Love Show (16 page)

“What would happen?” I asked Andrew. “If we just didn’t put
a paper out.”

He gave me a look. He had been none
too impressed with my I-sprained-my-knee-while-skydiving story and he seemed
further annoyed by my suggestion that Northwestern could survive a day without
us. Added to the fact that I told him he needed to act as Editor-in-Chief when
I left for New York for my interview, I was pretty sure Andrew had had enough.

“If you need a break, I can do it
today.”

“I don’t need a break,” I said.
“I’m just wondering what would happen.”

“I don’t know, Hadley,” he said
wearily. “I’d rather not think about it.”

I chewed on my lip. I’d gone over
my résumé two dozen times. I’d practiced answers to every interview question
I’d ever heard. And I’d researched my interviewer fanatically. All that was
left to do was to perform flawlessly in the interview.

I drove over to Jack’s after I’d
wrapped up all of the final details for the next day’s issue. He was lying on
his bed, reading. He barely heard me clatter in on my crutches.

“Mmm. Hey. You’re getting good at
that,” he said with a grin.

“Thank you, sir.” I tried to
curtsey on the crutches and nearly wiped out.

He nodded. “I have something for
you.”

I smiled. “Yeah?”

He tossed me a New York Knicks
sweatshirt. “For the plane. So you don’t look like a helpless Midwestern
tourist.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t look
like…”

“Sh…” he said.

“I’m from California.”

“Helpless California girls and
tourists from the Midwest are all the same to New Yorkers.”

I rolled my eyes and pulled on the
sweatshirt, balancing on one leg. He kissed me deeply. He pushed a strand of
hair behind my ear. “Maybe we should have put the sweatshirt on after we
fucked,” he murmured.

“Mm,” I said, kissing him back.
“You might have a point.”

“Because I sort of like all of the stuff
under the sweatshirt. I’ve really gotten in my own way here.”

I chuckled as he kissed my neck
even more gently than usual. He shuffled me to the edge of the bed and pulled
the sweatshirt over my head. He pulled my t-shirt over with it. And then he
undressed himself.

“Can you do this?” he asked,
gesturing at my knee.

I nodded.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

He smiled. “Good.”

He was feather light with his
touches. It was difficult for me to move, but he was perfect. He cradled one
knee in his arm, barely allowing it to sway, and he was so sweet and he was so
gentle that it felt like even more than just good sex. It started to feel a lot
like a crush. Or maybe, if I let my guard down for half a second, a little bit
more than even a crush.

I was just in New York for a single
day. A single chaotic day that started at O’Hare airport and ended back there
the same night. The interview process had been grueling, six hours of
rapid-fire questions.

I had taken a class once on the
criminal justice system. I’d learned how aggressive investigators would ask the
same questions over and over so the suspect would start to forget what he had
said and would start to question what he remembered. I felt a bit like that by
the time I was handed off to an editorial assistant who walked me out of the
labyrinthine office complex.

“We’ll call you,” she told me.

“Great, thank you,” I replied. And
then I crutched down 8th Avenue, hailed a cab, zipped through Kennedy airport,
and got on a plane back to Chicago. I wearily passed out leaning against the
window.

I couldn’t believe all of that had
happened in the space of one day. The way we travel now makes everything go so
fast, it’s like it hardly happened at all.

“I feel like you’re not eating,” Jack said. “So, I need to
take you out for dinner.”

Half of the fraternity was over for
a pledge class celebration, and it was dinnertime. We were holed up in Jack’s
room and I was not prepared to crash an all-male fraternity dinner.

I gave Jack a suspicious look.
“That’s against the rules.”

“You broke the sleepover rule,” he
pointed out.

“That was your fault. I was
drugged.”

“I was ready to go. But you were
all like
stay
,” he whispered in breathy imitation of me.

I laughed. “I was not.”         

“It was like when the Titanic was
sinking and the redhead was all like, oh my god, I’m so cold, let’s hold
hands.”

“It was not like that.”

“
Jack, never let go
. I mean,
what was I supposed to do?”

“You weren’t on drugs,” I said,
flushing.

“Never let go, Jack,” he whispered.
“Never let go.”

“That is the worst imitation of
Kate Winslet ever.”

