Love Show (11 page)

Cheryl offered me the job while I walked back to the
apartment on Saturday night. It was eight o'clock and I was sure the unknown
number belonged to a telemarketer. But, it was her, working on a Saturday.

It made me think I really had no
idea what I was getting into.

"Can I have a few weeks to
think about?" I asked, fumbling with the keys. I was relieved. It was an
option and a good one, but I was still holding out hope that I might get a job that
I really wanted.

"Sure, take your time,"
Cheryl said. "We look forward to hearing from you."

I had not heard back from Suzanne.
I suppose that was to be expected.

I unlocked the door, finally, and
pushed into our apartment. The light to David's room was on, for the first time
in days. Most of the time, when I came home, he'd gone to sleep or he'd gone to
Ben's.

"David!" I shouted.

When he didn't call back, I walked
into his room frowning. He must have left the lights on before he went out. I
sighed, disappointed, and flicked them off.

And then I heard a sound, like
whimpering. I turned the lights back on and crossed to his bathroom door.

I hesitated. I didn’t want to barge
into anything in the shower, but it sounded like someone in pain. "Hey,
David?" I called softly.

I knocked. “David?”

“Hadley?” he called back shakily.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, f-fine,” he said.

“You want me to come in?"

He didn’t say anything so I pushed
open the door. He was hunched over the sink, pressing a blood-strained cloth to
his mouth.

I darted across the bathroom. I put
my hands on his back. “David,” I gasped.

One of his eyes was brimming with
tears. The other was badly hurt, already swollen shut, concealing the robin’s
egg blue of his iris that had startled me the first time I met him. “David,” I
repeated. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he muttered.

“Honey…”

“Ben and I got into a fight.”

“He
hit
you?”

“We got into a fight,” David
repeated, like this was different. His lip was split and he was bleeding from
the gums.

“David,” I said. “You need to call
the police.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Stay there. Here. Sit down,"
I said, kicking down the toilet seat and pushing him by the shoulders so he was
sitting. "I'm going to call the cops. I'll be right back."

"Don't! Hadley, I’m serious. Stop.
Please don’t, Hadley. We got into a fight. It was mutual. I’m not a girl.”

“I never said you were.”

“Well, it’s different.”

“No, it’s not different.”

“It’s completely different.”

“Nobody’s boyfriend should hit
them,” I yelled at him, furious at the implication. “David! He beat the
crap
out of you.”

He swallowed thickly. “I said I was
fine.” His voice broke as he said it and I instantly regretted raising my
voice. “Can you please just help me?”

I sighed. “Just give me a second."

"Don't call the police,
Hadley. I'm begging you."

"Okay. I won’t. I’m getting
you ice.” I tried to collect my thoughts as I walked to the freezer.
Don’t
get emotional. He’s been attacked by someone that he’s in love with. Be logical
and be firm and you can talk about it in the morning.

It all sounded fine in my head, but
as I reached for a cloth to wrap the plastic bag of ice in, I wanted to stomp
Ben bloody.

“
Motherfucker
,” I muttered
to the refrigerator. “Stupid fucking asshole.”

I walked back to David’s room. He’d
pulled off his blood-spattered shirt and sat on the toilet, shivering. I handed
him the ice and went back into his room. I took his fleece to him, and helped
him ease his aching shoulders into the sleeves.

“Thanks,” he whispered brokenly.

I clucked. I couldn’t help myself. “Come
into the living room,” I said, pulling him up. “I’ll make you tea.”

I helped him onto the couch and
flipped through the channels, looking for something that might make him smile.
That would be hard. But I found a rerun of
Make it Or Break It
, a cheesy
ABC Family show we’d been obsessed with our freshman year, when we were both
clueless eighteen-year olds.

“Love this show,” he said softly.

I put on the kettle, drumming my
fingers against the countertop. The silence was fraught with his fear and
adrenaline. I wanted to take it away for him. I made a cup of Chamomile with
honey and brought it to him.

I sat down cross-legged next to him
on our couch and he leaned against me, cradling the cup in his hands. “Thanks,
Hadley.”

“Yeah, of course,” I said softly. I
ran my fingers through his short hair. He’d cut it for Ben.

“I feel like an idiot,” he
murmured.

“You’re not an idiot.”

“We just got into an argument,” he
said softly. “I know what it looks like. But, it was just an argument.”

I swallowed. “What happened?” I
asked as neutrally as I could.

“He hooked up with this girl,” he
said. “I asked him—I asked him if he could stop doing that. He got upset.”

“And he hit you?”

He shrugged. “No. I tried to leave,
and he wouldn’t let me. But I tried, physically, to go and he got pissed off
and…” He swallowed and closed his eyes before he continued. “He tried to
apologize. I wouldn’t let him.” He bit his lip. “But, it was, you know, we were
both winding each other up. I just didn’t know he’d snap like that.”

