Love Show (20 page)

Needless to say, Jack and I didn’t speak for days after
that. And as much as I missed him, I was angrier than I was sorry. Whenever I
reached for my phone to apologize, I remembered how he’d blindsided me and I
set it back down. And Jack didn’t make an effort either.

Riley presided over class more
quietly than he usually did. Which is to say that he didn’t call anyone ‘a
fucking useless imbecile.’ We listened to him discuss hostage situations. We
learned about when keeping quiet was more important than speaking up.

Sometimes, I felt like his eyes
were hovering on me a second longer than they were hovering on anyone else in
the class. I wonder how much Jack talked to him. I wonder if he knew that we’d
fought.

At the end of class, he cleared his
throat. “We’ll be assigning you to your career profile of a deceased journalist
on Monday. If you’re interested in someone in particular, let me know by
tomorrow and we’ll see if you can be assigned to that person”

Valentine’s Day dawned bitterly cold, and stupid, like every
day in February and like every Valentine’s Day before it.

“Oh my god!” David screamed.

I followed the high-pitched screech
into the living room where David stood in his bunny slippers, wielding a
heart-shaped crepe pan. Someone had sent him roses. “Guess what day is today?”

“The day the world vomited up pink
and PDA?” I asked. “Haven’t heard from Jack in Three Days Day And Am Supposed
to Be Meeting his Family on Friday Day?”

“Don’t be such a Grinch.”

“That’s exclusive to Christmas.”

“Well, don’t be a Vrinch.”

“I don’t have the stomach for
romance,” I said.

David looked at me.

“Justin sent you flowers?”

David nodded. “I would guess so.”
He reached for the card. “I mean, it’s not like—” He stopped suddenly when he
read the note.

“What?”

He exhaled. “Shit.”

“What?”

I grabbed the card from him.
I
miss you. Please call me. Love, Ben
.

“You are not getting involved with
him again.”

“I know, Hadley. I’m not stupid,”
David snapped.

I bit my lip.

There was a rap on the door. “I am
so not getting that,” David said.

I swung open the door and saw Ben
standing in the hallway. “Oh,
fuck
no,” I said, trying to close the door
again.

“What?” David asked alarmed. He
walked to the door to see Ben. He took a step back. “Ben?”

“David, I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Just, I know I was horrible. I know, but I think it’s because I’m in love with
you.”

“You need to leave,” I said to him.

David caught my arms and pulled me
kicking back to my room. “Ben, come in. It’s fine. I just need to corral her.”

“You
cannot
date him. He is
a homophobic psychopath.”

“Hadley.”

“
David Michael McPhee
.”

“Trust me.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about.”

“I’m not going to let him hurt me
again,” David said in an even, low voice. “I promise. I know better. You have
to trust me.”

I took a deep breath. “Fine. But if
he fucks with your head again, I’m going to shoot him. I really will. So, make
sure he’s aware.”

David smiled at me. “Hadley, you
know I can handle this.”

“I know,” I said. “I just wish you
didn’t have to.”

“It’ll be fine. Go to class.”                       

 I left them quietly talking in
David’s room. I swallowed thickly, hesitating at the door. I didn’t want to
have to rely on trust to know David was safe. I wanted to just know. And I
wanted Ben to just leave.

I waited at the doorway for the
longest time, wondering what I’d lose if I just emailed my professors and said
that I was sick, and stayed home to make sure David was okay. But I couldn’t do
that—not to David, not to the people counting on me. So I left, stomach in
knots, wishing I hadn’t been so mean to Jack at dinner, wishing I had his arms
to collapse into.

After class, I went to the library. I texted David to make
sure everything was okay.

How did things with Ben go?

He wrote back immediately.
They’re
fine. He left.

Someone cleared his throat and I
glanced up. Jack Diamond was holding a single white rose. He was wearing a red
plaid shirt, which was loose on him, and his hair was pushed back off of his
forehead. He looked a little bashful, like he couldn’t believe he was doing
this either.

He held it out to me with a wry
little grin on his face.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Sh…” He said. “You’re supposed to
be quiet in the library.”

We weren’t alone in the library.
Two girls watched with interest across the table while I accepted the flower at
an arm’s length.

