Love Story

by Jennifer Echols

  “Well.” Hunter’s voice cracked as he said this. He cleared his throat. “There goes your internship.”

  “Which is exactly what you and my grandmother wanted,” I said without looking up from my book. After a moment I said brightly, “Maybe I still have a shot. I seriously doubt Gabe is on the committee. He won’t give me a stellar rec from class, but I can try to sidestep him and submit my portfolio to the committee—”

  “He is on the committee,” Hunter said.

  “He’s not on the committee,” I insisted. At least, I hoped he wasn’t on the committee. I had assumed he wasn’t, but it would be like Hunter to know something I didn’t know. I stammered, “Only the bigwigs in the English department are—”

  “I’m telling you,” Hunter said, “he is on the committee. He’s the head of the committee. He’s won the O. Henry and the Pulitzer.”

  “Gabe?” Even as I gaped at Hunter, I realized he must be right. A university English department with this good a reputation wouldn’t hire a washed-up junior college reject to teach honors creative writing. He didn’t dress like a beach bum because he was so low on the totem pole that he could get away with it. He dressed like that because he was so high. I put my shaking hand up to my mouth, speechless for once.

  Hunter sat beside me on the chaise. “You’re not the only one with something to lose. If Gabe flunks us, I can kiss med school good-bye. I’ll still be dragging my GPA out of this hole when I’m a senior.”

  “You’re being a little melodramatic,” I said faintly.

  “Me? You’re the one writing stories about—” He stopped himself. “It doesn’t matter now. Just tell me about Whitfield.” His face was white stone.

  “What do you care?” I snapped. “Every single thing you have done to, for, or with me since you’ve been in New York you’ve done because my grandmother paid you. You are not my boyfriend. You are not even my real friend, and it’s none of your business.”

  “You made it my business last night,” he insisted.

  I looked into his intense blue gaze for a moment. “My story is fiction.”

  He scowled at me. “Your name is in it.”

  “What? No it isn’t. I wrote it in the third person about a nameless girl.”

  “Your name is in it, Erin,” he insisted. “Freudian slip.”

  Uh-oh. “I mean, it’s sort of nonfiction,” I backtracked, “but it happened a while ago. Not this weeken—”

  He closed his eyes and put up his hand. “Just. Stop. Talking.”

  I was about to point out to him that he was the one who’d started talking to me, when I heard quick steps toward us down the hall—too quick to be Gabe. Isabelle jogged up to us and panted, “Erin. Gabe will be here any second. I don’t know what will happen to you or whether I’ll see you again, so I thought it was important to tell you something.”

  “Okay,” I said, careful not to stare accusingly at Hunter. This had to be about him.

  “I love your stories,” she gushed, bending to put her hand on my forearm. “Love them. I look forward to them every two weeks. I’ve told my whole family about them.”

  “Thank you,” I said instead of what I really meant, which was, I don’t believe you. I would have believed you at the beginning of the semester, but not now. This must be a joke. Where is the camera?

  “I haven’t defended you in class because Manohar seems so sure of himself,” she said. “He’s hard to argue against and I’ve felt awful that I’ve failed you. But you have inspired me. I didn’t know an English major was allowed to write a story like that.”

  “Apparently we’re not. That’s why I’m in trouble.” I patted her hand. “I appreciate this, Isabelle.” Gabe’s white head appeared in the stairwell. I stage-whispered, “I’ll write you stories from prison.”

  “Okay!” She laughed like I was joking and passed Gabe on her way back down the hall.

  I tensed as he approached us, and I could feel Hunter’s muscles draw taut, too, even though he didn’t touch me. But Gabe was back to his friendly self. He even grinned at us as he unlocked his office door and ushered us into two chairs in front of his cluttered desk.

  He grew scarier again as he wedged himself into his chair and leaned on his elbows on his desk. With a stern look at me and then at Hunter, he said, “I do not lose my cool. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hunter said. I grimaced and nodded.

  “We are going to talk this out so it never comes up in my class again.” Gabe shifted his weight back in his chair and steepled his hands. “So. Hunter. You’re Erin’s stable boy?”

  Neither of us wanted to spill our guts or our family secrets to an old man who would probably flunk us both. But when I explained the impetus for my stable-boy story, Hunter had a dissenting opinion. When Hunter defended his bathroom story, I piped up that he wasn’t telling the whole truth. We went round and round like this until Gabe finally said, “I’m from California and I thought those people were screwed up, but Kentucky takes the cake, doesn’t it? You could write a story about this.” He laughed.

  Hunter and I did not.

  Gabe rubbed one eye. “Which brings us to Erin’s story today, and what happened over the weekend that finally broke Hunter.”

  Hunter frowned. He did not like that characterization one bit.

  I kicked while Hunter was down. I asked him, “What exactly was your directive from my grandmother?”

  I thought he would deny it, even now. But Gabe stared at him expectantly, too, and with a slow look up at Gabe and a slow look down at his hands again, Hunter began to speak.

  “I was supposed to get into some of your classes.” He glanced up at Gabe, looked away. “Try to become friends with you again. Become friends with your friends so I could keep tabs on you. Take you out to eat as often as possible so you didn’t starve. Keep you away from any no-good piece of shit who tried to get in your pants.”

