Never Always Sometimes

by Adi Alsaid

  “Just stop, Julia. I’m trying to tell you for the first time in our friendship that I’m into someone.”

  “You’re right,” Julia said. “Would you like a high five?”

  “You can be such an asshole,” Dave snapped. “It’s just never been directed at me before, so I couldn’t see it.”

  “Wow, you’re taking this personally.”

  “No shit, Julia. I like the girl.” Dave stood from the chair. He had to stand up, unload some of the sudden energy he was feeling. He tensed his fingers into a fist. It was so unfair. He’d loved Julia for so long, and he’d always managed to be happy for her when she was with other guys, however fleetingly. And now that he finally liked someone else, she couldn’t return that simple favor. Julia had taken a seat on the arm of the couch, her arms crossed in front of her chest, still holding on to the garbage bag full of beer cans, which clinked against each other like the world’s worst wind chime. “You know what? I don’t think you have any idea what people are really like. Your mom put this idea in your head about a life less ordinary, and I let you drag me along with it because...” He exhaled, trailing off and turning his back to her.

  Then he turned back around, tried to soften his voice. “We separated ourselves from all these people, and we thought we knew who they are. But we don’t, not at all.”

  “I know who they are,” Julia said. “I just didn’t know you preferred them over me.”

  “Jesus Christ, will you listen to yourself?” He leaned against the wall near the couch. “I’m not renouncing our friendship, you crazy person. I’m just saying they’re not all as awful as we thought.”

  Dave could see Julia’s lips form another smirk. “Speak for yourself,” she said loudly, as if daring her voice to break. “These people are clichés, even more so than I’d imagined. I just thought you were different.”

  “You know what? You’re not different either!” Dave yelled. He saw Julia flinch, and felt a strange satisfaction that he’d caught her off guard. When he moved, he accidentally flipped on the switch for the ceiling fan, and it started whirring noisily, spinning shakily, like it’d been knocked off its usual axis. In any other situation the two of them would have burst out laughing at the timing, at how wobbly it moved. But now they were quiet, and the fan was the only sound in the room, save for the light snoring coming from the couch. “You think forcing yourself—forcing us—to become outsiders makes us unique? It doesn’t. Rebellious teenage girl swims against the current? You know what that sounds like to me? You’re a cliché, Julia.”

  The words felt right up until the moment he spoke them, right even as he spit them out across the room. The venom felt righteous, a lesson Julia had to learn.

  But when her face crumpled up, when the hurt rippled across that beautiful face he’d all but memorized, Dave wished that there was some way to undo it all, to skip back a few chapters and rewrite the scene, find a different way to approach the subject, of Gretchen, some way to make Julia understand.

  “Please leave,” Julia said simply.

  He didn’t dare to move. It felt like they were in some other universe, and if he left her house, the real world wouldn’t ever come back. He feared that leaving would make this permanent, but he didn’t know how to do anything but stand there. He wondered how he could be so mad at her now, how things could take such a turn so quickly. Julia said again, “Get out,” like she was already writing it into their history.

  So he left.

  PART 2

  JULIA

  WITHOUT KNOWING

  HOW JULIA HAD felt something so deeply for so long without knowing it herself was a mystery. As if love was a fugitive harboring in an attic, hidden even from the people residing in the house. Dave liked Gretchen? Well, Julia loved him. She loved him.

  If it didn’t hurt so much, she might have marveled at the way the mind/heart/psyche/whatever worked. How she’d known without a doubt that she was in love with Dave and had been for a very long time only when he told her he’d kissed someone else. How the words I love you had popped into her head so loud and so clear that she’d wondered if she’d really never said them before. How the realization seemed to unwind backward through time, suffusing every moment they’d had together with a love she’d simply failed to notice before. Of course she loved Dave. His humor, his—and she hated to even think the expression, but, trite as it was, it rang completely true—heart of gold, the selfless way he did everything he could for her. His sheepish smile. His hands, big and gentle. How had she loved his hands this entire time and not known it?

