by Audrey Bell
“To fall in love with someone who couldn't be worse for me." He shook his head. "I mean, Jesus Christ. You've got a lot of rules. And I've got just about none. But if I had to come up with one it would be: don't sleep with the pretty girl headed for Syria in six months. And if you do sleep with her, be damned sure you don't fall in love with her. But here we are." He smiled humorlessly.
"You're not in love with me," I said. "We're not even dating."
He laughed bitterly. “I am, though. I really am. I'm in love with you.” He smiled again and shook his head. “But, I’m fucked up." He got to his feet.
“Jack…”
"Look, don't worry about it." He put his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “You don't have to say anything, Hadley. I get it. You're not into it. You said that from the beginning and you don't owe me anything. If you want to take off, take off." He rubbed the back of his neck and turned back towards the house.
I stood up. "You want me to go? You want me to leave the party you invited me to?"
He bit his lip. "No, I don't want you to go." He shook his head. "But you probably should."
I met his eyes. "C'mon," I said softly. "Talk to me. I'm not going to die in Syria."
"My dad used to say that." He nodded and looked down at his feet and then up at me. He shrugged. "Listen, I'm going to go inside. You didn't sign up for this."
"Okay," I said. "That's okay. We'll figure it out."
"Figure what out?" he demanded. "I’m telling you I can’t do this anymore, Hadley.”
I met his eyes. "You can't do this because I'm going to Syria?" I said. I shook my head. "I just don't understand—”
"Jesus, Hadley, haven't you listened to anything I said?"
"Well, everything was fine. You knew that I—”
"I said I’m love with you," he yelled. He threw his head back and I took a step back and looked at him. He looked at me again and exhaled. "I'm in love with you," he repeated quietly. “Do you get that?”
I bit my lip. I had nothing to say.
"I'm sorry," he said. He shook his head. "There are about a dozen girls who I had to say I was sorry to because I didn't love them. So I get what it's like for you right now. Believe me. I know. It's terrible. You feel guilty and awkward and like you failed to communicate something to me." He nodded. "But most of all you feel like you want to get the hell away as fast as possible. And I know what that feels like and I'll make this easy for you. Take off. Go home. It’s fine. I broke the rules and I got burned and that’s my fault.”
"You don't know how I feel," I said. I didn’t feel awkward. I felt sick.
"I love you, Hadley."
"Would you stop saying that?" I snapped.
He smiled sadly. “See?” He shook his head.
I wanted to cry. I was almost sure that I’d start crying. “Since when?” My voice sounded strangled.
He laughed. He lifted the flask to his lips. His face twisted when he swallowed. He stared at me. “I don’t know. Maybe since I met you,” he bit his lip. “Listen. Go. Go. It’s fine.” He smiled. “You don’t want this and I’ll…I’ll deal with it. But, you should go. It’ll be easier for you and it’ll be easier for me, too.”
"Well, do you want me to come say goodbye? To Riley or your...family?"
He gave me a cocky smile. I’d seen it a million times. On his Facebook page, when he was talking to people he didn’t really know, when someone told a story he didn’t think was particularly funny and he wanted to be polite. This empty, distant, arrogant smile like he’d never even worried about anything before in his life. “Nah. Don't worry about it. I’ll clean up. Not your mess anyways.”
I expected him to turn back and look at me as he walked back towards the house. I expected him to laugh and say he was fucking with me, he was drunk, or that he just needed some space, or that he’d call me tomorrow or that he’d see me around. Or something.
But the door closed and he didn’t come back.
I stood staring at that door for a long time.
I didn’t have a ride back to my apartment. And I didn’t call for one. The air was cold enough that I couldn’t think about the icy pain in my chest.
By the time I got home I was shaking from the cold. I felt so tired, like I’d walked eight miles instead of half of one. I shuddered in the doorway, flipping on the lights, taking off my heels.
“You’re early,” David said. He turned to look at me. “How was it?”
I smiled, took the kettle down from the cabinet, and filled it with water.
Then I burst into tears.
“Hadley! What the hell happened?” David asked. He got up from the couch next to Justin. I smiled as widely as I could manage.
“Nothing,” I insisted, pressing my hand to my mouth, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Hadley.”
“Please, David,” I said, as he crossed the room to me.
“What did he do?”
“Nothing. He didn’t do anything,” I said. I took a deep breath and managed to keep the sobs down until I’d entangled myself from his wrist and gotten to the bathroom to turn on the shower.
Chapter Thirty-Four
David refused to let me leave the next morning. He insisted on an explanation. And when I’d finally spat out the whole sorry story, I still hadn’t touched my pancakes.
I shook my head. “I should have known."
"What?"
"That this would end badly," I said.
David looked at me in concern. “Is it really a problem that he loves you?"
I shrugged. "He seems to think so."
"Why?"
"Because he broke up with me."
"But you aren't even dating."
"He told me to leave." I took a breath. "He told me he loved me and that I had to go. And I did."
"What did you say?"
I shrugged. "Nothing. I left."
He was quiet. "Do you love him?"
I cocked my head at David. I exhaled. "I don't believe in that stuff."
