Getting Over Max Cooper Read online

  “I wanted to surprise you,” Macy says as she takes the cone from me and hands it to Gayle. Gayle sits on the bench that is between Woodson’s and Crabby’s to eat her ice cream, and Dylan sits next her, in his denim shorts and oversized Kaepernick sleeveless football jersey, rambling about whatever it is that nine-year-old boys care about. “Plus, Max was on the ferry, so you know . . .”

  Macy’s “you know” is code for I saw Max Cooper and I am so happy right now. Max Cooper was her non-boyfriend boyfriend last summer, and we thought he liked Macy as much as she liked him until after the fourth time they had sex and he started ghosting her. The sex part was a big deal because she had never done it before, but the way he treated her was the worst part. There was a rumor he gave her COVID, but he didn’t, she was just heartsick and couldn’t get out of bed for almost all of August. According to every single thing I know about Macy, he’s the first boy she’s really fallen for.

  “And?”

  “It was like we’ve always known each other. He was so chatty and—”

  “Girls, I hate to break up this lovefest, but we are working. Unless you’re buying, you need to go bye-bye,” Sue says.

  Gayle, done with her ice cream cone, interrupts us with her ever-present haughty tone. “Macy, let’s go home and you can see your little friend later, right?”

  Dylan jumps in the air, fist-pumping, psyched to be off the bench and on his way home.

  Macy rolls her eyes and looks at Gayle. “Okay, fine.” Macy leans in with that long torso of hers, gives me a big hug, and then she’s gone.

  I want to spend every second with Macy Whelan now that she’s back in Fair Harbor. The school year plus Macy living in Philadelphia and me living in Manhattan has kept us from doing what we love: riding our bikes from our town to the lighthouse in Kismet, and being in a water taxi, our arms dangling off the back of the boat, the spray of the ocean nipping at our fingertips, and going to the dock at sunset and watching the sky turn from blue to pink to dark violet. Because all of that and so much more can only happen here in Fair Harbor with my best friend for life, Macy Whelan.

  * * *

  • • •

  Hands down, the most gorgeous group of girls I have ever seen in person are my next customers, walking up to the counter as Macy and Gayle and Dylan leave. Clearly, they’ve just gotten off the ferry that Macy was on. There are four of them, each as pretty as the others, pulling their wheelie luggage, ooohing and aaahing at the lone deer walking past Crabby’s, as if they’ve never been in nature. Also, we can’t pet or feed the deer because of ticks: those bloodsuckers cling to the deer that populate this island, and it’s a problem we have to be wary of.

  But the one that has me speechless is the lanky one with the long vibrant ginger hair and ice-blue eyes whose face was plastered to Leo’s at Max Cooper’s on Friday night.

  “You an Ariana stan?” she asks, her eyes dripping dark judgment. I look down at my chest, momentarily spacing on what I’d put on today: Ari’s Sweetener T-shirt with the purple camo background. The burn vibrates, and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s making fun of me or if it’s because I feel that familiar jealousy of a girl who captures the attention of a boy that I pine for. She leans against my counter, as her friends stand in the middle of Broadway, talking about how cute this place is. “Like, modern much?”

  She just dissed me, to my face. Not cool. Not cool at all.

  “I’m sorry. Do we have a problem?”

  Her face scrunches up; clearly, she is not appreciating my ability to speak up for myself. “I just want four iced coffees. No sugar. Actually, can you give me a few sugar packets? And one of those coffees, I want it to be half milk, half decaf. Good?” She spins around and, with her back to me, calls to one of her friends.

  “Sekiya, did you say iced coffee or iced tea?”

  A girl with thick crimson passion braids and tattered short-shorts lifts her bedazzled pink oval sunglasses and replies that she wants iced tea, her caramel skin sparkling in the sun. So that’s Sekiya. I need to find her Instagram—it will require a little detective work—and find out her story. She personifies cool to me. Is she a model too, or is “Beauty” simply her middle name?

