Over You (4 page)

She lifts her pointer finger and mirrors his movement.

“Up, there she goes! But I need a hundred percent!”

She throws herself into it, making every guy waiting for the elevator suddenly wish he was staying right here for the evening, until Zach promptly stops, lifting his hair off his face. “Was that so hard?”

“Yes.” She catches her breath, suppressing a grin as he waves down a cab. “Seriously, Zach, your dance attacks are going to get us into trouble.”

“The target is two floors above us with his head up a bowling ball. Oh, and about Taylor.”

“Yeah, what did you find?”

“He was with Bridget four months and six days, based on her email log, and they’ve known each other since, like, the womb. He laid it on thick, this one. I looked through the last few weeks of his emails for warning signs, but, I mean, if I was her sassy best friend, I’d have been sewing her prom dress.”

“Oy.”

“And there’s a kicker.”

“Hit me.”

“She lives
directly
across the street from him. Bedroom stares right into his.”

“Wow.” She pauses to take in the enormity. “New challenge. Okay, kick ass on calc tomorrow! Bye!” She kisses Zach on the cheek before walking away toward the subway.

Max sighs contentedly as she makes her way to Union Square, her tasks for the night completed. She relishes the feeling of being worn out by a full day of work, looks forward to getting into bed and waking up fresh tomorrow to tackle this new challenge of getting Bridget over the boy-next-door. Which is way worse than boy-from-camp, boy-in-school-play, or even boy-in-homeroom. She’s learned that there’s bound to be a strategy, she just has to think long and hard and shake down what the world doesn’t even know it has to offer.

Nothing makes Max happier than the emails from her graduated clients reporting on
their
happiness. She makes a point of staying up on everyone’s progress, all the way back to Client One, Olivia Petra. A few days after Max’s Met epiphany, Max spotted her sobbing on a barrel of sardines behind her family’s Italian grocery. Max approached her, laid out her mission, and asked if Olivia would be open to being her guinea pig. Olivia said anything was worth a shot as she couldn’t feel worse than she did. Through trial and error (which Olivia thankfully had a sense of humor about—Max will never again take anyone to the totally depressing Tibet Center to work on focus), Max honed her program. At the end of four weeks, Olivia walked into senior homeroom and didn’t even blink as she watched her ex suck her cousin’s face. Olivia was so grateful she referred a friend, and slowly the word spread.

As she passes through the northern tip of NYU’s campus, she gets excited anew about her plans. A self-described optimistic realist, Max knows colleges aren’t exactly falling over themselves to admit high school dropouts. Even ones with a 3.8 GPA. So she knows she has to bring something amazing to distinguish herself. After some measured cyber-stalking (how many fan letters do psych professors get?), just this week Max was completely floored to hear back from NYU’s Professor Jane Schmidt. The renowned psychologist hailed for her groundbreaking work in pain management. She is intrigued by Max’s work and has agreed to meet in December to review Max’s findings on “Strategies for Ameliorating Heartbreak in the American Adolescent Female.” If Max’s presentation is stellar and her data sound, Jane will vouch for Max to the admissions committee.

Then Max can co-major in psychology and business so she can take Ex, Inc. national. A branch in every mall. An article in every magazine. Max will be the one in the history books—the famous woman who cracked heartbreak.

Sure, equal pay, maternity leaves, and pro sports are important. But a girl can’t make a free throw from the foul line if her head’s not in the game.
This
is the next frontier.

T
aylor Bradley wakes the next morning with a start, the tense anticipation that’s bummed him out the last few days still gripping him before he remembers … he did it. He broke up with Bridget. It’s done—behind him! He feels a rush as he drops his feet to the floor and ruffles his hair. His
single
hair. That some girl could rub at anytime. Any girl. Because he can do that now, ’cause he’s single. He scrolls his iPod in search of the perfect anthem to start this new era of his life. Settling on Drake, he rolls the volume up and raises a fist pump in his dresser mirror. What to wear his first day back? What are guys even wearing now? He feels at the scruff on his chin as he dances into the hall and to the bathroom to shower. He should totally get a haircut, let the world know what’s up. And sayonara to that scruff Bridget thought was sexy. Time for other chicks who find a shaved guy hot, ’cause he can meet them now.
Razor, please! Don’t mind if I do
.