"In love?"
"Not the way he meant it." I put my hair into a ponytail and gathered up my things. "I have to go."
"Hadley," David called after me.
“David, I have to go. The newspaper has to get put out,” I said. I probably had done it before, used the newspaper as an excuse to hide from people. But I’d never been so aware of it.
Every comma I cut, every sentence I reworded, I knew exactly what I was doing. He told me he loved me and I wanted to say it back.
But, I was afraid.
So, on a Saturday morning, feeling hung-over and half-empty, I copyedited the newspaper.
You’re breaking your own heart, a tiny voice told me, when I looked up for my work long enough to think about it.
Another voice, one I knew better and trusted more, spoke back you have to break your own heart. You can’t compromise.
I had no idea how I was going to face Professor Riley in class on Monday. I wondered what Jack had said when he returned to dinner. Had he told them I was crazy or heartless or just feeling sick?
Had he just told them the truth?
I sat in the second-to-last row, close to the back of the room. I scrawled my name in nervous, looping letters in the corner of my notebook. I tried not to think about the way Jack smiled on Friday night, like he'd seen this coming and he hadn't been able to stop it and for some reason that was funny.
Like finding out something that had seemed too good to be true just wasn't true.
Well, of course.
I had scrawled my name over half the page by the time Riley walked in, and I didn't look up when he grumbled hello to the class.
He had moved to ethical constraints on journalism when it came to respecting other people's religious beliefs, and I finally looked up when he referenced a statistic on a slide.
He wasn't looking at me. Obviously.
He didn't look at me all class. I bit my lip and took notes and when he was finished talking, I did my best to pack u
p my things in record speed.
"Now before you go, we'll be distributing your assigned journalist for your profile." He looked around. "Oh, and Hadley?"
Shit.
"Can I talk to you for a second after class?"
I wondered if Jack had told him we’d broken up.
Or whatever that had been on Friday. A fight? No, it was more than a fight. It was the end of something.
I chewed my thumbnail while the classroom emptied.
"Are you going to come down here?" Riley asked with a grin.
I got up and walked down the rows to where he stood by his desk.
I wasn't going to talk first. I couldn't think of a single thing to say. He stared at me piercingly.
"So, Friday was fun," I said. So much for the not talking first. "I mean, it was nice seeing you."
Riley smiled. "I didn't know about you and Jack."
"Oh," I said.
"You're good for him," he said, cocking his head.
I opened my mouth and then closed it. I cocked my head and cleared my throat. "I'm not his girlfriend or anything."
He laughed. "Yeah, he said that. Whatever you are, though, I think it's good."
I nodded. He told me to go away. I guess even investigative journalists missed the obvious sometimes.
"Anyways, I'd assigned you Jack's father, Scott Diamond." He looked at me. "I'd made the decision before I knew you were...how did you put it? Not Jack's girlfriend or anything?" He smiled at me.
Jesus. Christ.
I smiled back. "Right."
"Anyways, if you're not comfortable with the assignment because of that, you can choose someone else. But I thought you'd do a good job with it." He smiled. "He'd have liked you. He was idealistic, too." He nodded. "It's the only time I'd thought to assign him to anyone and I'd like it if you did it. But I understand if you'd prefer not to."
"I'll do it," I said quietly. I cocked my head. I had a feeling Jack would hate it if he knew. But he wouldn't know. The sad thing was that I didn’t think he’d ever find out. Because I didn’t think he’d ever talk to me again.
He nodded. "Good. Glad to hear it. You feeling better?"
So that's what Jack had gone with. Sick. "I feel great. Thanks."
He nodded. "I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but you should know Jack's a fighter."
I looked at him.
"It's how he shows he cares about people." He grinned. "If he's fighting with you, you know."
I wished that we were fighting. But we weren't. He was ignoring me. And I was letting him. "Thanks, but I'm really not his girlfriend."
"Like I said, whatever you are to him, it's good."
I nodded once, unwilling to shatter that perception, because it seemed to make him happy. "Well, ah, thanks."
He laughed. "For a research project and unsolicited relationship advice for someone you swear you're not dating? Anytime."
I managed to laugh and told him I had to get to a meeting. I walked quickly from his classroom to the newspaper office.
My phone hadn't been quiet. Not exactly.
My mother had texted about dinner plans for graduation weekend, my father had sent me an email about a suicide bombing in Syria with the subject line FYI, and David had sent me a gif of a dancing rabbit.
But Jack hadn't sent me anything.
I put the phone in a drawer so I couldn't think about it and turned my attention to writing a brief on employment statistics for recent graduates.
It was dry material and uncomplicated—the report released by the Alumni Affairs Office came with charts and detailed analyses. On a normal day, I would've delegated it to a junior writer, but I wanted something to do. I sighed when I finished it and forwarded it to Andrew for copyedits.
I glanced out the window, pulled my phone from the drawer and tapped out a response to my mother.
Graduation wasn't far off—two months now—just eight weeks.
That seemed surreal.
The newspaper office was quiet. I peered out my door. If I wanted to Google Scott Diamond, I could. No one would know. But I felt brittle and I thought that reading about it might break me.
