Love Show (28 page)

In the end, he picked the restaurant and he insisted on
coming all the way uptown just to go all the way back downtown with me.

"You have too many
stairs," he said. "Fact."

"We could've just met at the
restaurant," I said, opening the door.

"You could just move."

"Mmm...maybe you can carry all
my boxes for me?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Ask
me that when I've had a chance to recover."

I smiled. "Let's go."

"Oh, back down the stairs?
Right after I came up?"

I laughed.

"I told you that we should've
met at the restaurant."

"I had to pick you up for our
first date."

We got into a cab and headed down
to the West Village.

"How was school?"

"Crazy. Kids are psychotic. I
had the kindergarteners today. I wasn't impressed. Not too bright."

I smiled, imagining Jack surrounded
by five-year-olds.

"Junessa said that I was
spelling my name wrong."

"Jack?"

"No, Mr. Diamond."

"They call you Mr.
Diamond?"

"It's disturbing, I
know," Jack said. "She said I was spelling Diamond wrong because it
needed to have sparkles. And I told her, you know, sparkles isn't actually a
letter, and she started crying."

"Oh, God. What did you
do?"

"I told her I'd made a huge
mistake and that sparkles was definitely a letter. The kindergarten teacher was
like,
please don’t ever talk about the alphabet again.
”

I laughed and took a long second to
stare at Jack, really stare at him. He was so damn handsome.

"What?"

"Nothing," I said
smiling. I bit my lip. "We’re going on a real date."

He nodded. "You freaking
out?"

"No," I said. I smiled
and shook my head. "Well, kind of. But not about being on a date with
you."

“What are you freaking out about
then?”

I laughed. “Everything else.”

Although, strangely, I wasn’t.
Knowing he was here. Knowing that I could call him…it made everything that had
seemed so hard seem a little bit easier. I leaned against his shoulders. “This
is going to work, right?” I asked.

He nodded. “Affirmative.”

I brought him back home with me. I let him feel me shivering
when the sirens started as we climbed the stairs.

“What do you need?” he asked
softly. He put a hand on my lower back, as I braced one hand against the wall.
“You said you had Xanax?”

I nodded. “Upstairs. I can walk.” I
didn’t want this to happen in front of him. I didn’t want to seem like a total
fucking head case in front of him.

He nodded. “Put your hands on top
of your head.”

“What?”

“Put your hands on top of your
head. It helps with the breathing.”

I looked at him.

“My mom,” he said. “She gets panic
attacks.” He smiled, he took my hand. “Did I ever tell you about my pet pig?”

I shook my head.

“So, when I was younger, I read
Charlotte’s
Web
,” he said. We had reached the landing of the staircase. “And I was kind
of obsessed with Wilbur. We were living in the city at the time. Not exactly
the kind of place where you can see farm animals. But, my dad took me out to
New Jersey one day. And there was an organic pig farm.” He smiled. “You know,
happy little pigs. And we were on the tour and they were showing us the baby
pigs and there was a tiny one named Twister and the farmer giving us the tour said
sort of dismissively that Twister was not likely to live to maturity and I
asked what that meant.” He smiled. “And my dad, I could tell, right away, he
wanted to punch this farmer in the jaw for telling me that the baby pig was not
likely to live to maturity. But he told me it meant the pig would die.”

He had reached my couch and sat me
down and locked my door.

He kept talking as he walked to the
bathroom and took down the Xanax and brought me a glass of water.

“So, I had a meltdown and my dad
couldn’t take it so he asked the farmer how much the pig would cost him.” He
smiled. “I think he shelled out like three hundred dollars.”

“And you had a pet pig?”

He smiled. He handed me the water
and the pill. “And I had a pet pig.”

I looked at him. I felt fine. I
felt calm. “I don’t need it.”

He smiled slightly, like he was
proud of himself.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Um, I don’t know. I
got good at distracting my mom when she was getting upset.” He smiled. “She
liked when I talked about Twister.”

“A pig named Twister.”

