Over You (7 page)

“You sure?” Max appreciates the gallant gesture, but can’t stop seeing Hugo right there, in
her
park, in the middle of
her
favorite neighborhood, her brain like an octopus tentacled around her indignation. “Thank you,” she musters to Ben as she follows him out past the rainbow tiers of dyed chrysanthemums.

“You going this way?” He points toward her house, on Clinton Street, his basketball jacket falling open. She nods. “Me too.” They start to walk. “Can I carry your luggage?”

“You
are
full service,” she marvels.

“Don’t mock. If my father passes us on his way home and sees me letting you struggle with that he’ll hit me upside the head with your Ritter Sport.”

“Well, thank you—again.” She gladly hands off the bag, having underestimated the weight of prêt-à-porter outerwear.

“Okay, yes, I procrastinated,” Ben says unprompted. “But it wasn’t my fault.” He pauses, flips the top off another can, and downs it in one go. “Ech.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “My best friend is newly single and needs to take his oats on the town.”

“Ah, yes,” Max says. “The ceremonial oat tour.” She reaches in the shopping bag and takes out the milk bar with almonds, ripping it open. “It must be so
hard
for guys in relationships—to have just
one
girlfriend
completely
devoted to taking care of all your whole-grain needs. I can see how at the first opportunity you’d just
have
to get out there and—sow.” She can’t keep the edge out of her voice.

He lifts his palms defensively. “Look, I’m not sowing anything. I’m just the wingman. I am the pizza procurer, the Yelp navigator, the fake-ID possessor.”

They step over where an old tree has bumped up the sidewalk into a mogul. “So how come your friend can go out on school nights?” She moves the conversation to safer territory.

“Because he’s a legacy at Kenyon.” Ben stops and puts his hand to his chest. “
I
am a legacy at Gerber.”

She laughs as the edges of her foul mood lighten, the tentacles loosening for a split second. “But when you get into a school—and c’mon, you will—you’re going to have a confidence your friend will never have because you’ll know you did it yourself. You didn’t have to rely on your ancestors of yore.”

He smiles back at her. Ben can’t believe his luck—in either direction. Good: that he could run into Max again—looking all cute and dressed—her nose pink from the cold. That she’s funny—and just seems to
get
everything he says. Bad: that he could be looking like shit from too-little sleep—burping red chemical aftertaste—and too hopped-up on
energy
to be funny back. Not that any of this matters—it’s senior year—time for work. Not the time for pink noses—or funny.

They slow in front of Max’s house, and she finds herself thinking of all the nights Hugo walked her back to her dorm. Uch! She wants to hit her head against the stoop railing like a swimmer knocking trapped chlorine loose.

“How’s the crib working out?” he asks.

“Oh, awesome. I get in at least once a day. Read the paper.” She lets herself laugh.

“Sorry—right—of course.”

They stand there for a moment, like this is a date, which it so isn’t. She doesn’t even know why she’s still standing there. Finally she holds her hands out for the bag, their fingers brushing again as he passes it off. “Okay, well, good luck with your exam,” she says.

“Yeah, good luck with your … binge.”

She gives a thumbs-up and jogs down the three steps, pulling out her keys. He notices how the light coming from the parlor-floor windows plays through her hair. “Max?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I text you?”

“Oh.” She’s surprised and, for the first time in a long while, flustered by a boy.

“Or not.”

“No, no, yeah, that would be great.” She suppresses a smile as she tosses out her number.

A
few days later, Max watches as Zach painstakingly spreads the opaque, reflective film across Bridget’s bedroom windows. “This is ridiculous,” Bridget states as she stares at the beige-tinted image of herself, her arms folded across her tank top in protest. Pointedly ignoring her as instructed, Zach smoothes his palm along the thin coating, obscuring the remaining corner of bare glass and the last glimpse at the reddened leaves clinging to the oak outside.

“Uh, no,
this
is ridiculous.” Max whips up a photo that’s fluttered down to the blue carpet from the box they are packing and holds it to Bridget’s innocent face.

