Dave thought about it for a while. Or, rather, he tried to actually come up with an answer, rather than picture kissing Gretchen. “There are worse ways to go,” he said finally.
“I agree. If you’re going to die via shark, it may as well come as a surprise, in the middle of doing something that feels as nice as kissing does.”
Now, every fiber of his being screamed. Now. But Dave kept his eyes on the screen. The fingers on his left hand, out of sight from Gretchen, tensed into a fist. “Yeah,” he said simply, still thinking, Now now now. Still thinking, despite it all, about Julia.
For five perfect minutes as the credits rolled, Dave’s and Gretchen’s hands clasped together. Dave didn’t know how it had happened, if he had initiated the contact or if it had been her. He only knew their fingers were interlocked. They cracked a joke or two about how awful and great the movie had been, neither of them acknowledging the moist warmth of each other’s skin, the lack of a kiss.
What Dave could acknowledge, though, was this: Julia. Julia in the back of his mind the whole time, restraining his movements. Every way he touched Gretchen, every place he touched Gretchen, he thought of how he’d failed to touch Julia. The movie made them both laugh, and Dave thought about all the Friday night movies he’d watched with Julia. He thought about how long he’d loved Julia, how recently he’d become interested in Gretchen. How Julia didn’t even know that he loved her, after all this time. And so even after those five finger-clasped minutes, even after they looked at each other with smiles still plastered on their faces, smiles practically lingering all over the room, smiles clinging off his hamper, smiles perched on the corner of the TV and the whiteboard, even after Dave walked Gretchen downstairs with his hand against her lower back, even after he opened her car door for her, Dave felt too much like he was cheating on Julia to kiss Gretchen. He knew it was crazy. It was ridiculous. It was dumb. Everything told him he should be kissing her, everything except Julia in his head (even though Julia, if she were actually present, would probably tell him he was an idiot for not kissing Gretchen). In the end he could only touch Gretchen in just the way he’d been touching Julia for years: He hugged her, warm and friendly but nothing more, and said good night.
NEVERTHELESS BELONG
“WHAT THE HELL is going on with you guys?” Brett said as he delivered the three kegs to Julia’s house. “Now you’re hosting parties? And Dave’s on the ballot for prom king?”
“Thanks to your video,” Julia offered.
“Of course it was thanks to my video. But I’m still confused about your whole new we-actually-hang-out-with-other-people thing. It’s not like you. What happened to thinking you’re better than everybody else?”
“We never thought we were better than anyone,” Julia said with a sigh, like she’d tried to explain this to him dozens of times before. “Like you said, we’re just coming out of our shells a little bit. Just because we did different things than other people didn’t mean we thought we were better than anyone.”
“Sure,” Brett said. “Now you’re just slummin’ it with us common folk for a while to see what it’s like.”
Julia blushed. “Don’t go back to being mean.”
“You mean calling you on your shit?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Julia said, smiling.