  “Come on now,” I said. “My grandmother said ‘piece of shit’?”

  “She may have said ‘scalawag.’”

  That sounded more like her. “Is that all you had to do?”

  He shook his head no. “Bring you home for the Breeders’ Cup.”

  “Even if that meant lying to get me there?”

  “We didn’t discuss methods. I was desperate at that point.” He turned to face me for the first time in an hour. “I’m sorry.”

  “Speaking of methods,” I said, “were you supposed to sleep with me?”

  His eyes widened, then slid to Gabe and back to me. “No. I mean, I knew already that your grandmother doesn’t think I’m good enough for you. But in case that wasn’t clear, she spelled that out specifically.”

  I grinned devilishly—which was only fitting, because I felt like hell. “So, all I have to do is call her—”

  “You don’t have a phone.”

  “—and tell her we slept together, and you’re as cut off as I am.”

  “I already did,” he said.

  I gasped audibly. “When?”

  “This morning, before my anatomy test.” Sighing, he closed his eyes and put his elbow on the armrest of his chair and his chin in his hand. He had looked tired the past few weeks. Now he looked beaten.

  I studied him, this handsome, brilliant young man whose life should not have been so hard.

  Remembered him staring at himself in the mirror at my grandmother’s house. At least, that’s what I’d thought at first. I’d taken a few more steps and realized his eyes were closed, perhaps examining himself from inside.

  “Hunter,” Gabe said, “why don’t you get us a couple of sodas?”

  Hunter nodded shortly and stood.

  “Hold on.” Gabe sat forward, drew his wallet out of his back pocket, and waved a bill between his fingers. “Sounds like you may need this.”

  “Funny,” Hunter said. But he took the bill. As he backed out the door and closed it behind him, he was watching me.

  “Erin,” Gabe said, turning to me.

/>   “Yes, sir?” I asked in my best imitation of Hunter.

  “You have a problem with authority.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You can’t take criticism.”

  “What do you mean, I can’t take criticism?” I demanded. Gabe did not laugh, so I said, “Ha-ha, joke.”

  “But I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “Lloyd Peters tells me you’re a brilliant student and wrote a phenomenal paper for his early American literature survey.”

  “Bleh!” I said automatically. “I mean, I am thrilled that Dr. Peters enjoyed my paper.”

  “He said you tore Nathaniel Hawthorne a new one.”

  “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” I said gravely.

  “And in my class,” Gabe said, “though your demeanor has on occasion been less than professional, you’ve given terrific advice to your fellow writers. In fact, according to the statements of your peers, you’ve been more helpful than any other student. Brian has commented to me on how much your suggestions have helped him. Summer. Isabelle. Hunter.” He snapped his fingers. “What’s-his-name, what-do-you-call-him, Wolf-boy.”

  “Kyle.”

  “And very recently, Manohar. I was particularly amazed by that. If I’d been you and Manohar had said those things about my first story, I would have knocked his block off.”

  All of this was said with a jovial smile on his cherubic face.

  “And you have a gift,” he said.

  Those words meant much more to me now, after everything that had happened, than they had when he’d written them on my stable-boy story. I let the words hang in the air between us like the unexpectedly lovely scent of an aromatherapy candle in a funky SoHo shop. I had a gift.

  “I think your original story was your best,” he said. “The class’s criticism of that story sent you on a journey you didn’t want to take. Sometimes it’s good for our foundations to be shaken. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

  “I guess,” I said bitterly. I still didn’t understand why Manohar always got to comment first.

  Gabe continued, “You were writing what you thought was a good story. You didn’t know Hunter would be in the class, so you weren’t trying to make a point to him. You weren’t exorcising demons or recounting your family history. You were concocting an enjoyable fantasy for yourself. We all do our best work when we write the story we want to read.”

  I squinted, determined not to cry again. “I’m not sure this one ends well.”

  “It ends the way you say it ends,” Gabe said gently.

  “I think Hunter might have something to say about that.”

  Gabe’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “We’re not talking about your life, Erin. We’re talking about your writing. Your imagination. Your creativity. And it’s time you learned there’s a big difference between your writing and your life. To do it right, your writing takes an incredible amount of work. Your life takes more.”

  I nodded slowly. “Believe it or not, I’ve been trying to repair my life. I’ve planned to apply for the publishing internship.”

  Gabe raised his white eyebrows at me. “Really.”

  “Yeah. From your tone of voice, it sounds like you’re telling me I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, and I shouldn’t bother.”

  He pried his mouth loose from its grim line to say, “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  I held my breath. I could not cry in front of him. Not again. I tried not to think about my life in New York, my internship, my whole writing career fading in front of me, all because of my tangle with Hunter, whom I’d also lost. I would think about this later and let loose with the waterworks. Not now.

  “But, Erin.” Gabe tapped his finger on his desk to the beat of his words. “If you are trying to make a writing career for yourself, you will get rejected again and again and again and again.” Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. “You must keep going. You have to learn not to take no for an answer.”

