Love Show

by Audrey Bell

  I twitched. I took more notes. It made less sense.

  The more I learned, the less sense it made. Not what had happened. I knew what had happened. I understand the timeline. I recognized the reasons the men who murdered Jack's father gave for their awful crime.

  But I couldn't get to a place in my head where I could understand it. I couldn’t understand the violence or the terror or the brutality or the basic tragedy of a kid's father dying like that. I knew exactly what had occurred and I also knew it was too horrible to ever fully understand.

  I closed my laptop and my notes and walked away from them. I could tell you what happened to Scott Diamond. But it would never be the full story. It would never be the story of what happened to Jack Diamond’s dad.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The first nice day came at the end of March. The first real day of spring. When you knew winter had just about ended.

  It would be cold again—maybe once or twice—but when the temperature soared to the high sixties, you knew it would never again be as cold as it had been.

  I had barely noticed March until that warm day. When it became clear that Jack wasn't going to come back to me, that Jack didn't want to be friends, I buried myself in work like I used to.

  There was something relaxing about it, about checking every box, mitigating some barely-there anxiety.

  I hated the Scott Diamond assignment, selfishly, but I did it. I did it slowly, writing down the details, highlighting the key elements in play from the moment of his abduction to his ultimate death.

  I could only take so much at one time.

  And I knew that was because of Jack, and I knew that it was a good thing to learn how to do. To write about something awful happening to a person who meant more to you than the average person did.

  I never met Scott Diamond but I knew his son.

  It was, if nothing else, an exercise in empathy.

  I was up early—the first nice day—and I didn't see anyone walking across campus to the newspaper office. I liked the quiet in the office, too. Starting a pot of bitterly strong coffee, I began to think about the positions we needed to fill next year.

  I thought Juliet could be a good Editor-in-Chief. But she said she didn't know if she wanted the job. She had smiled and shrugged when I suggested it. "I don't know, Hadley. It looks like a ton of work."

  When I'd gotten a few things into shape, I turned to my homework. I had started working in my newspaper office around the time when I started being worried that I'd run into Jack on campus.

  I put on my headphones to listen to Arabic conversations spoken at a quick clip, while answering a series of challenging questions about their contextual meaning. It was the sort of work that took a lot of focus—so much that you couldn't think of anything but the noise and what it all meant.

  Andrew popped his head and waved, letting me know he was here. I smiled, waved back, and kept working.

  When I looked up again, it was dark. I pulled off my headphones and sighed. I flipped my phone over to see I'd missed four calls while it was on silent.

  That was weird.

  I unlocked the phone and scrolled to my missed calls.

  Jack.

  Jack.

  Jack.

  Jack.

  The phone, still on silent, lit up with his name again.

  I swallowed. I picked up the phone.

  "Come on, come on, pick up," he muttered frantically.

  "Hey," I said. They were having a party. Or something. It sounded like a thousand people were chattering behind him.

  "Hadley?"

  “Jack? What do you want?” I asked quietly. “Is everything okay?”

  “Come to the house.”

  “I don't think that's a good idea," I said.

  “Come on, Hads,” he begged. “I gotta see you.”

  "Hey, have you had dinner—” Andrew trailed off when he saw I was on the phone.

  "Hadley?" Jack said.

  "I have to go.”

  "Why? Just come here," he said.

  “I can't.”

  “Please. Come on. I've got to talk to you.”

  I wavered. Andrew was watching me. “Jack, I've got to go.” I hung up and put the phone away.

  “Everything okay?” Andrew asked.

  "Great."

  "Was that Jack?"

  I cast a wary eye at him. I didn't like the idea of people knowing anything about it. I nodded, though.

  "You're better off," Andrew said. He smiled. "Everyone thought you'd lost your mind. You know?"

  I looked at him. "No, I didn't know."

  "Come on?" he laughed. "Jack Diamond?" He smiled. "Number one cause of breakups at Northwestern?"

