Love Show (5 page)

“Hey,” he said indignantly. “I’m
not bullying anyone. I would never say any of this shit.”

“When you’re the head of an
organization, you’re responsible for its actions.”

He shook his head. “You’re
confused.”

“I’m confused?”

“They voted for me because they
were stoned. You know what the vice-president of a frat does? Nothing.”

“The position exists for a reason,
and not doing anything when the organization you’re in charge of is bullying a
kid makes you culpable.”

“Look, I’ll get it to stop.”

“Good,” I said tersely.        

“You don’t believe me?”

I shrugged. “I never said that.”

“I’ll take care of it, Hadley.” He
met my eyes. They were cool, calm, and for some ridiculous reason, I nearly
trusted them.

“Great. Thanks,” I said. I sounded
like a bitch. I had expected more of a fight, honestly. I took a breath and
exhaled. “Sorry. I really appreciate it. If you’d get it to stop. I just—I
don’t know. He’s a nice kid.”

He nodded. “I’ll take care of it,”
he repeated.

I twisted my lips and snuck a look
at Jack. He was staring at me. I dropped my eyes and stood up. It struck me as
sad that the stranger I kissed at a tailgate, the random person I happened to
notice, would reappear like this. As someone who was involved with an
organization that was hurting someone I cared about.

Everyone knows you shouldn’t trust
strangers. Shouldn’t listen to them. Shouldn’t take candy from them. Shouldn’t
get into their cars. You definitely shouldn’t kiss them.

Most people learn this in
kindergarten. But I, Hadley Arrington, had missed that lesson. Or chosen to
ignore it. I slipped on my coat, feeling like an idiot.

“Thanks for taking the time to meet
with me,” I said seriously.

“Yeah, no worries,” he said. “Sorry
about this. Really, I’m sorry.”

He walked me to the door quietly.
When we reached it, he set a hand lightly on my back.

I jumped.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. He held
his hands up where I could see them. He looked at me. “Look, this is really bad
timing.”

“What’s bad timing?”

“This,” he said. He bit his lip.
“After tailgate I spent a while trying to figure out who you were. But nobody
could tell me.”

“Probably because I don’t
ordinarily act like that.”

He smiled. “Oh. Well, that’s a shame.”

“For you, maybe.”

“For me, definitely.” He laughed.
“So, can I ask you to dinner or is that going to piss you off?”

“I don’t think now’s a good time to
talk about dinner.”

“Yeah. I know. Bad timing.”

“It’s always bad timing,” I said.

“That’s too bad.”

I stepped out of the door.

“Can I ask you a serious question,
though?” he said. “Why’d you kiss me?”

I shrugged. “My roommate dared me.”

His face changed. Not dramatically,
but enough to know that what I said had been hurtful.

He laughed. “Ha. Of course, of
course.” He nodded. “I should’ve thought of that.”

I stared at the mixture of surprise
and hurt on his face and swallowed. He’d leave me alone if I left now. But, I
wouldn’t like the unsteadiness in my stomach.

I put my hand on the door to keep
him from closing it.

“I mean.” I swallowed. “He dared me
to kiss someone. And I chose you.” I flushed, as something else crossed his
face, and I pulled the door shut before I could say anything else.

“You will never
believe
what happened,” crowed David
when I walked through the door. He was curled up on the couch with a book and a
cup of tea.

“You’re telling me,” I said. I
shook my head and walked to the kettle, which was still steaming.

He smiled at me. “What happened to
you?”

“You first,” I said.                                    

“Ben Mitchell,” he said simply.

I waited for the name to ring a
bell. I cocked my head and snapped my fingers. “Soccer player, right? You were
in love with him for a whole month sophomore year.”

“Football player,” he corrected.
“Tall, dark, and handsome. And I was in love with him junior year.”

“Well, close enough. What’s up with
him?”

“I saw him today.”

“That’s it?”

“No, that’s not it.”                                             

I opened one of the cabinets in our
kitchen and rummaged around for tea bags. I yawned.

“He asked me out.”

“Wait-
what
?”

“He asked me to go see a movie with
him,” David said. “We had chemistry together last year. We were lab partners.
And when I ran into him at the grocery store today, he just asked me to see a
movie.”

I hesitated. “Just the two of you?”

“
Yes
, just the two of us,”
David said. “You seriously think he’d ever invite me to hang out with his
friends?”

“Is he…out?” I asked cautiously.

David waved away the comment with
his hand. “No, he’s still in the closet, but I don’t really care. He’s dreamy.”

