“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.
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