Love Show Read online

  LOVE SHOW

  by Audrey Bell

  Copyright © 2014 by Audrey Bell. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  First Edition.

  Cover design © Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations LLC

  Cover photograph ©ollyy, Shutterstock

  audreybellbooks.blogspot.com

  “You have to pick the places you don't walk away from.”

  -Joan Didion

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  LOVE SHOW

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  The fall of my senior year of college, my roommate decided I was a head case because of the espresso machine to which we owed our friendship.

  Actually, David probably decided I was a head case the first day of freshman year, when we met. My mother had just decided to get divorced for the fifth time and I had just decided I’d had enough.

  "I just don't understand where the rest of your room is," my mother said for the eighth time.

  "This is the whole room. All of it."

  "But where will you put your espresso machine?"

  "In the hallway. The espresso machine can go in the hallway or it can go with you, but it is not going in here."

  "I think you should complain. I thought you were supposed to be going to college. This looks like a prison cell."

  I’d stepped out of the tiny room with the espresso machine to catch my breath. And that’s when I’d met David.

  He had taken the espresso machine and, because he had no one to move him in, he'd also taken my mother.

  Anyways, he'd been fine with my being a head case and in love with the espresso machine until the last week of November my senior year, when he decided he was definitely not okay with either.

  I had just gotten back to Northwestern from my third-round interview at The New York Times and had to put the finishing touches on a junior staffer's piece on online privacy before memorizing idiomatic expressions for my advanced Arabic test in the morning.

  So, I needed a few cappuccinos.

  It was the fourth cappuccino that did it. David stormed out of the room.

  "What. The. Hell. Are. You. Doing."

  I held up my Arabic textbook. "Test tomorrow."

  "Are you kidding me?"

  "Sorry, I know it's late."

  "It's not late. It's early. It's five forty-five in the morning," he said.

  "Seriously?" I glanced at the clock. "Gosh, time flies."

  "Time does not fly, Hadley. It moves at a constant pace." He looked at me seriously. "You look like a drug addict. And not in a good way."

  "Can you ever look like a drug addict in a good way?"

  "I'm sure it's been done before. But not by you."

  "Well, I'm not on drugs."

  "That's okay. I'm having an intervention anyways."

  “A study intervention?”

  He took my Arabic book away.

  I smiled and held my hand out for the book. "David, I need to study."

  "You need to study like the Mojave Desert needs a dry spell. You have a 4.0 GPA. You are the last person in the world who needs to study. Here are some people who need to study. Me. Tara Barnes. Kim Kardashian. Miley Cyrus. You do not need to study. You need to take a nap, a Xanax, and a two-year vacation."

  "Oh, please.”

  "You're addicted to work."

  "I am not addicted to anything." I tried to snatch the book back from him.

  "You are. Work and caffeine and possibly sugar," he said mildly, leafing through the pages. "I mean, look at this. You learned how to speak a language in college. You want to know what I learned?"

  "Theater?"

  He arched an eyebrow. "How to roll a joint." He closed the book. "Anyways, this is unhealthy. It's unhealthy for you and it's even more unhealthy for me."

  "How is it unhealthy for you?"

  "Because, people think I live with a drug addict. And your work ethic makes me feel small and pathetic and lazy and we can't have that. I need to feel superior or, when that's not possible, at the very least, equal to you."

  I smiled. "I need the book back."

  "You need to get laid," David said.

  "Let's talk about this later."

  "Like when?" David asked.

  "Today."

  "When today? Before or after the newspaper staff meeting?"

  "Christ, I forgot about that. Dinner. We can cook dinner."

  “Isn't the newspaper cohosting the Ambassador to Turkey at the multicultural center for dinner tonight?”

  I looked at him. “I need the book back, David.”

  He sat down on the couch. "How was the interview?"

  "Seriously?"

  "You want the book back?"

  I exhaled. “It was fine.” I rubbed my chin. “I liked the journalist who interviewed me. She seemed cool—intense but cool.” I shrugged. "They said they weren't sure about my experience level. It would be in Africa, not the Middle East, and Arabic's not as useful. But, the interview seemed fine. I liked her a lot.” I shrugged.

  "That's good!"

  “Yeah. It's good.” I agreed. “I really want the job.”

  He looked at me expectantly.

  “So, is that all?" I asked, reaching out my hand for the book.

  “Of course not. I want to discuss your mental health and your sex life. That was supposed to be an icebreaker.”

