Over You (11 page)

The line goes dead. Max wishes she could just get on Facebook and connect with old friends—but she doesn’t begin to know how to catch anyone up to the point where she can ask advice. She was never great with keeping in touch with everyone. On to the next school, the next ecosystem she had to harness all her resources for fitting into.

She sees the subway entrance looming at the block’s end, its green light hovering above two women standing close together. One can barely get through her story they are laughing so hard, holding on to each other. Max pulls out her phone and finds herself texting the one person she suddenly really wants to talk to. “Cooper baby, any chance ur out? Don’t feel like going home yet. M.”

When Max hits
SEND
, Ben is stuck at his grandfather’s retirement home in Bay Ridge trying desperately to uncover a dark family secret. Any dark family secret. A bit of disturbing Cooper lore that Ben could have learned “in his youth” that “facing” made him become a “better, more interesting person.” A person somehow differentiated from everyone else filling out the common app.

“Bro, you called me.” Taylor’s voice pulls Ben back from rereading Max’s text.

“Sorry, that girl, Max, just texted. She wants to hang out.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not exactly next door, though.” Ben looks around the small suite set up to feel as much as a home as humanly possible—and failing. “What are you up to?” he asks.

“Just, uh, watching Bridge. She was hanging out with some friends. She’s gone now. Or upstairs. The house is dark again. Sorry, you were saying?” Taylor asks, and Ben hears the clank of Taylor’s bedroom blinds hitting the sill.

“Bridget? Why are you watching her? You two hanging out again?” Ben asks, surprised as he hops up to sit on the two feet of counter.

“No. Just, I don’t know, usually when it’s over with girls there’s more of a mess and she’s been—not one. I haven’t seen her at all, and then tonight I saw her hanging. I mean, I’ve kinda been thinking about how she always used to do this cute thing where she’d bite the tip of her tongue when she was concentrating. Whatever. It’s just I’d heard she was chill, and she looked … chill.”

“So you’re watching her?” Ben waves a hand in the air, trying to get Taylor to the point.

“What’s fun in Denture Land?” Taylor asks, and Ben realizes he’s changing the subject. “Find your inspiration?”

“Nah, it’s all like I’ve always heard. His dad came from the Old Country. They changed his name from Capernico at Ellis Island. He worked his ass off, married my great-grandma, started the store—”

“Didn’t secretly go back and fight for Mussolini?”

“Dare to dream.”

“Store basement wasn’t a stop on the underground railroad?”

“I wish.”

“Bummer. Look, I think you’re sweatin’ this way too much. I mean, the application isn’t even due for another month and a half.”

“Right,” Ben says, unable to stifle his annoyance at Taylor’s overconfidence.

“You want to swing by?” Taylor asks, and Ben hears the thud of the little basketball hitting Taylor’s floor.

“I just said Max wants to meet up.”

“Yeah.”

“So if I can get back in time I’m going to meet up with her.” Ben goes ahead and lays it out.

“I thought you and this chick are just friends.”

“Dude, we are just friends.” Ben feels himself get defensive.

“But you’d rather hang out with her?”

“What’s your deal? You and I’ve been going out every night!”

“I’m just—I need you to be a friend right now.”

“When am I not?” Ben asks as he overhears his exasperated grandfather saying his dad’s name like he’s still a kid. “I should go. My dad’s trying to do some tax thing with him, and it’s taking forever. Could you hook me up and call your dad’s car service to come get me? It’s my only chance of making it there.”

“Dude, I don’t know. I’m supposed to only use it for emergencies.”

“You got them to take you ten blocks to the movies.” Ben rests his hand on the refrigerator handle, the cold metal reminding him of the feel of Max’s zipper as he slid it up her calf. “Come on, dude.”

“You like her,” Taylor says accusingly.

“No,” Ben says, not ready to answer the question that will just lead to more questions. And humiliating answers. No, they haven’t hooked up. No, he hasn’t tried. No, he hasn’t even asked her out.

“Admit you like her,” Taylor challenges, “and I’ll call them.”

