Never Always Sometimes

“Listen,” she hissed. “When the romantic interest has been isolated—”

“You mean the victim.”

“David Gostkowski, you interrupt me again and I’ll dye your hair bright green.”

“Isn’t that happening anyway?”

“We wait until he gets up to use the bathroom,” Julia said, her eyes getting big, warning Dave to keep quiet. “At which point, we follow.” She stole a glance over the menu to look in Marroney’s direction again. He was halfway done with his margarita, sprinkles of salt on his mustache catching the light and shimmering. The table was already getting louder, breaking up into a couple of conversations. It was curious to see them behave so much like students in a classroom. “Your job,” Julia continued, “will be to go into the men’s room and make sure no one else is there. When you’ve cleared it, you give me the signal by starting a dance-off, and I go in.”

“What happens once you corner him in the bathroom?”

“Flirtation,” Julia said, drawing the word out long under her breath. It was easy to forget what she was talking about. No one could make him laugh like she could, even if it was hidden away like this, the laughter quiet but understood between them. How had he not learned to be happy with just this? How had he not managed to stifle the desire for more?

“This is by far one of your best plans.”

“I appreciate that,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. “But you’re clearly forgetting the snow fort I designed freshman year.”

“We live in California, Jules.”

“Just because it never snowed doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fantastic fort. The planning itself was pitch-perfect; it was the execution that, at no fault of mine, fell short.” She smacked her palms down on the table and looked over at the teachers. “We’re getting away from the point. I need to do what many a teenage girl has done before and seduce the sexy older man.”

Dave stole a glance at the side of her face and then joined in spying on them. They’d decimated the chips and were raising their hands, looking around for their waitress to ask for refills. Mr. Kahn was polishing off his first margarita and grimacing from a brain freeze. “Shocking that none of them have had to use the bathroom yet,” Dave said.

“I know, right? Those are some sizeable drinks. Maybe Marroney is much younger than he appears. God, he must be so virile.”

“I’m going to puke all over you. Good luck with the seduction covered in my puke.”

“The stench of another man on me will only make him jealous.”

For the next twenty minutes, after they’d placed an order with their waitress, they watched the teachers. At first they attempted to be inconspicuous, but the teachers seemed to be in their own little world, and once their drinks were refilled, they didn’t care much for anything on the outside. Julia refined her strategy, and despite the dull ache in his chest at the thought of her seducing anyone at all, Dave helped. By the time Marroney stood up, Julia’s plan had been tweaked to perfection. Or at least that’s what she said when she stood up and pulled Dave by the arm, motioning for him to follow.

As per their revised plan, Dave sped up past Marroney and cut him off before he got to the bathroom. No one else was in there. He checked the two stalls for feet, just in case. Then he went to the faucets and pretended to wash his hands as Marroney came in. Dave tried to hide his face so that Marroney wouldn’t recognize him, then said, “Urinals aren’t working. Gotta use a stall.”

“Thank you,” Marroney said. He entered the first stall without so much as a glance at the functioning urinals. As soon as he shut the door, Dave walked out of the bathroom, where Julia was waiting. She was so excited, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, her hands balled up into little fists.

“Okay, phase one complete,” he said. He put his hand on the back of his neck, a nervous habit. “You realize this is insane, right?”

“You’re mispronouncing ‘genius.’”

She took a breath, like someone about to attempt swimming the length of a pool underwater. And with that she walked into the men’s bathroom.

Dave anxiously watched the door close behind her, casting a glance to make sure no one had noticed. The hostess was on her phone; a waitress was waiting at the window for a dish; the manager stood by the bar, looking at something on a clipboard. Chili’s was probably the best place for covert operations; no one cared enough to look around.

It was only about thirty seconds later that she came back out, a huge, goofy grin on her face, color in her cheeks. She put her hands on Dave and urged him back to the booth. “Retreat! Retreat!”

“What happened?”

“Dammit, man, fall back!” Julia cried, laughter on the edge of her voice. When they slipped back into the booth, back in their conspiratorial hunch, she erupted into cackles while Dave could only sit there and watch.

“I take it the meet-cute didn’t go as planned.”

“We should get the bill before the cops arrive.”

“Julia, what the hell happened in there?”

“I may have tickled him,” she said, still red and laughing, looking over her shoulder toward the bathroom. “Accidentally.”

Dave stopped looking for the waitress to signal for the check. He slouched closer to Julia. “How do you accidentally tickle someone?”

