Over You (22 page)

Max does. By the entrance. Like she’s a lost intern from the PR firm of Frump & Dowdy. Max sends a text, “Here! ☺” Ten minutes turn into twenty. Twenty turns into thirty. Max is getting frozen. Max is getting annoyed.

Just then another town car pulls up and out climbs the Pendergast clan. Perfectly, impeccably blah. Mr. Pendergast and Mrs. Pendergast lead the way in matching camel-colored cashmere topcoats and brush right past Max as if Sloane hadn’t dined across from her mere hours ago. “Max?” Elizabeth’s voice drips with fake shock as she gives Max an obvious once-over. Under her own camel coat, Elizabeth’s wearing a similarly shapeless dress. “
What
are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

Elizabeth leans in, smile in place. “My mother told me she ran into you, and I got on the first train. I heard you were in a funny farm somewhere.”

“Time off for good behavior.” Max holds her ground.

Elizabeth narrows her eyes. “Are you going in?”

“Momentarily,” she answers, willing it.

“Max!” They both turn their heads as Hugo barrels through the entrance. “Elizabeth!” he calls with obvious shock, breaking on the heels of his patent Belgian loafers. He tries to re-form his features into a smile. “I wasn’t expecting you! What a treat!”

Elizabeth smiles smugly, then looks around, her purse held in both hands. “You made this party sound boring. If I’d known it was going to be a
reunion
I’d have told you I’d come.”

Hugo looks uncharacteristically thrown. “It is boring. So not worth your traveling in from school.”

“You know I love to be supportive.” She raises her eyebrows. “Oh, look, there are
so
many people in there I know and really should go say hello to. And there’s my father with his arm around your father.” She turns to Max. “It was great to see you. Since I don’t expect to again, I’ll wish you well now.” She turns away and, with a passing predatory smile to Hugo, walks inside.

Max and Hugo stare at each other, the snow falling between them.

“Am I?” Max asks, her teeth starting to chatter, as his mother’s words really sink in.

“Are you what?”

“Just a way to get back at your parents for forcing you to be like the six hundred Hugos before you.”

“No! Where the hell did you—no.” He steps close to her. “You’re my Max, you know that. You’re special.” She nods. She is. “But I have responsibilities. I mean, it’s not like I kept that from you, right? We’re not in high school anymore. You can be grown-up about this, can’t you?” He places his hand on the base of her neck, extending his fingers under her hair. “I have to do things for my family. But you’re the one I want to be with. This thing with Elizabeth—” He lowers his voice. “I will get out of it. Of course. It’s just that—I haven’t had the heart to break it to her yet,” he whispers.

And there it is—the look of hunger, of adoration, the look she has been craving all day—all year.

And she feels nothing.

Better than nothing.

His gold signet ring is caught in her hair. His breath smells like crab puffs. And feeling she’s the one, while thinking she’s not good enough to be the one, is just plain not good enough.

Max steps back. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“I’m special?” She raises her arms to shoulder height, her voice getting louder. “You have. No. Idea.”

“Max, calm down.”

“I am calm. That’s the crazy thing. Anger would mean I cared. And, wow, I really don’t.” She looks at him, suddenly seeing nose pores and a stubble strip and how one of his eyes is actually slightly smaller than the other. She takes a breath, carefully choosing her last words. “You’ll toe the Tillman line, while rolling your eyes, just like you toed the St. Something’s line. As if constantly saying ‘it’s all bullshit’ somehow excuses your behavior. It doesn’t. You always love that I voice my opinion, except when it’s about us or, more precisely, you. But here it is: never taking a stand on anything doesn’t make you ‘responsible’ or ‘mature’—it makes you a coward. When I met you, I was a girl with a whole lot of talk, but since you dumped me—”

He goes to protest, but Max barrels over him. “Or just cheated on me and I ‘flipped out’—whichever—I’m now a girl committed to walk that talk. I want to be with someone who does the brave thing. Especially if that brave thing is wanting to be with me—for real. Here’s the most important takeaway for you: you may
not
live vicariously through my courage. You get the life you deserve, Hugo, and I’m certain you will have a very blah one.

