I looked up from our intertwined hands. "Self-destructing? How?"
"I drank. A lot. All the way down to the cliché of the professor who tips a little whiskey from a flask into his coffee when the students aren't looking," Ford said. He tried to smile but it slipped away. "I tried to drink it all away but it didn't budge. So, I started making other bad decisions."
"Were you trying to get fired?" I asked.
He squeezed my fingers and nodded. "I think I was. I wanted a reason to fight for my old career, to face what happened at my old job, and I just couldn't do it myself. I needed the money."
I blinked hard. "I wish you had known my father then."
A real smile burned through the haze of Ford's torment. "Me too. He's too nice to kick my ass, but a few well-chosen words from a man of respect can cut through a lot of bullshit."
My heart warmed as he referred to my father as a man of respect. Ford was keeping me and my father at arm's length and I didn't know why, but those words had me hoping he would help us when it came down to it.
Ford cleared his throat and let go of my hands. "Libby expressed interest. She flirted. A few other students flirted too, but I never thought about it. I never intended to anything about it."
"What happened?" I asked. Hope fluttered again in my chest.
"The first alumni/donor dinner was a huge success for Landsman College. I was invited, but only stayed for a few minutes. I was blind drunk and lucky that no one noticed. Then there was Libby. She saw me, the state I was in, and she took her chance."
Ford hung his head and took a few deep breaths. "I could have written it off as a drunk mistake, but that only made the connotations worse. So, so I tried. I tried to make something out of it. We saw each other a few more times, but Libby was not who I thought she was. When she saw how I lived, that I didn't own a car, or have a fancy condo, she demanded that I change. I pointed out we meant nothing to each other. I guess she rewrote it in her head since then."
I edged away, uncomfortable with the mix of disgust and sympathy I felt for him. Ford had made a terrible, immoral, and reprehensible mistake, but there he sat telling me the whole truth of it. I felt like crying, but I also felt like comforting him.
He looked up and pinned me with a stormy-blue stare. "You mean a lot to me, Clarity," he rasped. "It has nothing to do with who your father is or that my job is on the chopping block. It has nothing to do with your age, our situation, or anything else but this."
He reached out and brushed a hand across my cheek. The searing undercurrents of his caress struck hotter than lightning. He felt it too.
"I should have thrown it all away to be with you," Ford said. "But, now it's too late. The least I can do now is help your father and save you."
"Save me?" I asked. I snapped out of the spell his confession had woven and stood up. "I don't need saving. I don't need protecting. As far as I can tell, between you, my father, and me, I'm the only one that can be trusted to seek the truth."
"The truth is not so simple," Ford warned.
"That's it," I cried and headed for the door. I had to escape before I gave into the urge to collapse in his arms. "I know you think I'm silly and naive but I can't help it. I prize honesty, I want the truth, and if you're not going to help me get it, then I will uncover it myself."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Clarity
I collapsed on Ford's saggy sofa. From there, I realized the only real things of substance that Ford had in his apartment were all media. Two newspapers were stacked under his coffee table. Bestselling nonfiction books were in random stacks. Magazines were all dog-eared or folded open. His tablet was charging on the edge of the table next to me.
"I wonder how many of these things tell the real truth," I sighed.
Ford raised an eyebrow and sat down slowly on the opposite arm on the sofa. "What do you mean?"
"Online media, print media, it's all just the same. The story is slanted no matter what. The only difference is some people make it go their way," I said.
"Come on, you can't think like that. You're too young," Ford joked.
I sat up and tossed the magazine next to me onto the coffee table. "So, what? That's it? The difference between being a child and being an adult is a working tolerance for dishonesty?"
"Things just get complicated. The older you get, the more demands there are on your time and money and ability to believe," Ford said. He scrubbed a hand over his chin and frowned at his own statement. "What you lose in believing in honesty, maybe you gain in insight to other people's motives."
I groaned and flopped back again. "I don't want messy motives. They're never easy to understand. I just want the facts to work, to tell the truth, and for the people who are wrong to be punished instead of the ones who are trying to do good."
Ford slid onto the sofa and nudged me with his elbow. "The best articles always reveal or hint at the subject's motives. People are interesting but mostly static, motives shift and move. Motives are action."
I leaned away from his elbow, but the sag in the couch brought us closer together. I fought off the gravity that pulled me towards Ford and said, "I'm glad I have a reason to turn down that internship at Wire Communications."
"What reason is that? You're not going to actually list this sideline private college corruption as a reason to decline one of the most prestigious internships in media arts, are you?" Ford leaned in to study my face.
"Why not?" I asked, "Then they won't have to guess my motives. Maybe it'll make a great subject for whomever takes my place."
Ford scrubbed his stubbled chin again in a sign of exasperation. He was so close I could smell the faded traces of his cologne. "Don't give up the internship," he said. "I'm not saying that success is better than honesty, but don't you imagine that sticking with this internship is the only kind of revenge your father really wants?"
In order to push my shoulder away from his, I had to press my knee against Ford's thigh. Immediate heat flooded from where our legs touched all the way up to my cheeks. "I don't want to be there," I said. "No matter how far the internship lets me go in my career, I'll always know where and how it started."
"No." Ford turned to me, our legs pressed tighter together. "You're a great journalist. You can make it there without letting it taint you. Just let things like this slide right off of you. They won't be able to touch your integrity unless you let them, and I don't think you will."
His words set fire to my mind as his proximity was heating every inch of my body. I forced myself to inch away and shook my head. "I'd make a terrible journalist. I'm not willing to play games or spin the truth. Let's be honest, I should quit pretending," I said.
The thought of quitting was an ice cold bath over my senses. I jumped up from the sofa and squeezed my eyes shut. My whole carefully planned life had a fatal flaw. One little thread got pulled and the whole thing came apart. Without a career in journalism, I didn't have a writing career based in current events, facts, and concrete styles. Suddenly I was completely at a loss and the feeling overwhelmed me.