Over You (3 page)

“You rang?” Max inquires as she climbs the carpeted stairs to the parlor floor, where her mother is slicing into a ball of mozzarella in the kitchen. “You’re having cheese for dinner again? Where’s Peter?”

“He’s working late, and it’s all I can stand to eat,” Anne says, turning sideways so Max can appreciate the full girth of her seven-month baby bump.

“Let me make you some pasta,” Max offers.

“No, I have to go back into the office. I came home to wait for the crib to be delivered—but the guy’s late. Can you handle it?”

“Sure—he’s just dropping off a crib?”

“And putting it together. If we waited for Peter and me to have a free moment, this baby would sleep in a drawer.” Anne wraps up the cheese and dunks it back in the fridge. The upside of having two workaholic parents is that no one notices Max is building a burgeoning business in the basement; the downside is that no one notices Max. “How’re the applications coming?” Anne asks as she grabs her keys.

“I have an opening sentence.” Actually she totally finished her essay a few days after NYU released this year’s topics.

“Fantastic—can’t wait to read it.” Gathering up her battered leather tote, Anne kisses Max good night. “Don’t wait up. I love you.”

“You too.” Max watches her mother waddle herself out the front door. Yes, at seventeen, Max Scott is going to be a big sister. To someone who is going to get to grow up with married parents who own joint property and live in the same time zone. If Max is feeling jealous or resentful, she hasn’t brought any of this up to her mother, a woman, Max long ago learned, more at home talking about homework than feelings.

Max heads back downstairs, sensing the urge to pity herself. Resisting that urge is essentially what she helps her clients do every day. Surely she can apply a little of that magic to herself.

A
n hour later finds Max in the bath, carefully sliding another slice of pizza from the box resting on a nearby chair. She takes a bite and sits back beneath the Charles Schultz poster of Lucy in her makeshift psychiatric booth. A self-congratulation gift for getting her GED that she snagged at a neighborhood flea market last summer while Zach was perusing vintage pocket squares. This was minutes before snagging Phoebe, who was working the cheese-dipped-pretzel table and successfully keeping a mob of very impatient, very hungry people on the verge of heatstroke happy. Max smiles at the memory of launching into her pitch on the growth opportunity at Ex, Inc., and how Phoebe cut her off to say that as long as the gig did not involve melting or dipping, Max had her at hello.

“The doctor is
in
,” Max says, reciting the sign on Lucy’s booth, forcing herself to stop procrastinating.

Okay, Bridget. Bridget, Bridget, Bridget … She rests her neck on the cool porcelain rim, closes her eyes, and chews … hoping Bridget is sleeping dreamlessly. In the stillness, Bridget’s pain makes Max’s own chest constrict, conjuring the ghost imprint of her own elephantine heartbreak. Max redirects her mind to speculate what this redheaded Taylor is doing right about now … fist-bumping some dude … sports drinks in their hands … carefree grins on their faces—

The buzzer rings and the water sloshes as Max sits forward, crust clenched in her teeth.

She leaps up, drops it in the box, throws on her big terry cloth robe, and wraps her long, brown hair in a towel. “Coming!” she cries as the buzzer rings again. She unlocks the door and sticks her head up under the stoop. “Hello?”

A tall, dark-haired guy in a navy-blue jumpsuit appears. Not at all what she expected. “Cooper Baby,” he says gamely.

“I’m sorry?”

“Delivery from Cooper Baby. You ordered a crib?”

“Yes.” Realizing in the oversized robe she could be a
Teen Mom
episode, Max gestures to the stoop above her. “Um,
I
didn’t. My mother did. Can you carry it? The nursery’s on the second floor.”

“No problem.” He retreats to the sidewalk, where the large carton is strapped to a handcart.

“Hold on—let me lock this door and run up and let you in.”

