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.
148 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES
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