“Your boyfriend isn’t allowed to
hit you,” I said as firmly as I could. I thought he should know that already. I
thought everyone knew that intrinsically. But he was insisting they’d had a
fight, which was a totally different situation. Even though I didn’t see it
that way. And I could already feel him tuning me out.

“David?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll talk to
him,” David said. He shifted.

“Did you hit him back?” I asked.

“No, no,” he shook his head. He
laughed softly and sadly. “You know me. I’m only verbally confrontational.”

I swallowed and nodded. “Dave, I
know this seems like a fight to you. But you shouldn’t stay with someone who
hits you. No matter how crazy about them you are.”

He didn’t say anything. He reached
for his tea and took a sip. “It wasn’t like that, Hadley.”

“You keep saying that, but he hit
you.”

“I know, but it was different.”

I let out a frustrated sigh. “Let
me see your eye.”

He dropped the ice from his eye and
winced at me. “How bad is it?” he asked in a small voice.

“It’ll be fine. Keep the ice on
it.”

“He’s under a lot of pressure,” he
continued. “And he’s afraid about the whole thing and I just picked something
that bugged him to begin with. And, I don’t know. I couldn’t let it go.”

“You really don't need to make
excuses for him," I said.

“No, I’m not saying he should have
hit me. But we just got into a fight. It’s like fighting my brother, you know?”
he said, like I’d understand.

I refused to accept that. But it
wasn’t the time for an argument. I bit my lip and we were quiet until the
credits rolled. David sat there quietly, as another commercial played.

“I really like him,” he said after
a moment. “I know you think I’m being insane, but I really, really like him. I
need you to trust me on this. It was just a fight. He’s not, you know,
abusive.”

I inhaled sharply. “David, I can’t
tell you that it’s okay that he did that.”

“Fine. But please don’t try to talk
me into breaking up with him. Because I’m telling you right now that it’s not
going to happen. I’m not going to give up on it yet.”

“Making you hide who you are?
Isolating you from your friends? Hitting you? These are not the actions of
someone who loves you,” I said hoarsely. “I am not going to sit around and tell
you to put up with it.”

“I’m not an idiot, Hads,” he said,
with a touch of his former flair in his voice. “I wouldn’t stay with someone
who was dangerous. It looks bad, but it’s not what you think. I need you to
trust me. Okay?"

I met his eyes and I didn’t know
what else to say.  I wanted to scream at myself as much as I wanted to scream
at him. It was definitely not okay for anyone to hit my best friend. And it was
especially not okay for his so-called boyfriend to do it. And the least okay
part about it was that David was going to accept it.

"Okay," I said. I
swallowed and he nodded gratefully.

I was old enough to know that very
few things in life were as black and white as they seemed when you were a kid.
But this was one of them. This didn’t happen. It shouldn’t. It was wrong.

But, I said okay when I knew I
shouldn't have.

“Somewhere, somehow, I lost my backbone,” I told Jack, lying
on his bed, in his boxers and one of his flannel shirts. I was totally starting
to understand how someone could wear them everyday.

Jack was quiet. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” I was on my back
looking up at the cracked ceiling with my head in Jack’s lap, and I wanted to
stay here forever, which was probably against one of our rules. “David’s
boyfriend beat him up."

Jack was quiet for a brief second.
“Well, who the fuck is his boyfriend?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Well, I can’t kill him if you
don’t tell me who he is.”

I grinned briefly. “I told David I
wouldn’t. He’s in the closet and I guess he’s terrified of anyone finding out,”
I said. “But he, I mean, his eye is swollen shut. David said it was a fight.
And he did this whole long thing where he was like I just need you to trust me
on this. And I said
okay
, of all the unbelievably stupid things to say,
I was just like, okay, David, that’s
fine
with me that your douche bag
boyfriend beat you up, and that you can’t see out of one eye, and that you’re
an emotional wreck. No worries. Love is love.” I sighed. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

Jack made a noise in the back of
his throat. “Well, what else could you do?”

“I don’t know. Get him to
understand that’s it’s
not
okay.”

“Well, I still think you have a
backbone,” Jack said softly. “And I can beat the shit out of his boyfriend.”

I gave him a look.

“Don’t look at me like that. I
could get violent for you.”

“For David,” I corrected.

“I could get violent for David,
too. I have a car.”

I laughed. “What are you going to
do with a car?”

“Run him over. Go bury him. Drop
him in the lake. I can do it, baby,” Jack whispered, pressing his lips to my
forehead. “Just tell me, baby.”

“Do not—”

“I’m allowed to call you ‘baby’
when I’m pretending to be a criminal. That’s how criminals talk,” Jack said. He
smiled, but only briefly. He looked at me, like he was thinking: “You want to
report it?” he asked after a moment.

