Love Show (14 page)

"I have an interview," I told Jack, when I arrived
at the frat house early Saturday morning, thinking about anything other than
jumping out of a plane.

"Where?"

"
The New York Times
,"
I said. I exhaled. "Your godfather actually helped me out."

"I'll have to tell him to stop
doing that," he said.

We took Xander’s old Jeep south of
the city. Jack and I got the back seats. Xander and Nate took the front.

“I want everyone to know that this
is a bad idea,” Xander said. “And it's all Jack's fault."

“It’s not a bad idea,” Jack said.
He leaned his head against the cold window and I leaned my back against the
door and put my feet in his lap. Whenever I looked over at him, he caught me
staring and smirked.

“You’ve done this before?” I asked
him.

“Yep,” he said. “Couple of times.”

“Jack’s skydiving solo,” Xander
told me, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. "Everyone else is getting
tied to a professional."

“Seriously? Have you done that
before? By yourself?”

He nodded. "Yeah."

"You've made this a
hobby?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

He smiled. “Why not?”

“Seems a bit extreme.”

“We can’t all be Editors-in-Chiefs
in our free time.”

"Well, how'd you get into
that?"

“Um, in Costa Rica, actually. When
I was fourteen,” he said. “I did this outward bound type of thing after I got
kicked out of boarding school.”

I raised my eyebrows incredulously.
"What? Why?"

"I don't know. It was Costa
Rica."

"I meant boarding
school."

“I didn’t do anything evil,” he
assured me. “Marijuana. Very old-fashioned place. Not everyone is from San
Francisco, you know. They probably taught you a class on how to roll a joint.”

“Not quite,” I said dryly.

He smiled. “I got kicked out of a
few boarding schools actually.”

“What for?”

“Kid stuff,” he said. “Alcohol,
breaking curfew, marijuana. I’m not great with rules.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Your rules are okay,” he smiled.
“Anyone who bans flowers I’m willing to listen to.”

I smiled and looked at him.
“They’re just guidelines.”

“Really? So, you will go to dinner
with me?”

I laughed.

He chuckled back. “I’m seriously
starting to hate this Brenner kid.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m just outraged
you had the time for dinner with him.” He grinned at me goofily. “So, when will
you find out if you get the
Times
job?"

“I don’t know. Like a week after my
interview probably,” I said.

"You should practice." He
lifted his chin. “What’s your greatest strength?”

“What?”

“Let’s practice for your
interview.”

“No,” I said, embarrassed. I
wrinkled my nose at the idea of Xander and Nate and Jack hearing the answers to
my interview questions.

“Come on."

"No," I said.

"What? You're suddenly shy?”

"It's just a personal
question," I said.

"Is that what you're going to
tell the guy who interviews you?"

"I'm going to tell the guy who
interviews me that my greatest strength as a journalist is precision."

Jack grinned. “What’s your greatest
weakness?”

I grinned. “I have trust issues and
watch reality TV. What's yours?"

He gave me a once-over. “Brunette
reporters.”

I laughed and my dark hair fell in
front of my face.

“This is probably true,” Nate
chimed in. “Jack doesn’t even know how to
attend
a meeting and he
managed to organize a mandatory meeting on your behalf.”

"It wasn't on my behalf,"
I said.

"Yes, it was," Nate said.
"He's the laziest person in the world. If you hadn't been the one asking,
nothing would have happened."

Xander and Jack chuckled.

I looked at Jack and shook my head.
"I don't think that's true."

"No, really. He's profoundly
lazy," Nate insisted.

"I am," Jack told me.

I shrugged. I still think he’d have
listened.

"Seriously," Jack
persisted. "Not into meetings at all.  And I didn't think it would work,
to be honest."

"Why?"

"Because the guys are immature
and they thought it was funny," Jack said. He shrugged. "It's not
like we have any real authority."

"Yeah," Nate said.
"It's a fraternity."

"I know that," I said.

"Being drunk and kind of
homophobic is par for the course," Nate said.

"Hadley's a little confused
about Greek life. She thought we were a pillar of responsibility.”

