Maxed Out (3 page)

“I need some space,” I say, standing up.

“If you need anything—“

“No,” I say. If I need something it won’t come from him. Not
right after he dumps me.

“Look,” he starts. “I feel—“

I don’t care. I walk away, ignoring him. He’s right, we
won’t be able to weather the coming storm. We’re over. Sitting and talking
about it won’t help anything, it’ll just make me feel dependent on him, which
is the last thing I need right now.

I’m outside the restaurant and hallway down the street
before I realize that I don’t have anywhere to go. I’ve lived with Max for the
last five months, since my lease came up and we were spending all of our time
together anyway. His apartment has come to feel like home. Now it’ll just be
that place where he lives, where we used to have fun together. I can’t wait to
get my stuff packed, to move into a place of my own. Until then, though, I’ll
need a place to stay.

Alone, on the sidewalk, with no boyfriend and no prospects,
I don’t see that being an easy task.

I finally call Renee after an hour of just wandering down Harbor
Drive. She tells me I’m good to crash at her place indefinitely before I’m even
halfway done explaining. It’s incredibly anticlimactic – I’ve steeled myself
for a long struggle involving heroic measures (or at least great expense) on my
part to find temporary lodging and it just kind of drives up in a green Kia and
offers itself up to me.

I don’t want to go to Max’s place to get my stuff right now.
I’ve still got a toothbrush and some clothes stashed at Renee’s from way before
I started dating Max, when we used to spend more time together. Before she got
serious with Brian, even. Thank god she’s finally over that – not like she had
any choice, seeing as Will shot him about a month ago after Brian broke into Renee’s
apartment and tried to rape her. I’m still not sure that dating her ex’s killer
is good for her sanity, but they’ve been together for about two months now and
it seems to be working, which is more than I can say about my own relationship
as of sixty minutes ago.

“So what happened again?” she asks. We’re maybe halfway back
to her place. It’s been less than ten minutes since I explained the first time.

“Max got a promotion which involves travel. We decided a
while ago that long distance relationships don’t work. Since we’re going to be
in one, we decided to break up.”

“We?”

“He did. I agreed. I mean, he gave me a chance to try to
convince him otherwise. Overall it was pretty reasonable.”

“But if you really love each other wouldn’t you be able to
make it work anyway?”

“Not worth it,” I say. “It all falls apart in the
cost-benefit analysis. Opportunity cost or whatever. “

She stares at me blankly.

“You started this,” I tell her. “In college. I didn’t do any
of this nerding out over emotional crap until you introduced it to me.”

“I don’t recall…” she says, slowly.

“You suggested that basic impartial analysis would improve
everything. This was back when I was beginning to date David, so I assumed you
meant that I should step back and think about our relationship in less gushy
terms so I could think more clearly.”

Renee seems surprised. “You broke up with David because of
that?”

I nod. “It was clear that neither of us was actually getting
what we wanted out of the relationship and he wasn’t willing to do anything to
fix that, so I broke it off. Was that not what you wanted me to do?”

“I thought he was a sleazebag, honestly, so I was happy to
see you leave him, but I didn’t think…” She trails off. “How many of your
relationships have I ruined with that little piece of wisdom?”

“All of them,” I say. “I mean, I ended all of my
relationships after that point based on me deciding that I’d be happier
elsewhere. I don’t think that’s a bad thing –“

“Jesus. All of them?” Renee looks shocked.

“I don’t regret ending any of them,” I say. “Your advice
helped me reach the right conclusions.”

“I still feel—“

I cut her off. “I would have broken up with them all anyway,
for similar reasons. Just because I analyzed something logically doesn’t mean
that I wouldn’t have arrived at a similar conclusion emotionally. In fact, I
dodged a bullet on a few of them – Carl was cheating on me, if you recall, and
I dumped him before I even knew because I just wasn’t happy anymore. You helped
me avoid heartbreak. You didn’t cause any.”

I’m defending Renee to herself, an hour after getting
dumped. How does she do this? It’s infuriating. At least I feel better about
the whole thing. Before I got into the car I was ready to pull a Carrie
Underwood his ride, my agreement with his reasons notwithstanding. Now my anger
has been replaced with a sort of bitter emptiness. Not that that’s any better.

