Over You (18 page)

“I thought—if we get busted we can just tell them we were on our way to find your mom and got lost. Harris tweed says, ‘
New Yorker
intern who bird-watches on the weekend.’”

“And if we get stopped in the closet?”

“This jacket also says, ‘I intern at
Teen Vogue
and am looking for a royal sugar daddy to take me pheasant hunting.’ It’s multilingual.”

Max leans back against the brushed steel. “What does it say if someone finds out I happen to have several thousand dollars’ worth of clothes in my tote?”

“You’re making me sweaty.”

“Relax. I’ve done this so many times I could sleepwalk it.”

The elevator bypasses her mother’s offices on twenty and carries them right up to
Teen Vogue
.

“But you’ve never done
this
,” he reminds her.

“No, I’ve never done
this
.” And she feels the bravado she’d been carefully cultivating evaporate as the oxygen thins. “Okay,” she whispers as they get off, “I’m going straight to the closet while you find a computer—”

“I can’t!” He grabs her arm.

“Are you suddenly having a moral crisis on me? Higher good, Zach! Higher good!”

“Oh God, no. I’m just wondering if Anna Wintour still puts people in stocks?”

“Okay, I don’t think she ever did that—come on, you’re going to love it here.”

She leads him along the row of desks to a computer whose screen saver is still on, meaning the computer’s just asleep—not shut down—and no password will be required. Max sits Zach down, hovering over his bankrolled bird-watching shoulder. “Okay, do your thing.”

He takes a deep breath and then hits the keyboard like Schroeder tackling the piano. Suddenly he stops typing.

“What?” Max asks, peering over his shoulder. “Is it not there—ooh, killer shoes,” she says, momentarily distracted as layouts pop up alongside article proofs. Then she realizes the top headline Zach’s staring at asks:
IS YOUR FRIENDSHIP FOR REAL?

“I still don’t understand why you couldn’t just tell me,” he says, pushing back from the desk.

“What?”

He turns to her. “You showed up on my doorstep last Christmas in that cute Zac Posen dress—”

“God bless Target.”

“But you looked like shit.”

“Hey.”

“Your eyes were like empty holes. You could barely smile. But when I asked you what happened, you blew me off.”

Max tenses. “Saying I wasn’t ready to talk about it isn’t blowing you off!”

Zach throws his hands up. “Since when don’t we tell each other everything? So you slipped in shit, whatever. I thought I meant more to you than that.”

Max can’t bring herself to explain. “You do.”

“Fine,” he says, even though it’s so not. But Max doesn’t know how to make it fine right now.

He turns back to the computer and resumes their search.

Max looks to the clock. “We can’t stay out in the open much longer like this.” He doesn’t answer. “Zach,” Max says desperately.

“I’m going as fast as I can!” He types while Max backseat mouse scrolls. “Okay, here, yes.” He opens the folder they’ve been looking for: the RSVP list for the party of the year. The Costume Institute’s Young Collectors’ Benefit, sponsored by
Teen Vogue
.

“Wow,” they say together as they scroll the guest list. Selena Gomez, Robert Pattinson, Emma Roberts, Emma Stone, Emma Watson—“Come on, come, come on,” Max says as they get to the bottom of the list. “This is all for nothing if we’re wrong.” But then they scroll back up and see it. Hugo Tillman. “Yes!” Max pumps her fist. Plus one. “Plus one?!”

“That’s the point, genius,” Zach mutters.

“Right, no, of course.” Max realizes if she doesn’t tell Zach how things actually ended with Hugo, they may never be okay again—for real.

Zach scrolls to the Condé Nast Junior Committee list and types Max’s name into the program proof.

“Here we go,” Max says as Zach clicks
ENTER
.

A few minutes later Zach and Max are nestled deep inside the closet. “What about this?” Zach asks, spreading the racks to hold out a green, scale-patterned Oscar de la Renta number.

“Too much,” Max says, taking in her reflection in chiffon Carolina Herrera, the bodice of which is composed of tastefully placed peacock feathers that pick up the flecks of green in her eyes.