  “Look, I get it. I'm stressed out right now and it's freaking you out and I woke you up—”

  “It's not freaking me out. I'm worried about you,” he said sincerely.

  “There’s nothing to worry about. Promise.”

  He smiled. “It's not an insult, Hadley.”

  “It is, though. Kind of,” I said. “Like, you're
worried I can't do what I signed up for.”

  "Well, that's not what I meant. I'm not worried that you can't do it. I'm worried that you're going to do everything you signed up for so well that you won't ever enjoy anything.” He smiled. “I'm saying you’re awesome and you need to take a nap and get laid or, at the very least, make out with a stranger.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  He rolled his eyes. "It has to do with the college experience."

  “Fine. You're right.”

  "See, the thing—” He stopped himself short. “Wait, what? I'm right?”

  “Yes. Now, can I have the book?”

  "So, you'll make out with a stranger?"

  “No. You're right. I'm a head case. I'll take a nap.”

  He growled.

  “Book.”

  He handed it back to me. “We're not done here. I'm just going to bed. Not to sleep, obviously. You would look down on that. I'm going to practice transcendental meditation and possibly achieve nirvana. I'll let you know if I get there.”

  He flounced back to his room and I returned to the text, my eyes blurring.

  Chapter Two

  David had probably been right to worry about my mounting sleep debt. After my Arabic exam, I went to the wrong library to meet with one of the freshman staff writers for The Daily Northwestern who had doubts about a piece he'd been working on.

  Justin Shelter hunched over his laptop at a corner table in the engineering library. Which was crowded. And quiet. On a Friday! David would've had strong words for this.

  "Sorry,” I said breathlessly. “I forgot we were doing this here. I forgot you were an engineering student altogether. That's the kind of day I've had.”

  “No sweat,” Justin said with a grin. “Thanks for coming.”

  Most of the kids who worked for the paper were in the Medill School of Journalism, but there were a few outsiders. Justin was one of them. He was also one of our more talented writers. He had a knack for investigative journalism and had spent the last month working on a piece on alcohol and student health.

  I read over his most recent draft while he watched, occasionally chewing a stray fingernail.

  A student had died over the summer from alcohol poisoning, and it had prompted a lot of concerned emails from the administration, but no real changes. The death hadn’t occurred on campus, but Justin thought it might be a symptom of a larger issue.

  He was right—a dozen different students, most of them freshmen, had been hospitalized since the beginning of the year for alcohol poisoning and eleven of them had come from the same address, an off-campus fraternity house.

  “Wow,” I said when I got to that point. “That changes things.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “Have you contacted anyone at the fraternity?”

  “Yeah, I emailed the president twice. He hasn't written back, and I don't think he will.” He frowned. "I asked a few other kids. They didn't exactly give me anything printable. Unless, ‘don't be a fag’ counts as a legitimate comment.”

  “Animals,” I said. “Well, if they don't want to defend themselves, fine.”

  “I don't want it be a takedown piece, you know? It's about student health.”

  “Yeah. But, you can't change facts,” I said. “The fact that kids have gone to the hospital from their parties at a disproportionate rate isn't a takedown. It’s just what’s true.”

  He squinted at his computer screen. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Make it clear that the house is at the center of the incidents. Say they declined your repeated requests for comment. Talk to a few other people. People who aren’t in the fraternity but go to their parties. See if they can give you a better idea of what happened, whether the fraternity should bear some of the responsibility or not, whether this is specific to this fraternity or specific to fraternities in general,” I shrugged. “You want to be fair, but you can't leave it out.”

  “I know.” He smiled ruefully. “I just don’t want to seem like a kid with an ax to grind.”

  “You're not the story. The facts speak for themselves, not to your opinions,” I said. He'd have heard that if he'd taken a journalism class. “It's a good story, you've worked hard on it.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Right. I know.” He let out a heaving sigh. “Just…it would be easier if it were easier.”

  I laughed. “Yes. It would. But, listen, I think you are great. I think the article will be great,” I said. “Don't let it stress you out. It's a good story; it's an important story. You know all this.”

  He nodded. “Thanks. Sorry to be an alarmist. I just wasn't sure what to do.” He grinned. “Literally no one ever read my high school newspaper, so I didn't have to worry about it.”

  “Well, people will read this.”

  “That's the problem!” He smiled and then sighed. “Alright, well, I'll get a draft to you sometime next week. Exams are killing me.”

  “Take your time.”