He nodded. “I’ve got the pictures.”

“I want to see them.”

He smiled. He kissed me lightly.

“Are you really freaked out?”

He looked at me. “About what?”

“Me.”

He shook his head. “Why would I be
freaked out?”

“Because I’ve turned into kind of a
head case.”

He shook his head. He wrapped an
arm around me. “I’m not freaked out.”

I smiled.

He ran his hands down my body.
“You’re gorgeous,” he said. He smiled. “And I love you.”

“And I’m a head case.”

He kissed me.

“I’m sorry,” I said throatily.

“For what?”

“For being selfish,” I said.

“You did what you needed to do.”

I shook my head. “I hurt you.”

He bit his lip. “Yeah.”

My eyes filled.

“But I was being an idiot,” he
said.

“No, you told me you loved me. And
it was all I wanted to hear. But I pretended it wasn’t. I convinced myself I
wasn’t. Because I thought—I don’t know. I keep trying to figure out what I was
trying to protect myself from and it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Listen. We were both young.”

“We both still are.”

“No, we both made promises to
ourselves when we were young. Right?” he looked at me. “They had a lot to do
with our parents, right? I saw my Mom’s life shatter because she married
someone with a dangerous job who couldn’t give it up. And I said, I’m never
going to do that to my wife and I’m never going to fall for a girl that would
do that to me.” He met my eyes. “And you promised yourself you were never going
to give anything up for love, because it never worked out for your parents. You
promised yourself you wouldn’t fall in love, basically.

“But I fell for the girl with a
dangerous job and you fell in love and we both decided we needed to keep these stupid
promises we made to ourselves when were kids instead of growing up and
realizing, things aren’t that black and white.”

“Right,” I said. I nodded. “But
you…”

“I’m sorry.” He said. “If I’d
listened to you, I wouldn’t have pushed you so hard so fast. But I wanted to
know after two months whether you’d give up your dream for me. And when you
hesitated, I wouldn’t compromise. I fucked up, too. This is not on you.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, it is.”

“It’s on both of us.” He grabbed my
hands and laced our fingers together. “And I don’t care, because we fixed it,
right?” He looked at me.

“We fixed it?” I smiled. “Jack,
this is still kind of a mess.”

“Right. But we know that now,” he
smiled back. “I mean shit happens. Bad shit happens. To everyone.” He met my
eyes steadily. “We both thought we could avoid it. But nobody does. You know?
And we shouldn’t hurt ourselves in the meantime.”

I nodded.

He pushed his forehead to mine.
“We’re going to be okay.”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“You’re going to be okay.”

I smiled. “Yeah.”

He pulled me into his lap and I
wrapped my legs around his waist and kissed him hard. “I love you,” I said
again. It had been scary the first time. Unpleasantly scary, but it wasn’t now.
I wanted to say it. I wanted to keep saying it. “I love you, I love you, I love
you.”

He laughed. “I know. I love you
too.”

I kissed him again. I knew that
saying I loved him wasn’t going to break me this time. I knew it would save me.

He kissed the top of my head.

“I was afraid,” I said.

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I was afraid that if showed that I
loved you, I would end up getting hurt and feeling stupid. So, I did the
opposite. And I ended up getting hurt and feeling stupid.”

“I know,” he said. “You really
don’t have to explain, Hadley. It’s okay.”

“I’m not afraid though. Of letting
it show anymore. I’m not afraid of letting my love show. I’m afraid of not
showing it,” I said.

It turned out to be easy to let it
go. That once I started, I couldn’t really stop. I loved the way he laughed,
the way his hair stuck up in the morning, how he cocked his head when he was
looking at me. I loved how sweet he could be, and how sure he was. I loved how he
talked to people, like they were the center of the world.

I loved that he noticed me. I loved
that he knew me better than I knew myself. I loved that he had put it out there
back in March, when he was pretty sure I was going to shoot him down.

I loved that he never told me to
smile or to stop being so serious. I loved the way he held my wrist and kissed
the palm of my hand.

