getting coffee for people in the office. She was pretty sure there was no marketing involved whatsoever.
At the apartment, Cleo pretended they were married. They played house, making dinner (usually just pasta and jarred sauce) and drinking wine, like they were adults. She knew that her old roommates were wrong when they told her she was making a mistake. “This will end in disaster,” Mary had said as she packed up.
Cleo had become friends with some of Max’s friends, but it felt like they were on loan, like they never really made the switch to being hers. She had really started to like his friend Ally, had started to think that maybe she would be the one that Cleo clicked with, until she heard her say at a party, “Cleo’s totally nice. She’s supersweet. She’s just, you know, sort of a loner.”
A loner? Cleo had been waiting for the bathroom when she heard this, and Ally was around the corner, out of sight, talking to someone else. She wanted to ask Ally what she meant by that, but she didn’t. Instead, she stood there praying that she could get into the bathroom before Ally saw her.
Later that night, she’d told Max what she’d heard. “Do you think I’m a loner?”
“No.” Max laughed.
“It’s not funny. Why would Ally say that? I thought she liked me.”
“She does like you,” Max said. “Don’t let it bother you.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Look, Ally can’t be alone for five minutes without going crazy. You know that. She can’t eat alone, she can’t walk to class alone, and she certainly can’t study alone. She’s probably just jealous of you.”
“It didn’t sound like she was jealous.”
“Well, then she’s intrigued. You do your own thing, that’s all. You don’t need a clan of girls around you at all times.”
“I guess,” Cleo said. But it wasn’t that she didn’t need it, she’d just never had it. She’d learned to live without.
Cleo felt like she’d failed in some very real way, to be almost a senior in college and not have one single girlfriend to show for it. It was her mom’s fault, probably. Elizabeth didn’t have any friends, not really. She had work people that she went out to dinner with sometimes, or to the Hamptons with, but not real friends that she relaxed and spent time with. And now Cleo was all fucked up because of it. She’d never seen an example of how to have friends and now maybe she never would. She could go on a talk show about it.
One night she and Max were watching TV, and she said, “You’re my best friend, you know.”
Max smiled. “Why do you sound so sad about it?”
“Don’t you think it’s weird? That you’re my best friend? My only friend, really? That I don’t have any girlfriends?”
Max thought for a minute. “No. I think you got in with a bad crowd early on.”
“A bad crowd?”
“Yes, a bad crowd. Any house with a milk tracer and a chore wheel is a bad crowd. In my book, at least.”
“I guess so.”
Max came closer to her and pulled her head down to his chest. “You’re my best friend, too,” he said.
“You’re such a liar.”
“I’m not. I’m not lying at all.”
“What about Mickey?”
Max wrinkled his nose. “He’s fun, but you smell way better.” He lifted up her shirt and started kissing her stomach. “Way better.”
IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST, they packed their bags and headed to the shore for a weeklong vacation with the Coffeys. They’d agreed to keep their living arrangement a secret from their families, and Cleo was terrified that she was going to blurt it out during the trip. Max told her she was being paranoid, but she knew better.
Around the Coffeys, she became a strange version of who she was. She tried to be chatty, but her voice came out higher than it usually was. She tried to be casual, but she felt uncomfortable everywhere. It was exhausting.
Cleo was almost certain that Aunt Maureen was bordering on a drinking problem, although when she suggested this once, Max laughed. “She just likes to have a good time,” he said.
On the drive to the house, Cleo asked how Claire was doing. She was nervous about seeing her after the whole engagement disaster.
“She’s good,” Max said.
“Well, she can’t be good. She just called off her wedding.”
Max had shrugged. “I mean, it sucks, but I think she’s handling it fine.”
“It’s just so sad. I feel so bad for her,” Cleo said.
“Well, don’t ask her