”

“Oh. All right then…bye,” Max said, feeling a little silly. Having been prepared for battle, her response had taken the wind out of his sails. He should have known Cynthia better.

“Don’t worry about changing anything,” she said again. “Just get it finished and get it to me.”

Max disconnected the call and lay the phone down on the coffee shop table feeling relieved. Whatever storms lie ahead with the book, he’d weather them. He didn’t really have a choice.

As soon as Nicole got back, they’d get the book finished.