CEILINGS
IT WAS THURSDAY evening, and Dave was watching the typical crowd at the harbor. Road trippers on their way to San Francisco or L.A. stopping for some pictures of the bay, twentysomething couples sitting at the coffee shop, families taking strolls. Some surfers were getting changed out of their wet suits, their boards, gleaming with salt water and wax, propped up against the sides of their cars. Dave could barely people-watch without thinking of how often he’d done this with Julia, how many hours they’d spent on the bench just watching the crowds pass by. He’d pretend to look at something happening in her direction so that she’d be in his sight. Sometimes he’d count to see how long he could go without looking at her, the game always losing steam after about fifteen seconds, when he couldn’t keep himself from it any longer.
He couldn’t remember the exact moment he’d fallen in love with Julia, but it had probably happened on that bench. It would have been easier if he had chosen to go somewhere else, somewhere that wasn’t dripping with memories. Except San Luis Obispo was small and if he and Julia hadn’t been to a place a thousand times throughout the last five years, then he and Gretchen had passed by it in her car while GPS-drawing in the past couple of weeks. Every landmark in town, every restaurant or shopping plaza or tree, Dave could suddenly recall exactly what song he and Gretchen were listening to as they drove past it. His memory had never been sharper. Which was kind of a shitty thing for his memory to do at this particular time.
The sun was starting to turn orange, casting everything in the harbor in the same emblazoned light, making silhouettes out of all the people in Dave’s line of sight. He watched the bundled shadows of the homeless guys gathering their belongings and moving on for the night. A couple of sophomore girls from school walked right in front of Dave, not noticing him sitting on the bench, like he was more liquid than solid.
“I’m serious,” one of them was saying, “it’s a real thing. We have to try it.”
“There’s no way that exists.”
“I read it online.” The girl was a brunette, wearing dozens of bracelets on her wrist that jingled audibly. “Oreos fried in Mountain Dew. Just saying it out loud gives me goose bumps.”
They kept walking, their conversation fading out, contextless. Dave’s butt was asleep. His feet were asleep. Everything else was painfully awake. He felt like a guttural groan would nicely summarize how he was feeling.
“Dave.”
At first he just craned his neck, thinking maybe the sophomore girls had recognized him and hadn’t picked up on the social cues that said he was miserable and didn’t want to chat. Then he saw a silhouette coming his way, the wavy locks unmistakably Gretchen’s. He stood up as quickly as he could, which was not all that quick thanks to his stiffened muscles.
She wasn’t crying. That was something. She was in front of him and not crying and she’d said his name without affixing an insult or a curse. Not that Gretchen was the type to throw insults or curses around, even at people who deserved them. “Hi,” he said, not quite holding his breath, but waiting to see what came next. Since that day at school, Dave hadn’t talked to Gretchen, except over and over again in his mind. He’d glanced at her once in class, then immediately flushed with shame, hiding himself away, feeling exactly like a dog with his tail tucked between his legs.
She was wearing a black zip-up hoodie with the school’s name on it. Her hands were stuffed into the pockets. The smell of honey wafted over to him and he knew that it would be a long time before he’d be able to forget what it was like to be near her.
“I figured I could find you here,” she said.