Never Always Sometimes - Adi Alsaid Page 0,36

mention I’m illiterate?”

Gretchen laughed and shifted for him, causing the car to lurch

forward. “You have to hit the brake!” she squealed.

Dave hit the brake the only way he knew how, by slamming both

feet down on the pedal. The sudden stop caused his seat belt to lock

up tight against his chest. “Gretchen, your car is trying to kill me.” He yanked at the fabric, which only made it pull back tighter, as if he and the car were involved in some sort of tug-of-war.

“This is going to be the funniest day of my life,” Gretchen said.

For an hour, Gretchen talked him calmly through, giving him little

pointers until the car’s movement felt natural. Every now and then

she’d touch his shoulder or his forearm when offering her advice, and

in those moments he was glad he’d waited until now to learn how to

drive, glad that Julia had always been around to drive for him.

When they both decided he’d had enough practice for his first

time, they switched back so that Gretchen could drive. But instead

of putting the car in drive they sat quietly for a moment, and in the

silence Dave could spot a mutual desire to stretch out their night, to

not go home. Gretchen pulled a GPS out of the glove compartment

and smiled at him. “Wanna do something cool?”

“Almost always.”

DAVE 121

“Check this out,” she said, and she started driving the car around

in strange patterns, stopping to turn the GPS on or off, hiding the

screen so he couldn’t see what was happening.

After a few minutes she parked the car and turned the screen

toward him. The parking lot was a blank white space in the GPS,

while the streets surrounding the mall were yellow. A blue line

showed the path the car had taken.

“You drew a smiley face.”

“I drew a smiley face.”

“With the car.”

“And a satellite,” she added.

“Gretchen,” Dave said, admiring the GPS screen, “you are so cool.”

It was another hour of GPS-drawing—a stick figure, a cat, the

word fuzzy—before they left the parking lot and Gretchen took Dave home. It was nearly midnight, but he didn’t want to step away from

Gretchen, didn’t want the night to end. But now that it was going

to, he wondered how, exactly, it would. It was a first date, he knew, because how they would say good-bye mattered.

They were parked in his driveway, no lights on in his house save

for the blue glow of the television in Brett’s room. Gretchen had put

the car in park, but for almost thirty seconds neither one of them had

moved or said a thing.

There was no doubt in his mind that he wanted to kiss her. He

could feel the desire for it like a ball of energy high up in his chest, but there seemed no way to move it from there, as if a part of him was

122 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES

against the whole idea and would not allow it. He couldn’t help but

think that Julia was somehow responsible.

Dave noticed her iPod sitting in the cup holder, a wire plugging it

into the car. “Play me your favorite song,” he said, picking it up.

The screen lit at his touch, casting Gretchen’s face in a soft white

light. She took it from him, her fingers touching his for what seemed

like a deliberately long moment. “You won’t make fun of me?”

“I’ve never made fun of anyone in my entire life.”

She narrowed her eyes at him over the iPod, bringing it close to her

as she scrolled through. “Seriously. Almost no one knows this song is

my favorite, and if I choose to trust you and you think it’s cheesy or

something, then for the rest of my life, any time I listen to the song,

there’ll be a tinge of shame. You might forever ruin my favorite song.”

Dave stole a glance at her lips, like he’d been doing all day. “I swear

on the bench at the harbor that I won’t laugh. If I do, I’ll never sit on it again.”

Then Gretchen hit play and Dave turned his attention to the music

coming softly through the speakers. Just a few guitar notes rang out,

clean and unaccompanied. The singer’s voice came on sounding like

Kermit the Frog mixed with a typical indie singer-songwriter.

Don’t let hurricanes hold you back, raging rivers or shark attack, find love, and give it all away.

It was a simple song, and Dave could see Gretchen moving her

lips along with the words. Brett had always made fun of his taste in

music, so Dave knew what it was like to resist the urge to sing out

DAVE 123

your favorite lyrics. He wanted her to sing, but settled for the fact

that