Nate nodded knowingly. "It's
more like a club that supports underage drinking and loose morals."

Jack laughed.

"I don't think it's
funny," I admitted quietly. "And it worked out. Everyone left him
alone." I shrugged. "Maybe I'm naïve and idealistic, but sometimes
you have to be.”

Jack met my eyes and smiled. “I
never thought it was funny. I thought you were a little bit funny.”

We pulled up to the skydiving facility
and for the first time all day, I acknowledged that I had agreed to jump out of
a plane. Jump. Out. Of. A. Plane.

In February.

Fuck.

“Don’t freak out,” Jack said
unhelpfully.

"That's great advice." 

I wondered when he started being
able to read me like that. I smiled at him, looking down the simple, paved
runway. And I opened the car door. It was bitingly cold and it would be even
colder when we jumped.

Jack had signed the release forms
before, and watched the safety videos. I watched them, too. Death, serious
injury, all that jazz.

I signed the form with a shaky
hand.

“Just pretend you're writing a
newspaper article in Egypt,” Jack teased.

“I am absolutely going to kill
you,” I said.

Jack laughed. “Trust me.”

“I do trust you. It’s the parachutes
that I’m suspicious of,” I hissed.

He laughed and kissed me lightly on
the cheek.

PDA. We hadn’t talked about that.
It should probably be against the rules, but I liked the way it felt, so I just
leaned against him.
You’re starting to be my good friend, Jack. Don’t fuck
this up.

He nuzzled me under his chin and
spoke softly. “Look, you don’t have to jump if you’re really freaked out.”

I shook my head. “Oh, screw you. I
drove all the way out here. I’m jumping out of a goddamned plane.”

He laughed and slipped his hands
around my waist and he leaned into my ear and spoke very, very softly. “I
didn’t think anything could feel as amazing as skydiving until I slept with
you.”

I arched my head back. “Oh, yeah?
So, what’s this? Double-checking?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “No,
I’m sure. This is just to keep things interesting.”

A man named Jonesy buckled me into
a harness while the plane idled nearby. Xander, Patrick, and I were all jumping
tandem, while Jack was flying solo. He’d done this before, I told myself. There
was no reason to worry.

The plane was noisy and I sat back
on a bench, in Jonesy’s lap, across from Jack, who grinned at me.

“Cozy?” he asked.

I made a made a face. I didn’t
think it was possible to have this many butterflies in your stomach. The plane taxied
down the runway and surged through its take off. My chest tightened and my
stomach went wild, as the earth shrunk below us. The engines roared in my ears.
I could hardly hear the instructor who I was strapped to shouting in my ear.

“Alright, sweetheart,” he said.
“We’re going to open the door in just a minute and then we’re going to jump.
Okay?”

Not okay. Not okay.
So
not
okay.

I shut my eyes until I heard them
open the door.

“Alright, here we go,” he said.
“Let’s start moving.”

“Okay,” I breathed. We stood up and
awkwardly moved to the door. The air was frigid. Actually, breathtakingly cold.

“Pull your goggles on,” Jonesy
shouted over the rattling engines. He walked me right to the edge of the plane.
All I could hear now was the wind and the noise. I turned my head, panicked,
and I looked at Jack. He’d risen to his feet to watch me go. And when I caught
his eyes, I felt safe.

And then we were standing outside
the plane.

The earth was spread out beneath
us, flat, like an unfurled map. Everything was white and gray for miles. I felt
my toes just over the edge of the doorway. I felt my heart riot in my chest. My
brain went clear. All I could see was the earth. All I could remember was that
we were jumping.

He pushed me out and we tumbled,
the air was the
sweet Jesus
kind of cold, filling my mouth, rushing
through my nose, stripping the warmth from my body and the air from my lungs. We
flipped once, twice, three times and the dark line of the horizon spun in my
eyes like a spinnaker.

My neck strained against the
pressure and then it didn’t feel like we were falling at all. We were still
dropping fast, but we were no longer accelerating. I was pressed tightly
against Jonesy’s chest, with my arms up against his like a gliding bird.