“I’m not doing Kate Winslet. I’m
doing Hadley Arrington,” he grinned. “And I’m buying you fucking dinner. If
you’re that worried about the rules, we can go to McDonalds. They don’t serve
food. It’s all plastic products that happen to be edible. So, we don’t even
have to call it dinner.”

“Ugh—I’d rather have dinner.”

“There you go again. Breaking
rules.” He smiled.

We walked down the stairs. Well, he
walked. I crutched. I was getting good at crutching.

I got into his car and put my feet
up on the dashboard. He grinned at me. “So, when do you find out about the job?”

“Oh, I don’t want to think about
it,” I told him. I looked out the window. Jack still didn’t really know what he
wanted to do. “What about you? You ever think about next year?”

He laughed. “Fair enough.”

“No, seriously. I’m not asking to
be a bitch. What about you?” I asked.

He made a helpless noise. “I—I feel
like you don’t believe me when I say I don’t know. I just...I don’t know.”

“What about skydiving?” I asked.

He laughed bitterly.

“What?” I asked. “You said you
loved that. You could be an instructor.”

“With a
Northwestern
degree?

“Who cares? Do what makes you
happy.”

“That’s the thing, Hadley. I
just...I don’t care about anything enough,” he shrugged.

“You love to read. You love to
skydive. You love your friends,” I said. “You care about a lot of shit.”

“Point taken. Look, I’m sorry I
asked. Can we drop it?”

“What are you going to do if you
don’t find a job?”

He shrugged. “Might stay in Chicago
actually.”

“Really?” I looked at him.

“Yeah. Bobby’s working on a book.
He said I could be his research assistant.” He shrugged. “So, that’s an idea.”

“That’s a
great
idea,” I
said.

He looked at me. I flinched at the
look, which was one of sheer annoyance. “I’m not a pet project, Hadley. It’s
not that I can’t get a job. I’m not looking for a reason.”

“Well, what’s the reason?”

“Everyone's always looking for
something else to make them happy. New apartment. New girlfriend. New dog. New
job. None of it every makes anyone happy. The looking just distracts the hell
out of you from what’s actually going on, which is your
life
.”

 “Okay.” I closed my eyes briefly.
“But even if doing something won’t make you happy, it could still be worth
doing. And having worth…”

“Hadley,” he said shortly. “You
don’t even want to be my girlfriend. Why do you care if I have a job or not?”

Well, that was a bit harsh. I
looked at him while he drove. “I don’t want to be anyone's girlfriend right
now."

“Right.”

“I don’t.”

“Got it,” he said.

“I don’t think it usually works
out. Everyone breaks up. Or else they get married. Or they get married and then
divorced. Or they cheat.” I looked at him. “Or they turn out to be a liar. Or—and
this is what really scares me—one person gives up everything they actually want
for a few years of love and lust and they find out it wasn't worth it. But you
don’t know. You can never really know what’s going on in someone else’s head.
No matter how much time you spend with them or how much sex you have or
anything. You don’t know.”

He sighed.

“And the point isn’t that I don’t
want you to be my boyfriend. The point is that I don’t want anyone to be my
boyfriend. Nobody."

He breathed. “Christ. Forget it.
Okay?”

“I’m not
ashamed
of you,” I
added, for emphasis. “I don’t care if you don’t get a job. You just talk about
not having one an awful lot for someone who supposedly doesn’t give a shit. And
we’re supposed to be friends.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I
just—this is a stupid conversation. Sorry I brought it up.”

I took a deep breath. We had
reached a Mexican restaurant that I liked. It was popular with almost everyone
who ever ate there. The quesadillas were always piping hot, buttery, and
mouthwateringly cheesy and the guacamole tasted like it was imported from Mount
Olympus. Plus, I’ve always been a sucker for margaritas.

Jack opened my door, which was not
just gentlemanly but actually necessary, with the crutches. He smiled when he
took my hand and helped me out. “Sorry,” he said, sincerely. “My mom keeps
asking me a lot of the same questions. It’s been bugging me a bit. And Xander
thinks he should be on my case about it. And then, you know, after him, you’re
like…basically my best friend.”

That meant so much to me. “You’re
basically my best friend too.”

“After David?”             