I packed up my things and went home.
I started crying in the shower. Something about the hot water on my skin. The way he had told me to leave. The way I couldn’t stop remembering. The first sob felt like it was ripping through me, and when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to stop them, I just let myself cry. I sat down on the cold, tile floor and tried to breathe through the pouring water.
I never expected to feel this rejected.
I scrubbed my hair viciously, like it could stop the flood of emotion. I was crying because he said he loved me and that I had to leave and I knew that if the first thing was true, so was the second one.
I got out of the shower, wrapped myself in one towel, and put my hair up in another one.
I wandered out into the living room to David, who was lying flat on the floor listening to some kind of new age spa music.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Realigning my spine," he said serenely.
I sat down next to him in my towel and looked at the ceiling. I shifted. “Huh.”
“Sh..." he said. "You're killing my zen."
"How?"
"Bad energy." He snapped open one eye. "Lie down. If anyone needs their spine realigned, it's you."
"What does that even mean?" I demanded.
"It means shut up and lie down."
So I did.
“How do you know when it’s aligning?”
“When you feel the tension leave your body,” David said knowingly.
“What does that feel like?”
David turned his head to me and glared. “Start with silence. Tension leaving will eventually follow.”
“Sure.”
“Close your eyes. Shut up.”
I breathed and stared at the ceiling and closed my eyes. My damp shoulder brushed David’s and I waited for the tension to leave my body.
My breathing slowed. Maybe it was the tension leaving my body. Maybe it was being hit with a wave of exhaustion. But something happened.
“There,” he said.
“What are you talking about? My spine is still misaligned,” I informed him.
“Well, you haven’t been working hard enough at the silence,” he said. He stood up. “Want some tea?”
I sat up.
“Well, now it’s definitely not going to align,” he informed me.
I chuckled.
“How you doing, girlfriend?” David asked gently.
“Spectacular. I'm writing a paper on Jack’s father for the journalism class taught by his godfather who doesn't believe that I'm not his girlfriend."
"Sounds complicated.” He handed me a warm mug of tea. Our hands brushed. "Your mom emailed me about graduation."
"Oh yeah," I smiled.
"Justin said his parents wanted to come. Especially since mine aren’t."
"Nice."
"Yeah? You don't think that'll be weird?”
"I mean, my parents are coming. That will be weird. I'll tell my mom to add them to our reservations. If you want.”
He nodded. "Mm. Yeah. If she doesn't mind?"
"She won't."
Chapter Thirty-Five
I didn't work up the nerve to Google Scott Diamond until midnight on Saturday. That's when most people worked up the nerve to say what they wanted. Midnight. Weekend. Have a few drinks. Say something stupid. Something that you mean.
I couldn't look down on that. If I had a little more nerve, I'd have called Jack and asked him how dare he tell me to go away just when I had gotten used to having him around, just as he started being the first person I told everything to.
I chewed my fingernails looking at the search results.
Scott Diamond's Son Recites Father's Last Words
I clicked on the link with trembling fingers, biting my lip. It wasn't Jack, but Alex. The video was
a few years old, taken when Alex was at West Point.
I closed my eyes. I did not hit play. I stared at the frozen image for a long time.
Finally, I shut the screen of my computer and pushed it away.
I got up and walked away from it.
I could either research Scott Diamond or I could tell Riley I couldn't do it. And I had a feeling if I couldn't handle this, it wouldn't say much for my prospects in Syria. I knew I'd have to be tougher.
I turned my head, looking back at the computer, and gnawed on my lip. I walked to it and opened the screen and began to work.
Scott James Diamond was born in 1961 in Chicago, IL. He attended the University of Illinois, got a graduate degree in journalism from NYU, and took a mailroom job with the Chicago Tribune.
He met Julie Rowland in 1983, married her in 1985. She gave birth to his son, Alexander, in 1986, and his son Jack in 1992.
He spent three years in Bosnia, and was hospitalized when shrapnel in his leg became infected.
He was the co-recipient of the Pulitzer Prize with Robert Riley in 1994.
He spent time in the First Gulf War, co-authored a book, and was named the Chief of the Moroccan News Bureau. He returned to the Metropolitan desk at The New York Times in 1999.
After the terrorist attacks on September 11th, he and Riley were asked to cover the war in Afghanistan. He agreed. In January of 2002, he went to a café to meet with a source.
Riley had a stomach bug from drinking the water so Scott Diamond went alone.
He didn't come back. Not that afternoon. Not that night.
The last time most people saw him would be in the photographs they released. He looked levelly into a camera, with serious but unpanicked eyes, holding a newspaper with the day's date.
The last time a very small handful of people would see him would be in the VHS tape sent to the Kabul hotel room where Riley had holed up, refusing to leave.
They slit his throat, cut off his head, and the camera went black.
I took notes on all of this. That was what they taught you. The way to make sense of things was to take detailed notes and to construct a narrative, identifying causes and effects, the repercussions and the warnings.
They didn't kill Scott Diamond. They slaughtered him. Like an animal.