He opened the parachute and I felt
tightness around my chest and arms as we came out of the freefall. We slowed
and then we were just drifting over the earth.

“Oh my god,” I murmured as I was
flooded with endorphins. I felt like I was on drugs. I felt perfect. Like all
of the things I ever worried about would never return.

I never wanted to land. Even though
my teeth chattered, I wanted to drift forever.

“Lift your feet up and then try to
stand,” Jonesy told me as we approached the ground. And that’s just what I did.
We landed gently. But my legs shook as we stood. He lightly touched my waist
and unstrapped me and I sat down.

“Holy shit,” I said as I watched Jack
dropping in alone. He came in faster, whipping through the wind. And he landed
at a half-run, taking a few big steps forward and then jogging over to me,
shucking off the harness.

“Holy shit,” I repeated to him.

He laughed and pulled me to my
feet. I looked up at the sky. In the distance, we could see the other two
parachutes opening and Nate and Xander drifting back to earth.

“Can we do that again?” I asked
breathlessly.

He smiled and dropped his head.
Standing in an open field, with a parachute still strapped to his shoulders, he
kissed me deeper than anyone has ever kissed me before.

And my knees buckled. They actually
buckled. And the thing about your knees buckling that they never tell you in
the movies is that usually you’re never expecting it and usually neither is he.

So he didn’t catch me. The bastard.

I caught myself on my hands, but
not without feeling a sharp shooting pain in my knee, which twisted underneath
me.

“Shit. Ow.
Shit
,” I said,
grabbing at the horrible stabbing in my left knee.

“Jesus. Are you okay? Did you—what
just happened?” Jack asked. He helped me sit up.

“I have a Charlie horse in my
knee.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Oh my god, shut the fuck up, I’m
dying,” I said.

"Are you seriously hurt?"

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"Me knees went out."

"I made you weak at the
knees?"

"I'm serious. It
hurts
,"
I growled.

“Alright, alright, alright,” he
said. “Hey!” He shouted to one of the instructors. “She hurt her leg. Can you…”
They started running over and he looked back down at me. “Babe, can you stand
up?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It
really
fucking
hurts.” And it did. It was like a stabbing pain, deep and penetrating
and awful.

I lay on the cold ground, breathing
hard. Anyone who tells you that you should wait for that guy who makes you weak
at the knees should be shot.

Three hours later, I had crutches, Percocet, and a brace for
my sprained knee. Sweetly, Nate and Xander had stuck out the whole ordeal in
the waiting room while Jack tried not to laugh when I told the doctor that my
knee just collapsed after he’d kissed me.

“I hate you,” I grumbled as he
pushed the wheelchair to the doors. “Actual, real hatred.”

“That’s against the rules,” he
said.

“Says who?”

“I’m making a rule. No hatred.”

“Okay, flower child.”

Xander dropped me and Jack off at
my apartment. He took my tote bag over his shoulder, giving me a look like he
dared
me to make fun of him, and helped me to the door.

“You need to take the elevator,” he
said.

“There is no elevator,” I said,
testing out my crutches on the staircase.

Jack looked at me skeptically. “You
are going to die on these stairs.”

“Don’t be such an alarmist.” I
stumbled and he steadied me.

“No, no, no. I’m not taking you
back to the hospital tonight.” He picked me up abruptly, like I was an infant
and began walking up the stairs.

I lolled in his arms. I’d normally
put up a fight, but I was sleepy and who the fuck wanted to walk up stairs when
they were on painkillers and someone would carry them.

“I don’t want to hear a goddamned
word about how much I weigh.”

“No more than eleven pounds,” he
said.

“Good answer,” I replied dryly. We
reached the stop of the stairs and he set me down.

“What? No door-to-door service?” I
asked, putting down my crutches in the hallway and beginning the awkward jaunt
to my apartment door.

“Fuck no,” he muttered
breathlessly. He took my keys and opened the door. David and Ben sat on the
couch, smiling at each other, and both of them freaked out when they saw Jack.

“Seriously, Hadley?” David said,
annoyed. I had forgotten. I had completely forgotten that he planned on having
Ben over.