  Julia was still in the living room when the front door closed softly. She’d been expecting Dave to slam it. She stared at the beer in her hand, didn’t want another sip of it but finished it anyway. Dave didn’t feel like slamming any doors? That was fine. She did.

  She walked to front of the house and opened the door only to throw it back against its frame, the windows giving a satisfying rumble. Julia smiled to herself and did it again. There was a crazy freedom in knowing she could blame anyone else if something actually broke. She looked around the house, the stains on the carpet, the faint smell of vomit coming from somewhere not yet discovered, the hole in the drywall. The party’s damage was done, and nothing she could do would hide it. Her smile spread wider.

  There was no hesitation when she chucked the beer can through the back window. She thought of this newly discovered love for Dave, her awful, stupid timing in realizing it, and then her anger basically did all the work for her. Breaking glass looked beautiful in the hazy light of drunkenness. The crash scared the couple making out in the backyard and they scurried away. Julia felt a savage pleasure in interrupting them.

  Next, Julia tried punching a hole in the wall. The first attempt went horribly and sent a wave of pain through her knuckles, which coincided with a fit of laughter at how satisfying it was to drunkenly punch a wall in anger. She did it a second time, too in love with the thought of it not to try again. The pain was too bad for a third attempt. She hurled a bowl of chip crumbles across the yard, and it soared like a broken Frisbee. She broke the chair Joey Planko had sat in against the lawn, leaving wooden splinters sticking out of the scorched grass at dangerous angles.

  She pictured Dave—her Dave, the funniest guy she knew, her best friend, the only person she could even imagine spending her days with—side by side with cookie-cutter Gretchen and her perfect blond waves and Julia broke into laughter so uncontrollable she had to lie down and let it tear through her. She ripped out a patch of grass and ripped the blades to shreds, throwing them in the air like confetti. As the bits of green rained down on her, she thought about waking up the guy on the couch and kissing him as an act of revenge, but she settled on going to the kitchen and finding more beer. Whether to drink or throw she hadn’t yet decided.

  Julia loved Dave. And she would tear her house apart to prove it.

  o o o

  Julia woke up to the sound of the garage door rumbling open. Sunlight streamed into her room. She’d forgotten to close the blinds last night, and she hadn’t bothered to change out of her clothes. She was on top of her bedding, sweating slightly from the heat, her head pounding, a pain in her hand. In the far corner of her room, her phone lay facedown on the carpet, she didn’t know why. It looked like it’d been thrown against the wall, but she couldn’t remember doing that. Ugh, alcohol.

  The garage door rumbled shut, and she heard the muffled voices of her dads getting out of the car. Julia wondered if her dads would wait to ambush her downstairs or if they’d come barging in. Then, in a flash, she remembered the love seat that she’d drunkenly dragged into the bathroom. Looping this image into the memory of last night, she knew it had happened after Dave had left, though it felt like something they would have done together. She laughed into her pillow, as pieces of the night started coming back, knowing for a fact now that the dads would be
running in at any moment. She was so hungover that laughing hurt; she felt like a desert floor with cracks running through it. Looking over at her empty nightstand, she wished her drunken self had been smart enough to get a glass of water for this exact moment.

  The dads started stomping their way up the stairs. They knocked twice, loud and hard, like a couple of gunshots. Tom came in first, his face bright red, the way it looked when he had even a sip of wine. Ethan, in poorer shape, lagged behind, huffing from the hurried climb up the stairs.

  “Julia,” Tom said, arms crossed in front of his chest, “care to explain why the hell my house looks the way that it does?”

  Julia decided she was going to lie in bed and take the yelling barrage without comment for a while. She tried to remember getting into bed last night, but all that came to her was a fuzzy memory of a bonfire, which felt more like something out of a dream. Why did her hand hurt? And why hadn’t Dave slept over, sprawled out next to her bed in that musky sleeping bag like he usually did?

