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The next day, I met Kevin at Starbucks for a makeup tutoring session. For like an hour before I saw him, I kept telling myself, “Don’t cry. Don’t cry.” I even watched an episode of
How I Met Your Mother
on DVD so that I could have something funny to think about if I felt the tears coming on.

I did all this prep work so I could keep it together. After all, I’d been crying pretty much nonstop for three whole days, but when I saw Kevin, I felt better. Not good, but better.

“So how was your hot date?” he asked when I walked over to the table where he was sitting.

“Don’t ask,” I said.

He pushed a cup toward me. “This is for you.”

“What is it?” I asked, opening the lid.

“What’s your favorite?” he asked.

“Caramel macchiato.”

“Well, that’s what it is.” He smiled. “See? A brother pays attention.”

You know how when someone’s being so nice to you but it’s not the person you want to have being nice to you? I kept wishing that I was sitting with Brian and that Brian remembered all of my favorite drinks, which he never did, even when we were together and things were good.

“Well, thanks,” I said. “But you don’t have to buy me beverages, and I owe you for being so late on Friday. So this session is on me and the next coffee is on me too.”

We were working on Cantor’s theory of sets, and for the first time, it seemed like he was really getting it. Maybe Kevin wasn’t just a bonehead rapper after all.

“This isn’t easy stuff; it gets into elements of trig,” I said admiringly.

“I like it,” he said. “It reminds me of hip-hop.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, amused.

Then he started freestyling, right in the middle of Starbucks. I was kind of horrified at first, but then I saw just how good he was:

“There’s an infinite set, just like there’s an infinite us.
They tried to Jim Crow hip-hop, but now we’re
driving the bus.

Bijunctive functions means you lay ’em out,
don’t count’em out.
Kev’s beats are hot, don’t try to think it out,
just twist and shout.

Bee’ll sting you with the vectors and her axioms are maximum.
When my album drops, there’ll be Grammys and more
platinum.”

Everyone in the coffee shop started to clap, and for the first time since the breakup, a whole hour went by and I hardly thought about Brian at all. Well, almost.

By the time I got back to my apartment, though, it was like someone had ripped off the Band-Aid. I missed Brian so much. As I was trying to decide whether I wanted to order Thai or Indian for dinner, I thought about how Kevin had talked to me about his music career. The night of the big seduction, when I’d gone to Victoria’s Secret with the intent of showing Brian what a hot chick I was, Kevin had asked me what was my passion. He’d said, What could I do better than anyone else? What made me feel so good that I wouldn’t give up no matter what it took?

I placed an order for pad Thai, then broke out a bag of veggie chips to tide me over while I waited for dinner to arrive. I realized that while being a doctor is the profession I aspire to, it’s not my passion. At least not yet.

I’m seventeen; what do I know about healing the sick? What I do know is that I really, really love Brian. And I think I could be a better girlfriend to Brian than anyone else in this whole entire world. Winning Brian back is going to be my passion. Like Kevin said, when you’re serious about what you love, there is no plan B.

5

Bee-reft

The
next day, I woke up at noon and decided I was too devastated to go to class. I mean, I skipped a whole year of high school. Was I really going to get busted for taking a mental health day? I ordered a pizza for lunch, and then I wrote Brian a long letter, begging him to take me back. Then to make sure he got it, I walked over to his apartment and slipped it underneath his door. I mean in bona fide emergencies, can you really depend on the U.S. Postal Service?

I’m pretty sure he got it, but Brian never responded to my letter. I waited five whole days for him to call me, and then I thought, You know what, maybe the letter sounded too desperate. Maybe I just needed to show him what a horrific mistake he’d made by dumping me.

I thought about the way Aunt Zo said that eventually all of her exes came around. Maybe it was because Aunt Zo always looked so fabulous. Even though she’s a pit musician and you never actually see her onstage, she’s always dressed up.

Unlike my mother, who owns about eighteen copies of the same black dress and then piles each of them with tons of ethnic jewelry, all handmade by some worthy woman in an economically deprived part of the world, Aunt Zo can
really
dress. Like when we went out to brunch last Sunday, she was wearing a cute little leather jacket with racing car patches, a black T-shirt, a cool purple skirt, and these knee-high Gucci boots. The whole time we were in the restaurant, guys were checking her out. Even guys my age.

When I first introduced Brian to Zo, he said, “Damn, if you’re going to look like that in twenty years, Bee, we ought to get married.”

How could I have forgotten something as important as that?!!!!!?? BRIAN was the first person to bring up marriage, not me. I had to fix whatever was wrong and I had to do it soon because I was losing my mind without him.

Maybe if Brian saw me in a high-fashion outfit like Aunt Zo’s, he would change his mind. Maybe he didn’t want to date a girl who wore Peruvian ponchos and Himalayan yoga pants. In an ideal world, I’d just go over to Aunt Zo’s and borrow some of her clothes. But she’s like a size six and I’m like a size twelve; a size ten if I suck in my gut and don’t breathe.

