chips in his hand. The tree house was packed, people on
every stool and sprawled out on the floor, making use of the pillows.
Underclassmen gazed up with wonder, peering like tourists drawn in
by a crowd, wondering what they were missing out on.
As it turned out, Gretchen and Vince were friends, and when
Dave took the seat that Vince had reserved for him, Gretchen was
only two stools away. Vince and a few others kept talking about what
a cool thing Dave and Julia had done, but Dave could barely focus on
what they were saying. He and Gretchen kept exchanging looks so
obviously that it was a shock no one called them out on it.
He chatted amicably with everyone around, even laughed a little
with Vince, who was all the time proving himself to be nicer than
Dave had ever given him credit for. That other clichéd football-player
108 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES
side of him that Dave assumed existed never made an appearance. But
at one point he decided there was only one person he really wanted
to talk to, and when the girl sitting next to Gretchen stood up, he
immediately moved over.
“How was your weekend?”
“Not quite as constructive as yours,” Gretchen said, plopping a
piece of papaya into her mouth with a smile.
“I see what you did there.”
“I’ve been thinking of it for, like, six whole minutes.”
Dave laughed, leaning into her shoulder with a nudge. “Come on,
how was your weekend?”
Gretchen chewed thoughtfully for a while. “Not too shabby. I
think some weekends feel wasted if you don’t have a ton of fun, and
some feel wasted if you don’t have a ton of sleep, and I did a solid
amount of both.”
“What did you do for fun?”
“I slept,” Gretchen said, picking out another piece of fruit from her
Tupperware.
“You are on a roll today.”
“I think you bring it out of me,” Gretchen said with a shrug,
pushing the Tupperware in his direction to offer him a piece. He
reached his fingers in for a piece of pineapple, feeling a little cheesy in longing for their hands to brush against each other.
When the bell rang and lunch was over, Dave and Gretchen
separated themselves from the group. It happened almost
DAVE 109
magnetically, the two of them drifting off from the rest, keeping pace
only with each other.
“So,” Gretchen said, hoisting a binder to her chest the way nerdy
kids in movies did, “you built a tree house.”
“I had some help.” Dave shrugged.
“Still, pretty cool. Was it your idea?”
“Inspired by a desire for us to have our own lunch spot,” he said,
aware that he’d purposely avoided saying Julia’s name but not sure
why. “But yes, my idea.”
“I wonder what your grandkids will feel when they read about you
in history books.”
“An immense and prideful love, obviously.”
They walked down the tree house stairs slowly, in no rush to make it
to class before the bell rang. Other kids gathered their belongings and
prepared for that last, brutal stretch of classes before the day broke
free. Some were looking in Dave’s direction, smiling, or whispering,
or just staring for a moment before walking away. Dave wasn’t sure
he’d ever get used to eyes turning to look at him, but it no longer felt like it had never happened before.
When they reached the building, Dave put his hand on the door to
open it for Gretchen, but hesitated for a second. He met her eyes and
the words simply escaped him in a way he didn’t fully understand,
like the drops of rain suddenly becoming too heavy and breaking free
from a cloud after staying together for so long. “Do you want to see
my favorite bench in the world?”
110 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES
Gretchen smiled but said nothing for a second, as if she wanted the
words to soak in. Nicky Marquez passed between the two of them,
looking at his phone and unaware of what he was stepping through.
When he opened the door, Dave’s eyes glanced into the hallway, and
he saw Julia rubbing the sleep from her eyes, walking his direction.
“Let’s go, David Bro Bronofsky. Two more classes and then we’re free.”
“Friday,” Dave added quietly. “We’ll have some coffee on my
favorite bench in the world.”
“Yes,” Gretchen said, nodding. “I’d like that.”
DAVE 111
DATE
DAVE CHECKED HIS phone and slid it back in his pocket for the
tenth time in the last thirty seconds or so. He was sitting on his
bench at Morro Bay, trying to avoid looking around frantically for
any sight of Gretchen. When she showed up, he wanted her to see
him first, sitting calmly with his legs stretched out in front of him, his hands folded on his stomach, a content smile on his face that showed
he saw joy in the world, even