The Stuff That Never Happened Read Online Free PDF Page A

other girl if he’s your boyfriend?”
    “Yeah, well, he’s not what you’d call monogamous.”
    “Oh, he’s not? Well, that’s interesting of him.”
    I laughed. “Yeah, he’s pretty interesting.”
    “A real find. Makes you wonder how guys get the deals they get.”
    “Do you have a girlfriend?”
    He laughed. “Do I seem like the type of guy women are interested in? Did you notice women flocking over to talk to me at the party?”
    “I talked to you.”
    “You only talked to me because your boyfriend was hanging out with somebody else, and you wanted a beer from the fridge I happened to be standing in front of.”
    “No. I talked to you because you were sort of nice. About art and all.” I smiled at him. I was thinking he might ask me to go somewhere else with him, maybe walk down to the beach or into town or something, but he didn’t. We got to his friend’s Datsun, which was unlocked, but Grant didn’t have the key to drive it. I was thinking that most guys would have assumed we were going to at least sit in the car and make out for a while, but Grant didn’t seem to have the confidence required to suggest something like that. We just stood there, leaning against it, him with his hands jammed in his pockets. I already felt like I needed to take care of him somehow.
    “Are you from California?” I asked him after a long silence.
    “No. I grew up in rural New Hampshire, in a place you’ve never heard of.” He told me that he actually had a family homestead , where generations of McKays had lived among a bunch of antiques and cows. Snow, ice, presidential primaries, mountains, skiing, all that. I liked his voice, the way he seemed so sure that home and parents weren’t totally bad things.
    I said, just trying out how it sounded: “My parents are getting divorced.”
    He blinked. “That’s a bummer.”
    “Well,” I said. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself. “I guess they think they stuck it out long enough. And now that my brother and I are nearly grown, they don’t see why they have to live together anymore. It’s really no big problem. I mean, I am grown up. I can handle this.”
    “Still,” said Grant. He looked at me closely. “You probably didn’t think this would ever happen.”
    “Yeah.” I looked off into the distance. A car was coming toward us down the street, and its headlights swept the road, where a crab was running across the yellow line.
    “Probably makes it easier that you’re at school. You have other stuff to concentrate on.”
    “That’s for sure,” I said. “I have loads of things to think about.”
    “You do?”
    “Yeah. I do.”
    “Is one of those things why you hang out with a guy who’s not monogamous, and why you go to parties where people throw cherry bombs?” He was laughing.
    “Would you just listen to yourself? At least I go to parties. At least I don’t tell people they shouldn’t major in what they’re majoring in.”
    He threw back his head and laughed harder. “Ah, a feisty one!” He ducked, as if he expected I might want to hit him. So of course I pretended to, thinking he’d grab my hands and we’d play-wrestle and then he’d kiss me, and we’d go down to the beach and make out and maybe I could start being in love with him for real.
    But none of that happened. He didn’t seem to know what the possibilities were, and after a while, I couldn’t find a place for him in my overactive love imagination, so I got bored and said goodnight and walked myself home. I threw the cherry bombs in the garbage, and they made a pop-pop-pop sound that almost stopped my heart.

[three]
    2005
    G rant and I make love on Wednesday mornings at seven o’clock.
    What? You don’t have a schedule for something like that? Perhaps you think that sex should arise spontaneously, whenever both people are so inclined. Maybe you are one of those silly, conventional people who think that passion shouldn’t be regulated.
    Believe me, this scheduling