I loved that after all that time of
thinking love wasn’t safe, I realized that I had never been safer than I was,
curled in my tiny apartment in Harlem, with Jack Diamond, the person I was
madly in love with.

I loved him. I was going to let it
show forever.

Jack, Seven Months Later

“We are not getting a Mastiff,” Hadley said.

“Why not? I like him. And he’s a
puppy.”

“Because we live in New York. And
I’m going to be the one who ends up walking it in the morning,” she said. “I
don’t need as much exercise as a mastiff.”

I looked over at her and smiled. “A
mastiff would look good on our couch.”

“I want a mutt,” Hadley said. “I
want a small mutt with an anxiety disorder who speaks Arabic to keep you
company when I’m in Jordan.”

Soon she’d be leaving for three
weeks to go to a Syrian Refugee camp just across the Jordanian border. It would
be her second trip. She’d gone for just five days a few months back and written
an article that just about everyone in America had read.

And this time, she wasn’t scared to
go. The refugee camps were stable. People were suffering there, but they were
safe. Hadley wouldn’t be in danger of dying.

After Hadley had walked away the
night of our formal, Xander said she was the world’s most emotionless bitch. At
the time, I had wished I could agree with him. But even then, when I wanted to
hate her, I knew nothing could be further from the truth.

Hadley saw everyone’s suffering
clearly. She saw it perfectly. And she knew how to write about it. She gave it
a name and a face and a story you could understand. David and I might have been
the only people who really saw that part of her in college.

But when you read her articles, you
knew.

I laughed. “I don’t want Hadley 2.
I want a mastiff.”

She shook her head and walked
further into the animal shelter. We’d just signed a lease together on an
apartment in north Chelsea. It was on the eighth floor and the building didn’t
have an elevator. The bedroom was microscopic. But it had a kitchen you could
use and a decent view. It was only a few steps away from the subway and it was
ours.

And Hadley wasn’t freaked out about
that at all.

Her phone rang and she pressed it
to her ear. “David!”

I could hear his laughter through
the phone and I walked up behind her and kissed the soft part of her neck and
she smiled and elbowed me in the hip. She pointed at a nervous looking dog that
was sitting in the corner of its cage.

I smiled at the dog. She looked
terrified, and I gripped the front of my cage with my fingers. “Hey, girl,” I
said to her.

 She had a white medallion on her
chest and curly speckled ears and black fur and big mournful eyes. The placard
on her cage said she was about two years old and shy, but housebroken.

“We’re getting a dog,” Hadley told
David. “Yes,
seriously….
No, I know. It’s insane…well, he wants a
mastiff, but that’s not happening…” She laughed. “But, yeah, I get back at the
end of May, so any time after that is great for us…the apartment is the size of
a postage stamp, but you both will fit….”

I looked down at the shy mutt and
smiled at her, trying to coax her out of the corner. “Hey,” I said again,
smiling when she approached my hand cautiously. She nuzzled up against my hand
and sat down.

Hadley ended her phone call with
David. “Don’t you like her?” she asked me.

“I do like her,” I said. “Is David
coming to visit?”

She nodded. “Yeah. In June. Justin,
too.”

“That’ll be fun.”

“Yeah.”

“You like her, too, right?” I
asked, nodding at the dog.

Hadley smiled. “Yeah, she’s
adorable.”

“Do you want to get her?” I asked.

“Yeah. Only if you’re sure,
though.” She leaned her head on my shoulder. “I thought you wanted the
mastiff.”

“No. She’s perfect,” I said. “Don’t
you think?”

“Yeah,” Hadley said softly.

“What do you think about Avery?” I
asked.

“Avery. I like that,” Hadley said,
wrapping her fingers around mine.  She put her hand up against the cage too.
“Hey, Avery.”

The dog turned her attention to
Hadley and I smiled. “She likes you.”

“I like her too,” Hadley said. She
looked up at me.

“Let’s get her,” I said.

I met her shining eyes and she mouthed
the words I’d gotten used to hearing:
I love you.