“Okay, what about
this
?” He holds up a crocheted white doily.

“Too little.”

“What are we going for?” he asks impatiently, seemingly over the whole undertaking.

She sighs, turning her back to the rack and leaning against the clothes, tipping in at the waist. “A part of it all. On the inside. Establishment,” she says, trying to pull him back to being her wingman extraordinaire. “But I want to take his breath away. More Audrey Hepburn at the end of
Roman Holiday
than Olivia Newton-John in
Grease
.” Truthfully when she tries to picture herself facing off with Hugo and his girlfriend, increasingly in her imagination the Perfect Dress blurs and the Perfect Setting blurs—and then the face that’s left staring into hers is … Ben’s. “I saw it here once: it was a simple, red column—kind of naked, but totally elegant.”

“Red, red, red,” Zach says, going from rack to rack. They pull everything red, but it isn’t there anymore.

“Shi—” She doesn’t get to finish because Zach clamps his hand over her mouth. She goes to whip it away, but then she hears it, too.

Zach shuts off the light and they dive under the nearest rack, pulling the ends of dresses over them. Max tries not to breathe—and then wonders if she even can as it sinks in that she may have just gotten her best friend arrested. Which will mean expelled. Which will mean rejected from anywhere he wants to apply next year. All of which he risked, going to the mat for her, when she couldn’t even be honest with him.

“Zach,” she says.

“Shhhh.”

“I’m Angie Riverdale.”

The door opens.

The guard’s flashlight slowly passes over them. Max can feel her cheeks swell as she tries to keep from exhaling. Her heart is so loud she’s sure the guy can hear it. The flashlight swings back to the rack they are behind. The beam holds steady over Max’s arched back, which she hopes is blending with the black dresses dangling in front of her. Zach is staring at her, his eyes huge. The guard moves away, and the door closes.

“Let’s get these feathers off me, in the bag, and let’s jet.” Max springs into motion.

“Whoa.” Zach doesn’t move. “Angie Riverdale metaphorically? Or literally?”

“Literally,” she confesses. “The first time we had a client who wanted to take her ex back I started to use myself as an example—a cautionary tale—but you were both so horrified that I changed course and said it had happened to an early client. It doesn’t matter.” She tries to downplay the enormity of her confession. “I just, you know, if we were going to jail—”

“So Hugo typed you a love letter and you went back to him?”

“Or something.” Max stares at her feet.

“You went back to him, and he didn’t even have to write you a letter?”

“It was more of a note. He might just have been asking me to give his rugby shirt back. The story has evolved to … suit the needs of our clients.”

“‘Ripped stockings in a rainstorm’ is an
evolution
?”

“Yes.” Max takes a deep breath. “Okay, I didn’t just pack up and leave St. Something’s. I mean, I’d been moving for forever and then I’d never been so lonely and then Hugo loved me, gave me a place to be, really
be
, and I didn’t know how to just give it up. I stayed at school for about two more weeks. I called him, showed up at his room.” She drops her head. “We would hook up and then I’d ask him to look me in the eye and tell me there was nothing between him and Elizabeth and he couldn’t and I’d start sobbing. His friends started calling me McCrazy. People laughed at me in the halls. It was brutal.” Her mouth quivers as she remembers the cocktail of humiliation and need she was drowning in.

“But you did leave,” Zach says gently as he helps her step out of the dress. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“This has to be perfect, this Moment.” Max clutches his shoulders to steady herself, hearing her own voice say what every client has said to her. “Because I may have tweaked the story for everybody, but I didn’t tweak the point—I really don’t think I can come back from this if it doesn’t.”

B
en doesn’t believe it, but he’s actually finished the common application. He’s reread his essay so many times the words stopped making sense, like it wasn’t even written in English or something. Now he wants to stick it in the mail before the impulse to rip open the seal and check it one more time gets too strong to suppress.

