Love Show (22 page)

“I didn’t know how to. And you
weren’t going to Syria until a week ago. For a long time you were going to be a
journalist. I mean, honestly, by the time I figured out you were applying for a
job in Syria, I was so far in over my head with you…” he took a breath and his
voice trailed off. “This is just like me.”

“What?”                                                   

“To fall in love with someone who
couldn't be worse for me." He shook his head. "I mean, Jesus Christ.
You've got a lot of rules. And I've got just about none. But if I had to come
up with one it would be: don't sleep with the pretty girl headed for Syria in
six months. And if you do sleep with her, be damned sure you don't fall in love
with her. But here we are." He smiled humorlessly.

"You're not in love with
me," I said. "We're not even dating."

He laughed bitterly. “I am, though.
I really am. I'm in love with you.” He smiled again and shook his head. “But,
I’m fucked up." He got to his feet.

“Jack…”

"Look, don't worry about
it." He put his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “You don't have to
say anything, Hadley. I get it. You're not into it. You said that from the
beginning and you don't owe me anything. If you want to take off, take
off." He rubbed the back of his neck and turned back towards the house.

I stood up. "You want me to
go? You want me to leave the party you invited me to?"

He bit his lip. "No, I don't
want you to go." He shook his head. "But you probably should."

I met his eyes. "C'mon,"
I said softly. "Talk to me. I'm not going to die in Syria."

"My dad used to say
that." He nodded and looked down at his feet and then up at me. He
shrugged. "Listen, I'm going to go inside. You didn't sign up for
this."

"Okay," I said.
"That's okay. We'll figure it out."

"Figure what out?" he
demanded. "I’m telling you I can’t do this anymore, Hadley.”

I met his eyes. "You can't do
this because I'm going to Syria?" I said. I shook my head. "I just
don't understand—”

"Jesus, Hadley, haven't you
listened to anything I said?"

"Well, everything was fine.
You knew that I—”

"I said I’m love with
you," he yelled. He threw his head back and I took a step back and looked
at him. He looked at me again and exhaled. "I'm in love with you," he
repeated quietly. “Do you get that?”

I bit my lip. I had nothing to say.

"I'm sorry," he said. He
shook his head. "There are about a dozen girls who I had to say I was
sorry to because I didn't love them. So I get what it's like for you right now.
Believe me. I know. It's terrible. You feel guilty and awkward and like you
failed to communicate something to me." He nodded. "But most of all
you feel like you want to get the hell away as fast as possible. And I know
what that feels like and I'll make this easy for you. Take off. Go home. It’s
fine. I broke the rules and I got burned and that’s my fault.”

"You don't know how I
feel," I said. I didn’t feel awkward. I felt sick.

"I love you, Hadley."

"Would you
stop
saying
that?" I snapped.

He smiled sadly. “See?” He shook
his head.

I wanted to cry. I was almost sure
that I’d start crying.  “Since when?” My voice sounded strangled.

He laughed. He lifted the flask to
his lips. His face twisted when he swallowed. He stared at me. “I don’t know.
Maybe since I met you,” he bit his lip. “Listen. Go. Go. It’s fine.” He smiled.
“You don’t want this and I’ll…I’ll deal with it. But, you should go. It’ll be
easier for you and it’ll be easier for me, too.”

"Well, do you want me to come
say goodbye? To Riley or your...family?"

He gave me a cocky smile. I’d seen
it a million times. On his Facebook page, when he was talking to people he
didn’t really know, when someone told a story he didn’t think was particularly
funny and he wanted to be polite. This empty, distant, arrogant smile like he’d
never even worried about anything before in his life. “Nah. Don't worry about
it. I’ll clean up. Not your mess anyways.”

I expected him to turn back and
look at me as he walked back towards the house. I expected him to laugh and say
he was fucking with me, he was drunk, or that he just needed some space, or
that he’d call me tomorrow or that he’d see me around. Or something.

But the door closed and he didn’t
come back.

I stood staring at that door for a
long time.

I didn’t have a ride back to my apartment. And I didn’t call
for one. The air was cold enough that I couldn’t think about the icy pain in my
chest.

By the time I got home I was
shaking from the cold. I felt so tired, like I’d walked eight miles instead of
half of one. I shuddered in the doorway, flipping on the lights, taking off my
heels.

“You’re early,” David said. He
turned to look at me. “How was it?”

I smiled, took the kettle down from
the cabinet, and filled it with water.

Then I burst into tears.

“Hadley! What the hell happened?”
David asked. He got up from the couch next to Justin. I smiled as widely as I
could manage.