 “Well, I haven’t quite
ranked
everyone
yet.” He laughed when I said that. “But you’re up there, kid. Don’t worry.”

We sat in a corner booth and ordered
margaritas and guacamole. I sat with my legs stretched out and Jack smiled at
me when I knocked a whole margarita back in one long gulp.

“Bad girl. I have to drive.”

I grinned and ordered a second. “I
don’t. And you said you wanted to see me really drunk.”

He smiled. “As long as you stay
conscious.”

 “Oh, I’m not going to fall asleep.
I promise.”

“You better not.” He dipped a chip
into the guacamole and popped it in his mouth with a crunch.

Maybe it was the sprained knee or
the sleep debt or the interview. Maybe I just wanted to have fun. I don’t know,
but I got drunk. Somewhere, in between the quesadillas and Jack’s joke about a
set of triplets in Delta Delta Delta, I ended up really, really drunk and
laughing really, really hard.

And somehow so did Jack.

“Fuck, I can hardly read this
receipt,” he said squinting at him. “Call Z. Tell him we need a ride.”

I took his phone giggling and
called Xander. “Sup, Diamond?” he said.

“Hey,” I said.

“Who is this?”

“Hadley Arrington,” I said.

“Oh. Jack gave you his phone? You
guys are getting serious, huh?”

“We need a ride.”

“Tell him to call one of the
pledges.”

“He said call…”

“No, tell him to come,” Jack said,
pointing a finger at me and squinting one eye. “Tell him it’s an emergency.”

“He said no.”       

“Mergency,” Jack repeated.

“Put him on the phone.” Xander
said.

“He’s too drunk to drive,” I said.

“Is he too drunk to talk on the
phone, too?”

“Um. Yes.”

Xander sighed heavily. “Where are you?”

“Mexico.”

Jack burst into laughter and
grabbed the phone. “We’re at Pedro’s.” He laughed at whatever Xander said to
him. “Yeah, well, I knew you’d say yes to
her
. See you in a few, buddy.”
He put away his phone and looked up at me. “Got us a ride.”

“I procured the ride.”

“You didn’t procure shit. That’s my
friend.”

“Yeah, but I got him to come to
Mexico for us.”

When Xander called us to tell us to
come outside, I moved as fast as I could on crutches. And Jack helped me into
the front seat and jumped in the back.

“You two are irresponsible,” Xander
said.

“We called you,” Jack giggled.                

“What the hell did you do to him?”

“I gave him some margaritas,” I
said indignantly. “Why aren’t you more concerned about me?”

“Because he’s giggling.”

“I’m not giggling,” Jack insisted.
He kicked the back of Xander’s seat.

“Hey,” Xander said.

“Are we there yet?” Jack demanded.

“Don’t make me come back there,”
Xander scowled.

We pulled up to the frat house and
Jack jumped out of the car. He pulled me out. “Come on, you cripple.”

I laughed. He cupped my face in his
hands. “You got me drunk,” he said.

We got upstairs as fast as we
could. He turned off all the lights and we went wild. Sometimes, when you’re
drunk, you miss the best parts about sex. Sometimes, though, when you’re drunk,
it feels as good as it looks in the movies. Too intoxicated to care about the
clothes or the lights or what to do when he dipped his head like that.

I came before he did, in a long,
hard wave that blew black through my mind. There was nothing but Jack.

I tried to catch my breath. I clung
to his broad back for support. His hard muscles rippled under my hands as he
came. Through the haze of the alcohol and the soft kisses and the intense high,
he said very clearly and very possessively: “I love you.”

He collapsed next to me, breathing
hard. And the shockwaves running through my body ran cold.
I love you
.

Isn’t that what every girl wants to
hear?

From the guy she’s sleeping with on
a casual basis.

Because she doesn’t have time for a
relationship.

Which is just the thing that she
says to people because she’s actually so fucking terrified of getting her heart
broken that she can’t imagine risking it, not for a second.

I breathed shallowly next to him as
he curled me into his arms. He didn’t seem to care that I hadn’t said anything
back. Or that I had tensed up next to him.

And he held me there, but I
couldn’t relax, and I couldn’t fall asleep. And after a long time, I got up
from the bed, put on my clothes and left.