“Okay,” Julia said. “Talk to you later.”
“Bye. Oh, and, Jules? That Nevers list? Awesome idea. Keep doing that. No point in living a life less ordinary if you don’t know what the other side looks like.” With a flair for the dramatic, Julia’s mom cut the call off. Julia shut her computer calmly, beaming.
She was so excited they’d stayed up talking until two in the morning, even though they had school the next day. The kind of conversation that quickly deteriorated into laughter, conversation that wasn’t really about anything other than the desire to not fall asleep. Finally, during a lull in laughter, Dave had looked up and seen Julia asleep peacefully.
He was sprawled out on the floor between Julia’s bed and her window, barely covering himself up in the ratty sleeping bag that he always used on their sleepovers. He was giving himself goose bumps thinking about Gretchen, looking at her name on his phone. Behind him, Julia was curled up near the edge of the bed, her face tucked beneath the covers, one bare knee poking out from the sheets. She was a sound sleeper, breathing so imperceptibly that after all these years Dave still sometimes sat up, checking to make sure she was okay.
Debbie was curled up at Dave’s feet, and a sliver of the moon was visible through a crack in the blinds. There was a stale smell to the sleeping bag, a smell that had always been comforting because there was only one place he ever smelled it. He used to fall asleep in this spot on the floor fantasizing chastely that Julia would simply climb off the bed and lay next to him, their noses and foreheads touching, hands clasped together.
Now, free of those daydreams, Dave looked at his phone. The message history between Dave and Gretchen was still completely blank, but he finally knew what he wanted to say.
Hi, Gretchen. It’s Dave. I think you’re great, too.
TREE HOUSE
THE IDEA TO do another Never came to Dave one morning at the same moment as he took his first bite of sugary breakfast cereal. He hadn’t outgrown kids’ cereals, or the simple pleasure of playing the games on the back of the box. It reminded him of his mom, truth be told, the way she’d let him pick out which cereal he wanted when they’d go grocery shopping together, the way she’d scowl as he slurped the leftover milk and its swirls of artificial coloring. Some days were like that still, everything a reminder. That no one ever brought her up in his house didn’t mean she was absent. It was actually in the silences that he remembered her most often, and today his dad hadn’t spoken a word, just poured himself a bowl of the same cereal.
Dave skipped the bus that morning and decided to walk to school, and to do it slowly. It was a cool morning, and Dave had not brought a sweater with him. But the cold felt good against his skin, maybe because he felt liberated. Liberated to enjoy his best friend’s company, to enjoy the rest of the school year without having to always fret about what to do with that love that had been festering for so long. Gretchen had texted him back the next morning, and they’d been talking ever since.