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