Over You (15 page)

Taylor maneuvers out from under the sinks with the towel still pressed to his face, obliviously continuing his own train of thought. “Since, like, forever if I get—upset,” he chokes out as he stands to lean against the Formica. “My nose bleeds.” His eyes glaze over. “One time Bridget and I were running a lemonade stand in, like, second or third grade. It was summer, like, gross sticky hot, she was wearing a dress … and I made wrong change and totally gave this guy all our earnings and Bridget—”

“Laughed at your retarded ass?”

“She was sweet about it, and blood just came gushing out my nose, and I had to run home. I didn’t talk to her for, like, months after that. Why? Why’d I do that, man?” Taylor shakes his free hand at the fluorescents.

“Should I call someone?” Ben steps back, sensing he’s out of his depth here. “Like, your mom or something?”

“She looked mad hot last night. Hell was I thinking?”

“What
were
you thinking?” He still isn’t totally clear why Taylor decided Bridget, who had always seemed pretty cool as far as Ben was concerned, suddenly had to go. “You were so into her.”

“I’m not doing the long-distance thing in college—seemed better to cut it off.” Taylor groans at his stupidity. “Now it just sounds—”

“Yeah,” Ben concurs. Knowing desperate times call for desperate, totally-screwing-yourself-over measures, he offers, “Listen, let’s get you cleaned up, back to class, and tonight we’ll go out and get your mind off Bridget.”

“Thought you had to work.”

“I can take one more night off.” Besides, the draft Max helped him with was finally coming along.

Taylor nods unconvincingly, dropping the towel to reveal his smeared face. “Or I might hang at home and just—”

“Just what?” Ben asks, wetting another paper towel and passing it to him.

“I mean, my mom’s making soup.”

“We’ve been robbed!” Zach gasps as he steps inside Max’s studio that afternoon to discover Phoebe standing over Max’s prone figure on the floor. Max’s head is propped on Hugo’s old rugby shirt, and her coat is serving as a blanket. “Max? Oh my God.” Zach steps through the scattered pictures, registering first Hugo’s face in the photos and then the somber, wistful music blasting. “Is that Beck’s ‘Lost Cause’?”

Max pulls the coat over her face and nods before letting out a whimper.

“She’s crashed,” Max hears Phoebe whisper. “Our Max has crashed.” Phoebe reaches down and lifts up the corner of the coat to reveal Max’s eyeliner-streaked ghostly pale cheeks. “I knew it was weird when she left without us.”

“We’re going to have to call Bridget.” Zach shakes his head. “Reschedule her Closeout.”

“Zach!” Phoebe gasps. “Reschedule?”

He circles a palm at the scene. “She’s still in last night’s dress and heels for God’s sake.”

“Okay, no.” Moving into action, Phoebe drops her backpack and steps over Max to the computer to mute the airy wailing—

“Leave it!”
Max moans, her mouth muffled beneath the black wool.

Phoebe leaves the music on, but at a slightly less kill-yourself decibel. “Zach, grab her arm, let’s get her in the shower.” Phoebe lifts Max’s hand but it’s dead weight. “What happened, Max?” Phoebe crouches. Max pulls the coat back up and shakes aggressively from side to side.

“You’re wasting your time. She’s not going to tell us. Believe me—I’ve tried,” Zach says, and even in her stupor, Max registers his hurt. “We’re going to have to go CSI on this mess.” He picks up a picture of Max and Hugo in their Harry Potter costumes under the eaves of a St. Something’s dormitory. “And it’s gonna get ugly.”

An hour later, Zach hops down from where he’s been hanging a makeshift piñata for Max, improvised from a stuffed bunny pilfered from the baby’s room, its whiskers peeking out from behind a taped-on photo of Hugo. “It’s a little over the bed, but that’s the only beam I’d trust.”

Phoebe flashes a thumbs-up from where she continues setting up the graduation spread for Bridget. It wasn’t easy, but they managed to wrestle Max into the shower and get her to put on her yoga pants and a Splendid tee. They forced her to keep her eyes open through a speed round of the slide show, chanted some mantras at her, and are now staying on this accelerated track to get her to access some anger. Max stares at all this with hollow eyes as she leans against her dresser. But she is vertical and that, in and of itself, is an epic accomplishment. That and silencing Beck.