  The main girl spins back around. “Never mind. Three iced coffees, one iced tea . . .” She is interrupted as her friends crowd around her, and they are talking about a fashion show one of them had to be at (Working? In the audience? I can’t tell). They don’t seem to mind that they interrupt one another or that no one can finish a sentence, and I am moving as quickly as I can to make their drinks as I see the line of customers start to grow.

  These girls probably have boys hitting them up on Snap and TikTok, and I would put money on it that they’re popular and I wouldn’t be surprised if they already owned everything I would love to buy at Sephora. I will never know what it is like to exist in the world the way they do, never stressing about a chin hair or back fat or being invisible.

  “That’s eighteen dollars,” I tell the kissing-Leo-McDimple-one as I place the drink carrier on the counter. She hands me her credit card, this sleek blue metal thing, ALICE ADAMS embossed on its face. Now I can find her on Instagram; if they’re together, she might have a post about him or something.

  Alice waits for me to finishing ringing her up, takes her card back, picks up the tray, turns her back to me as her friends crowd around, and says, “Okay, bitches, slurpy time!”

  They are standing right in front of her. Why yell?

  I am exhausted by the time they leave my counter. I glance at my phone. I have a few hours of work left, and those hours seem like three days away.

  * * *

  • • •

  In addition to sanitizing the counter and other things I touch, my day includes answering the phone (“No, sorry, we don’t do delivery.” How hard is it for people to leave their houses to get their iced coffees?). Sometimes, when it’s really, really slow, I count how many people walk by Crabby’s; I once was able to count eighty-two consecutive people before one interrupted the streak by walking up to my counter and ordering something to eat. Ah, the joys of a summer job.

  “Hey, Jazz,” Max Cooper says, interrupting my lack of motion, wearing his uniform of an oversized white T-shirt and baggy shorts and flip-flops, and even though he’s a giant in my mind, this perpetrator of breaking Macy’s heart, he’s actually more like Hobbit size. He’s not a big dude, and while I personally don’t find him attractive, I’d think he was hot if I didn’t know what a jerk he is.

  “What do you want?” I ask, bitchier than I am in real life, fire coming out of every orifice. Max Cooper feels my fury, and it singes his blond eyebrows. I don’t care that he was nice to Macy on the ferry; I know how much he hurt her last summer.

  Max Cooper leans across the counter so his face is close to mine, and he smiles, his blue eyes sparkling, going for that vampiric charm, I guess, by luring me into his gaze. He’s used to girls swooning over him, but I’m not one of them.

  “I actually wanted to talk to you, Jazz, about Macy.”

  While I want to know why he was on the Fair Harbor ferry instead of the Saltaire one, and I want to know why he’s in front of me right now, I do not want to speak with him about anything outside of what he orders. I mean, the ice cream is better in Saltaire, where he lives: it’s actual gelato.

  Sue barks at Max Cooper not to lean on the counter, and because she’s an adult, he morphs into a Boy Scout.

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry, ma’am,” he calls out to Sue, and then he looks to me. “Can I get a lobster roll?”

  “You know we don’t make lobster rolls,” I snap. “If you don’t know what you want, you’re going to have to move so I can take care of the next customer.”

  Max Cooper turns and now sees what I already know: there are no customers behind him.

  “Okay, I want . . . a mint chocolate chip, three scoops.”
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  “Sugar or wafer cone?”

  “Did you have fun the other night?” Max Cooper asks as he points to the wafer cone.

  Yes, I did have fun at his party last weekend. I saw the most beautiful boy in the world, Leo McDimple. And I watched Max Cooper mash with a girl who did not resemble the Very Serious Girlfriend that shows up on his Instagram; his girlfriend, Tina, is Asian, and the Friday girl was infinitely not so. And I hung out with Kim and Adera and spent hours laughing. I did not post that I was at Max Cooper’s house with a bunch of people because I didn’t want Macy to interrogate me about his every move. So yes, I had fun. Unlike right now.

  “Yeah, it was cool,” I mutter, hating that I am making chitchat with him. Thankfully, we are interrupted by Nate.

  “Bro!”

  “Bro!”

  Right. Speaking “bro.” An art form that I have yet to understand.

  “We’re gonna play Fortnite. You in?” Nate says in his regular voice. No character work involved when it comes to bro-speak.