  "I've never heard that," I said. And I hadn't. If Jack had a history of sleeping around, he'd kept it quiet. And so had his friends. Though it made sense: handsome and tall and popular and that goddamn smile.

  "You want to order dinner?"

  "Sure," I said.

  "Chinese?"

  I nodded and he left my office.

  The phone rang again. I silenced it with a flick of my finger and bowed my head. I tried to focus on fixing an awkward split infinitive in the third sentence of Scott Fleischer’s article on vending machine robberies.

  But, of course, all I could see was Jack’s face. And in the buzzing silence of the room, all I could hear was the drunken slur to his words. I gotta see you.

  When the phone lit up with his name again, I simply turned it off. I couldn’t do anymore work, but I waited an appropriate period of time, before I slipped my stuff into my bag and went to find Andrew.

  "Do you mind if I bail on Chinese?" I asked. "I've been here all day. Can't focus anymore."

  "Yeah." He grinned. "No worries. I'll see you tomorrow, right?"

  "Right."

  I turned my phone back on. Ten missed calls, three new voicemails. It had only been half an hour. I stopped in the parking lot, staring at my phone, wondering if I should call him, wondering if I should just go over there and see him.

  When my phone rang again, I answered it.

  “Hadley,” he said tightly. “Pick up, god fucking…”

  “It’s Hadley.”

  “Oh.” I heard him take a sharp breath. “Look, is there any way, any way at all, that you could come over here, Hadley?” His voice was ragged with emotion. It sounded like he was crying.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I just... I really want to see you,” he whispered. His voice broke. “I need…I need you.”

  “You’re drunk and you think I’m available,” I told him. Maybe if I was a bitch, he could just hate me. That would be easier for both of us. “It’s not fun anymore. Remember?”

  “I don’t want to have fun,” he said fiercely. “I want to see you.”

  I bit my lip. It was impossible to get him back now. It was impossible to tell him I was fun when he'd already told me that I hurt him. It was impossible to drive home and sleep, because he still sounded hurt.

  "Okay," I said. "Okay, I'll come."

  He exhaled. "Thank you."

  I hung up the phone and drove to the house.

  There was loud music playing downstairs and red plastic cups lining the railing of the porch.

  It was the prettiest girls and the coolest boys. The closer I got, the more inadequate I felt. In my jeans and Hanes t-shirt, with my backpack firmly on my shoulders, I stepped through the open door, looking around for him.

  Maybe upstairs.

  I didn't want to venture into the kitchen, or through the throng of people spilling out of the living room and into a narrow hallway. So I hoped he'd be in his room.

  I walked up the stairs, squeezing past a pin-thin Asian girl with a flower behind one ear and a redheaded sophomore boy making out aggressively by the bannister.

  Jack sat against the wall in his room, watching the news on mute.

  Handsome Jack, with an open bottle of whiskey, and a self-loathing smile on his face.

>   “Hi,” he whispered like a little kid, when I opened the door and stood there.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. I closed the door. He didn’t say anything. The bass beat of the speakers shuddered through the room. The painfully neat room, with so many books in it. And with Jack sitting against a wall, drunk, glassy-eyed, impossibly sad.

  He laughed. "I'd blame it on you if I could." He shook his head. “I’m all fucked up again.”

  “You're not fucked up."

  “Are we still friends?” he asked.

  I swallowed. "I don't know. Would you like to be?"

  Jack shrugged. "I don't know. I thought I'd be over it by now. But I'm not."

  "Over what? Me?"

  He laughed. "Yeah, you." He lifted the bottle to his lip. "I miss you. It's weird."

  "It's not weird," I said. "I miss you, too."

  He smiled. "Stupid, right? We go to the same school and you live down the road." He leaned back. "I'm sorry I told you I loved you. I shouldn't have said anything."

  I looked at him. "I'm sorry I can't be who you want." I exhaled.