“I thought,” he said very softly.
“Since we had started breaking the rules.”

I looked at him.

“That maybe I should apologize,” he
whispered. He sat down next to me and leaned over my notebook and spoke in my
ear. “You had a shit day and I made it worse. I shouldn’t have jumped into that
conversation with your dad either. I suck. I’m sorry.”

I smiled in spite of myself.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. “I was
a bitch at dinner.”

“And, I thought, if we were really
going to break the rules…” he leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “You maybe
would come to the aquarium with me tonight? I know we said no dinners. But I
think we can look at fish together. Even if it is Valentine’s Day.”

I don’t know if it was the warmth
of his lips on my skin, or the way he smelled, or the fact that even thought I
hated Valentine’s Day, I loved white roses. Or maybe it was because just
because I wanted. “Yes,” I whispered. “It’s a date.”

“Well, now you’re getting awfully
dramatic,” he said, leaning back, satisfied. “A date? We’re just going to look
at some fish.”

And he made me laugh. For the
thousandth time since I’d met him, he made me laugh.

I looked at him. “Are we still on
for Friday?”

He smiled. “Yes. If you want to
be.”

I nodded. “I do.”

Late that afternoon, we drove towards the aquarium,
listening to the National.

I watched the flat, dusky world
from my window.

“Have you been before?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

He smiled. “I think you’ll like
it.”

Jack obviously had been. He knew
every single tank, every hidden exhibition. He took me through the crowded ones
first. He caught my hand in a darkened room before a shark tank. Alone, we
kissed in front of the cool blue waters.

Before the dolphins, Jack stood
behind me. His body was warm, his hand rested on my hip and he kissed my jaw.

But it was before the jellyfish,
where nobody was watching, that I stopped to stare. The ancient giants pulsed
like beating hearts.

“They say they might live forever,”
Jack whispered in my ear. “Some of them are hundreds of thousands of years
old.”

I leaned heavily against him. “Can
you imagine the things they’ve lived through?” I thought of crashing meteorites
and quaking seas. And then this—being taken from the open water and placed in the
middle of an ocean of people. “Do you think they know they’re being watched?”

He smiled and nipped my ear. “I
think everyone knows when they’re being watched.”

He laughed at me when I jumped back
from the eels. He stood close to the tank and watched carefully.

“Do you come here a lot?”

 “Not a lot. I’ve been before. I
used to go to the aquarium in Connecticut.” He glanced at me. “When I was a
kid.” He paused. “With my dad. He traveled a lot for work.” He shrugged. “After
he died, it was the only place that felt okay. Everywhere else seemed awful.”
He rubbed my shoulders. “I think it was the only place I let myself feel sad. I
didn’t remember him at school or the house we moved to after he died. But, I remember
him at aquariums.”

He smiled. “Anyways, I always felt
kind of weird at school because of that. Like everyone was actually there, in
the classroom or gym class, thinking about being in the classroom or gym class
and I wasn’t there at all. I was pretending I was at the aquarium.”

“I used to go to the library and
I’d read books,” I confessed. “Pretend I was someone else for a while. After a
while, I got sick of the fiction. Because I knew it would never happen. So I
read the newspapers. And I knew there was life after middle school. Outside of
where I grew up.”

He nodded. “Yeah.” He smiled.
“Always felt like I had more in common with a bunch of fish than with people
when I was a kid.” He chuckled. “I’m a disaster, though.”

 “That doesn’t make you a
disaster.”

He wasn’t wearing plaid today. I
stepped forward until we were inches apart. Our foreheads touched.

“I’m a little bit of a disaster,
Hadley.”

“Then, you’re my favorite disaster,
Jack.”

He brushed his lips against mine
and lifted me off the ground. And on the Valentine’s Day that I would always
remember as the day that we broke all the rules, I let a boy literally sweep me
off my feet.

“Your place?” he asked.

I laughed and nodded. We drove home
quickly.

He walked me from the car, where he
parked upstairs. “I could get used to this,” he confessed.

I paused and leaned against him. I
didn’t say anything and he chuckled to himself and didn’t bring it up as we
walked upstairs.