“I have no idea how that got in there.” Bridget bites a cuticle as Max meticulously folds the last item of Taylor’s—his purple Kenyon hoodie—atop his other belongings.

“You have no idea how a picture of you in a bikini got in here. Really.”

“Look, Max, he took it when we were at his beach house. Technically it’s his, so I’m giving it back. That’s what we’re doing, right?” Bridget sits hard on her bed, looking miserable in a sea of misery.

“What we’re doing is underscoring how ludicrously calm you are. Stamping ‘Bridget Is a Class Act’ in neon blinking lights across his forehead. Unsettling him with the complete absence of drama. What we’re
not
doing is sending him photos of cleavage.”

“Fine.” Bridget takes the photo and throws it over her shoulder where it drops dejectedly to the puckered duvet. “Are you okay?”

“What?” Max is thrown by the personal inquiry. Clients are usually too (totally understandably) preoccupied to pursue anything more outwardly focused than where Max scored her shoes.

“You look stressed.” Bridget gives her nails a rest as Zach hops down from the sill. “And you don’t seem like a looks-stressed kind of girl, so I was just wondering.”

“Oh!” Max tosses her hand in an emphatic “it’s nothing” gesture because she would never in a million years cop to the fact that she got twitchy on the way here, thinking she spotted Hugo on a crowded street, and darted into a store to hide.

“It’s her allergies.” Zach covers for her as he sweeps his bangs to the side with a kelly-green varnished nail.

“In October?”

“Leaf mold,” Max confirms without looking at Zach.

Bridget returns her focus to the box and drops her head to her chest. “At least let me pour the paint thinner over his sweater.”

“No! No destroying, disfiguring, or dismantling. Paint thinner says—”

“I care,” Zach finishes for her. “I’m desperate for you to notice that I care. I’m crazed to get your attention. I’m a psycho.”

“And we are avoiding the P-word at all cost,” Max pronounces as Zach goes to pull a roll of clear packing tape from her red bag and hands it to Max with a flourish. “It’s time.”

“Ugh.” Bridget pounds both fists into the mattress. “I hate this!”

“Then let that motivate you”—Max passes the roll to Bridget—“to tape his ass up.”

Bridget stares at the box containing the only tangible evidence of Taylor’s love that remains. “I loved pulling on his clothes,” she says quietly. “Slipping his big sweatshirt over my head, you know? The weight of the fabric made me feel so small, like a music-box ballerina. I thought his scent of deodorant and fabric softener and the wind whipping past him as he skated was just for me.”

“Bridget,” Max urges gently. “It’s time.”

With a rip that satisfies Max and Zach, Bridget seals the flaps shut with obvious reluctance.

A few minutes later, with Max’s red bag swung jauntily over his shoulder, Zach escorts Bridget to the multiplex where Shannon will meet her for a horror movie, simultaneously distracting Bridget from running the bikini photo to Taylor’s mail slot and satiating her fantasies of slashing his belongings. Meanwhile, Max, cloaked in Peter’s old ski parka, heads across the street to make contact. From the base of Taylor’s stoop, Max turns to glance over to Bridget’s bedroom windows on the second floor. Perfect. They look completely normal from out here, and there’ll be no temptation. She’ll add this window film discovery to her ever-growing log of tactical resources when she gets home.

Even though the patter of drops has slowed, Max keeps her hood on as she jogs up Taylor’s front steps, box first. She leans her elbow into the bell.

Ben Cooper hears the door buzz from below. Or thinks he does. It’s kind of hard to discern from the club mix pumping out of Taylor’s computer speakers. Especially since Ben’s head is picking up the vibrations from the vantage point of Taylor’s bedroom floor, his socks resting up the wall as he tosses a mini basketball into the sagging hoop clipped to the top of the closet door. Taylor’s dad brought it back from some medical conference when they were kids. They’re taking it with them for their dorm room at Kenyon.

It suddenly strikes Ben that this dorm room will probably feel exactly like this. Ben’s NBA posters will soon be covered by Taylor’s skaters, all frozen forever in mid-rotation over their half-pipes. The thought causes Ben to tense his fingertips on the ball, his nail beds going purple.