Of course, she has to ruin my momentary respite by diving
back into it.

“Do you feel the same about Max?” she asks.

“I will in a week,” I say, trying to keep my emotions in check.
I believe myself, mostly. It’s hard to tell yourself that your decisions are
right when they hurt so much.

Time to change the subject. “How are things with Will?” I
ask, immediately reminding myself of my aloneness.

“Fine,” she says. Of course things are fine. Why would
things be anything but fine? When Renee has relationship problems, this hunk
just comes out of left field and blows them to pieces with a rifle.

Somehow, I steer the conversation and my mind off out of
this gutter long enough to finish the drive. Everything goes okay after that –
I gorge myself on leftovers and we stay up watching sitcom reruns until I’m too
exhausted to think.

It almost works. Lying on the couch, past midnight, I can
only make out the faintest embers of depression before I finally succumb to
sleep.

At work the next day, I’m trying to put the finishing
touches on a story about some new local band while Jeremy hovers over my
shoulder in the most frustrating way possible.

“Wrong there,” he says.

I glare at him.

“It’s ‘their’ as in ‘the amps they own’ as opposed to ‘the
amps in that location,’” he says. “This is like fifth grade English stuff.”

He’s right. Normally the word processor picks this stuff up.
I must be slipping. Maybe it’s the constant looming presence that’s interfering
in my work. Nah. Couldn’t be.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I’m supposed to help you. Since you haven’t
told me how I’m supposed to do that, I’m stuck here watching you. I don’t like
this any more than you do. Do us both a favor and assign me something. Share
the load.”

“Okay,” I say, turning around. “Do this article.” I hand him
my notes and requirements for the piece on the Korean band Phil assigned me
earlier this week. “You’ve got two days. Go.”

“This is your article,” he says. “I’m not supposed to just
do your work with no help from you. You’re supposed to ease me into this.”

“Phil said I could use you however I wanted,” I say. I don’t
actually remember any such thing, I’m just bluffing. “Of course I’m going to
review it and monitor you a little, but you came really highly recommended. I
doubt a little buzz piece like this will give you any trouble.”

“I’m going to check with him first,” he says, standing up.
Fuck. Second day with Jeremy and he’s already going over my head to override
me. Things are turning out just great.

A minute later, Phil is standing over me, shaking his head.
“I wanted you to do that article, Jeanine,” he says. “You’ve got a unique
insight into this sort of thing. Let it through. Jeremy can do your regular
column.”

“But I’ve got that almost complete,” I say. “He just has to
–“

“You’ve got too little on your plate as it is,” Phil says.
“There’s more than enough time for you to complete the other article before we
print Friday. Don’t go throwing all the hard work on the new guy.” He turns and
leaves before I can rebut.

I bury my head in my hands. This looks bad for me – it’s not
that Phil is wrong about anything in particular, just that the whole point of
this was to give him something to do to get Jeremy off of my back. Now, he’s
just proved that he’s got more sway with our boss than I do.

“You heard him,” Jeremy says. “E-mail me what you have done
so far for that article. Also your notes.”

“What?” I say. “It’s just a little column. He said you
should write it. I’m basically finished. If you put your name on it at this
point it’d be plagiarism, straight up.”

Jeremy glances in Phil’s general direction. “Do you want me
to –“

“No,” I say. He’s made his point. “Whatever. I’ll do it.”

Half an hour later, when he’s finally done browsing
Facebook, he edits my name out and hands it to Phil. If the plan was for me to
be productive, it failed: I’ve spent the whole time glowering in Jeremy’s
direction. I certainly haven’t stopped now. The way Jeremy just circumvents the
normal order of operations and hands off MY article right to the boss,
bypassing every edit, check and balance in the process is both baffling and
offensive.

The worst part about this is that if Phil doesn’t like what
Jeremy hands in I’ll get blamed for not teaching him right.