Then he’s all fresh and clean.
A clean slate,
he thinks, as he pulls on his oxford and loops his school tie around his collar. He’d had a thing for Bridget since her family moved in across the street in kindergarten. She was always so cute with her blond curls, always cracking herself up. And then—when they finally got together—man. But it’s his
senior year
. He can’t go to college committed to the same girl he’s always liked! What if they got married? He’d have been with one girl his
whole life
. When Carrie hit on him homecoming weekend, he totally clammed up. It was like he was already married. And that’s when he knew what he had to do.

This summer he and Bridget hung out so much his friends started calling them by one name, “Baylor.” He sends out a mass text with a triumphant grin on the way downstairs. “Baylor RIP.” He hops the last two steps and slip-slides into the kitchen, where his mother is flipping through the paper at the counter. She tucks her blouse into her skirt with one hand.

“Morning, Tay.” She takes a long sip of coffee without looking up, like it’s any other day and not the first of the rest of his life.

“You want toast?” his dad asks from where he rummages in the fridge, holding his tie to his chest. “Anyone? Going once …”

“I don’t know, Dad,” Taylor announces as he slaps both hands down, billowing the
Journal
. “I don’t know because every morning, Bridge brought me a Pop-Tart. Strawberry with sprinkles, and the thing is—I was so sick of it. Day in, day out. Strawberry and sprinkles, strawberry and sprinkles, strawberry and sprinkles. I stopped thinking about what
I
wanted for breakfast. I stopped thinking about what I
want
. I may want toast. I may want an egg. I may want lasagna! It’s time I figure that out, figure
me
out. I get to meet myself for the first time in—”

“Four months?” Taylor’s eight-year-old sister, Daisy, asks through a mouthful of Honey Nut Cheerios.

“And a week,” Taylor corrects her.

“So, no to toast?” His dad tucks the bag tag in his teeth as he withdraws a slice of bread.

His mother shakes her head in dismay. “Does Mrs. Stetson know about this?”

Taylor’s phone buzzes, and he looks down to see his best friend’s response. Finally, something worthy of the occasion! “Dude. You have been sorely missed.”

Outfitted in a pair of riding pants and a cozy cashmere sweater from her Etsy knitting hookup, which allows her to radiate the comfort necessary on Day One, Max slips inside Bridget’s bedroom. Having received Bridget’s dazed call at dawn, Max has already breezed past Mrs. Stetson with a handoff of a dozen homemade cranberry muffins and a mention of “last-minute flash-card drills.” After a quick appraisal of Bridget, Max reaches into her red bag, pulls out a stainless-steel thermos, and sets it on the nightstand. She glances out at the windows across the street. Taylor’s are dark, and light is filtering through the shutters on the first floor. Which means either he’s already downstairs or Max has beaten his alarm clock and can preemptively close Bridget’s curtains before her client awakens and does anything she’ll regret. Max flicks on the bedside lamp.

“Morning, Bridget.”

“All those nights we’d talk for hours, watching and waving through our windows. Teasing him with flashes of my new bra,” Bridget murmurs into her pillow as if they were mid-conversation. “Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe he meant something else. It just doesn’t make sense that he could go from remembering that I loved peanut-butter ice cream on Tuesday to needing to take a break on Wednesday....” As Bridget’s eyes focus on Max, Max lifts Bridget’s head as if she were a wounded soldier and puts the thermos lid of espresso to her lips, but Bridget keeps talking. “I want to go back to sleep so I can wake up and have it be that this didn’t really happen. That he didn’t really dump me.”

“But he did. Drink,” Max encourages her. Bridget sips.

“Rule number one: caffeine is your new best friend. Liquid optimism.”

“I just … it hurts. So. Much.”

“Mornings and evenings are the worst,” Max says as she pulls her up to sitting to give her the Day One speech. “But every day there’s going to be a little window of time where you feel not just ‘barely alive,’ not just ‘okay,’ but positively euphoric. Winning
American Idol
euphoric. And that window is going to get longer and longer each and every day. Because your body knows that surviving this … elephant is going to bring you a level of strength you have not yet known. I promise. And my system will speed what organically can take months, or years, to a few weeks. Today we’re aiming for about a thirty-second window, okay?”

