Never Always Sometimes

by Adi Alsaid

No one had told him that March of senior year would feel like it was made of Jell-O.

When, two days later, Julia received her congratulations from UCSB, only an hour up the coastline, the whole world took on brighter notes,

It was strange how he could see her every day and still be surprised by how it felt to have her near.

It was pleasant torture, how casually she could touch him.

So far, the small pile contained two in-class notes from Julia and a short story he’d read in AP English.

But something caught his eye. One paper folded so neatly that for a second he thought it may have been a note he’d saved from his mom. She’d died when he was nine, and though he’d learned to live with that, he still treated the things she left behind like relics. But when he unfolded the sheet and realized what he was holding, a smile spread his lips. Dave’s eyes went down the list to number eight: Never pine silently after someone for the entirety of high school.

recalling the day they’d made the list, suddenly flushed with warmth at the thought that nothing had come between them in four years.

Everything about Julia was beautiful to him, but it was the side of her face that he loved the most. The slope of her neck, the slight jut of her chin, how the blue in her eyes popped. Her ears, which were the cutest ea...

“Kind of cool that we never did get a permanent lunch spot,” Dave said, gesturing with the list in hand. “I hadn’t even remembered that it was on the list. Had you?” “No,” Julia said. “The subconscious is weird.”

Dave reached over and grabbed Julia’s head, shaking it from side to side. Long ago, in the awkward years of middle school, that had been established as his one gesture of affection when he didn’t know how else to touch her.

“I don’t want to get my hopes up.” “Her hopes should be up. Her biological daughter is awesome.”

“I don’t care how great of a life she’s led, if she doesn’t come visit you she’s a very poor judge of awesomeness.”

He was waiting to catch that smile of hers, to know he had caused it. Instead, he only saw her eyes flick toward the Nevers list, which was resting folded on his knee.

Looking around the room, he imagined a little number popping up above each person’s head depicting how many Nevers they’d done.

A breeze was blowing, and now that Julia was wearing only her tank top it almost tired him how beautiful she was. It’d been a long time of this, keeping his love for her subdued. It’d been a long time of letting her rest her head on his shoulder during their movie nights, of letting her prop her almost-always bare feet on his lap, his hands nonchalantly gripping her ankles. He’d been a cliché all four years of high school, in love with his best friend, pining silently.

Dave couldn’t help but smile at the side of her face, the way the sun made her eyes impossibly blue, how he could see her mom on her thoughts.

He lowered the mirror visor and stuck his arm out the side of the car, feeling the sun on his skin. He kept smiling, too experienced at hiding to let the tiny heartbreak show.

On his own, Dave was a bit of a neat freak. But when Julia was nearby, messes seemed beautiful, life’s untidiness easier to comprehend.

“Better a bang than a whimper,”

within an hour or so he’d found himself longing for Julia’s company, an urge so sharp it felt like homesickness. He had no trouble being alone. But if he was around anyone, he wanted it to be Julia.

They stood there in the empty living room for a second, mostly just smiling at each other. Dave imagined that if anyone walked into the room at that point it might look like they loved each other in the same way.

He was so used to looking for her that he felt unreasonably skillful at it, as if no matter how many people were around his eyes would easily land on her. Her presence called out to him like a beacon.

The blue of her eyes, those three freckles on her neck.

already looking forward to reuniting with her, though he had no doubts she would have the better story.

It felt a little like doing a somersault underwater and then coming up really quickly, your head spinning and sending a warm tingle down your spine.

“Nah. Just friends,” Dave said, a line he was used to delivering with as little emotion as possible, as if he were a spy trying not to be discovered.

“To be honest, right now it kind of feels like I can peer into everyone’s soul.”

I’ve barely been able to sleep since. I wake up at four a.m. thinking of things to say to her, and I repeat them to myself until my alarm goes off and it’s time to go to school to stop myself from saying it.”

little hum of agreement in the back of his throat.

So many people were quietly in love that he and Julia considered it part of a normal high school experience and had therefore sworn it off.

Pining silently was a cliché, which meant that people were constantly in love with each other without saying a thing about it. How much unrequited, unspoken love filled up the halls every day? How many kids in class felt exactly like Dave did on a day-to-day basis?

talk to other people who are being gently eaten alive by longing.”

Her back was to him, but he could recognize her by her hair, which was wavy enough to maybe be considered curly. It was dark blond, lightening up toward the ends, though he didn’t know enough about her or her hair to know if the blonder tips were natural or the evidence of a past dye job. She turned to look at him, big brown eyes and the hint of a smile. At a glimpse, he could tell that her bottom teeth were slightly crooked. The world was full of details he’d failed to notice before.

She was in a simple blue dress and—Dave couldn’t help the thought—looked lovely.

She was laughing as she said it, showing another glimpse of her crooked lower teeth. They weren’t unsightly, just imperfect. Dave liked the look of them, for some reason.

“Right. Sorry, I just usually assume people don’t know me.” “I know you,” she said. A lock of blond hair fell in front of her face and she pulled on it, examining the lighter ends for a few seconds before letting it drop against her dress.

He’d always seen her out of the corner of his eyes, blond locks and not much more, talkative, active at school in the way that he and Julia inherently disapproved of. Her legs were tan from soccer practices in the sun, and she wore scuffed beige sneakers that didn’t really go with her dress.

He laughed, the image of her reforming itself, starting to fill up with color.

Maybe for the first time, he looked at her and saw more than just her face. The words that he would have used to describe her yesterday—that she was just another popular pretty girl, a soccer player who maybe ran for student council or worked on the yearbook or something like that—suddenly seemed to lack any real description.

It was like he’d been carrying around a coloring book that hadn’t yet been drawn in. He and Julia knew the outlines of people, but not much more.

THERE WAS NO greater proof of an underlying human connection than the universal hatred of Monday mornings.

her hastily combed hair made Dave think of what it would be like to wake up next to her.

Julia hated talking in the mornings, and so Dave knew to listen to the music until she was ready.

He kept the muted earphone in, always happy to be tied together to her.

a couple of guys’ awful attempts to make out with her, their worse attempts at interesting conversation. She’d ended up playing video games in the basement with a group of juniors—stoner clichés that she hadn’t expected to run into at the party, but clichés nonetheless. They’d joked about Dave’s embarrassing flip-cup skills. Throughout the weekend, Dave’s thoughts had returned to Gretchen, how he’d kind of fallen in love with the mood of the party. He’d assumed Julia had talked it all out of her system, though.

It always drove him crazy how easily she minimized the distance between them, as if it didn’t mean anything. And then, almost out of nowhere, he thought about sitting next to Gretchen, how he was looking forward to seeing her in chemistry third period.

“Actually, we’re doing all of them.” She sat back up quickly, smiling. “It’s the perfect way to end the year,” she said. “It’s been so boring; this’ll be the perfect end-of-high-school celebration. Embrace the clichés so tightly they’ll suffocate.

She was radiant when she got excited about something. Her mouth scrunched over to one side of her face but somehow remained a smile. It was indescribably cute.

a smile that was about ninety-five percent mischief spreading her thin lips.

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?