“What are you even doing?” Julia laughed, flinching. Then he sprung on her, attacking her face with kisses, dozens of quick pecks that left her breathless from the laughter. She put her hands on his face and moved him toward her mouth.
This was exactly like everything he’d dreamed about. True, it had felt close to this with Gretchen, too. True, he still found long blond hairs on his carpet, on his clothes. Sometimes, he caught himself about to compliment Julia in the same way he’d complimented Gretchen before. But he imagined that love often looked similar, regardless of who was involved. He tried to think of a compliment he’d never said and when nothing came, he buried his face into her neck. They hadn’t done a thing for hours. The TV was on, but God knew what it was playing. Homework had not left their backpacks in days.
Dave fell back onto his pillow. “I need to pee.”
“If you get up, you have to pee for me.”
“Why haven’t scientists figured that one out yet? You should be able to transfer the need to pee.”
Dave pulled back to fluff his pillow. He found the remote and turned to the TV to put on a movie. They hadn’t even made it through a movie as a couple yet. Before the closing credits could roll, they’d both be asleep, or giggling, or...well. He got distracted halfway through scrolling to look down at Julia. Brushing her pink hair behind her ear, he wondered why it often looked like she was tearing up. The first few times he’d asked if everything was okay, she’d looked at him like he was crazy. So he’d stopped asking. Every time he saw that glint, though, he wondered what was on her mind. Maybe nothing was, and it was just him imagining things.
He placed his hand on her shoulder as he turned his attention back to the TV. It was hard to have her nearby and not touch her. At school, their legs were constantly shifting under their desks, always leaning against each other.
“What’s that one?” Julia had turned to look at the TV.
“That’s, uh,” Dave said, stammering, not wanting to bring up the fact that the movie she was talking about was the one he’d watched with Gretchen, “I watched that already. Not great.”
“But is it not great in a great way?”
“Not really.”
“Ah. Lame.”
Dave kept scrolling through the options, and Julia scooched closer, resting her head on his chest. Downstairs, he could hear Brett and his dad watching sports on TV, nothing said between them. He finally chose some political drama series that he’d heard good things about. It didn’t take long for Julia to fall asleep, and the feel of her breathing made him want to join her. Then his phone buzzed on the nightstand, and despite the comfort and the warmth, his arm jolted for it.
Gretchen’s name was on his screen. It wasn’t a text message, but an e-mail. The subject line was empty, only a few words from the body of the text appearing in the preview. Did you know...was all he could see. He stared at his phone for a second, then looked down at Julia. She was in a tank top and the shorts she’d borrowed from him every time she’d come over that week. The three freckles on her neck were right in his line of vision. He’d kissed every one of them over and over again.
Dave slid his thumb across the screen. He owed her that much. Even if the bliss of having Julia often distracted him from the fact, Dave felt awful about what he’d done to Gretchen. If she’d written an angry e-mail telling him what an awful person he was, then he deserved the discomfort of reading it. As the e-mail loaded, he planted a kiss on the top of Julia’s head.