  “There’s a hole in my wall, ash all over my carpet, and a crusty puddle of puke on my suede couch,” Tom was yelling, that vein in his neck starting to pop out. Ethan was standing by the door, biting his thumb, looking like he was the one in trouble. “There’s trash all over the place, and that doesn’t even come close to mattering compared to the fact that you had underage kids drinking here. The whole school judging by how many empty beer cans are around. Do you realize how irresponsible that is?”

  The memory of a fight with Dave appeared suddenly, her on the verge of tears after he’d left. Wait. Had she drunkenly decided that she was in love with Dave? Julia almost laughed in the middle of her dad’s tirade. Of all the stupid ideas people get when under the influence; Julia shook her head at the thought. It couldn’t have actually happened. And even if it did, Julia would plead temporary beer-induced insanity. But it didn’t happen. “What if the cops had been called? What if someone had been hurt?” Tom was leaning over her now, gesticulating wildly with his hands as he yelled, like some conductor in the midst of a crescendo. “Hell, maybe someone was; we haven’t had time to really check.”

  Ethan stepped away from the door and put his hands on Tom’s shoulder, whispering something into his ear that Julia couldn’t hear. Julia strained to remember more about the end of the night, and what had happened with Dave. She hoped she hadn’t done anything as embarrassing as tell Dave she loved him. A distinct memory of climbing onto the roof and throwing eggs out the window, watching them disappear into the night, popped into her head. That would have been great to do with Dave, but his presence wasn’t there in the memory, even though she couldn’t remember them ever saying good-bye. He should have been there for that.

  “It’s unacceptable,” Tom was saying, still in conference with Ethan, who spoke calmly, quietly enough that Julia could only hear the breath of his words, and not the words themselves. “No, there is no side to her story. What, she accidentally threw a party?”

  “Ooh, yes!” Julia said. “It was an accident. Peer pressure and the aching desire to be accepted by my peers.”

  Tom got even redder and Ethan shook his head. “Now’s not the time for jokes.”

  Julia tried to get up, but the movement made her head feel like it was about to explode, so she sank back into the comfort of lying down. “Sheesh, okay. Just trying to lighten the mood a little. I know I messed up. Can we skip the lecture and just get to the repercussions? I plead guilty.”

  “No, you don’t get off that light,” Tom said, still yelling. “The lecture is part of the punishment.”

  Julia sighed and slowly slipped out of the blazer she’d fallen asleep in. She gave it a whiff, then immediately regretting doing so. She tossed it across the room toward her laundry pile. “Trust me, what I just smelled was punishment enough.”

  “You’re paying for that to get dry-cleaned,” Ethan said. True businessman that he was, the only punishments he could ever think of were financial. Disciplining did not come easily to him.

  “I understand that I am financially responsible for the mayhem below. I wouldn’t have thrown the party if I weren’t ready to face some consequences. So can we just call this my one big teenage fuckup and move on? I could use some coffee and a greasy breakfast.”

  Ethan sighed and took a seat on the foot of her bed. He looked up at Tom with a smile and a shrug. “She’s tougher than I am. You’re gonna have to do all the lecturing.” Then he turned back to Julia. “To be clear, I’m not okay with any of what happened.”

  “Unbelievable,” Tom said. He shook his head and recrossed his arms. “What was going through your head?”

  “Honestly? I was hoping to get laid.”

  “Julia!”

  “I’m kidding! When did you guys lose your sense of humor?”

  “No father would ever laugh at that joke.” Ethan scooted up the bed to sit beside Julia, his back to the headboard and his legs stretched out in front of him.

  “What do you want me to say?” Julia said to Tom. “High school is wrapping up, Dave got voted onto the prom king ballot, you guys were out of town. It was on the Nevers list, so I took advantage. I’m eighteen. I’m allowed the rare burst of immaturity.”

  “If only it were rare.”

  Julia held her hands to her heart. “Ouch, Dad.” Another piece of the night came to her: an image of her yelling at Dave. Something to do with that soccer-playing blonde he’d been chummy with all night. She nestled into her dad for comfort, not wanting to believe that she could have ever been so dramatic. “Look, I’m sorry. Can I blame this one on my genes?”