  I want to ask him where McDimple is, but there’s no way I’m going to be obvious about having a crush on his cousin. Also: I hope Nate doesn’t tell Macy about seeing Max Cooper in Fair Harbor so I don’t have to endure twelve thousand questions about what Max Cooper said and who he was with and blah blah blah.

  “Can’t. I had to drop off some shit at the firehouse—gotta get back. Come through later, we’re gonna be kicking it.”

  “Cool, cool.”

  It’s a total body relief when they both ride off into their Fortnite-ian fantasy lives. Mostly because whatever Max Cooper wanted to tell me about Macy has been dropped.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ravi Srinivasan, my shift relief for the summer, rides by on his bicycle, his surfboard under one arm, steering his bike with his free hand, McDimple and Nate behind him. This is practically the eightieth time I’ve seen Nate today, which is normal—there’s only one town in Fair Harbor, one place to get everything you need. They park their bikes on the wooden bike racks across the pavement road in front of Crabby’s and approach my counter. I can tell they’ve been at the beach: their hair is wet, towels are shoved in their metal bike baskets, and there’s sand clinging to Nate’s calves.

  “Is it busy today?” Ravi asks, peering in to see if Sue’s around, and when he realizes she’s not, he grabs a few peppermint patties, so quick I don’t have the chance to slap his hand away. He throws one to Nate and one to McDimple, then unwraps one and pops it into his mouth. Well. He’s an employee, so Sue can deal with him.

  Some words that aren’t a sentence slip out of my mouth as I try to maintain eye contact with Ravi, but I can’t help myself, I keep looking over at McDimple, distracted by how he takes his T-shirt off, using it to rub the perspiration off the back of his neck, and I wonder if his skin is soft.

  “Wait, what?” Ravi asks, because, hello, I just spoke gibberish. I’ve known Ravi forever, like I have Nate and Macy. He has shaggy ebony hair, and he grew like ten feet over the winter—he’s really tall now, and he’s got the same problem I have, annoying zits that sit right under his bangs. Ravi has been coming to Fair Harbor every summer since he was a baby, and when we were twelve, we made out every day for a week, and I am pretty sure I’m the last girl he’s ever kissed.

  My personal repertoire of skills when it comes to sex is limited to open-mouth and closed-mouth kissing; I have sexual curiosity, obviously, but none of that applies to Ravi. Or Nate. Or any of the boys in our friend group, other than the new one, Leo McDimple.

  “No, it’s been so slow. I can tell you all about every customer I served today,” I say, speaking to the air above Ravi’s head and not at the dimple factory that I want to wrap my whole body around.

  McDimple is now looking directly at my face, and his mouth curves upward, and his dimples, oh, his dimples appear! It’s like we’re Romeo and Juliet right now, and I wish we were, but with a happier ending than theirs.

  “Are you guys going back to Birch?” I ask, hoping McDimple will say more words to me, but sadly, it is Nate who answers.

  “Nah, everyone’s scattered,” Nate says, and then all the boys start talking in monosyllables. They walk into Woodson’s without saying goodbye or anything else to me.

  Ravi barrels into the shack—the way into Crabby’s is through Woodson’s, after all—stows his surfboard in the back, says hello to Sue, then plows his way into my zone, taking over my spot behind the counter.

  He hip-bumps me—playful, of course; he’s not a jerk.

  “Get out of my way, sis.”

  “You’re early, Ravs,” I tell him.

  “Ten minutes is not early, Jasmine Jacobson,” Ravi responds, laughing.

  I am a stickler for punctuality, but I’m also so anxious to meet up with Macy that I don’t mind leaving work early. I doubt Sue will care. She favors Ravi anyway.

  I put my card in the antiquated punch-out clock and text Macy, letting her know I am on my way.

  As I leave the shack and enter the comparatively cavernous Woodson’s, I walk right into McDimple and Nate, who are standing in front of the counter where the pies are displayed.

  “Where you going?” Nate asks.

  “Macy’s.”

