one
Spring
Ten Years Ago
classes after she’d decided to ghost the guy she’d been seeing from her econ class last week, Gabe and Zoey weren’t back from
by the fact that we only had so many weekends like this left between us and graduation.
But there was a call from a classmate, and springtime California air as we walked the few blocks to the house where she knew
about a party. Music and drinks in the fridge and no real concept of a before or a during or an after for any of us, and then
a cheer going up at the front door for someone arriving. Golden-brown hair and flashing eyes and a case of beer hoisted in
the air. A second beer in the kitchen while I laughed along with everyone else, and a screen door closing behind me as I stepped
onto the quiet back deck to cut through the alley and head home.
“Got to be a record,” said a voice from behind me.
I turned. The guy everyone had been so happy to see earlier leaned against the railing, a water bottle in hand.
He was wearing a navy-blue sweater, the sleeves pushed up to above his elbows, the white of a T-shirt just peeking out underneath the neck of it.
“What?” I asked.
He glanced at a watch on his wrist. I didn’t know anyone who wore an actual watch at that point, and this one looked well
loved, a leather band that had been worn by someone before him. “Ten thirty,” he said. “Sorry the party disappointed you.”
“This is your party?” I asked, pointing back at the screen door, a rectangle of yellow in the dark, voices and a song that
Laurel turned up every time it came on the radio spilling out of it.
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. A lock of hair fell across his forehead, and he pushed it back. I didn’t know it was a restless
habit then, that his hair wasn’t pushed back by design, but by anxious necessity. “I’m just friends with the guys who live
here.”
“You keep them in beer,” I said, settling against the wall opposite him. The light from the kitchen fell across his face just
in time for me to see a smile tug one side of his mouth up. “Everyone was certainly happy to see you earlier.”
“I think if you show up to any party with a case of beer on one shoulder people will be happy to see you.”
“Was it on one shoulder?” I asked, pretending to think. “From what I recall, it was over your head.”
“You were paying attention,” he said, that smile stretching.
“You’re the Lloyd Dobler of beer.”
“Wasn’t Lloyd the key master in Say Anything?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “You know, holds on to everyone’s keys, makes sure they’re sober before they drive?”
I nodded at his water. “If that’s all you’re drinking, you could be key master if you wanted.”
He glanced at the bottle, something flitting across his face before he looked back at me. “I try to follow the water-between-drinks
rule,” he said. “Not big on being drunk.”
“Fair.”
He shifted then, like something had occurred to him, and held out his hand. “I’m Everett,” he said. “Bridges.”
“First and last name,” I said without taking his hand.
“Something wrong with that?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Everett Bridges. Sounds like you’re going to be an actor or a writer or something. Am I close?”
He exhaled a small wry laugh. “Something like that.”
“Sutton,” I said, finally taking his hand. We didn’t exactly shake them, just kind of held them there, suspended. I realized
I was waiting for him to ask me my last name, probably so I could say something like now that’s more information than I wanted to give you tonight, but he didn’t. He just looked at me until the warmth of his palm started to crawl up my arm and I quickly said, “Hale,”
and dropped his hand.
“Sutton Hale,” he said, leaning back again. I could feel my cheeks heat and was grateful for the dark. “Now that sounds like you’re going to be someone people know.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but the door flew open at that same moment, a guy in a polo spilling out and peering drunkenly
around the deck until his eyes landed on me.
“Have you seen Everett?” he asked.
“I’m here, Shane,” Everett said, pushing back the door where Shane had cornered him in with it. “What’s up?”
“We need ice,” Shane said. “And beer.”
“I brought you more beer an hour ago,” Everett said.
“And everyone has really enjoyed it,” Shane said. “Are you drinking? Can you go? I’m about to kick John’s ass at Mario Kart in the basement and I—”
“I’ll go,” Everett cut in.
“Great,” Shane said, digging into his pocket. “Shit, I don’t have any cash on me.”
“I’ll get it,” Everett said.
Apparently, that was all the convincing it took for Shane. “Guys!” he shouted as he spun back toward the kitchen, the door
slamming behind him. “He’ll get it!” A chorus of cheers went up.
“Sutton,” Everett said, reaching into his jeans pocket to pull out a set of car keys. “It’s been great. I hope you enjoy the
rest of your evening, wherever it takes you.”