“I froze up, okay. He walked out of the stall and I was standing there trying to figure out how to break the ice. We stared at each other and then I just kind of...tickled him.” She reached for her glass of water and took a long swallow. “Which, by the way, was an awful plan. Cornering him in the bathroom and expecting flirtation to just happen naturally? That’s sloppy planning. I expect more from you.”

“It was your plan!”

“Don’t split hairs now; it’s too late to apologize. Just do better next time.” She looked over her shoulder again and gave a little gasp when she saw Marroney coming out of the bathroom. “I may have yelled something inappropriate, too.”

Dave held his breath as Marroney walked past the table, his eyes fixed on Julia’s. “I told him I wanted to lick his face,” Julia whispered quickly, right before Marroney’s mustard shirt passed by their lowered heads.

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.

“Postcard for you,” Dave said, holding it out to her. Her bare feet pitter-pattered against the kitchen tiles and she snatched it from his hand.

Julia read quickly, almost breathing the words out loud. Then she laughed and said, “She sends her love,” to Tom and Ethan. The postcards didn’t come often, so when they did, Dave knew, Julia read them over and over again, as if they were poetry. Then she’d put them up in her room connected by strings to pushpins on a map indicating where they’d been sent from. Ecuador, China, Australia, Belgium, Chile, Mexico. Julia traced her mom’s journeys around the world and used the few details she knew to imagine the days when she would be able to travel as well. Without question, the best night in Dave’s life was the night he and Julia sat staring at the map, splitting a bottle of wine stolen from the garage and planning travels the two of them would go on together.

“Is she still in Mexico City?” Tom asked, dipping a spoon into one of the sauces simmering on the stove to take a taste. “More ginger?” he said to Chef Mike, who shook his head.

“Yup,” Julia said. “Working at an art gallery and part-time at a bar-slash-restaurant-slash-art-house movie theater.”

“That sounds about right,” Tom said with a smile. “That’s gotta be the longest she’s spent in one place since you were born.”

“She says it might be her favorite place she’s lived in. Although I’m sure she says that about everywhere she’s been, because she only picks amazing places.” She slipped the postcard into her shirt pocket. “We’re gonna go upstairs to dye our hair. Call us when some of this amazing-smelling food is ready.”

“That’s funny, I thought I heard you say you were dying your hair,” Ethan said, looking up from his notebook. Julia nodded with a smirk and Ethan looked over at Dave.

“I’m going with green,” Dave said with a nod.

“Don’t you have to ask permission from us to do something like this?” Tom said.

“I’m a college acceptee,” Julia said. “That pretty much grants me freedom to do whatever I want, except for felonies.”

“How’d you get talked into this?” Tom asked Dave.

“Your daughter has a talent for corrupting the youth.”

“Don’t I know it,” Tom said. He crossed his muscular arms in front of his chest and appraised the two of them. “I don’t think I’m ready to let go of my iron fist of authority in this household.”

“Don’t worry,” Julia said, grabbing the CVS bag with the hair dye off the counter and kissing him on the cheek. “You can still tell Dad what to do all the time.”

“Hey,” Ethan called halfheartedly, his attention slipping back into his work, “I resemble that remark.”

“Resemble? What, are you having a stroke, old man? Don’t you mean resent?”

“It’s a Three Stooges reference,” Dave explained.

“There is hope yet,” Ethan said, giving Dave a smile as Julia dragged him out of the kitchen by the arm. “Don’t make a mess,” he called out after them.

“We are definitely making a mess,” Julia whispered to Dave as they went up the stairs toward her room.

“Which of us is going first?” Dave said, reading the tiny print on the side of the box.

“Let’s do yours first. Your hair’s darker, so we should probably let the bleach sink in longer for you.”

They grabbed some old towels from the linen closet and spread them around the bathroom in Julia’s room. Julia snapped on the gloves that came in the box, and Dave sat on a stool in front of the sink, watching Julia go over the instructions again. She had the most hilariously exaggerated reactions to every step of the process, and Dave sat back and watched, relishing each expression. Just as she was about to dab a bit of the dye on Dave’s arm to test for skin allergies, Debbie the cat jumped onto Dave’s lap, getting a green streak down her back.

“Oops. Dad’s not going to be a fan of that.”

As the bleach began to do its thing, whatever it was bleach actually did to lighten hair, they swapped spots. Dave draped a towel over Julia’s shoulders and she undid her ponytail, her hair a light brown cascade that brushed against his fingers. “Have we sufficiently researched this process?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘sufficiently.’”

“Um.”

“It might not look like a professional dye job but I won’t get us killed.”

“I guess that’s reassuring?” Dave said, making sure the question mark was understood. After the bleach had magically transformed them into blondes—Julia pulling off the look much better than Dave ever could, though he admitted he was biased—Dave took a seat in the chair and watched a slightly different version of his best friend pour out the dye into a little container provided in the kit.

“This stuff smells great,” Dave said.

“Don’t you dare get high off the fumes. Sit still,” she said, straightening his head and focusing on the dye job.

It didn’t take her long to finish, since Dave didn’t have all that much hair. The instructions said to let it sit for at least twenty-five minutes, though the Internet suggested much longer, so while they waited for his hair to really grab hold of the green, they changed spots again. He tested the dye against her arm, then mixed the two liquids together as she had. He shook the bottle, careful not to spill. When he took his finger off the top, though, a single pink drop that clung to his gloved hand dripped off and landed right in the middle of Debbie’s forehead.

“That’s what she gets for being so in love with you,” Julia said, looking down at her cat rubbing her side against Dave’s leg, unaware of the splotchy dye job she was receiving.

Dave squeezed out the dye onto his fingers, and for the next twenty minutes he became lost in the task. He worked slowly, not because he wanted to stretch out the time, but because it was Julia’s hair, and everything to do with Julia he did with care. When he was done, he decided to wait with Julia, so that they would rinse the dye off at the same time. They tried to wipe Debbie clean, but she kept moving around and the drops of pink and green she’d absorbed spread across her fur.

“She looks like a tie-dyed shirt gone wrong,” Julia said.

“That doesn’t bode well for our hair.”

Julia sat on the counter and looked at herself in the mirror, leaning in to examine the pink stains by her hairline. “The genius in this is that if it turns out shitty it’s even more of a cliché.”

“That’ll be a comfort when everyone’s laughing at us.”

“Look at you worrying about what others think. Way to get into the spirit.” She smiled, then gave him a friendly tap with her foot. “I think that’s long enough. Time for the big reveal.” She hopped off the counter and turned on her shower, grabbing the removable head and waiting for the water to warm up a bit.

They helped each other rinse the excess dye from their hair, which resulted in more dye getting all over the bathroom. “It looks like a couple of cartoon animals were blown up in here,” Dave said.

They turned to face each other, and when Julia asked how her hair had turned out he had to swallow down the word sexy. “It looks pretty good,” he said. “How’s mine?”

She cast her eyes up at his hairline and bit her bottom lip. “I couldn’t have hoped for better,” she said, then laughed. “Maybe you should just look for yourself.” She moved aside to let him step in front of the mirror.

“My God.”

“I think the lighting in here is bad,” Julia said, suppressing another laugh.

“Julia, it looks like someone vomited on my head.”

Dave looked at her in the mirror, petrified. She brought her hands up to her mouth, her perfectly pink hair framing that lovely face of hers as the laughter tore through her.

“This is seriously the worst shade of green I’ve ever seen.” Dave turned on the faucet and ran water through his hair, and the pretty shade of green water that poured into the sink only made the joke crueler. “There’s no way I’m walking around with this on my head.”

“Oh, come on. You really pull it off.” Julia was doubled over in laughter, trying to catch her breath.

“I’m shaving it off.”

“No, don’t! The Nevers!” She dropped to the floor, not taking her eyes off of him, her hand clutching at her stomach. “Oww, Dave, the laughter hurts.”

“The Nevers just said dye your hair. They didn’t say anything about keeping vomit on my head for the rest of the school year. I’m gonna go to the mall to get this cut. Right now.”

“If I keep looking at it, I might pee myself.” She laughed again, either pretending to wipe a tear from her eye or actually doing it, Dave couldn’t tell at this point. “Wait until the morning. Maybe it’ll look better in daylight.”

Dave grimaced but stayed put. “Only because I’m such a good friend and you’re clearly enjoying this.” He lingered by the mirror for a second, looking down at Julia, who was trying to fight off another giggling fit. It was hard not to want this to go on, whatever his hair looked like, hard not to chase after the idea of the Nevers, too, when the result was a whole day spent with Julia laughing at his side, her cheeks as pink as her hair, her eyes suffused with joy. “It’s going to be a strange end of the year, isn’t it?”

o o o

The next morning Dave’s hair not only looked like puke, but like puke that had been allowed to sit out overnight.

