IT WAS A Friday night and Julia had not seen a movie in far too long. Really seen one. She drove past the theater in Pismo Beach that showed all the indie flicks and saw that it was packed, as she should have known it would be. Her heart knew exactly what it wanted, though, so she found a parking spot a couple blocks away, leaving her phone in the center console, her earphones wrapped around it.
Julia splurged on some popcorn, since she’d brought a bottle of hot sauce with her, a quirk she tried out ever since her mom had mentioned in a postcard that that’s how they ate it in Mexico. It pissed Julia off that her mom still had this hold on her even after that whole meltdown at the tree house. She should have been swearing off all things mom-related right now, idolizing her dads, who lived quiet lives but knew how to love. Except here Julia was, squirting hot sauce onto her popcorn. Disdainfully, sure, but still.
The theater was mostly full, and she took a seat close to the front, where the screen would take up her entire view and she could immerse herself in the movie. It was one thing she and Dave had always disagreed on, how close to sit. He hated craning his neck, she didn’t like seeing the little silhouettes of other moviegoers in her periphery.
Julia munched slowly on her popcorn, trying to save most of it for when the movie started rolling. She stared absently at the trivia questions they played on the screen before the previews, questions she’d seen on easily a dozen different trips to the theater, since before the whole Nevers thing began. Struck by a realization, she riffled through the contents of her bag. Flip-flops her dads made her carry around, just in case. Earrings she hardly ever wore, her agenda, a couple of tampons, Heart of Darkness, still mostly unread. Her wallet, which was full of receipts she didn’t need. In one of the side pockets she finally found the list, and she pulled it out, unfolding it. One of the creases had started to tear.
She’d used three different colored pens to cross off the items she and Dave had done. Now she grabbed the simple black ballpoint pen that was tucked into her agenda, used Heart of Darkness as a writing surface, and touched the tip to the paper. Her eyes passed over each item, quickly recalling all the things they’d done. When she got to number seven she laughed out loud. A heart-to-heart in the tree house was good enough. She crossed out Never hook up with a teacher.
The only one they hadn’t thought to cross out yet was number ten: Never date your best friend. She ran a finger over the subtitle that Dave had added on when they were fourteen: Dave and Julia’s Guide to an Original High School Experience. His boyish handwriting was so much like her own that sometimes she found notes they’d written each other and couldn’t make out which side of the conversation was hers and which was his. She didn’t let herself wonder about what would have happened if they’d never found the list, or let herself wish for anything else, not now, not in public—since when those trains of thought took over it always ended with her in a crumpled heap, trying not to cry into her bedding. This was enough for now, this at-ease sadness. A cliché, maybe, to let someone go because you loved them. It hurt, but it was better than any of the alternatives.
Dave deserved happiness, even if it wasn’t with her. This wasn’t a case of letting the thing you love go and hoping it returns to you. Dave wasn’t some winged thing, Julia wasn’t a perch.
She folded the sheet of paper back up, tapped it meaningfully against her thigh a couple of times, then leaned over and slipped it into a cup holder a couple seats away. She took the hot sauce bottle out of her bag and shook a few squirts out onto the first layer of popcorn. Then she propped her feet up on the seat in front of her and waited for the lights to dim, trying and failing to pace herself on how quickly she reached for more popcorn.