Seventeen-year-old Ben Cooper huffs the handcart up the steps, trying to make it appear easy and effortless. Usually he doesn’t care what it looks like when he makes his dad’s deliveries, but usually he is trailing a very pregnant woman, perhaps he himself is trailed by a toddler or two. But that is the extent of who observes his after-school job. Not once has anyone close to his age factored into his rounds. For the first time he finds himself wishing he hadn’t worn the jumpsuit.

As Max waits for him to bump the box up the stairs, she should be wishing she hadn’t grabbed her mother’s old robe, but instead is so distracted by the texts coming in from Zach as he scrubs Bridget’s laptop, that she is unaware of the boy-ness of this boy. Right now he is just representing yet another odd and uncomfortable thing she has to do for her mother’s new life.

“So where do you want it?” Ben asks as he wheels the box along the second-floor landing past her mom and Peter’s bathroom.

“The yellow room.” She points.

“With the teddy bear border? Yeah, I figured. I meant in the space.”

“Oh. Um, do I have to decide?” Max asks as she flips on the overhead light.

“No. It’s easy to slide around once it’s assembled.” He lowers it to the yellow carpet, slips a box cutter from his back pocket, and starts slicing the packaging apart. Max hops up on the dresser and tips off her turban, her wet hair flopping down her back.

Ben is suddenly nervous. Which is stupid because he could put a crib together in his sleep. Which is a skill he will do
what
with in life, he has no clue. If his dad has his way, Ben’ll come back from college and be the third generation to run Cooper Baby. But Ben has to believe his life is going to be more than keeping up with the latest-model diaper pail.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Max asks as the thing he’s building in front of her is starting to look more like a small cage than a sleep spot.

“Um, I—uh—never assembled this brand before. It’s new. I was kind of following what I’ve done before with other models.”

“So you’re having your learning curve—right here, right now?” She makes it sound dirty.

Blushing, he nods.

“Hang on.” She runs all the way downstairs to swipe a T-shirt and pair of black jeans off the floor. Dressed for crib battle, she runs back up, pulling her hair into a damp topknot. She has no idea how beautiful she is.

“Okay,” she says. “Take that child-sized torture chamber apart, pass me the directions, and let’s start from scratch, assuming nothing. Lay those big pieces flat across from each other—I think they’re the legs.” She peers at the instructions. “So, how long have you been doing this?”

“Deliveries? Since I could walk.”

“For babies, from babies—I like it. Good business model. I think maybe start with those two pieces.” She hands him back the directions.

“Ah, thanks. It’s my family store. You got a family store?” he asks, attaching the frame base with a Phillips head she passes him.

“I don’t even got a family,” she cracks. “And I want to do my own thing—no offense.”

“No, me too,” he says, tightening a screw. “I’d totally move to—whatever is on the opposite side of the planet.”
If I could,
he thinks.

“That might be water. I would definitely double-check that before you write your admissions essay.”

He smiles. She probably has a boyfriend with a cool after-school job. Like a club promoter’s assistant. Or stockbroker.

“Max,” she says, holding up her palm.

“Ben.” He points with embarrassment to the oval name tag sewn to the front of his jumpsuit.

“That’s kind of retro and awesome,” she says. “I think Marc Jacobs is doing name tags next season.”

“And then hairnets?”

“Inevitably.” She looks back down at the directions on the carpet.

“And I’m taking any and all advice on the college essay front, so …” He pulls his attention away from her face and back to the friggin’ crib.

“Write about whatever you’re most passionate about.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes,” Max affirms as she hands him the last screw.

“Had not heard that, thank you.”

“Generic, but true.” Max shrugs as a slew of texts comes into her BlackBerry.

“Okay, tah-dah!” he says, hiding his left hand and the small gouge that’s starting to bleed. She looks up from her clients’ daily questions of desperation along the lines of “Can’t I just text him?” Most of which require only a “NO! XO, M” response.

“Tah-dah?” she asks.

“Pregnant moms like a ‘tah-dah.’ It’s my dad’s brand of customer service.”

“Well, I’ll try it on my mom when she gets home.”

Ben starts packing up the discarded wrapping.

