by Audrey Bell
“Hadley, he was only trying to help,” my dad offered.
“He was trying to help you,” I snapped. “That’s not help.”
He exhaled. “I don’t condone this. And I won’t support it.”
“I’m not asking you to,” I said. “Please. You really think I’d count on you for anything at this point?”
After that, there wasn’t much left to say. He paid for dinner and he dropped me back at my apartment. He went straight to the airport. And even though I’d been doing it for years, I couldn’t totally suppress the twinge of guilt in my stomach, which had a lot more to do with scaring away Jack than it had to do with disappointing my father.
Chapter Thirty-Two
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 sea
s. 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.
“What happened?” one of them asked Jack.
Jack looked at David. “He’ll tell you,” he said calmly, confidently.
“My ex-boyfriend assaulted me,” David said simply. Saying it aloud changed him. He spoke more forcefully about things that I hadn’t known about. He spoke about harassing phone calls and controlling behavior.
“Was this the first time it happened?” one of the officer asked.
David shook his head. “No,” he whispered. “I thought he was going to kill me this time. I couldn’t breathe.”
The police officer made a clucking noise with his tongue against the top of his mouth. “Okay. What’s his name?”
“Ben Mitchell,” David said softly.
The police wrote down his name and pulled Jack aside, who had held himself together to ask him more questions. “I was supposed to see Justin,” David told me.
“Let me call him.”
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“I don’t want him to see me like this.”
I laced my fingers through his. “He’d want to be here. But, he should at least know, don’t you think?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
I stepped away, far enough so that he couldn’t hear me calling Justin, but close enough for me to keep an eye on him while the paramedics checked his eyes and the marks on his neck.
Justin picked up the phone and his brief panic settled into deliberate calm when I told him they were taking David to the hospital.
“He’ll be okay,” Justin said. “Let me know when he’s ready for visitors and I’ll be the first one there. Can he talk?”
I looked at David, who was still basically incoherent. No. He definitely wouldn’t want to talk to Justin right now. “Not now. But he will tomorrow. He wanted you to know that he wasn’t blowing you off.”
“Tell him not to worry for a second about that,” Justin said. “Call me as soon as he wants to see me, okay?”
“Okay. Yeah. I will,” I nodded, wishing I could be so calm. David is fine, I reminded myself. He’s hurt. But he’s fine.
When Jack came back into the room, he took one look at me and walked over. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, a simple gesture, and I leaned against him, and he held me.
On the day after Valentine’s Day, Jack snuck popcorn, Jack Daniels, Justin Shelter, and me into David’s small hospital room by flirting shamelessly with a nurse.
“Hadley’s boyfriend could charm his way into Fort Knox,” Justin told David. He sat down on David’s bed. He settled down next to David, and after a moment, I saw him lean forward and kiss David’s forehead and whisper: “I’m going to murder him.”
David laughed hollowly. “I’m tired of all the death threats.”
“I’m sorry,” Justin said. “I’m going to wage a very effective letter-writing campaign.”
We turned on You’ve Got Mail. Jack and I watched part of the movie, and then decided to give Justin and David their privacy, walking out into the waiting room to sit on cheap plastic chairs and thumb through old magazines