  Tom raised his hands in surrender, palms out. “I can’t handle this right now. I’m going for a drive.” He pointed at Ethan. “You, stop facilitating.” Then he pointed at Julia. “And you, go clean my house. The couch smells like an orgy.”

  “Eww.” Julia laughed. “I love you, too, Dad!”

  Tom grumbled a response as he made his way downstairs.

  “Next time you have a party, I’d like to be invited,” Ethan said. “Just, you know, not for a few years.”

  “No promises.” She nuzzled her nose into his side, the hangover getting worse. “Have you talked to my mom at all? Did she get tickets yet?”

  “Do me a favor, don’t bring her up while Dad’s around. We told her she can stay with us, but if he starts thinking you’re acting out because of her visit, he could change his mind.”

  “I’m not acting out ’cause she’s coming,” Julia mumbled. “I’m acting out ’cause I’m a teenage cliché.”

  Ethan chuckled and put an arm around her, rubbing at her back the way he’d done so many times when she was little. “Wanting to party does not make you a cliché.” Julia smiled and sank further into his side, comforted by his warmth and the relief that came with closing her eyes. It was tempting to keep them closed the rest of the day, let the details remain fuzzy. Whatever she’d said to Dave, he would forgive her. Whatever had taken them apart at the end of the party would be forgotten.

  APOLOGIES

  JULIA AND DAVE hadn’t talked all weekend. She’d of course been grounded, though the dads had let her keep her phone. It wasn’t completely without precedent for them to go all weekend without even texting each other, just a little weird. But if they didn’t talk, it was usually Julia’s fault, and radio silence from Dave made Julia realize that maybe their fight had been worse than she remembered.

  Monday morning, Julia went to school, happy to get out of the house and to not have to clean up anymore. Her phone was full of pictures of the mayhem so she could show Dave. On another weekend she probably would have messaged them to him, but the thought of Dave with the soccer girl made her pull away. She remembered his confession now, the fact that he liked Gretchen, though she still didn’t know quite what to make of the two of them being together. Whatever she thought of Gretchen, t
hough, she had to go apologize. For the fight, and whatever it was she may have said. Her friendship with Dave hadn’t changed in four years, and it wasn’t about to now. The first thing she was going to do was find Dave and tell him that she was happy for him, no matter who his little love interest was. She definitely wasn’t going to phrase it like that, though. But on her way to homeroom, Dr. Hill intercepted her in the hallway. “Julia,” he said. “Come with me.”

  Julia followed absently, her mind still on the fight with Dave, trying to phrase an apology, brush it all away. Then she saw Marroney sitting in the chair behind the desk and her head cleared.

  “Please, have a seat.” Dr. Hill pointed at one of the twin chairs that faced his desk.

  She did as he asked, moving slowly, wondering how much Marroney had accused her of. Marroney looked like a smaller version of himself. When she took a seat, she could have sworn she saw him push himself farther away. This was going to be great.

  Dr. Hill moved around her so he was standing to the side of the desk, in between her and Marroney. He crossed his arms in front of his chest. The dads always talked about how attractive Dr. Hill was, often joking that they were going to leave each other for him. “I’m sure you’ve already figured out why you’re here.” He leaned forward and put his fingertips on the desk in front of her. “It has to stop, Julia. I’m going to assume for propriety’s sake and to save myself a headache that you’re just having some fun at Mr. Marroney’s expense. But following him around town? Breaking into his house? Unwanted physical assault? Even you have to see how inappropriate that is.”

  Marroney practically flinched at the euphemistic reminder of the tickling incident. With all that had happened, she’d almost forgotten about that ill-conceived initial flirtation in the Chili’s bathroom. How the hell had she let Dave talk her into that one? Marroney looked downright scared to be in front of her, and Julia felt a little sorry for what she’d put him through. She poked fun a lot, but she genuinely liked the oddball. “Sir, in my defense, the cupcakes were a gift for Teacher Appreciation Day.”