Never Always Sometimes - Adi Alsaid Page 0,44

run time was ninety-four

minutes, and he felt a rush of gratitude knowing that he would spend

every single one of those with Gretchen nearby. “I can’t wait for all the shark puns.”

“Ooh, you think there’ll be shark puns?” Gretchen smiled. The stud

in her ear glinted green, reflecting the light from the TV.

“I would be willing to bet five hundred points on my SAT score

that someone is going to say, ‘We’re fin-ished.’”

DAVE 145

Gretchen snorted, smacking him slightly across the ribs. “I can’t

believe how quickly you came up with one.”

Dave shrugged, folding his hands over his stomach and maybe

sticking his elbows out a little more than was comfortable so that they

would brush against Gretchen’s side.

As the movie ran on, Dave noticed that he and Gretchen talked

almost as much as the characters on the screen did. With every

comment or joke, they scooched closer to each other, Dave pretending

not to notice the diminishing space between them, wondering if

Gretchen was pretending, too. He laughed at the movie, and at

Gretchen’s jokes, and in their laughter he found little excuses to touch, to lean into her.

When Gretchen would lean into him, Dave could smell her breath

(honey, too). He would think about kissing her but laugh instead, or

he would shift so that his leg was touching more of hers. The closer he

got to her, the more he wanted to kiss her, the more insane it felt that he wasn’t already kissing her.

On the screen, a shark swam in the creek near where the characters

had set up camp. The ditzy redhead and the bro-y one who kept saying

he knew kung fu were making out in a tent.

“Do you think it’s a good way to go or a bad way to go?” Gretchen

asked, her knee bent and resting on Dave’s thigh.

“Eaten by a shark in a forest? Pretty bad.”

“No,” Gretchen said, “while making out.”

Dave thought about it for a while. Or, rather, he tried to actually

146 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES

come up with an answer, rather than picture kissing Gretchen. “There

are worse ways to go,” he said finally.

“I agree. If you’re going to die via shark, it may as well come as a

surprise, in the middle of doing something that feels as nice as kissing does.”

Now, every fiber of his being screamed. Now. But Dave kept his eyes on the screen. The fingers on his left hand, out of sight from Gretchen, tensed into a fist. “Yeah,” he said simply, still thinking, Now now now.

Still thinking, despite it all, about Julia.

For five perfect minutes as the credits rolled, Dave’s and Gretchen’s

hands clasped together. Dave didn’t know how it had happened, if he

had initiated the contact or if it had been her. He only knew their

fingers were interlocked. They cracked a joke or two about how awful

and great the movie had been, neither of them acknowledging the

moist warmth of each other’s skin, the lack of a kiss.

What Dave could acknowledge, though, was this: Julia. Julia in the

back of his mind the whole time, restraining his movements. Every way

he touched Gretchen, every place he touched Gretchen, he thought

of how he’d failed to touch Julia. The movie made them both laugh,

and Dave thought about all the Friday night movies he’d watched with

Julia. He thought about how long he’d loved Julia, how recently he’d

become interested in Gretchen. How Julia didn’t even know that he

loved her, after all this time. And so even after those five finger-clasped minutes, even after they looked at each other with smiles still plastered on their faces, smiles practically lingering all over the room, smiles

DAVE 147

clinging off his hamper, smiles perched on the corner of the TV and

the whiteboard, even after Dave walked Gretchen downstairs with his

hand against her lower back, even after he opened her car door for

her, Dave felt too much like he was cheating on Julia to kiss Gretchen.

He knew it was crazy. It was ridiculous. It was dumb. Everything told

him he should be kissing her, everything except Julia in his head (even

though Julia, if she were actually present, would probably tell him he

was an idiot for not kissing Gretchen). In the end he could only touch

Gretchen in just the way he’d been touching Julia for years: He hugged

her, warm and friendly but nothing more, and said good night.

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NEVERTHELESS BELONG

“WHAT THE HELL is going on with you guys?” Brett said as he

delivered the three kegs to Julia’s house. “Now you’re hosting parties?

And Dave’s on the ballot for prom king?”

“Thanks to your video,” Julia offered.

“Of course it was thanks to my video. But I’m still confused about

your whole