That evening Ben looks across the Bradleys’ kitchen table at Taylor’s pile of wadded, bloody Kleenex, not sure what to make of it. “Thanks for the soup, Mrs. Bradley,” he says as he folds his napkin and waits for Taylor to excuse them from dinner. He takes advantage of all eyes on Daisy recounting the horrors of the afternoon’s ballet misadventure to check his phone under the table. For the billionth time.

Did his last text not go through? Is Max just really busy?

Or did he totally blow it with the bubble bath thing? Did he read something that wasn’t there?

After dinner they head up to Taylor’s room, where Taylor immediately sinks into his desk chair and turns the volume all the way up on his computer, drowning out Ben’s distracting questions about doing stuff.

“Good-bye my lover,”
Taylor sings along, his cheek resting on his desk.
“You have been the one for me.”

“No.” Ben hits the keyboard, James Blunt still hanging in the air like cartoon squiggles over a garbage can. “I think the bro code says I’m actually obligated to shoot you in the face right now.”

“You don’t get it!” Taylor pushes himself to stand, spins, and falls back on his bed. “You want to watch
Star Wars
?” He reaches to fumble for the drawer he keeps his sweatpants in. “I can’t go out. You want some pizza?”

“We just ate.”

“I feel like pizza and Boba Fett,” Taylor says as he pulls out a raggedy pair of his dad’s Kenyon sweatpants. “Just stay through the gold bikini, bro. Come on. Yo, Mom!” Taylor stretches to push open his door and shout downstairs, “Make us some magic bars? Mommy?”

“And that would be my cue.” Ben stands as Taylor puts in the DVD. “Call me if your brain comes out your nose again, but I gotta bounce. I have so much work that I’m having this recurring dream that I’m middle-aged and balding and still haven’t finished my history paper. Like I’m still working on it at my grown-up job.” He scoops up his backpack and walks out the door.

“Hey.”

Ben spins back and leans through the door. “Yeah?”

“In your dream—what was your grown-up job?”

Ben’s eyes glaze over at the yellow words scrolling up the black screen before tapping the door frame with his knuckles. “I don’t remember. Weird.” It strikes Ben that if he’s ever going to figure that out he needs to stop focusing on what he doesn’t want and maybe start thinking about what he does. “Later.”

As the minutes tick down to Bridget’s Closeout, it’s as if Angelina had quit and Mary Poppins was now being played by Moaning Myrtle. Max shuffles behind Zach as he darts around her office floor trying to eradicate all evidence of Max’s grief binge. She woefully drags her umbrella (makeshift bat) as he tries to set out the milk and cupcakes to toast Bridget’s victory. “But
why
that look on Hugo’s face?” Max asks Zach. Again.

“Are you going to want the vanilla or the chocolate—or I’m guessing you do not have a preference,” he says as he arranges the celebratory confections on the plate.

“The—the nothing,” Max sputters. “Like a Mr. Potato Head with all the features ripped out. Like a blank muppet. Just—nothing.”

“It sounds like stoicism,” Phoebe offers, rolling the linen napkins Max made from a vintage tablecloth and sliding them into their tortoiseshell holders (repurposed shower curtain rings).

“Really?”
Max asks, lunging, panther-like, across the rug to her.

“Definitely.” Phoebe’s eyes dart apologetically to Zach. They’d been set on not indulging her, but after two straight hours of requests for analysis, Max was wearing her down.

“Zach? What did you think? Was it really a blue-blood stiff-upper-lip kind of thing? Was he dying on the inside? Was he all
Bridges of Madison County
meets
Stella Dallas
and I missed it?”

Zach places the plate carefully on the crate, which has been covered in the rest of the tablecloth for the occasion, licks the lavender frosting off the edge of his thumb, puckers his lips, and raises his eyebrows. “I do not know. I do not know if it was desperate door handle or brave Central Park rain-bonnet because
I did not see it
. It takes longer to split an atom than for Hugo to give you this nothing look you are fixated on.”

“It happened,” Max says woefully, looking for a spot to curl back into a ball. “The nothing look happened. I know the nothing look. I train people in the nothing look. You have your Moment, you look back, you can’t help but give him a nothing look.”

