Brett looked around the kitchen, giving his derisive laugh that was more like a snort. Dave could tell he was trying to think of a comeback. After a while, Brett scowled, muttered something about cupcakes, and then went into the living room to rejoin their dad. Watching TV was their favorite thing to do. They did so silently, never acknowledging that it drew them together. Sometimes Dave felt like joining them, but it seemed to belong just to the two of them. Dave didn’t mind so much; he had his own silent way of feeling close to his dad: They cooked for each other, meals that Dave’s mom used to make for all of them.
“You have to teach me how to do that. I never get the last word with him,” Dave said, dipping a finger into the frosting to taste it. There was something delightful about watching Julia move about the kitchen recklessly, a trail of batter and eggshells in her wake. The tiled floor was a mess when she was done with it, polka-dotted with vanilla extract. Her fingerprints were all over the black cabinets and on the stove. A pile of dishes sat in the sink, way more of them than she had needed. 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.
“So this is how tradition falls,” he said, taking a seat on one of the stools at the breakfast counter. “With cupcakes and the Kapoor army.”
“Better a bang than a whimper,” she said, easing onto the stool next to him. She reached over and brushed something off his shoulder, as if he were the one covered in ingredients. “Plus, don’t be so dramatic. It doesn’t suit you. We’ll watch a movie next Friday, when we get bored of this. And them.”
Dave nodded, understanding what she was getting at, though maybe not in the exact way she’d meant it. Julia kept mostly to herself at school, and by extension he did, too. He was friendly enough with classmates, though, especially when Julia wasn’t around to draw his attention. There were a couple of guys he might even go so far as to call friends, though he never really spoke to them outside of school. Once or twice he’d hung out with them, gone to lunch and then played video games in a curtain-drawn den. There’d been dog hair on every surface, a stale smell of Doritos in the air. Their conversations had bored him, and 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.
“You’re right,” Dave said, the worry over the party melting away. “I might even try breaking the promise to never go streaking while we’re at it.”
“I’ll make sure that the picture goes viral and you live the rest of your life in regret and shame.”
“You’re such a good friend.” Dave put a hand on top of her head and shook lightly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Show up to parties empty-handed, for one.”
Dave chuckled, dipping another finger into the frosting. “You have to admit it’s kind of weird, though. Doing this after avoiding it for so long.”
Julia shrugged, using her pinky to steal the frosting from his finger before he could lick it away. “I don’t think it’ll be that bad. Just see it as a brief social experiment.” She hopped off the stool and went to the oven, peering in through the glass to check on the cupcakes. “My mom did this once.”
“Went to a Kapoor party?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “No, goof. She came back to the States, got a regular job. This was when I was around nine or so. She worked at a bank, tried to go back to school. She calls it her ‘social experiment with the sheep.’ Six months later, she’d taken off again, even happier to return to her unordinary life.”
Julia leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms in front of her chest, not really meeting Dave’s gaze. She knew she was being transparent, but she’d never been good at hiding her feelings when it came to her mom.
“I see what you’re doing. You’re drawing parallels between us and your mom so I will feel as cool as she is.”
Julia smiled and tossed a towel at him. “If it is too lame we’ll just leave. We can even have a secret signal.”
Dave groaned. “Why a secret signal? We could just turn to each other and say, ‘This sucks,’ and then leave.”
“Will you get into the spirit of this thing, please? Our secret signal will be to start a dance-off.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And you love me for it,” she said, smirking.