MAKING A MESS
WHEN THEY LEFT Chili’s, Dave felt wonderful. Things had gone wrong, but in the exact way they should have. Now he had the evening with Julia to look forward to. He sincerely doubted bright green hair would look good on him, but he had succumbed to Julia’s rationale about the Nevers making the end of the year more interesting. So what if it was some insane attempt to prove herself original, probably in an attempt to win her mom’s approval; the Nevers brought out a joy in Julia that he loved being a part of. As long as nothing between them changed, he didn’t have much to complain about.
“Why’d we add this to the list anyway?” Dave asked after they’d left the CVS and were parking at Julia’s house. He was holding the boxes of green and pink dye in a plastic bag in his lap.
“My mom,” Julia said. “She’s always told me that changing looks has nothing to do with leading a unique life. It’s usually the sign of a pretty ordinary inner self.”
They walked up the driveway to Julia’s house, a modest two-story with the garage open, her dad’s workstation glistening with tools. The lawn was lush, almost overgrown. A porch swing hung slightly off-balance and in need of a paint job. Julia pushed open the door, placing her bag on the little entry table, which held a basket for keys and loose change and which was often piled up with unopened mail. A pleasant smell wafted toward them from the kitchen.
“Hey, homies,” Julia said when she entered the kitchen. Tom and Ethan were sitting at the kitchen island hunched over a couple of notebooks. Someone Dave didn’t know was standing by the stove, tending to about a million different things: a wok, two saucepans, a cutting board stockpiled with vegetables. He turned over his shoulder to glance at Dave and Julia, then wiped the sweat off his forehead with a dish towel before returning to cooking.
“Hello, hello,” Tom said, moving to kiss Julia on the cheek and hug Dave. “How was your day?”
“Impossible to summarize in small talk,” Julia said, walking over to Ethan, who was frowning at his notebook and tapping his pen against the counter of the kitchen island. Julia gave his back a hug. “You look stressed, Dad.”
“Restaurant stuff.” He sighed and tossed the pen down, sitting up and rubbing a hand through his graying hair. He almost always wore checkered shirts with the top button undone. He kept a cigarette tucked into his ear, though Dave had never seen him smoke. He’d started an Internet company before they’d adopted Julia, then sold it to start a string of businesses in the last two decades, none of them quite as successful as the first one. The latest venture was a restaurant. “Say hi to Chef Mike. We’re doing menu testing.”
“Hi, Chef Mike!” Julia and Dave said at the same time.
Julia walked over to Chef Mike to see him work while deflecting her dads’ questions about her day, probably since the only mentionable thing about it was tickling a possibly middle-aged (it was hard to tell exactly how old Marroney was) teacher. Meanwhile, Dave sorted their mail into little piles on the counter: bills, junk, personal/miscellaneous. Dave never got any regular mail himself, save for last year’s college recruiting packets. Aside from that, he was convinced that ninety percent of the mail in the world was credit-card offers. He came across a postcard mailed from Mexico, the handwriting familiar and addressed to Julia.