“Wait!” Max runs out of the room and across the landing and comes lumbering back with a stone statue of Peter’s.

Ben’s eyes widen. “What’re you—” She lobs it over the crib railing. The mattress bounces—and holds.

“Okay,” she says, nodding appreciatively. “Well done. You’re good to go.”

“Need anything else?” Ben finds himself asking, not wanting to go back to his van and his homework and his dad’s TV droning on into the night as one
Law & Order
episode bleeds into the next.

Max glances around. “Just a baby.”

“Well, here’s our fridge magnet.” They lock eyes for a brief moment as she takes the pacifier-shaped logo from his warm fingers. “We have everything you want.”

A few hours later, Max finds herself replaying Ben’s offer as she looks out at the bustling floor of the bowling alley. Zach trails her, taking notes in preparation for a client’s culmination of the Ex, Inc. program, what Max and her team have come to call “The Moment,” a carefully orchestrated event that takes place at the end of the four weeks of each client’s recovery. In addition to focusing on healing, Max and her staff put each girl through rigorous training so she can finally face her ex from a position of confidence—a “Moment” to prove to herself and the guy who dumped her that she’s over him.

Tonight the place is packed with NYU students, enjoying some ironically vintage entertainment, souped up with a DJ and martinis. Max can’t wait to be one of them next year. “The light in here is really—off,” Max observes. “It has, like, an orange cast to it. Make a note for Kelly’s makeup. I’m not sending her in for her Moment looking like she passed out in a tanning bed. And you got the floor map with the emergency exits?”

“Check. And check.” Zach makes a flourish with his pen as he follows behind Max. The two casually weave among the clusters of rowdy bowlers as if ambling to meet up with friends.

“How’re Kelly’s skills coming along?” Max inquires.

“Good. She’s been taking the bus out to Jersey every Saturday to practice unobserved. She’s going to bowl his pants off.”

“I wonder if she should have a special, colored ball.” Max pivots to him and slurps from her soda straw. “Should she have a special ball? Pink or red or something? Or is that too ‘I will now break into my musical number’?”

Zach flops his dark hair from side to side, considering this detail. Around them people cheer as the thunderous sound of falling pins breaks over the whir of spinning balls. “I do love a colored ball....”

“Over the top,” Max deems, poking her straw into the ice chips. “Add five minutes to the schedule for her to pick out a ball from here before she goes into makeup.”

Zach scribbles this down while Max bites the straw and narrows her eyes at Kelly’s ex, Rufus, and his lame boyz. Bowling and checking out the hotties. Completely unaware that at this very moment Kelly is doing her kickboxing, beefing up her bowling muscles, preparing to show him no mercy.

“Eyebrow.” Zach reminds Max not to make a stink face as he drops his notebook into his messenger bag.

Max relaxes her expression, tossing her plastic tumbler into the trash as they swing past. “Thanks.”

“And we out.” Zach leads the way to the elevator through the arriving crowds. He wedges in and sticks out his hand for Max. She takes it and squeezes beside him. Even though he’s a year younger, Zach is one of the tallest Packard juniors. He has a full six inches on her, so Max must peer up to telegraph her thoughts to him as the doors seal them in with way too much olfactory information.

“Axe. Is. The. Devil,” he mouths. She starts to crack up just as they are spit out onto the evening bustle of University Place.

She takes a deep inhale of the first really cold night of the season to clear her prickled sinuses. “I’m launching my own campaign that says spraying that stinky crap all over your sorry ass will get you the opposite of kissed. Cleanliness. Cleanliness will get you kissed. And cuteness. Cuteness will help—”

“And disco!” Zach begins to swing his hips to the music blasting from the speakers beneath Bowlmor’s awning.

“No, not—”

“Yes! It’s time.” Zach throws a finger into the air. “Do it, Max. You know I won’t stop.” He dances in front of her, starting to draw the attention of those in line for the elevator to the bowling alley.

“Zachary.”

“We are dancing!”