  I left his office unsure whether to feel better or worse about my chances at the internship, my chances at publishing my writing, and the incredible amount of work it would take to be friends with Hunter again.

  He sat on the chaise longue, three bottles of soda beside him on the cushion. As I passed him, he handed one to me.

  I downed big swigs of soda while walking down the dark street, thinking hard. I was halfway to the coffee shop when I realized I was ninety minutes late for work, and I had been fired.

  18

  A week and a half later, we read Hunter’s story for class. I was afraid it would be some kind of recrimination, about a man who takes revenge on the bitch who ruined his life. But it seemed to be about reconciling his relationship with his dad. I hoped it was true and I thought it was beautiful, but the rest of the girls in the class didn’t hide their disappointment that it wasn’t about his sex life. The biggest topic of discussion was Manohar’s hilarious story about an Indian stockbroker joining a bluegrass band, which the class argued was unrealistic—everybody but me.

  After class, I went back to my room and found a new tube of my expensive face cream on my bed. Summer did not know where it had come from, and she had not let anyone into the room. Jørdis said the same thing, but she looked guilty.

  After Hunter left for the hospital late that night, I sneaked up to his room and stuck my New York City magnet on his doorknob.

  Jørdis’s art project was installed in the college gallery the following week. Everybody she’d roped into cutting faces for her—meaning pretty much everybody in the dorm—was there to admire our handiwork. One of the huge collages held thousands of photos that at a distance formed a portrait of Summer and me. An even larger collage, titled Watchdog, showed Hunter curled up asleep on Jørdis’s bed with my belly-dancing outfit hanging on the door in the background.

  Hunter was at the opening. In fact, at one point we gazed at each other across that collage. When I arrived back at the dorm, a gift card for the restaurant around the corner from the dorm had appeared on my bed.

  Summer wanted me to go home with her to Mississippi for Thanksgiving, but neither of us had the money to buy me a plane ticket. Even Jørdis was headed to the home of a friend from Brooklyn. Summer tried to get Jørdis to take me, too. I waved them off. I would go to the dining hall for the sad Thanksgiving dinner for foreign students who couldn’t go home and had no local friends, and I would meet some new and fascinating people. No biggie.

  “I know you,” Summer said. “There is no way you would spring for Thanksgiving dinner in the dining hall. You’ll be right here in the room, boiling ramen noodles in your hot pot.”

  I had thought I would be relieved when Summer and Jørdis left on Tuesday, not because they bugged me, but because it would be nice to have the place quiet and to myself, and I could get some writing done. Since my talk with Gabe, I’d been working on my end-of-semester portfolio. I’d figured out a way to save my grade, save Hunter’s grade, and get my internship after all. I’d included my stories from the class, plus Hunter’s stories that I’d copied in the library. And around them, I’d filled in the real journey Hunter and I had taken. The stories themselves might still be exploitive and debauched, but the portfolio as a whole made some sense out of the experience, and—I hardly dared say—some art.

  All I had to do was get Hunter’s permission.

  I worked hard at first, halfway glad I’d been fired and determined to make the most of this windfall of time before I found a new job. But the hours and the silence weighed on me. I found myself lying on my bed, staring out the window, wishing for someone interesting to walk by, waiting for any noise upstairs, just to know there was someone in the building with me, keeping me company. I gripped both sides of the bed whenever I heard footfalls in the stairwell.

  They didn’t sound like Hunter. I wondered if he had gone home.

  Wednesday morning I woke with my laptop open on my tummy. Hunter was rummaging through my dresser, packing my suitcase.

&nb
sp; I yawned and sat up. My laptop tumbled closed on the pillows. “Is my dad going to be there?”

  “Absolutely not,” Hunter said without looking up from his neat folding. “But I hear you’re out of a job, so that’s no excuse for staying. There’s lots to fly to Louisville for.”

  “The end of the fall meet,” I murmured. I missed the horses.

  “There’s the end of the fall meet,” he agreed. “And there’s, you know, Thanksgiving, which you usually spend with the people you love the most. And then there’s me.”

  He stopped folding. We exchanged a long look.

  “Have you bought the tickets already?” I asked. “I thought my grandmother cut you off when you told her we were together.”

  “That was the deal,” he said. “But she’s been calling me for updates about you. I guess I’m still employed for now.”

  “Even after you were so naughty?”

  “Even after that. She can’t admit this, but all she ever really wanted was to know you were okay and didn’t hate her.”

  I blinked. “I don’t hate her,” I said, realizing this for the first time.

  “Come with me to Louisville, and tell her.”

  “All right.” I feigned reluctance. “Give me a few minutes to wrap up this writing and get ready.”

  He nodded and pointed toward the larger bedroom. “I’ll wait for you out there. Jørdis needs a lot more faces cut out for her project next semester.”

  “Oh joy.”

  After he left, I opened my laptop. While I was showering, I would print out the collaboration I’d been working on so Hunter could read it on the airplane. I hoped he approved. I prayed he would get it. There was a small, glimmering chance he would love it.

  Thankfully it was almost ready to go, but it had no title page. Thinking of Hunter, whose opinion mattered to me even more than Gabe’s at that moment, I typed, love story.