It’s probably just as well that Ben couldn’t hang out, Max thinks the next morning, or she would have slept late and missed this. She is nervous to be unexpectedly sitting across from her dad while he gets the check for the brunch they’ve shared at the glamorous Newark Airport Chili’s before he goes through security. Her father had called when his flight from Chicago was rerouted to see if she wanted to meet during his delay.

Two subways, a train, and a tram later, she found him at Terminal B in his rumpled suit, waiting with the paper folded to the business section to give her one of his reassuring hugs.

They haven’t been together since her ill-fated spring stay when she was still pulling herself up from her St. Something’s tailspin. “Good to see you with an appetite.” Her dad nods as she folds the last fry into her mouth. “You look great, Maxine. New York is really working for you.”

“And I for it.” She squeezes her knees under the table.

“So.” He lowers his glasses to sign the bill. “How’s the school search going?” he asks. “Thought any more about the UCs? Your mom and I loved Berkeley. Think of all the sunshine. You could go to class and the beach on the same day.”

“What would that outfit look like?”

“We’ve covered this.” His face sets in seriousness. “You can’t just apply to one school, Max. Not as a dropout. It’s just not prudent. So there’s NYU, but where else do you want to go?”

“How about nowhere?” There. She said it. It was one thing to be faced with Hugo. It’s something else entirely to be faced, day in and day out, year in and year out, with Hugo in love with someone else. No matter how she’s looked at it, she just can’t figure out a way around this new reality. And she can’t abandon her clients. So she’ll just get an apartment and build her business the old-fashioned way. “I mean, the pioneers didn’t have PhDs.”

Her dad smiles like she’s made a joke as he puts his card back into the worn slot in his wallet.

“I kind of mean it, Dad.” She picks at the cocktail napkin under her sweating glass of orange juice, her mouth drying as she finally says it out loud. “I’m thinking about not going to school, like, at all.”

“What?”

“Or at least taking a year off.” And then another and another and another.

“Except you’re having your year off. Isn’t that what we agreed? A year off and then college?” They stand and he pulls on his blazer before putting his arm around her shoulder and leaning into her ear. “You don’t want to be working here for the rest of your life, do you?” They both watch a girl clear off the cheese-and-ketchup-strewn plates into a gray bin with something miles below enthusiasm. He turns his wheelie around to trail them into the traffic heading to security.

“I could get an apartment of my own. We know Mom’s going to move on to another job any minute now. I just can’t imagine packing up again, Dad,” she says, telling him the least of what she can’t imagine.

“That’s because you have the wardrobe of a midsized traveling circus. You sent me the financial planning forms?” he asks. “Don’t hit me with it all at once at the zero hour.”

“I did.” She didn’t. “Last week. Didn’t you get them?”

“I’ll ask Debbie. Maybe she saw them.”

“Yes, ask Debbie. Maybe she used them to line her bird’s cage.”

“It’s a canary, Max. Come on, it’s sweet.”

“Except it’s not,” she says gently.

“I know,” he concedes with a sigh. “But she is.”

“Okay,” Max says noncommittally.

They arrive at the long line of shuffling travelers preparing to remove their belts and shoes. He pulls her into a hug, and she rests her head on his chest. “You’re going to find a school you totally love, I know it. Boarding school is not college, Max. High school is not college. Nothing is.” He hugs her. “I’ll call you this week. Thanks for meeting your old man.”

“Love you,” she says as she backs up and turns to leave.

“Max!” he calls after her, and she spins around. “You’re going to college.”

Everyone in line is looking at her, and she sheepishly gives him a thumbs-up, having no freaking clue what she’s going to do.

M
ax feels like her brain is going to break open. Option A seems to be to go to NYU and forgo her fashions for a burka. Unappealing. Option B, go somewhere else and lose the opportunity to be mentored by Dr. Schmidt, the one woman who might see past her age and take Max’s research seriously. Option C, forgo college altogether, build her business with grit and fortitude, and change the world with just a GED. Paternally vetoed. Which leaves Option D. As in doughnuts. Having motored through the gifts from her clients, Max has started making and frosting her own. At three a.m.