I didn’t like the idea of David
being someone’s dirty little secret. Especially after what he told me in San
Francisco about never allowing anyone to make him feel ashamed of who he was
again.

“Yeah, but, I mean—isn’t that a big
headache? Dating someone who’s hiding his real identity?” I asked cautiously.

“As previously discussed, Hadley,
he’s dreamy.
Dreamy
,” he said. “Plus,
I’m
not going to hide my
real identity. He can do whatever he wants.”

“If you say so,” I said. “You’ll
still be around for dinner, right?”

“Yeah. I’m making lasagna.”

“Can you make it for three? I asked
Justin over. From the paper.”

“Ah, the Justin that Nigel wanted
me to go out with?”

“Yes.”

“Hope you didn’t make any promises.
Because I
cannot
cancel on Ben.”

“I didn’t. I just invited him for
dinner. I had the
craziest
morning.”

 “What happened?

“Well, I found out who I made out
with at tailgate.”

“Oh my god! Details!”

I made a face. “His name is Jack
Diamond and he’s the vice-president of Lambda Pi. That frat that Justin wrote a
piece on?”

David nodded, remembering. “Yeah,
yeah. And?”

“So, basically, the Lambda Pi
sophomores have been harassing Justin ever since it published. So, I went over
there to find the president and see if he’d get everyone under control and he
wasn’t there, but Jack was. It was so unbelievably awkward.”

“Oh my god. That’s terrible.”

“Yeah.” I shook my head. “Terrible.”

“What did he say? I mean, was he
behind it?”

“No. I mean, he said he wasn’t
behind anything. And that he’d take care of it.” I rolled my eyes. “But, who
knows what that means?”

“I’m sorry, Hads.”

I waved away the apology. “Please.
It’s Justin I’m worried about. And I’m not going to even think about kissing
another boy until I have a job.” I exhaled.

David clucked. “That was just bad
luck. You have to put yourself out there.”

“No. I don’t want a boyfriend,” I
shook my head. “Long-term monogamy just doesn’t run in my family. I don’t need
that kind of drama right now. I need a job.”

David and Justin hit it off right away. Justin was a
hopeless cook, but an eager apprentice and he laughed every time David threw
his hands up at his attempts to dice tomatoes or roll out dough or butter a
pan.

David looked at Justin’s row of misshapen
zucchini slices. “Is this supposed to be an abstract art project? I want nice,
evenly sliced
circles
.”

Justin giggled.                         

I could tell he was disappointed
when David left abruptly, as we were clearing dinner. “That’s my ride!” He
planted a kiss on my cheek and gave Justin a loose hug and flounced out the
door before Justin could ask where he was going.

“He’s a spaz,” I told Justin. I was
pretty sure David would lose his interest in Ben Mitchell quickly. “You should
come over next week, too. David cooks every Friday night. It’s his way of
achieving mindfulness.”

Justin nodded. “I’d like that.”

David didn’t come home until the next morning, and when he
did, he wore a big, foolish grin on his face that made me like Ben Mitchell a
whole lot more. Anyone who could make David smile like that was okay by me.

Something else was different, too.
Usually, David gushed with details about what he wore and what he said and what
he liked and what he didn’t like. But David just hummed happily when I asked
him if he had fun.

“Oh, it was wonderful,” he said
simply.

“What did you do?”

“He’s really great, Hadley,” he
smiled.

I grinned at him. “Details?”

“Everything was just…” he sighed.

“Well, if you’re speechless, it
must have been pretty special,” I said. I bit into the granola bar I’d been
forced to eat because David hadn’t been home to make breakfast. “Next time,
have him sleep over, so I can get my pancakes,” I said selfishly.

His face fell slightly. “Oh, um—I
know you’re not gossipy or anything, but I promised Ben I’d keep everything
under wraps. So, don’t say anything to anyone.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Okay…”

“And, um, if you see him … Well, I
told him I hadn’t told anyone. And then I realized, you know, that I already
told you. So, if you see him, just pretend you don’t know him. Okay?”

I was about to nod my agreement,
when I stopped myself. “Why doesn’t he want your friends to know? You’re out.
That’s not a secret.”

“Obviously, but he’s still in the
closet. And it’s a big deal. He’s on the football team. You know, it would be a
huge amount of scrutiny and—”

“You can’t just tell him that your
friends are trustworthy?”

“Hadley, could you
please
just not say anything?” he pleaded.

“I’m not going to say anything,” I
said. “But you should be able to tell your friends. Just because he’s in the
closet doesn’t mean you need to keep him a secret.”

