Never Always Sometimes - Adi Alsaid Page 0,34

say good-bye already.”

Dave laughed and they headed in the direction of the coffee shop.

“It wouldn’t have been a good-bye, just a ‘be right back.’”

“Well, yeah,” Gretchen said, and already Dave could hear that

little warble in her tone that meant she was about to make a joke.

“But I have huge abandonment issues.”

“Have you ever in your life successfully lied?”

“God, am I really that bad?”

“There are worse things to be bad at,” Dave said.

“Like what?” Gretchen responded, faking disbelief.

“What if you were really bad at eating?” Dave opened the coffee

shop door and let Gretchen pass through. “Say you had really bad

aim with forks. You would be hungry all the time, plus imagine all

the scarring.”

“But, Dave, I have so many jokes that I’ve missed out on delivering

well. Do you know how much emotional scarring that’s left behind? I

may seem normal to you, but my soul is completely wrecked.”

As they talked, they kept doing the eye-contact dance. Their eyes

flitted around the room, at each other’s foreheads or lips or feet. How

did anyone maintain eye contact throughout a conversation?

They ordered hot chocolates and took them back to the bench. On

the walk there, Dave discovered that she had a tattoo on the back of

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her neck. He caught a glimpse of it when she swept her hair over one

shoulder right before they sat down.

“What’s your tattoo say?”

Gretchen took a sip from her hot chocolate and self-consciously

brushed her hair back to cover her neck. “It’s from a book. It says, ‘a

little better than you found it.’”

“What’s it mean?”

“Well, it’s part of a longer quote, this really beautiful passage about

how the best you can ever do is to leave the world a little better than

you found it. It doesn’t matter how you do it. Invent a new toaster or

reach out a helping hand; just, you know, leave it a little better than

you found it.”

Dave noticed that their knees were touching. Amazing what kind

of warmth could come from such slight contact. “What book is it?”

“Timbuktu by Paul Auster,” she said. “I know it’s weird to say or even think this, but that book has made me who I am. Not entirely,

obviously. It didn’t help me at soccer, or make me so good at telling

jokes with a straight face. But certain lines felt like they were thoughts I’d had my whole life that just hadn’t taken shape yet until I read

them. ‘A little better than you found it’ is how I see everything now.

Not just the world, but everything. People, too. I want people I know

to be a little better off than when I found them. God, that sounds

pretentious, doesn’t it?”

“It sounds like kindness to me,” Dave said.

“Well, thanks. My ex always thought it was stupid. He hated

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the tattoo.” She popped the lid off her hot chocolate and scooped a

fingerful of whipped cream. “Want some?”

“Sure,” Dave said. He hesitated. “It’s okay if I dip my finger in?”

“I insist.” Gretchen smiled, holding out the cup toward him.

“Why’d your ex hate the tattoo?”

“If I had to guess, it’s because he doesn’t care about other people.”

She popped the lid back on. “That’s not true. He cares about some

people. I’m just bitter—legitimately this time.”

“Can I ask why?”

“He cheated on me,” she said, not really sounding all that bitter, as

if the statement had lost its heartbreak. Dave wasn’t sure if he should

ask more, but a couple of the homeless guys walked by the bench just

then, saying hi to Dave and asking for change. Dave gave them the

two singles that he had loose in his pocket.

“Those guys knew your name,” Gretchen said, following their slow

retreat back to the other side of the harbor.

“Like I said, I come here often.” He put his finished drink on the

ground, trying to ignore how it felt to have her look at him. Their

knees were still touching.

“I’ve only really been here a couple of times,” Gretchen said,

looking out at the boats docked in the harbor. “My family wanted

to check out the aquarium when we first moved here but never got

around to it.”

“You’ve never been to the famed Morro Bay Aquarium? That’s a

travesty.” He stood up, grabbing their empty cups and tossing them

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in a nearby trash can. “Come on, you’re missing out on easily the

thirty-second best aquarium in the western hemisphere . . . or at least

the thirty-second best aquarium of the West Coast.”

“What about the bench? What if it loves you back and misses you

terribly when you’re gone?”

“It’ll have plenty of warm, fuzzy memories of your butt to hold it

over until I come back,” he said without