Bridget drops her head to Max’s shoulder.

“Fifteen?”

Bridget nods.

“Okay, now let’s start with a shower. You’ll feel better.”

“But after the shower is dressed, after dressed is breakfast, after breakfast is leaving. When Taylor won’t be waiting downstairs for his morning kiss and Pop-Tart before we split up for school. Because we split up for
real
.” Bridget buries her face in her raised knees, the idea of taking a single step unbearable. “I won’t feel better.”

Max pats her sweaty back. “But I will.” She stands and claps her hands. “Okay! You have homeroom at eight twenty, and we have a ton of ground to cover. Being late today of all days is not cool—in fact, for the next month I don’t care if you get wombat flu, you
will
be at school every day looking awesome because that
will
get back to him and that will be the first chink in his ego. Okay, time to wash off the last twelve hours! Here we go! The rest of your spectacular life awaits!”

Bridget stares at Max, salty tear-crusts in the corners of her eyes and mouth. “Sorry. So you’re Shannon’s friend? I’m just not really following how you—”

“We’ll get to that. Take the coffee in with you. Right in under the water. Here.” She pulls Bridget to her feet, hands her the lid, and holds the edge of the floral comforter. It trails off Bridget’s shoulders like a queen’s cape as she shuffles to the bathroom.

While Bridget showers, Max does an informed sweep of the room, removing the sweatshirt, stuffed duck, and dangly earrings Zach’s electronic espionage revealed were gifts from Taylor. She then returns the hacked laptop to Bridget’s desk. Lastly Max whips out her sterling tape measure, another flea market score, and sizes up the windows.

Minutes later, Bridget, in a fresh long-sleeved tee and cords, her wet hair in a bun, sits cross-legged on the carpet across from her TV, devouring a warm breakfast wrap Max brought from the deli. Max connects the TV to her own laptop, and her PowerPoint appears with the acronym
CPSRW
.

“This is your schedule,” Max says forcefully. “Up! Out of bed! And directly downstairs to the kitchen for a sugar-free caffeinated beverage—”

“Sugar free?” Bridget asks through a mouthful of egg.

“No Coke. No Red Bull. No Frappuccinos. We can’t risk you getting artificially hyped and doing something ill advised.” She clicks to the next slide, a photo of one Lorena Bobbitt. “Cut off her ex’s penis.” Then she advances the screen to Clara Harris. “Ran over her cheating husband three times. And we’re not going out like that, not because it wouldn’t feel spectacular, but because we want you ending up fabulous.” She advances the screen to a sunny picture of a gorgeously grinning Jennifer Aniston. “Not fettered and reduced to a Lifetime TV bio-pic. This is about the long haul, Bridget, not immediate gratification. Immediate gratification and lawlessness make you one thing: a psycho. That’s not my program. So! Caffeine and one serving of lean protein to keep you from getting foggy. Then straight to the shower, followed directly by the donning of
real clothes
—no pj’s or sweats—anything you pull on when you have the flu does not count. Also.” Max pulls an Estée Lauder Brazen Berry lip gloss from her bag and tosses it to Bridget.

“The gold cap says glamour and sophistication. I’m a classic, and he’s a fad. It’ll lift your spirits. Reapply between every class. So, caffeine, protein, shower, real clothes, and …” She pulls a bottle of Evian from her bag. “A minimum of two liter bottles of water to be nursed throughout the day. Little known fact: dehydration and depression go hand in hand.” She flashes a rapid succession of slides. “Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Courtney Love. Crazy? Maybe. Depressed? Probably. Dehydrated? Definitely. It’s astounding how the lack of electrolytes can suck a girl’s mojo. In conclusion, every morning, without fail. Caffeine. Protein. Shower. Real clothes. Water. CPSRW. I’m tacking it to the ceiling over your bed.”

Bridget’s shoulders sink as she finishes off her wrap; Max is losing her.