  He laughed. “Right. How many writers do you say that to?”

  “None. Zero. Only you. But you're the only person who investigates anything, so you're special.” I got to my feet. “You coming to this multiculturalism thing?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got to study this stuff, unfortunately.”

  “Well, I have to practice my speech. But email me if anything else comes up, okay?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  David and Nigel, his friend from the GSA, were making risotto when I got back to the apartment to change into something less ratty than my torn jeans and ragged t-shirt.

  “I thought you were coming to the dinner,” I told David.

  David raised his eyebrows. “I’m coming to the dinner for you, but you really can't expect me to eat cafeteria food on a Friday night.”

  I looked at Nigel. “How'd you get roped into this?”

  “I wanted to come,” Nigel insisted.

  “Liar. I don't even want to go.”

  Nigel laughed. “So, David said you were just meeting Justin Shelter?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, you know him?”

  “I do. I'm trying to set David up with him.”

  “You're joking,” I said.

  “What's wrong with him?” David asked. “I knew something was wrong with him.”

  “I just didn't know he was gay.”

  “Does he know he's gay?” David asked.

  “Yes,” Nigel said.

  “I'll take it under consideration.”

  Nigel shrugged. David had a bad habit of falling in love with straight boys. Nigel had a bad habit of trying to fix it.

  “You know who needs relationship advice?” David asked.

  "Amanda Bynes," I said.

  “Close.”

  “Miley Cyrus. Kim Kardashian,” I said. “Tiger Woods.”

  “Hadley Arrington. Front of the line.”

  Nigel laughed. “Ooh. Really? I want to help.”

  "I need to get dressed,” I said, sighing.

  "She needs to get laid," David told Nigel.

  I went to my room and pulled on a black dress that I'd worn to a winter formal my junior year of high school. It had held up well, like the saleswoman at Bergdorf's had promised.

  My mother and I had been on one of those horrific college tours that everyone goes on with their parents, where the only thing you end up doing is fighting.

  She'd signed divorce papers that November and Tom, Julian, and Leah—my stepfather, stepbrother, and stepsister—had disappeared as quickly as they'd arrived. The house had disappeared too, another casualty of the divorce.

  We'd moved to a penthouse apartment on Market Street, and, after three months of refusing to unpack, I'd finally put away my books and my clothes. I'd been dusting off the box of picture frames to put up around my room when my mother told me that Lawrence had proposed.

  We’d left on the college tour the next morning. I would end up remembering each school by what we fought about there.

>   NYU had been our last stop. The dress had been an attempt at a bribe.

  “You have to understand, Hadley,” my mother said, after she'd bought the dress and a pair of shoes that I would never learn to walk in. “You'll be gone soon, and I don't want to be alone.”

  I had already known that, but I had never heard her say it aloud and it made one thing very clear to me: being afraid to be alone made you dependent on someone else. Someone you hadn’t met yet. A stranger. And a stranger was an incredibly stupid and unreliable thing to depend on.

  I promised myself I would never do that. And I never did.

  When I stepped back out of my room, David handed me a plate of butternut squash risotto. “Nigel said he needs to know what's your type.”

  I looked at Nigel. “Of what?”

  “Of man,” David said.

  I took a bite of the risotto and closed my eyes. “I could live on this stuff.”

  “I think her type needs to be very, very, very calm,” David said.

  “I don't have a type,” I admitted. I set down my fork.

  “Last boyfriend?” Nigel asked.

  I rolled my eyes. My last boyfriend had been Luke. In high school. Nice kid. I had liked him. Lost my virginity to him. The whole nine yards. I broke up with him when he said he loved me. It reminded me too much of my mother.

  He told everyone I was a huge bitch. I didn’t blame him for that. But, he also told everyone I was a slut. That was, first of all, a lie, and second of all, a douche bag move.

  He’d been the popular one, though. People believed him. Everyone believed him. And when everyone believes something about you, it might as well be true.

  “Some lacrosse player,” I said dismissively, not wanting to get into it. "High school.”

  “Seriously?” Nigel asked. “Your type is lacrosse player?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don't have a type. My last boyfriend was a lacrosse player. That’s all.”

  “Well, good. We don't have a lacrosse team,” David said.

  "On second thought, maybe it is lacrosse player," I said.

  “Her type is not lacrosse player. Don't try to find one,” David said. “She'll hurt it.”

  “How would I hurt a lacrosse player?”

  “You’d kill him with your Arabic textbook,” David said.