“We might be walking into a gay
fiesta, just FYI,” I said as we reached the hallway.

“That’s fine,” he said. “As long as
they don’t expect us to participate.”

“You wouldn’t do that for me?” I
asked, in mock indignation.

I heard a scream and a shout. I
pulled away from his kiss, at the same time as he lunged toward my door.

“Did you hear that?” Jack asked,
grabbing my arm. He pushed me away from the door. “Do you know who is in
there?”

“David! That sounded like David!”

“Get back, Hadley!” Jack barked and
I moved away from the door as he pushed it open.

The banging was coming from David’s
room. Jack pushed past me towards his bedroom and I followed close behind.

“David,” Jack yelled. “David, are
you alright?” He shoved the door open and moved ahead of me. I wanted to run to
him, but I didn’t. I pressed my hands to my mouth uselessly and stared.

David was bloodied and bruised, on
his knees, barely struggling against Ben. Ben’s hands were locked around
David’s neck.

David choked out a plea, or a cry
for help, his hands on Ben’s trying to tear them away. His eyes were wet and he
was desperate for air. The way he cried out sounded horrible, deeply painful,
and Ben kicked David harshly in the ribs, without releasing his stranglehold on
him.

Jack moved before I could scream.
Jack moved so quickly that Ben was grasping his bloodied nose, with his back
against the wall in the time it took me to reach David. And David spluttered,
and choked and fell from his knees to his stomach, and took these ragged,
shuddering breaths that sounded like nothing but pain.

His broken figure lay on the floor,
underneath my shaking, useless hands.

“David,” I whispered through tears.
“David, come on.” I turned him over. His eyes were open and he was breathing
shallowly.

Ben struggled against Jack and Jack
hit him again and he slumped, dejectedly against the wall.

“Get the fuck off of me,” Ben shouted.

“Hads?” David whispered.

“I’m here, baby,” I said. “We’re
here.”

“Hadley,” he whispered hoarsely.

“If you touch him again I will
fucking bury you, Mitchell,” Jack roared. “Do you understand me?” He slammed
Ben’s body against the wall so hard that the picture frames rattled. “Get the
fuck out.”

As soon as Jack released him, Ben
fled.

I tried to help David up, but he
curled away from me. “Go away,” he said, as the door slammed. “Go away,
please.”

“I’m calling the police,” Jack
said. “He’s in shock.”

“No,” David whimpered.

“He needs ice,” Jack said, not
listening to David and grabbing his phone.

“No,” David said softly. “Stop.
Hadley…I’m fine.”

I heard Jack on his cell phone
walking down to the kitchen.

“I’m calling to report a crime,”
Jack said deliberately into the phone. I watched him and my lungs and chest
filled with something, air and something else. I think it was gratitude. “2333
McBride Street. Apartment 2D.” Jack’s voice didn’t waver as David started to
cry.

He handed me a bag of ice and paced
before us, a look of capable concern on his face.

I put a hand on David’s back and he
pushed me away. “An assault. Yes, ma’am—his name is Ben Mitchell. He’s a
student at Northwestern. The athletic department should have his address and
photograph on file. The victim’s name is David McPhee.”

“Hadley, please,” David said in a
broken voice.

“He needs medical attention. No,
he’s alert, but he’s injured,” Jack said calmly, ignoring David. “Thank you. We
will.”

When he hung up the phone, Jack
walked over and picked David up. That was something that I wished I could do,
but couldn’t. He put him on the couch, steadied him. “Are you drunk?” Jack
asked him seriously.

David shook his head. “No.”

“Did he hit you in the head?”

David nodded. Jack was the strong
one, the capable one. He pulled David’s hands away from his face so he could
see his eyes. “You’re okay,” he told David softly when the sirens grew louder.

David flinched. And then he slumped
against me and I held his body against mine and pressed my lips to his forehead.
The little comfort I offered made him whimper.

The officers came before long.
Their footsteps made him flinch. When they sat down, all I could see was the
boy from South Dakota, who heard the word ‘fag’ in church and tried to hide all
of the truest parts of his soul. He knew if they found out who he was, they’d
kill him. And then, like everyone promised, it had actually gotten better. But
then it got worse. Really, really awful.