  "You're exactly who I want."

  "Well, what you want then," I said. "I can't be the girl who follows you. I can’t not go to Syria. And you can't just be whatever it was that you were to me." I bit my lip.

  He closed his eyes and slumped further down. "Maybe I could be.”

  I walked over to him and sat down next to him against the wall. I tried to think of something comforting to say. "David says my spine is misaligned."

  He laughed.

  "He says that's the root of all of my problems."

  "Don't be nice to me," Jack said softly.

  I was quiet. "You said you wanted to talk."

  "I lied. I wanted to see you," he said. He exhaled. "I don't want you to be nice to me."

  "Well, I'm not going to be mean to you. Especially not when you're looking like that."

  He gave me a look.

  "Being mean to you right now would be like kicking a puppy."

  "Because I'm adorable," he said.

  "Because you're drunk and sad."

  He rolled his eyes. "That's just my personality."

  "Drunk and sad?"

  He laughed and I did, too, and it was funny and horribly painful and deeply aching all at once. Like the laughter echoed and because of that you knew you were hollow.

  He reached for my waist and kissed me. No matter how drunk he was, no matter how sober and stupid I was, he could still kiss me like it was what he was born to do.

  I was left breathless and senseless, and whispering: “We cannot do this. Jack, we cannot, cannot do this.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  “I’m still going to Syria. I can’t give that up. I just can’t.”

  “Will you tell me something?”

  “Yeah."

  "What was with the rules? Seriously?" he asked.

  I shrugged. "I don't know. My way of not turning into my mother." I bit my lip. "She just never got it together after my dad left. She kept looking to fall in love with someone. And she was always at their whims, you know? I don't want that. And maybe the rules were overkill. But, the one that I absolutely can't break is the one that you want me to, right? I mean, I'm going to Syria in May. You can't deal with that. But I can't not go."

  He was quiet.

  It wasn't fair for me to have this conversation with him when he was drunk. But I asked. I wanted to know. "I mean, if we tried again and if we gave up all the other rules and I still went to Syria. Do you think that could ever work?"

  He bit his lip. He shook his head. "No."

  I closed my eyes. Well, at least I knew now.

  I bit my lip.

  The rejection still stung.

  "It's not that dangerous. The chances of me dying..."

  "It's not rational," he said. "I still wake up in the middle of the night panicking about my dad." He looked at me. "And he's been dead for a decade. Nothing worse can happen to him. Nothing. And I still can't sleep sometimes thinking he's somehow still suffering." He cleared his throat. "And Alex is in Afghanistan and..." He took a breath. "No, I can't. And I can't ask you to give it up. I know you'd say no if I did. But I wouldn't want you to say yes."

  He took a long sip from his bottle. He met my eyes. He closed them.

  "This sucks," he said. He was wasted.

  "Yeah," I agreed. He dropped his head to my shoulder, and I felt him nod off to sleep. I shook him gently, helped him get to his feet, and stumble into his bed.

  I moved the whiskey bottle to the other side of the room and filled a glass of water and put it next to his bed.

  I looked down at him, breathing quietly, his thick-lashed eyes closed. I smoothed his hair back off of his forehead. I pressed a light kissed to the top of his head, turned off the lights, and walked away.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I didn't see Jack again until May.

  He texted me occasionally late at night when I was sure he had been drinking and I ignored him until they stopped. And I fought the urge to text him during the day, when I was sober and clear-headed.

  I spent time with David and Justin. They were good together. They worked. They made sense.

  When I saw Jack in May, he was at the library. He was leaned over a book, his fingers curled around a Starbucks cup. He whispered to a girl with golden hair and smiled occasionally.

  So, someone else had gotten him to the library.

  I decided not to say hi, not wanting to worry if he'd told her about me or if maybe she was just a girl from an English class or if maybe she wasn't anybody at all. Maybe they'd just met.

  I got away without him seeing me. I couldn't decide whether or not that was a victory though, by the time he was out of view.