David shrugged. “I’m okay with
that. I like him.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

I nodded and returned my focus to
the
USA Today
job application that a Northwestern professor had sent
over to me. It wasn’t a perfect fit—not like the
Times
job in Cairo had
been, but it would be a good experience—working at the Washington, D.C. Bureau,
reporting on domestic politics.

I tried not to say something stupid
or controlling, though I was sorely tempted to point out that Ben was asking
him for a fairly significant sacrifice.

I was buying my textbooks for class, muttering at the $130
list price on the new Arabic textbook, when my phone rang.

I didn’t recognize the number, but
I did recognize the area code. 917. New York. It had to be my father responding
to my request to transfer money for books. My mom responded more quickly to
these things. But I liked to make my dad do it. He hardly had to do anything
else for me and he could more than afford my books.

“Just in time, Dad,” I said.

“Actually, this is Jack.”

Note to self: New York is big.
Sometimes people with 917 area codes are not your father. They are sometimes
Jack Diamond.

 “Sorry. I thought…I just called my
dad and I didn’t…never mind. What’s going on?”

He was laughing. He needed to stop
that.

 “Sorry,” he said. “This is
serious. I should be serious. We had a meeting last night—the frat. Granted,
not everyone’s back from break, but we told everyone to take everything down
and let Justin be. They went back and deleted their comments from CampusRag.”
He took a breath. “I want you to know how sorry I am. I want you both to know
that—you and Justin. We’re not that cohesive of a group, so it’s hard to know
what everyone is doing all the time, but we should’ve taken control of the
situation from the beginning. I’m sorry we didn’t and I’m sorry Justin had to
deal with that because we didn’t.”

As far as apologies went, it was
pretty good. I was impressed. Most people never took responsibility for their
actions and even fewer people took responsibility for the actions of others
that they could’ve prevented.

I took a breath. “Thank you,” I
said. “I’m grateful. Really. I know Justin will be.”

 “Yeah, no problem,” he said.

I balanced another textbook on top
of my stack. “I’m at the bookstore, so I should go, but seriously, thanks a
lot, Jack.”

 “Yeah, sure.” He was quiet.

“Well, I guess, I’ll see you
around,” I said.

“Actually—before you go. Would you
want to get dinner sometime? Or do I have to wait for your roommate to dare you
again?”

I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t been
so startled. “Um, what?”

He chuckled. “Dinner? Would you
want to go to dinner sometime? Can I ask you out?”

“Ah, look, I’m at the bookstore.”

“Oh, I got it. I heard about that
law. You can’t agree to go on a date with anyone when you’re at a bookstore.”

“I don’t think I’m available,” I
managed to say.

He didn’t sound at all displeased.
More than anything, he sounded amused. “Ever? You are never available for
dinner? Wow.”

“Well, I just…I don’t know. I’m not
really into dating people right now,” I said. Or
ever
, I added silently.

“Well, who said anything about a
date? Maybe I just want to have dinner with you. Maybe I think you’d be a
fantastic conversationalist.”

“I doubt that, somehow,” I said.

“Why?” I could hear him smiling.

“Because in our first conversation,
I was drunk and made no sense.” I looked around to see if anyone was listening.
“And in our second conversation, I yelled at you.”

“You didn’t yell. You spoke
persuasively.”

“Well, it’s not a good idea,” I
said. “It just seems like things are rapidly devolving from not making sense to
anger and then like, the third conversation we have could end terribly, you
know?”

He laughed again.

“Stop laughing. I’m serious.”

“You’re scared that our third
conversation will devolve? Into what? Silence? That would be awkward, but I bet
we could survive it.”

“I really don’t have the time to
date anyone right now,” I said. That sounded believable. It was certainly true.

“Aw, I’m not going to give up that
easily,” he smiled. “You’re the one who started it. You shouldn’t have kissed
me like that if you wanted to be left alone.”

“I—”

“I’m going to swing by,” he said
adamantly. “We can hang out. That’s a good idea. No dinner. Anti-date date.”

“I mean, maybe.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing, but—”                                     

“Great. I’ll swing by tonight.”

“No, I don’t think you understand.
I said dinner wasn’t good for me.”

“I thought you said dating wasn’t
good for you. We won’t have dinner. It’ll be a non-dinner, non-date hangout
session.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“I just want to talk to you,” he
said casually.

“Why?”

He laughed.

“What?”                                     

“I think you’re fascinating,” he
said, the same wry amusement coursing through his voice. “I’ll stop by
tonight.” He hung up before I could say anything else.