Julia practically woke up laughing, and she refused to let Dave go until her dads saw his hair. They made their way downstairs, where Tom, Ethan, and Chef Mike seemed to have never left the spots they’d been at the day before.

“Good timing, we’re just about to test the Sunday brunch menu,” Ethan said when he heard them entering the kitchen. He was typing on his computer while Tom peeked over Chef Mike’s shoulder, watching him crack an egg into a steaming pot of water. Julia held her laughter, waiting for them to look up. She took a seat at one of the stools positioned by the kitchen island, and finally Ethan looked away from his screen and gasped.

The other two men turned to look at Dave. Tom immediately broke out in laughter. Chef Mike just said, “Yikes,” before returning to poaching eggs.

“Yup, going to the mall right now,” Dave said.

“You probably should, I might lose my appetite otherwise.”

“Ouch,” Dave said, though he took a seat next to Julia and Ethan.

Ethan pulled his glasses off and reached over to touch Julia’s hair. “This actually suits you.”

Dave loved sitting in the kitchen with Julia and her dads, loved the ease with which they talked and laughed with each other. He wished him and Brett and their dad had it, too. Dave had always wondered how Tom and Ethan handled Julia’s infatuation with her mom, whether they were ever hurt by it. But when he sat with them in their kitchen, it became clear that there was plenty of love to go around. No matter how much she longed for her mom, Julia never neglected her dads.

“How does your bathroom look?” Tom said, pouring a mug of coffee and offering it to Dave.

Julia quickly cupped her hand over Dave’s mouth. “Spotless.”

“You’re grounded,” Tom said, shaking his head.

“We had this discussion yesterday. Your reign of terror over me is done. Let it go.” Julia pulled her hand back and reached for Dave’s mug, blowing slightly at the surface. There was a hint of a chemical smell around the two of them from the hair dye, and Dave was thankful for the aromatic tendrils of steam rising from the coffee. He rose from his chair and went to the fridge to grab the milk, adding just a splash, the way Julia liked it. “So how’s the restaurant going? When do I get to see the dream come true?”

“More like a nightmare,” Ethan muttered. He put his glasses back on, then looked over at Julia. “Just kidding. Don’t panic.”

“Julia panics?” Dave asked, sitting back down.

Julia gave Ethan a light smack on the arm. “I have a rep to live up to; don’t tell people stuff like that.”

“Is there really anything this kid doesn’t know about you?”

“Not the point.” Julia drank from her mug, then slid it across the marble top to Dave.

They spent the morning in the comforts of the kitchen and the joys of the banter that Julia had learned from her dads. She filled them in vaguely on the Nevers, stating that she and Dave were conducting important sociological research into the world of the modern teenager. It sometimes felt like Dave belonged in that kitchen, though he knew he was just using Tom and Ethan’s warmth as a reason to think he and Julia were meant for more than friendship. When the afternoon started looming, Dave forced himself to leave the house, to cut his hair and maybe see his own family for a bit.

The mall was a slight detour on the way home, and throughout the walk he wished he were the kind of guy who wore hats. There weren’t a lot of people around, but it was still embarrassing to be out in public. He imagined even the squirrels, usually nonchalant about human hairstyles, staring down at him from the trees and making disgusted faces.

When he walked through the glass doors of the mall, he knew right away he was going to run into someone he knew, someone from school, someone who would be witness to the atrocity he and Julia had committed on his head. The mall was swarming with families, couples in their twenties, packs of middle school girls sharing cups of lemonade. Huge banners hung from the rafters announcing a special weekend-only sale.

He sighed and kept his eyes cast down on the floor, trying to maneuver his way around the crowd without running into too many people. Before he knew it, he was at the Supercuts, and the hipster girl with the red hair and the half sleeve of tattoos had written his name down on her clipboard and told him to take a seat in the waiting area.

Just as he was sighing in relief, he saw that the only chair available was right next to Gretchen. She was reading, but almost as soon as his eyes landed on her, she looked up at him. She smiled at him—all lips, though, no imperfect lower teeth—and raised her hand in a wave.

He raised his hand up and mouthed hello, hoping she’d somehow missed his hair. Which, of course, she hadn’t.

“Wow. What happened there?”

His stomach clenched as he took a seat next to her. “I know, I know.”

“That couldn’t have been by choice.”

“I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known it would end up looking like...” He motioned with his hands, pointing at the hair and trying to find a word that accurately described the fiasco sitting on his head.