Borrowing Zo’s clothes wasn’t going to work. But what about the credit card that my dad had given me for “reasonable expenses”?
Certainly
, buying myself some decent clothes was a reasonable expense. I could pretend that I had an interview for an internship and that while my three-piece Nigerian boubou was considered perfectly adequate for tribal high holy days, it wasn’t going to cut it for a college student looking to intern at a major research hospital. That sounded like a feasible story, right? I mean, I planned on getting an internship at a major research hospital just as soon as I sorted out things with me and Brian.

So I went to Forever 21 and bought myself a funky print skirt, a fake leather jacket, and a pair of high-heeled boots. I liked the way I looked in the outfit, but I needed to step it up if I was going to get Brian to take me back.

Before a big event, like say the Tony Awards, which she goes to every year, Aunt Zo always goes to a department store and gets her makeup done. You have to buy some of the products they use, but chances are, you were going to buy some of it anyway. Zo said, “The Laura Mercier counter is good for a subtle French girl look. Nars is good for shimmer, healthy, bronze beauty stuff. And whatever you do, don’t go to the Mac counter; those guys always manage to make women look like drag queens.”

So I made an appointment and hopped on the subway down to Bergdorf’s. The woman at the Laura Mercier counter was pretty. She had super-pale skin, jet-black hair, and ruby red lips. It sounds extreme, but on her, it was ethereal, like she was a character in an old black-and-white movie. Her name was Françoise, and she spent an hour painting my eyes the shade of lilacs and my lips and cheeks in this beautiful lush shade of gold.

“You have amazing skin,” Françoise said. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like a younger Savannah Hughes?”

Yeah, like anyone would ever compare me to a supermodel. But by the time Françoise was done, it wasn’t such a ridiculous idea. There was a big billboard of “Savannah for Sephora” near campus, and Françoise had re-created the look in the ad to a tee.

Although I knew he was going to kill me, I bought every product Françoise used—including a $65 bottle of “invisible foundation”—and paid for it with my dad’s credit card.

I took the subway back uptown and realized that Brian had his Arabic immersion class every day from three to five p.m. It was only four thirty. So I went to the coffee shop on the corner of his block.

Eva, the Hungarian waitress, handed me a menu.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” she asked.

The question just slayed me. I kept telling myself, “Do not cry. Do not ruin your makeup. Do not cry. Do not ruin your makeup.”

Even though I’d had a burger, fries, and a milk shake for lunch, I went ahead and ordered a piece of apple pie à la mode and a Coke. I mean, they weren’t just going to let me sit in the coffee shop and drink water while I waited for Brian. And it was way too cold to wait outside.

While I polished off the pie, I went over my plan:

1. Go see Brian.

2. When he sees me looking gorgeous, he’ll ask me to come home with him for Thanksgiving. I’ll say that I’ll think about it.

3. Play hard to get if he asks me to stay for dinner. Tell him I’ve got dinner plans. But maybe the next day.

Aunt Zo is always saying that feminist revolution or no, it never hurts to play a little hard to get. It reminds people that you’re valuable. Well, I wanted some of that. I wanted Brian to think I was more than valuable; I wanted him to think that I was
irreplaceable
. I had to prove to him that I was ready for the real thing. That I
am
mature. That I’m worthy of him.

This is what actually happened:

1. I went to see Brian.

2. He said, “Wow, you look gorgeous.”

3. I made out with him.

About two hours later, he said, “I gotta get ready. I’m supposed to meet up with some guys to check out this band downtown.”

“Great,” I said. “I’ll go with you. I’ve got these new clothes and this new makeup . . . I’d love to go out.”

“It’s all the way downtown at Arlene’s Grocery,” he said. “I’m probably going to crash at my friend Ty’s place. I don’t want to have to worry about you on the subway.”

“I’ll just take a cab,” I said.

Brian sighed. “Don’t do this, Bee.”

All of a sudden, I was sobbing again. “I thought you said we could still hang out.”

He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say that. I mean, maybe I said that. But clearly you’re too immature to deal with a casual relationship. Come on, Bee. You have to go.”

And for the second time in a week, Brian closed the door to his apartment right in my face.

The next day, I woke up feeling pathetic and sad. I wanted Brian back more than anything, but I needed to regroup first. I had grades to keep up, after all. My physics prof, Professor Trotter, was ruthless. So I walked over to Butler Library to get some studying done.

I was back on track and dreaming of allotropic forms when I saw Brian and some girl coming out of the library. Maybe he didn’t even know her. Maybe he was just holding the door for her. But she was laughing and he was smiling that charming smile. I ducked behind a column so he wouldn’t see me. Then I turned around, ran down the steps, and hopped the subway to SoHo to MarieBelle, where I had a giant hot chocolate and instead of cracking open my lit textbook, I read the latest issue of InStyle magazine. Welcome to “Life Post-Brian,” in which our heroine (me, Bee) discovers that nothing douses the flames of heartache like a gallon or so of chocolate.

A few days later, I was having lunch in the cafeteria by myself when Brian came up to me. I thanked God that I’d washed my hair and put on a little eye shadow despite the fact that I was still feeling miserable. But Brian wasn’t in the mood to notice. He was really angry.