Ben can’t even pinpoint when he and Taylor made this plan for Kenyon in the first place. Ben’s dad never went to college. The way Mr. Bradley talked about Kenyon, always cracking himself up, well, Ben’s dad didn’t talk about anything like that.

Up against the mess of his parents’ divorce, it had been comforting to know that he could picture what college was going to look like, he and Taylor taking it on—but the more his dad talks about him coming back to run the store afterward, the more he feels like he knows what the rest of his
life
is going to look like.

The ball thuds to the floor, narrowly missing Ben’s face. Taylor reaches a foot out to stop it from rolling away without looking up from clicking through Halloween party options. Ben is still figuring out how to break it to Taylor that he can’t party on Halloween. Ben has to take the application workshop from that supposed college genius on November 1 that starts at eight in the freaking morning. A genius with no social life—holla! Mrs. Downing, their college advisor, would choke Ben with one of her paisley scarves if he didn’t show after she “worked her magic” to get him in.

“Dude,” Ben yells over the music. “That your doorbell?”

“What?”

“Doorbell!”

Taylor hits
MUTE
, and they both listen for a second.

“I’ll get it,” Ben says, happy for a chance to grab some air that is not scented with Taylor’s sneakers. Down in the foyer, Ben pulls open the front door just in time to make out a hooded figure picking up speed as it heads toward Greenwich Avenue.

“Who is it?” Taylor calls from his room.

“Box for you. From a messenger.”

“Grab the Fritos while you’re down there.”

Ben snags the orange bag from over the fridge and brings both to where Taylor waits at the top of the stairs. “A messenger? You sure it isn’t for my dad?”

Ben shrugs, handing it off and popping the chip bag. “Open it.”

Taylor slices through the tape. Opening the flaps with evident curiosity, he lifts out the contents with a strange expression on his face. Ben recognizes Taylor’s sweatshirt, along with his Volcom hoodie, and his
GOD IS A DJ
hat.

Taylor mutters something about “her perfume” as Ben watches his hands digging through the neat pile in search of—what?

“What is it?” Ben asks, mouth full of chips.

“My stuff. From Bridge. No note, no … anything.”

Ben drops into Taylor’s desk chair and swivels around to check out what Taylor’s search has pulled up on the computer. Ben tells himself to just say it already. “So about Halloween …”

“What?”

“Not sure I can swing it this year.” Ben wipes the yellow crumbs from his palms and watches Taylor for a reaction, but Taylor doesn’t seem to have heard because he’s just focused on putting everything back in the box. Taylor presses his hand over the slit. But the seal is already broken, and the flaps slowly rise back up.

Max feels her phone buzzing in her pocket as she rounds the corner onto Greenwich. “Bridge break free?” she asks.

“That girl’s in the world’s longest line for Gummi Bears,” Zach says.

“Then what’s up?”

“Leaf mold?” he asks.

“You said allergies!” Max protests. “Look, I just have a lot of cases right now. Yes, I’m a little stressed.”

“Uh-huh.” Zach sounds unconvinced.

“Seriously, Zachary, I’m fine.”

“O-kay,” he trills, the second syllable rising. “Up, gotta jet. The bloodbath is commencing, and the girls are passing on Gummis to grab seats.”

“Yes—go!” She rushes, and he hangs up.
I am fine,
she thinks as she strides over to Sixth Avenue.
This
is
allergies. Just a
temporary
reaction brought on by proximity to asshole
.

That night Max is happily ensconced in her bunny pajamas and working on the presentation for Dr. Schmidt when she realizes she isn’t sure of the year Dr. Schmidt published her first influential paper. So Max goes to the NYU site to load Dr. Schmidt’s page, which leads to a student blog from the psych department, which leads to a freshman blog about NYU housing, which leads to a boy blog about hot girls on campus, which leads to an even tackier boy blog about the best secret hookup spots, which leads to a blog called
New at the U
. Max starts reading this kid’s account of his first weeks at school, his adventures in the village, imagining herself in his shoes next fall.