“And,” she adds, “I’m still applying to NYU. Because it’s
my
vision for building
my
life. Leave my Carolina Herrera in your lobby and tell your mom I’ll send a messenger to swap it for this dress tomorrow—it’s shapeless and awful and I’m sure Kirsten will love it.”

He looks so bewildered. “That’s it? You’re going?” he asks, even after everything she’s said.

She shakes her head. It may be years before he understands. He may be paunchy and bald and sitting on the floor of an apartment his ex-wife’s movers are emptying before he suddenly gets, “Oh. People can
leave
me.”

“Bye, Hugo. Have a nice life.” Max elbows her way through the arriving guests, desperate to get free of these people. She finally makes it to the end of the red carpet and strides onto the clear sidewalk toward home. Then she knows it through her whole body:
I am free
.

I am over him
.

T
he triumphant feeling lasts exactly one subway ride. And then it hits her like she walked into a wall of fuck. “Fuuuuuuuuck,” she says out loud. Behind her eyes is a slide show of awful. Everyone standing on the street below as Hugo kissed her last night. Phoebe. Zach. The recognition between Ben and Bridget. And then there’s Taylor Bradley, who she really may have given a nervous breakdown. After what she selfishly did last night to Ben, who was she to be so judgmental? She walks from the train, fighting the feeling that her stomach is trying to escape down to the pavement and slink away, too ashamed to belong to her anymore.

As she turns the corner and sees her house she prays that the light might be on in her windows, that Zach and Phoebe might be inside, waiting to chalk it all up to Kryptonite and move forward. Or even waiting to rip her a new one. But at least there. Instead she finds it empty as she unlocks her door. She sits at her desk and pulls her phone from her clutch. At least she didn’t miss any new Hour Ones since last night, thank God. But there are a fair amount of last-minute “I might see him at this Christmas party” voice mails that came in while she was under Mrs. Tillman’s oppressive wing today. She wants to cry, but knows she can’t possibly collapse under the weight of these feelings right now. There’s no time for that. She slips out of that assaholic dress, kicks off those assaholic flats, and tugs on jeans and a T-shirt. She pulls up her hair, makes a pot of coffee, grabs a fresh pack of markers, and pulls out the rolling white board. None of which is any substitution for having a team.

But Max needs a plan.

Ben stares into the greasy bottom of the fried chicken bucket, and burps, realizing he feels no less miserable than when he made a KFC run an hour ago. Only now he’s sad
and
nauseous. He can’t get his brain to move off those sickening minutes under the High Line last night—as that guy kissed Max, and Ben pieced together what had happened to Taylor from Bridget’s angry tirade at Zach and that girl. Both of whom, he now realizes, he has to think of as Max’s evil minions. He drops the bucket on his bedside table, pauses the DVR, and lays back to stare at the ceiling, allowing airtime to the questions he tried to muffle with chicken and football. How could he have been such a fucking idiot? The city’s full of perfectly nice girls, why did he have to pick the one who capsized his best friend and got with someone else right in front of him? Every time the image comes back of that douchey guy inhaling her face, he just wants to—

Ben leaps off his bed, lunges across the room, and gets to the toilet just in time to deposit the extra-crispy six-piece dinner.

Empty, he sits back on the tile and wipes his mouth with the bottom of a towel. He rests his head against the cold wall. And then he allows himself to ask the worst question of all: If she sucks so much, why can’t he just stop thinking about her?

The next morning, after staying up until dawn strategizing, Max gets to Bergdorf’s Men’s a half hour before the store opens, clutching the pre-Christmas sale ad from the Sunday
Times
. She knows in her bones that Zach will come through at some point today. She positions herself on the corner of 58th for the stakeout. From her spot, she can see down the avenue to the main entrance and simultaneously east to the side entrance. She’s ready.