Understandably, given her lack of sleep, the week that ensues is an unmitigated mess. Sara’s piñata came back as Minnie Mouse instead of a rat, and no matter how wounded a heart may be, no one can take a bat to Minnie. Max accidentally sent Phoebe to case a day care, whose name was one letter off from an ex’s school. And the frozen car keys got served at the parents’ cocktail party. And now it’s Saturday, when, with no school to stifle the schedule, Ex, Inc. lines up doubleheaders.

Given how distracted Max’s been, she’s fully embracing the packed day because it allows no space for thinking about college or Hugo or his girlfriend or that the three subjects are now fused at the hip. Tanned, triangular muscles that narrowed into the band of his boxer shorts—would be an example of what she does not have the space to think about!

She’s too busy wrangling a trio of Maltese in the late afternoon sun of Prospect Park. “How we doing, Zach?”

Zach shoots her a weary look from yards away, telegraphing how ballsy it is of her to inquire. He continues pep-talking Jess, whose Moment will showcase her newfound love of furry, four-legged creatures. Because her ex has three bullmastiffs, which, on the night he brought her home to meet his parents, bounded up, front paws on her shoulders, jowls splattering slobber, and humped her senseless. Jess informed Max that he never saw her the same after she screamed and slammed into their front door like a fly on a windshield. He dumped her within the week.

Unfortunately, Jessica’s desensitization class, based on the principles of behavioral psychology, is taking twice as long as Max had anticipated, a miscalculation not lost on her annoyed staff. “Great! Let’s go again.”

Jess grips Zach’s arm, which is already showing the flushing precursor to a bruise, as he walks her toward Max’s neighbor’s—Mrs. Denunzio—fluffy white dogs. All three strain to lick at Jess’s approaching ankles. At the last second, Jess darts to the other side of the path, her arms overhead as if the puppies were bombarding her with mortar. “I can’t! I can’t!”

“Max.” Phoebe drops her head back. “Isn’t there something else she could do, something more achievable? Jump out of a burning building? Any chance her ex is also a pyro?”

“She’s going to get this, Phoebe,” Max reminds her through clenched teeth before turning to Jess with a calm smile. “You’re going to get this. Look how much progress you made today!”

“Yes, I do recall.” Zach’s voice teeters on the edge of sarcasm. “When we got here you couldn’t even come out from behind the tree.” Jess nods from a safe distance.

Max takes a look at her watch. Michael Kors. Gold, with a grounding masculine heft. It will
kill
her to give it back next week. “Yes. That’s good for today. But awesome work, really awesome!” Max announces, hopefully covering her own disappointment. “Go home and watch
The Shaggy Dog
—with the sound
on
this time—and try to touch the screen at least once.”

Jessica nods, takes a Fig Newton that Phoebe offers, and slumps off.

Zach and Phoebe drop on a bench, and Max has to dig deep not to join. “Okay!” Max punches the air as she invokes a rallying tone. Zach and Phoebe exchange looks. “Come on! Today’s setback will only make Jessica’s Moment feel all the more awesome when it does go perfectly—
as it will
. And Bridget will be here in five minutes so let’s get moving. Break.”

Zach and Phoebe push to their feet and move into setting up the next training. Within minutes the team has traded leashes for Airwalks as they suit Bridget up for her first skateboard lesson. Bridget seems blessedly unaware of the tension among those padding her. “There is no way I am going to—what did you call it?”

“Make him regret his entire existence,” Max says as she adjusts Bridget’s helmet.

“Yeah, that—in this getup. He can’t even see me.” She looks down at the plaid jacket and baggy cargo pants.

“But he’ll see your moves.” Max mollifies her. “You’ll be like Hannah Teter. You’ll rock his world. It’ll be h-h-h-hot.”

“I’m going to look like a dork. I’m going to eat it. It’ll be l-l-l-lame.”