Never Always Sometimes - Adi Alsaid Page 0,47

beer and tossed the can into the fire, where it immediately crumpled in on itself. Dave and Gretchen caught up to Vince at one

of the kegs. He’d just finished pouring a cup, and when he noticed the

two of them he immediately handed it off to Gretchen and poured

another two.

“Congrats on getting on the ballot, man,” Vince said. “That was

pretty badass what you guys did. Just the idea to build a tree house on

school property is ballsy. Were you high?”

“Nope,” Dave laughed.

“The tree house is so great,” Gretchen said, nodding. She sipped

shyly from her beer and looked around the party. She looked so lovely,

and he wished they were elsewhere, some place they could be alone.

“Well, all the more credit to you. I don’t know why you’ve been

hiding these past four years of high school, but I wish you’d shown

yourself earlier. It’s a shame everyone’s figuring out how cool you are

this late.”

“I can’t imagine how many cool things you and Julia have done,”

Gretchen said. She was holding her cup with both hands and smiling,

DAVE 155

but she didn’t meet Dave’s eyes. “Be honest, how many times have you

saved the world from imminent destruction?”

“Once or twice,” Dave said, mustering a smile. He spotted Julia

coming outside, yelling, “All right, which of you bastards fed my cat

cheese puffs?” She made her way around the party, checking people’s

hands for evidence, finally stopping to chat with the Kapoor triplets,

who were wearing different shades of the same pastel polo shirt, the

collars, of course, popped.

Dave, Gretchen, and Vince stood in their little circle. Gretchen

and Vince started talking about some project for their French class.

Dave took constant, tiny sips of his beer, the mild bitterness coating

his tongue. He looked up at the sky, where clouds were rolling in to

cover up the stars. It felt like all he could do was stand there, and that even if it started to rain he wouldn’t be able to move. He was tired of

inaction, tired of not having learned a thing from years of sitting still. It built up in him, like the desire to kiss Gretchen had on their date, but this time more powerful, more urgent. As if this was his last chance,

a momentous fork in the road. If he chose inaction now, inaction it

would be for the rest of his life.

“Hey, Vince, you mind if I talk to Gretchen for a sec?”

Vince stopped talking midsentence. “Uh, sure, man.” He gave

Gretchen a look and then made his way toward the house.

“Sorry if I interrupted that,” Dave said. He picked a leaf that had

fallen into his beer and flicked it onto the grass. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the other night.”

156 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES

Gretchen shifted her weight from one foot to another. She looked

down at the grass, too. If there was one thing Dave would ask of adults

at that moment it was why people his age were constantly looking

down at the ground, and if they would ever grow out of it. “You don’t

have to, Dave, it’s okay. I get it.” She shrugged and smiled, a smile that felt somehow rehearsed, like the way he’d kept it in mind on their date

at the harbor to compliment her looks.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s okay; I get that you’re with Julia. I’m sorry if I came on too

strong.” Her smile faded to more of a lopsided grin. The hand not

holding her beer reached across to her elbow, the turquoise ring

catching a glint from the backyard lights. “I still like spending time

with you, so—”

“I’m not with Julia,” Dave said. Across the party, Julia was trying to

unpop the Kapoors’ collars, yelling something. “It’s not like that.”

Gretchen looked up at him just for a second. Her expression gave

nothing away. Or it did, and he simply wasn’t familiar enough with her

face to catch its subtle changes; he couldn’t read her silences the way

he could read Julia’s. “You kind of act like you’re together,” Gretchen

said with another shrug that spilled a blob of foamy beer down to the

grass. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me. It’s okay. I’ll learn how to pull pranks some other way.”

Dave had never seen someone who smiled this often, in such a

variety of ways. She looked sad and embarrassed and still managed an

honest smile. It felt insane, all of a sudden, how long he’d been reaching DAVE 157

for Julia. And if not insane, then too long by exactly four days. Tuesday night, watching a movie with Gretchen, that was the exact moment he

should have let go for good. “I’m not with Julia,” he said