  "...and now she's sending emails at 5 AM about Oxford commas. I mean, she's got to get a grip..."

  I closed the door to our apartment and dropped my bag on the floor. "Who’s talking about Oxford commas?"

  Justin fell silent.

  "She does look kind of cracked out,” David commented.

  I glared at him ferociously.

  David looked right back at me. "Justin thinks you might be spiraling."

  "Spiraling?"

  "Into despair," he added.

  "I didn't say that," Justin said quickly.

  "Is this about the email?"

  "It's like five pages long. Single-spaced. About grammar,” David said.

  “You read it?” I asked. “That was only for the newspaper staff.”

  "Justin forwarded it to me."

  "Okay. You're totally unreliable," Justin said, looking at David. “I told you not to bring up the email.”

  "I just don't understand why everyone is confused about Oxford commas," I took a sip of my Red Bull. "They're sloppy and it's May and people should know these things by now. The Northwestern Daily News does not use Oxford Commas. Is that really that complicated? No. It’s not complicated at all.”

  "You shouldn't be sending emails at five in the morning. Especially not about commas. It's disturbed," David said.

  "I didn't say you were spiraling," Justin added. "Just to be clear."

  "Well, I think you're spiraling,” David chimed in.

  "And disturbed," I said. "Got it."

  "We're going to the bar to have a beer and celebrate basically being done with college."

  "You and Justin?"

  "No, Justin is a freshman. His GPA still matters. He has things to learn. You and me. It's pub crawl."

  “I have things to do."

  "Like what?" David asked. “Writing an email about apostrophes?”

  "Just things."

  "You've got nothing to do. C'mon. I won't make you brush your hair," he said. "Andrew will be there."

  "So?"

  "These are people you've gone to school with for four years. We don’t have that much time left to spend with them, Hadley."

  “Fine,” I said.

  I
went to my room and slipped into a sundress, cowboy boots, and a soft blue cardigan. I sat with David and had a glass of wine. It was nice, I realized. It was nice to relax.

  I hadn't had a drink in a long time. I sipped slowly and the wine made me sleepy more than anything. I was yawning while we walked to the bar.

  "I would rather take a nap," I said, looking at the line.

  He grabbed my wrist. "One beer. Then we go. You go. Whatever."

  We were both too sober for the place. People seemed pretty emotional actually. We only had a few weeks left, and the bittersweet realization we were nearing the end had infiltrated the bar.

  I had known I'd see Jack when we'd walked over.

  I missed him. I'd missed him badly at first, but now it was more like a dull ache. Bearable. Completely bearable. Yet, I wanted it to go away and worried it never would.

  When I saw him, the ache was sharper. But it also felt good. It felt like standing on the doorstep of my grandmother's house when I was a kid.

  He was with the same girl. The one I’d seen in the library.

  I bit my lip, watching him. His hair was a bit longer, he had a few day's stubble, and he'd rolled up the sleeves of a flannel shirt that I hadn't seen before.

  He caught me looking. Smiled. Looked back at her.

  Jesus. That was the worst.

  I looked over my shoulder at them twice. He was introducing her to people. Some of them she knew. She shoved Nate's shoulder like they were old friends, laughing.

  "Go say hi."

  "No way."

  "Well, then stop staring," David ordered. "You want a beer?"

  I shook my head. "Ginger ale."

  "That's so boring."

  I smiled. "I don't want to get drunk and go over there and say something stupid."

  David looked over. "She looks like she's twelve."

  "She does not," I said.

  "She does. He ordered a child bride from Russia online."

  I laughed.

  "You did the right thing in getting out when you did. You would've ended up like one of those clueless women married to the total psychopath on SVU with the child bride in the basement."

  "Groovy."

  "I'll have a Corona," David said to Xander, when we reached the bar.

  Xander looked at me for a long minute. He looked at me like I really pissed him off.