“Nothing,” I insisted, pressing my
hand to my mouth, squeezing my eyes shut.

“Hadley.”                       

“Please, David,” I said, as he
crossed the room to me.

“What did he do?”                         

“Nothing. He didn’t do anything,” I
said. I took a deep breath and managed to keep the sobs down until I’d
entangled myself from his wrist and gotten to the bathroom to turn on the
shower.

David refused to let me leave the next morning. He insisted
on an explanation. And when I’d finally spat out the whole sorry story, I still
hadn’t touched my pancakes.

I shook my head. “I should have
known."

"What?"

"That this would end
badly," I said.

David looked at me in concern. “Is
it really a problem that he loves you?"

I shrugged. "He seems to think
so."

"Why?"

"Because he broke up with
me."

"But you aren't even
dating."

"He told me to leave." I
took a breath. "He told me he loved me and that I had to go. And I
did."

"What did you say?"

I shrugged. "Nothing. I
left."

He was quiet. "Do you love
him?"

I cocked my head at David. I
exhaled. "I don't believe in that stuff."

"In love?"

"Not the way he meant
it." I put my hair into a ponytail and gathered up my things. "I have
to go."

"Hadley," David called
after me.

“David, I have to go. The newspaper
has to get put out,” I said. I probably had done it before, used the newspaper
as an excuse to hide from people. But I’d never been so aware of it.

Every comma I cut, every sentence I
reworded, I knew exactly what I was doing. He told me he loved me and I wanted
to say it back.

But, I was afraid.

So, on a Saturday morning, feeling hung-over
and half-empty, I copyedited the newspaper.

You’re breaking your own heart
,
a tiny voice told me, when I looked up for my work long enough to think about
it.

Another voice, one I knew better
and trusted more, spoke back
you have to break your own heart. You can’t
compromise.

I had no idea how I was going to face Professor Riley in
class on Monday. I wondered what Jack had said when he returned to dinner. Had
he told them I was crazy or heartless or just feeling sick?

Had he just told them the truth?

I sat in the second-to-last row,
close to the back of the room. I scrawled my name in nervous, looping letters
in the corner of my notebook. I tried not to think about the way Jack smiled on
Friday night, like he'd seen this coming and he hadn't been able to stop it and
for some reason that was funny.

Like finding out something that had
seemed too good to be true just wasn't true.

Well, of course.

I had scrawled my name over half
the page by the time Riley walked in, and I didn't look up when he grumbled
hello to the class.

He had moved to ethical constraints
on journalism when it came to respecting other people's religious beliefs, and
I finally looked up when he referenced a statistic on a slide.

He wasn't looking at me. Obviously.

He didn't look at me all class. I
bit my lip and took notes and when he was finished talking, I did my best to
pack up my things in record speed.

"Now before you go, we'll be
distributing your assigned journalist for your profile." He looked around.
"Oh, and Hadley?"

Shit
.

"Can I talk to you for a
second after class?"

I wondered if Jack had told him
we’d broken up.

Or whatever that had been on
Friday. A fight? No, it was more than a fight. It was the end of something.

I chewed my thumbnail while the
classroom emptied.

"Are you going to come down
here?" Riley asked with a grin.

I got up and walked down the rows
to where he stood by his desk.

I wasn't going to talk first. I
couldn't think of a single thing to say. He stared at me piercingly.

"So, Friday was fun," I
said. So much for the not talking first. "I mean, it was nice seeing you."

Riley smiled. "I didn't know
about you and Jack."

"Oh," I said.

"You're good for him," he
said, cocking his head.

I opened my mouth and then closed
it. I cocked my head and cleared my throat. "I'm not his girlfriend or
anything."

He laughed. "Yeah, he said
that. Whatever you are, though, I think it's good."

I nodded. He told me to go away. I
guess even investigative journalists missed the obvious sometimes.

"Anyways, I'd assigned you
Jack's father, Scott Diamond." He looked at me. "I'd made the
decision before I knew you were...how did you put it? Not Jack's girlfriend or
anything?" He smiled at me.

Jesus. Christ.

I smiled back. "Right."

"Anyways, if you're not
comfortable with the assignment because of that, you can choose someone else.
But I thought you'd do a good job with it." He smiled. "He'd have
liked you. He was idealistic, too." He nodded. "It's the only time
I'd thought to assign him to anyone and I'd like it if you did it. But I
understand if you'd prefer not to."