“To who?”

“I don’t know. The police? Campus
Health? CAPS?” CAPS was the mental health crisis center on campus. I hadn’t
even thought about that. “I’m sure they have some kind of process you can use.”

“David would kill me if I got this
guy in trouble.”

Jack shrugged. “Yeah, maybe at
first.”

I sighed. “I don’t know. He’s my
best friend. I do trust him.”

“Are you worried about David’s
safety?”

“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know.
Psychologically, a little bit. I mean, David was—he was different before he
started seeing him. He was happy to be gay. Now, he feels like he has to hide
it.”

“But he said they got into a
fight?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it was just a fight.”

“David didn’t hit him back.”

Jack frowned. “Maybe David needs to
take some boxing lessons.”

“Not a bad idea,” I said, frowning.
"I'll run it by him."

Jack rubbed his chin. "Have
you talked to him about it?"

"Not since Thursday."

"Well, talk to him. I mean the
best thing would be David deciding this guy was a problem."

"Yeah," I agreed. I shook
my head. "I don't know. Sorry to burden you. It's just disturbing. Aside
from newspaper people, David's my only friend. And I feel like, I don't know, I
should be doing a better job."

“Hads, you know you’re doing your
best.”

“I don’t know.”

He ran his hand through my hair and
leaned down to kiss me. It was an affectionate kiss more than anything else and
I smiled up at him for a long minute.

“So, you still like Riley’s class?”
Jack asked, breaking the silence.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What does he have you report on?”
Jack asked. “Since you’re obviously not at war with anyone.”

“He tries to get us to write about
things that are chaotic,” I said. “Like, write an accurate account of a time
when you were totally wasted.”

Jack laughed. “How do you even
remember enough to do that?”

“Exactly. And how do you not make
yourself sound like a total asshole?”

Jack smiled. “I think I like you
when you’re drunk.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever seen me
really drunk.”

“The night we first hooked up…?” He
grinned.

“Oh, no. You’ve definitely never
seen me really drunk,” I said. “I’m not nice.”

He chuckled and shifted my head out
of his lap. I sat up as he got to his feet. “I’d like to see that, actually. It
could be fun.”

I watched him go to his desk and
pull down a book. His books—and he had over a hundred—were neatly organized
above his desk. And the ones that didn’t fit there lined a bookcase by his bed.
I hadn’t encountered anyone with as many books as Jack. Most students only
bought books required for their classes. But Jack had more books than any
professor could assign, and all of them looked like they had been read.

 “I got something for you,” he
muttered over his shoulder, half-bashful. “I mean, I didn’t
get
it for
you. I’ve had it. But, I think you’d like it.” He moved a few books around and
found the one he was looking for. “Here,” he said, handing me a worn out copy
of
The Bombs over Bosnia
, a collection of Robert Riley’s articles on
Bosnia.

I took it, surprised and grateful. “Wow.
How did you get…” I cut myself off. “Godfather, right?”

“Yup. I have a couple copies.
That's a first edition," he said. He rubbed his chin and shrugged.
"Thought you might like it."

I had a copy of the paperback at
home. I could've said I already had it, but it wouldn't be true at all. This
copy was worn and read and possibly even loved, like the best books should be.
And it was Jack’s.

I thumbed through the pages.
Someone had crinkled them while they were reading. Maybe over and over again. I
saw Jack’s familiar handwriting in the margins and ran my fingers across the
words. When I looked up, he was watching me.

“Thank you, Jack.”

“I don’t know if that’s against the
rules or not,” he said sheepishly.

“Books are cool,” I replied.

“Okay,” he grinned. “Good.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean…I already
had it. It’s not like…” he lifted his shoulders and sat down at his desk.

I laughed. “Alright.” I set it
gently down next to my bag and clothes and got out of bed.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” he
asked.

“Newsp—”

“You know, I am really getting sick
of that word.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied.

He smiled as I traded his clothes
for my less comfortable ones. “You know, you could sleep over.”

“Rules.”

“How is it that sleeping in the
same bed means more to you than sex?”

“It doesn’t mean more to me,” I
told him, buttoning my jeans and slipping my feet into my Converse sneakers.

“I mean, even you must have the
time to sleep.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes. In my own
bed.” I kissed him briefly and he reached for my wrist. I held the book he’d
given me in one hand and looked into his brown eyes. And I leaned in for
another kiss.

I loved the way he kissed me. But
this felt more serious, deeper and longer, and we held each other’s eyes for a
long moment before I cleared my throat and felt a flush rushing to my face. I
turned my head.

“See you around, Hads.”

"See you around, Jack."

He smiled. "If you need
anything, you know, just pick up the phone."

I nodded and smiled back. “I will.”