Being frustrated isn’t getting me anywhere. I try to focus
on my work. I’ve got a few sources and a contact for a possible interview so
far but not a lot else. The good thing about Jeremy bringing the boss in was
his choice of words about me doing the article. I’ve been thinking about this
as a little fluff PR thing, but as I finally bring myself to do some research it
turns out there’s actually something going on here – maybe not something
newsworthy in itself, but I can spin it to create a narrative. I need to be
sure on my facts first, though, which means doing things and not pretending I
have heat vision and I’m incinerating our new hire.

Jeremy comes back, reminding me that I’m not going to get a
chance to do any of that no matter how much I might want to.

“Phil loves it,” he says, smiling. “He says I’ll fit right
in here. I can’t thank you enough.”

I somehow resist the urge to drive my fist through his
skull.

Later that night I’m venting at the bar with the girls,
which is a rare occurrence. I don’t think I’ve talked for this long straight
since that time Alice brought her latest fling to our weekly meet up last year,
and that didn’t have the same emotional release I’m experiencing right now.

Of course, it all comes crashing back down when I finally
finish my tirade and get a look at my friends’ reactions. Alice is looking
bored and making eyes at the new bartender. Tiff looks vaguely concerned, but
it’s a cold, clinical concern that reeks of dead rats and one way mirrors. Renee
is half asleep, trying to hide her phone under the table and use her lidded
eyes as misdirection.

Assholes, all of them.

Renee looks up from her phone suddenly – Will must be
momentarily indisposed – and looks concerned for a moment. It’s the best acting
I’ve seen all night. “Wait,” she said. “You don’t even want to talk about Max?”

“Why would I do that?” I ask.

“What happened with Max?” Alice says, suddenly interested.

“Nothing major,” I say.

Renee scoffs. “They broke up,” she says.

“What?”

“Breaking up is nothing major?” Tiff says. “How do you
figure?”

I shrug. “We’re not like, fighting. We just agreed to break
up.”

Alice frowns. “Why?”

“He got promoted,” I say.

Renee rolls her eyes. “Jeanine feels that if Max is
travelling on weekends they won’t be able to maintain a relationship,” she
says.

“That makes no sense,” Alice says. “Why—“

“Our relationship relies on communication and intimacy,” I say,
sighing. “Without those, we’ll drift apart. I have to work late on weekdays a
lot, so if he’s travelling weekends we’ll hardly see each other. I’ll suspect
him of cheating, he’ll be unsatisfied, and then when—“

“You’re breaking up with him because you think he’ll break
up with you later?” Tiff asks.

“Can I finish?” I say.

“I just want to understand what’s going on,” Tiff says.

“He was the one that brought it up, technically,” I say. “I
think he broke up with me.”

“But you’re the one that had established that you didn’t
want to be in a long distance relationship,” Tiffany says.

“I didn’t ask for your psychoanalysis bullshit,” I say. “I
don’t even want to talk about this. We didn’t have a fight. We’re still
friends. We just both decided we wanted to break off the relationship.
Amicably.”

“If you’re on such good terms why are you sleeping on my
couch?” Renee asks.

“I just felt like I wanted some space,” I say.

“Call him,” Tiffany says.

“What?”

“Call him,” she repeats. “Right now. If you’re such good
friends, invite him to meet us. He’s a friend, he can join us.”

“This is our night, though,” I say. “No boyfriends.”

“You broke up,” Tiffany says. “He’s just a friend now. It’ll
be okay.”

“Why do we call it girl’s night then?” I ask.

“We can make an exception this once,” Alice says.

“I don’t think that’s right,” I say. “It’s been just the
four of us for –“

“Times change,” Tiffany says. “Call him.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Okay,” Tiff says. “I’ll do it. He’s my friend too. Unless
you didn’t break up in that perfectly sanitary way you described and you’re not
on good terms and you still have feelings for him, of course.”

I don’t say anything. This isn’t fair. Of course I’m still a
wreck so soon after our breakup. Just because we worked it out logically
doesn’t mean we dealt with the emotional attachment.

“Well?” she says.

“Don’t call him,” I say. I regret it instantly. Having Max
here would be infinitely more pleasant than having to see that smug expression
on her face. At least he would give a shit how it made me feel.