"I'll do it," I said
quietly. I cocked my head. I had a feeling Jack would hate it if he knew. But
he wouldn't know. The sad thing was that I didn’t think he’d ever find out.
Because I didn’t think he’d ever talk to me again.

He nodded. "Good. Glad to hear
it. You feeling better?"

So that's what Jack had gone with.
Sick. "I feel great. Thanks."

He nodded. "I hope you don't
take this the wrong way, but you should know Jack's a fighter."

I looked at him.

"It's how he shows he cares
about people." He grinned. "If he's fighting with you, you
know."

I wished that we were fighting. But
we weren't. He was ignoring me. And I was letting him. "Thanks, but I'm
really not his girlfriend."

"Like I said, whatever you are
to him, it's good."

I nodded once, unwilling to shatter
that perception, because it seemed to make him happy. "Well, ah,
thanks."

He laughed. "For a research
project and unsolicited relationship advice for someone you swear you're not
dating? Anytime."

I managed to laugh and told him I
had to get to a meeting. I walked quickly from his classroom to the newspaper
office.

My phone hadn't been quiet. Not
exactly.

My mother had texted about dinner
plans for graduation weekend, my father had sent me an email about a suicide
bombing in Syria with the subject line FYI, and David had sent me a gif of a
dancing rabbit.

But Jack hadn't sent me anything.

I put the phone in a drawer so I
couldn't think about it and turned my attention to writing a brief on
employment statistics for recent graduates.

It was dry material and
uncomplicated—the report released by the Alumni Affairs Office came with charts
and detailed analyses.  On a normal day, I would've delegated it to a junior
writer, but I wanted something to do. I sighed when I finished it and forwarded
it to Andrew for copyedits.

I glanced out the window, pulled my
phone from the drawer and tapped out a response to my mother.

Graduation wasn't far off—two
months now—just eight weeks.

That seemed surreal.

The newspaper office was quiet. I
peered out my door. If I wanted to Google Scott Diamond, I could. No one would
know. But I felt brittle and I thought that reading about it might break me.

I packed up my things and went
home.

I started crying in the shower. Something about the hot
water on my skin. The way he had told me to leave. The way I couldn’t stop
remembering. The first sob felt like it was ripping through me, and when I
realized I wasn’t going to be able to stop them, I just let myself cry. I sat
down on the cold, tile floor and tried to breathe through the pouring water.

I never expected to feel this
rejected.

I scrubbed my hair viciously, like
it could stop the flood of emotion. I was crying because he said he loved me
and that I had to leave and I knew that if the first thing was true, so was the
second one.

I got out of the shower, wrapped
myself in one towel, and put my hair up in another one.

I wandered out into the living room
to David, who was lying flat on the floor listening to some kind of new age spa
music.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Realigning my spine," he said
serenely.

I sat down next to him in my towel
and looked at the ceiling. I shifted. “Huh.”

“Sh..." he said. "You're
killing my zen."

"How?"

"Bad energy." He snapped
open one eye. "Lie down. If anyone needs their spine realigned, it's
you."

"What does that even mean?"
I demanded.

"It means shut up and lie
down."

So I did.

“How do you know when it’s
aligning?”

“When you feel the tension leave
your body,” David said knowingly.

“What does that feel like?”

David turned his head to me and glared.
“Start with silence. Tension leaving will eventually follow.”

“Sure.”

“Close your eyes. Shut up.”

I breathed and stared at the
ceiling and closed my eyes. My damp shoulder brushed David’s and I waited for
the tension to leave my body.

My breathing slowed. Maybe it was
the tension leaving my body. Maybe it was being hit with a wave of exhaustion.
But something happened.

“There,” he said.

“What are you talking about? My
spine is still misaligned,” I informed him.

“Well, you haven’t been working
hard enough at the silence,” he said. He stood up. “Want some tea?”

I sat up.

“Well, now it’s definitely not
going to align,” he informed me.

I chuckled.

“How you doing, girlfriend?” David
asked gently.

“Spectacular. I'm writing a paper
on Jack’s father for the journalism class taught by his godfather who doesn't
believe that I'm not his girlfriend."

"Sounds complicated.” He
handed me a warm mug of tea. Our hands brushed. "Your mom emailed me about
graduation."

"Oh yeah," I smiled.

"Justin said his parents
wanted to come. Especially since mine aren’t."

"Nice."

"Yeah? You don't think that'll
be weird?”

"I mean, my parents are
coming.
That
will be weird. I'll tell my mom to add them to our
reservations. If you want.”

He nodded. "Mm. Yeah. If she
doesn't mind?"

"She won't."