o o o
When Dave walked out of the Kapoor house, it was past three in the morning. Tiredness was starting to dull the edges around the thrill of the night, a faint headache building up as payback for all that beer. He was so ready to go to bed that he almost missed Julia sitting on the curb in front of the house, her head on her knees, arms curled around herself. He leaned over and could hear her softly breathing, asleep.
“Julia,” he said, putting an arm on her shoulder. When she stirred, eyes darting, confused, he asked her how long she’d been waiting for him.
“I don’t know. An hour, maybe. Where the hell did you run off to?”
“Nowhere. I was in the den downstairs.”
“You weren’t answering my calls.” She put her hands on either side of her and stretched her back out. “What gives?”
“My phone died, sorry.”
“Fuck, Dave, you couldn’t have come to tell me that?”
“I tried.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, not knowing what else to do with them. He hated making her upset. “I couldn’t find you anywhere, so I thought you’d left.”
“Without you? Please.” She yawned. “You know you’re an awful human being for letting your phone run out of battery. Come on, David Montgomery Burns, it’s the twenty-first century. Stay plugged in. You made your friend worry.”
“Why didn’t you go home?”
“Again. Without you?” She let out a groan and then reached her hand out. “Help me up, you forsaken supposed friend.”
“I’m sorry,” Dave said, pulling her up gently. “I feel like shit.”
“Good. Wallow in that for a second.”
They started walking down the middle of the road, the streetlights casting hazy shadows. Earlier in the night, it had felt so bizarre to be walking toward a party. Now the fog was starting to roll in and the trees looked beautiful. Julia’s arms were crossed in front of her chest, her jaw tense. He tried to read her silence, just how angry she was at him. But the booze was interfering, making his mind return to the wonders of street lighting at three a.m. Feeling guilty, Dave cast his eyes down at his shoes.
“Well, don’t look so freakin’ glum,” Julia said, rolling her eyes when he looked up. “Come on, let’s go have coffee at the diner.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Julia said. “If you buy me a slice of pie, all is forgiven. We still have to exchange stories from the night.”
Dave thought of Gretchen, the strange appeal of those crooked teeth. It felt weird to bring her up, though; he’d never talked to Julia about girls. She’d talked to him about the few guys she’d fleetingly dated, and had on occasion tried to pry out from him some admittance of a crush on anyone. But for obvious reasons he’d always said there was no one he was interested in. Bringing it up now felt somehow wrong. Plus “a girl and I talked for a while” was not much of a story, so the next thing that came to mind was the flip-cup tournament. He chuckled to himself, though a distinct feeling of shame goose-bumped up his arms. “Embarrassing is good, right? We were here to fit in in an almost gross way?”
“Oh God, what’d you do?”
“Let’s say I really embraced the spirit of the Kapoor party.”
“Eww, Dave, did you buy a polo shirt? I’m going to have to cut you out of my life, aren’t I?”
Dave put his hands in his pockets, turning the corner toward the street where the diner stood, lit up against all the darkened storefronts. “I don’t think I’m ready for that,” Dave said, adding a chuckle.
HOMEROOM