“You too,” I said as he started down the back steps. And that might have been it, might have made our lives far less complicated
if some cosmic force hadn’t landed a fist against my stomach, punching my next word out of me. “Wait.”
Everett turned with his foot on the bottom step, gaze slanting up to mine. I felt it again: heat in my cheeks, stretching
down my neck and across my chest this time. “Want some company?”
The way Everett’s mouth turned down at the corners, like he was trying to suppress a smile, like he knew I might ask, almost made me take it back. Instead, I raised an eyebrow, waiting.
He jerked his head to the side, beckoning me toward him. “Come on, then, Sutton Hale.”
I followed him around the side of the house and toward what I assumed was his car: a nondescript sedan, the same as most students drove in Southern California, either handed down from older siblings or purchased as a high school graduation present by their parents.
But he started across the street just as I was about to reach for the handle toward a classic sixties Bronco, the top removed and its paint the perfect shade of muted sage green.
“This is your car?” I asked as he walked around to the passenger side, unlocking it and holding it open for me.
“This is my car,” he confirmed as he closed the door behind me, patting a hand on it for good measure. I took in the interior,
clearly new, lovingly refurbished as he walked around the front and climbed into the driver’s seat. He glanced sideways at
me as I ran a finger over the brown leather of the seats. “What?”
“I can’t tell if I love or hate this,” I said as the engine rumbled to life.
Everett laughed as he put the car in Drive and pulled out of the spot. “Dance Hall Days” came out of the speakers when his
phone connected to the stereo, loud, and he reached over to turn it down before asking, “Why’s that?”
“I’m no car aficionado, but don’t refurbished models like this usually go for, like . . . a shit ton of money?”
“They do tend to,” he said. “But my mom’s husband is into fixing up cars, so I mostly paid in labor for this one.”
“Really?” I asked. Everett nodded as he turned out of the neighborhood and onto the main road, the wind whipping through my
hair as we picked up speed. California was already warming up this time of year, but it was still chilly at night, and I wrapped
my hands around my bare arms, suppressing a shiver. Everett noticed, and at a stoplight he reached into the back bench seat
and produced a well-loved Devon College crewneck.
“Here,” he said. “It’s a little early to have the top off,” he explained as I tugged the dark blue sweatshirt on over my head, catching a whiff of something warmly familiar, crisp pine and cinnamon, and something almost salty underneath it. “But I drove down the coast this week to surf.”
“Wow.” I refastened my seat belt. “So you’re, like, a real Californian.”
“Los Angeles born and bred, I’m afraid. Where are you from?”
“Bay Area,” I said. I gave him a wry look. “Different kind of Californian.”
Everett nodded as he shifted gears, which I, for some reason, found unbearably hot. We talked back and forth as we drove the
rest of the way to the gas station, basic things like majors (me: culinary arts, Everett: film school), why we’d picked them,
how we’d ended up at Devon in the first place. I’d ended up here because of the scholarships they offered, but it hadn’t seemed
meant to be until I met my friends, the people who weren’t here tonight. It was as if all the other schools had been out of
reach simply to pull me here, with them. But I didn’t tell Everett that part of things just yet.
At the gas station, we grabbed two cases of Pbr out of the cooler before starting down the candy aisle, where he paused in
front of a display. “Want anything?” he asked me.
“No thanks,” I said until a bag caught my eye. “Gummy worms.”
He grabbed them and the sour version before rounding the corner into the chip aisle. I followed just in time for him to toss
a bag of pretzels my way, followed quickly by potato chips that I only just caught.
“Quite the refined palate you’ve got there,” I joked as he mulled over the Pringles options. He smirked at me. “Sour cream
and onion.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Just in one future chef’s opinion.”
“See,” he said as he grabbed the canister and tucked it under his arm. “Sutton Hale is a name people are going to know.”
We tore into everything on the drive back to the house, tossing things back and forth, holding open bags out to each other,
and it struck me that I hadn’t felt immediately comfortable like this with anyone in a while. That I reserved things like
this for my best friends. That I had, I realized as Everett turned onto the street where we could hear the music from the
party echoing, felt so comfortable around him that I’d gotten into a car with a virtual stranger.
I examined him while he parked: good jaw, tendons working in his forearms as he twisted the keys out of the ignition, a five-o’clock
shadow on his chin. From what I could tell, he looked like he used his body, and not necessarily in a seven-days-a-week-at-the-gym