Within a few minutes of manning the corner she’s seeing her breath and appreciating Zach and Phoebe even more, if that’s possible. If this was an ex, she thinks, Phoebe could watch the front entrance from the warmth of the women’s store across the street and Zach could have the side covered from under the heat blowers of the Apple Store entrance, so Max could be waiting for their “go” over hot chocolate at the Plaza.

She gives herself permission to cross to the side of the street with the hot dog vendors, so she can at least stand in the wake of their steam. But an hour goes by and her feet are numb and she smells like meat soaking in water and still no sign of Zach.

“Frug,” she murmurs, before dashing over to the store in hopes of finding a spot
inside
that will give her a view of both entrances. Once past the revolving door Max stomps her boots on the taupe carpet. The employees watch apprehensively as the trickle of shoppers becomes a steady flow of eager bargain chasers, their faces as braced as defensive linemen. Max maneuvers to the necktie rotunda, where she can see everyone entering.

But another hour and she is getting dangerously close to peeing on herself. Now she gets why that astronaut wore a diaper. Urgent missions and pee breaks do not mix.
When does James Bond pee?
she wonders. At the triggering thought of Ben, her throat closes for a moment, but she breathes through it.

She rushes through dress shirts, past the sock section, to the bespoke alcove, running the back stairs to the top floor ladies’ lounge. Where she is on line behind every wife and girlfriend who seems to be choosing this moment in the mirrored stalls to ask themselves if they should start coloring their hair.

Max bobs her knees, looking at her watch. Even if he slept in, met Tom for brunch, Zach should still be here while the getting’s good. Finally a stall door opens and she runs in.

Max flies back down and across the floor so fast she can’t brake on the marble mosaic and her hips slam into the cuff link case. The salesman clears his throat and she gives him an apologetic smile—before something catches her eye. She spins around, looking past the sea of felt fedoras and oversized fur hats. Suddenly she glimpses the heel of a sneaker as it passes out of view up the grand staircase. She shimmies through the shoppers, but by the time she gets to the second-floor landing he’s gone again. She jostles her way through the crowds down the corridor of boutiques. At the end, she doubles back and fights up one more flight. And there, trying on a skintight, short-sleeved seersucker blazer and matching hot pants from Thom Browne’s resort collection, is Zach.

“No,” Max huffs, dropping her hands to her thighs as she crouches, catching her breath. “I came here to apologize and I want to get on your good side, but I still can’t let you buy that.”

Zach turns slowly from the mirror, raising the Jackie O sunglasses he grabbed to complete the look. “Bite me.”

“
Come on
. I’ve had this place staked out since nine thirty. At least talk to me.”

He purses his lips. “Your powers of deduction are impressive. I mean, I didn’t shackle my fortunes to yours because you were mediocre.” He mists up and drops the glasses back down on his nose.

“Good to hear?” she tries, relieved he’s at least thinking of her as a boss, if not a best friend. That’s something.

“Were. It’s all in the past now, Baby Jane.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“Hot cider?” A gentleman cuts in proffering a tray.

“Thank you.” Max takes two cups and hands one off. “Look, I know I handled Hugo
really
badly. Like, needs a new word for
badly
, badly.”

“You turned your back on everything you stand for. And you left Phoebe and me holding the bag with Basket Case Bridget and Double-0 Hottie.”

“That was a mistake.”

“You’re not engaged to the Tillmans?” He studies her.

“No. We’re not anything. I told him I was going to NYU, and he could kiss my ass.”

“So I don’t need to come up with a new best friend while you go MIA?”

“No! Zach, why would you even say that?”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be out in high school? I wear it with a winning sense of humor and rakish sense of style, but it’s not easy.”

“I know, I mean, you’ve told me.” She nods.

“What you don’t know is that I brought a guy to the fall formal last year. We had a great time. No one was rude to our faces. But when we went to get our coats, someone had cracked eggs in the pockets. Of my Armani!” He drops his head and pretends to look at something on the carpet but Max knows better.