On the last Friday afternoon before Christmas, the main post office is as packed as the subway into the city had been. The line of people waiting to ship their gifts to far-flung relatives snakes multiple times before stretching out one of the doors.
Do not rip open any of the envelopes,
Ben tells himself.
You’ll be stuck here until New Year’s to buy a new one
.

Ben’s not surprised Taylor’s late. They’d made this plan last year, late night, when a keg was tapped and they were fuzzily sentimental. They cheers-ed their plastic cups to the idea of ceremoniously mailing their Kenyon applications together to get them in ahead of the rush. They were then going to cross over to Penn Station, where they’d hop the train to Vance’s annual ski weekend.

Now Kim’s going to be there with some other girls. They’ve talked a few times and she seems cool. Yeah, he’s looking forward to it, if Taylor could just hurry up and get here already.

Ben spots him trudging up the steps with his head hung like some old guy, his parka unzipped despite the flurries. Even from this distance he looks like ass, but at least his nose doesn’t seem to be bleeding, so there’s that!

“Sorry, do you mind holding my place?” Ben asks the old lady behind him pushing a grocery cart of packages topped with a lounging cat. “I just have to grab my friend, I’ll be two secs.”

Ben pushes through the glass door and jogs down to get Taylor to pick up his pace. “What’s up?” Ben asks as he approaches. “You still sick?” Taylor just keeps trudging. Ben waves a beckoning hand to hurry him, jogging suggestively a few steps ahead even. Taylor’s oblivious. “I could have just gone to my local post office,” Ben says as they reach the heavy brass doors, “and met you on the train.”

“It’s cool,” Taylor responds unconvincingly as Ben points him to their saved place in line. Surrounded by harried, sweaty, middle-aged people and a mopey, miserable, potential roommate, attempting a ceremonious anything feels officially lame. Not even noticing the cat, Taylor swings his slack backpack off his shoulder and withdraws his applications.

“This line is mad long,” Ben mutters as he looks into the near-empty bag, guessing Taylor does not have his ski pants in there either. As they approach the home stretch to the tellers, Ben fends off a flood of doubts about what he wrote, what he didn’t write, and why spending the next four years with a guy he feels like he doesn’t know anymore at a school he isn’t sure why he wanted to go to in the first place seems like a good idea. Mostly what he thinks of is Max figuring out graduating early, applying to one school—and doing it all on her own. “So you traveling light?” Ben shifts his straining bag to his other shoulder.

Taylor nods listlessly.

“You going to borrow gear from Vance?”

“Vance?” Taylor looks confused.

“To ski?”

“Oh, yeah. Nah. Not up to it.” Taylor shrugs.

“It’s our last Ski Weekend of Debauchery.”

“Yeah, have fun.”

Ben snaps. “Look, Tay, I spent eight weeks busting my ass on this application. So I can get in somewhere that, at the end of the day, you’re getting into even if you farted on that thing and left it blank, which, given your zombie state, I’m thinkin’ you did.”

“Just ’cause I’m a legacy, that’s totally not true. I filled it out, Ben. I wrote my essay. Jesus, what’s your problem?”

“My problem is I didn’t see you for an entire summer. Then you need me to go out like you’re making up for your lost youth. And now you’re acting like some-one cut your balls off and you’re bleeding to death very slowly. Is this what school with you is going to be like?”

People are looking at them over their brown packages. A weird smile spreads across Taylor’s face. He waves to motion for more. “This is good!”

“What?” Ben’s alarmed.

“No, it is! I need to be pushed! Nobody has—Bridget used to challenge me. Every time I wanted to make a wussy choice. This is good, yell at me.”

Ben steps closer, dropping his voice. “I kinda said what I had to say.”

“And you’re right. Totally right. I’m walking around with Kleenex in every pocket.” He withdraws his hand to display the wads. “This morning, my mom suggested I need ‘a good cry.’ I do not need a good cry. I need Bridget to answer my calls. Or my emails. Or my messages. Or my texts. Or my tweets.” To Ben’s surprise, Taylor grips him by the shoulders. “You said it. I need to man up.”