Zach steps between her and the chaise, crossing the arms of his tartan blazer. “Maybe he didn’t see you.”

“He saw me.” She skirts around him, heading for her bed.

“Maybe he didn’t recognize you.” Zach motions for Phoebe to block her.

“He recognized me.”

“Then maybe you’re right—he didn’t care.”

“Hunhn.”
Phoebe and Max’s collective gasp has an almost Buddhist resonance.

“
That
is a terrible thing to say.” Max spins on him.

“Do you want to punch me?”

“Kind of, yes.” Max narrows her eyes. Zach swipes up the abandoned umbrella and tosses it to Phoebe.

“Hugo Tillman doesn’t care!” Phoebe repeats, placing the umbrella in Max’s quivering hand.

Max lets out a wail and raises her umbrella at the bunny.

An hour later, Zach leads Bridget to the chaise.

“Doo-doo-doo!” Phoebe plays the trumpet on her fist. “Hear ye, hear ye, we now declare you, Bridget Stetson, Officially Over One Taylor Bradley.” She holds up the Polaroid camera and snaps a picture of her radiance to affix to the diploma beside the original one of abject despair.

“Congratulations!” Phoebe gives her a hug. Behind the thin screen, Max’s sniffles are burbling back up to crying.

“What’s that?” Bridget asks suspiciously over Phoebe’s shoulder.

“Nothing,” Zach dismisses, releasing her to sit on the chaise. “Just, you know, mice.”

“That doesn’t sound like mice,” Bridget says as she cranes to look around him.

Phoebe presses her lips together. “Max is a little under the weather.”

“You are seriously freaking me out.” Bridget pulls her bag onto her lap like a shield. Max lets out a full sob and flops back, sending the screen toppling. Bridget leaps up as it clatters to the floor, revealing her guru, keening as a tattered bunny swings overhead. “Is this … stuffing?” Bridget bends to pick up a piece of cotton.

“You’ve got to tell us already,” Zach says, helping Max up to sit on her bed.

“No,” Max protests. “You’ll lose all your confidence in me.” She reaches for the tissue box on her nightstand and, realizing it’s empty, grabs an errant tank top and wipes her nose on it.

“Pshaw.” Phoebe waves a dismissing hand.

“Yes, you’re the picture of confidence.” Zach tugs the tank away and hands her a napkin. “Now I’m asking you as one professional to another. We obviously can’t move forward if you don’t just tell us exactly what Hugo Tillman did to you.”

“Zachary!” Max points remonstratively at Bridget.

“Sister girl.” Zach looks at Max disbelievingly before gesturing to Bridget. “This young lady here has bravely trusted us with her innermost thoughts. And I’m sorry, she’s already witnessing your bottom. At least I hope this is your bottom.”

“It’s actually comforting,” Bridget admits, reaching for a cupcake. “To know we all snot. So who’s Hugo Tillman?”

“Max’s ex,” Phoebe explains. “Although, honestly, that’s about all we know.”

“Her Kryptonite. Her holy water,” Zach adds.

“Her garlic.” Bridget nods. “Spill it.”

Max looks at the three expectant faces, knowing she’s finally been cornered. “His name isn’t Hugo Tillman.” Max starts with a statement of fact, easing her way into the story. “Hugo Tillman lived a few hundred years ago and founded Boston. My Hugo is the Tenth. My Hugo likes argyle and rugby—the game, not the fashion line—and blueberry pie and Martin Scorsese. He smells like the European cologne his mother sends him.” Collectively everyone gets comfortable in their seats as the memories overtake Max. “I was at boarding school—emphasis on
bored
. If you’d held those girls’ faces to Funny or Die, they still couldn’t have made a ha-ha and for the first time in my life I was lonely. Really lonely.” She looks down at her hands as she thinks how vulnerable she was to any attention. “He came looking for some girl. He noticed my red boots.” She blushes as she remembers eventually standing before him in only those boots. “For five months we were inseparable.” Her eyes glaze over as hundreds of memories wash over her. “He wanted me to sit with him breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If we passed in the halls he’d pull me into an empty classroom to hook up before the bell rang. Once I was studying in the library really late and I got up to find a book—I came back to my table and he’d left a bag of M&M’s for me Post-it-ed with a heart.”