  McDimple is looking at a pie intently. “You think our moms will want apple or blueberry?” He lifts both pies at me, as if I know the moms well enough to have an opinion. I feel like me and McDimple are officially on our way to becoming a couple (yes, I know, he is face-mashing with Alice Adams, but an average girl can dream).

  “Our moms are twins. Sisters,” Nate explains, as if I don’t know that being twins also means being siblings.

  Nate’s mom, Sandy Beckerman, used to be friends with my mom, back when they’d piggyback our playdates with their day drinking when we were little. But I have no idea if Sandy Beckerman has a preference for apple or blueberry. “I . . . uh, go with apple.”

  “Thanks,” McDimple says as he smiles, our eyes connecting, the world around me warping into slow motion, and all that there is now is the two of us until he breaks the spell with a question. “You coming to sunset tonight?”

  The nightly ritual in Fair Harbor is to watch the sunset from the dock, as a community, which also means that my friend group has a place to meet up, unless it’s raining. So yes, I will be at sunset. I want to be around my friends and am still decompressing from a shitty year as a sophomore in a school that has way too many people. If I didn’t have my camera and my carefully curated Jazzmatazz socials where I post my photos, I’d basically be lost in the wallpaper of my school like everyone else except for the one percent of popular kids. I don’t have that feeling of being lost in Fair Harbor; I’m seen here, one of maybe ten people my age, and while every so often there’s a new addition to the friend group, we don’t have the kind of social hierarchy that exists at home.

  Leo McDimple is a new part of this dynamic, and as Nate’s cousin, he comes into our friend group preapproved.

  “Yeah, totally. See you at sunset,” I say. I’m poker-faced in my coolness, but I’m doing a Snoopy dance in my head.

  * * *

  • • •

  Can you pick up two skirt steak strips from Saltaire Market? The ones I like, okay? I’ll Venmo you now.

  It’s not unusual for Mom to text these requests, and I don’t mind, since I’ve just spent the day in a shack listening to Sue breathe. Plus, these very specific skirt steak strips from the market in Saltaire are not carried in Woodson’s, and they’re delicious, so I run the Mom errand before heading to Macy’s house.

  My Mom wants me to go to Saltaire and pick up steak. Come with?

  Can’t. Dealing with Olive. C u soon.

  Bicycles are the primary mode of transportation on Fire Island. In general, the bikes here are beat-up cruisers. They get rusty easily, an
d every year someone loses one or gets one stolen on the big weekends like the Fourth of July, when a lot of day-tripping mainlanders visit. I’ve had the same bike since I was thirteen, and I love it; it’s purple with a banana seat and it’s super beat-up and no one but me wants it.

  After picking up the steak, I ride toward Macy’s block and see the gaggle of supermodels walking toward me, which is not a problem—lots of people walk and bike along Central Walk; it’s the concrete street that runs through this part of Fire Island, separating the houses on the beach side from the houses on the bay side. The problem is that Leo McDimple is walking with them, and even though I’m riding by, I’m not speeding, I’m pedaling slow enough to see that he is walking really, really closely to the supermodel Alice Adams, like it’s just the two of them, and they’re a little separated from the pack, and he’s looking down at his phone while she talks. And I picture them making out and I almost lose my balance as I pass by, and just as I yelp, he looks up and says, “Hey, Jasmine.” I play it cool and yell “Hey” back, and I’m still within earshot when I hear Alice say, “Who’s that?”

  Exactly. Who is she to you, is what I want to know.

  * * *

  • • •

  I turn on Macy’s block, Birch, then get off my bike and park it in the bike rack that’s in front of her house.

  “Jacobson!” Macy yells from her porch and bounces off the steps to my side. She puts her arm around my neck and I wrap my arm around her waist as we walk up the stairs to her house, three steps leading up to it, white Christmas lights wrapped around the handrails.

  Lilly Whelan, Macy’s grandmother, comes out on the deck, her chunky red glasses covering her pale face—she doesn’t go into the sun. She’s a giant like Macy is, and she bends down to give me a hug. Lilly and Tom, Macy’s grandfather, are super into everyone calling them by their first names. When I try to call Tom “Mr. Whelan,” he always says, “That’s what people called my dad.” Har, har, har.