two
This Summer
I need you. It’s a worrying text to get from your best friend, especially when it’s delivered fully out of the blue, no context provided,
after she’s been dodging your messages for the last several months. My communication with Laurel has been spotty for several
years now, if I’m honest. But we always find our way back to each other.
I need you. Like a bat signal sent up, one that had me booking the next flight to Los Angeles to see her, and the reason I am now, six
months later, driving her down the Pacific Coast Highway in the direction of a beachside resort I haven’t seen in five years.
We might have changed since then, but as we pull into the porte cochere outside the main building, it’s clear Malibu Springs,
terrible as its name may be, has not.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Laurel, who is barking breakneck French into her phone. She nods and waves a perfectly manicured
hand at me as I step out of the driver’s side of her car.
Ralph, a front-desk staple here and someone with whom my relationship has been a bit of a mixed bag, looks up as I walk in,
career hospitality on his newly lined face. “Welcome,” he coos as I approach the mahogany front desk. “Checking in?”
“To the Wild Horse Villa,” I say. I slide my ID across the counter before pulling up our reservation confirmation on my phone.
Ralph makes an approving face, which is strange because Ralph has only once before looked at me without disdain twisting his
expression. “Have you stayed with us before?” he asks.
“I have,” I say, giving him a tight smile. “But we’ve usually been in the Wildflower cottages.”
“Ah.” His tone is pinched. Something like recognition passes across his face, eyes narrowing in my direction, but his face
brightens at something on his computer screen. “We have Ms. Im’s card on file. You’re all set,” he says.
“Ralph?” Laurel asks when I hop back into her car.
“Ralph,” I confirm.
“Still hates us?”
I nod as I guide the car toward the tight corner that will take us away from the main hotel and back down toward the bluff
where Wild Horse Villa sits. “Still hates us.”
Laurel rolls her window down and leans her head out, drawing in a breath as she shuts her eyes. “At least some things never
change.” I glance over at her, the narrow set of her shoulders, and wonder if she’s actually looking thinner in the months
since she shared the news of her divorce or if it’s just all the time we haven’t spent together in the last five years that’s
painting her image differently for me.
“When is everyone else arriving again?” I ask, like I don’t already know. Like we haven’t gone over the plans I made for this
week a hundred times.
Laurel looks back at me, raising an eyebrow. “Gabe and Davi are on the same flight this afternoon. He is driving down tonight.”
“Great,” I say nonchalantly as I round the bend toward the villa, its white stucco walls stark against the bright blue sky. “Looking forward to it.”
Laurel snorts. “Sure you are.”
I ignore her because it doesn’t matter how I’m feeling about seeing him again. We’re all here for her this week, to help as she navigates what she’s calling the start of her “new life.”
Laurel Im, best friend, former Rock Band champion, absolutely hopeless cook, is also the textbook definition of a social media star, and creator of one of the largest
culture and lifestyle empires around. It started back in college: posting her outfits, recaps of her daily life, her recommendations
for everything from mascara to green juices, but it wasn’t until after graduation that she started to blow up. Since then,
Laurel has launched a line of athleisure wear, started a podcast, signed deals with brands like Hoka and Bombay Sapphire and
Knix, hosted trips where she leads tarot card readings and hikes through the Italian countryside. She is an influencer to
the highest degree, maintains a lifestyle most people could only dream of, and has the best hair of anyone I know.
Her appeal only grew when she married Stephen four years ago, the boyfriend the internet was obsessed with. He was perfect
for her: model-handsome and just as busy as she was, her biggest supporter and the picture of a doting husband.
That is, until Laurel told me she needed me, that she needed all of us, because she and Stephen were getting divorced. Out
of nowhere, with zero warning. We agreed to gather at the resort we used to visit each year the week the divorce would be
finalized to be there for her. To support her through it.
We haven’t been back here in five years. Not since our last stay at Poppy Cottage, where a secret I hadn’t kept alone nearly
destroyed the group of friends I’d been calling family for a decade.
Nearly. Laurel’s invitation, I hope, is a new beginning for all of us. To return to what we used to have: a group so tight-knit it
rivaled movies, a reality so good it almost seemed made up. The kind of closeness I had searched for all my life. What has
felt off track for the last five years will be righted again this week. I’m sure of it.
The Wild Horse Villa is a far cry from Poppy Cottage, but the last time we stayed there, the romance of its tiny space and
desperately needed repairs was starting to wear off, so it makes sense that we move to a bigger space. That, and part of Laurel’s
invitation was her paying for a week in the sprawling Spanish Revival home we’re dropping our bags in the foyer of now.
Not that any of us took her up on it. As soon as she sent the invite, the rest of us started our own group chat where we figured
out how we’d surreptitiously pay her back so Laurel wouldn’t have to spend a penny on her own divorce week, save for the party
she’s throwing herself on Friday and the rest of us have been left completely in the dark about.
“Here I let you make me think staying in that A-frame was so romantic,” Laurel says as she sets her suitcase at the foot of
the terra-cotta-tiled stairs, leaning her head back to look at the vaulted, beamed ceilings, the light filtering in through
the skylights there.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, wrapping my arms around her shoulders. “You loved sharing that tiny room with me every summer.”
“I will miss you always kicking me in your sleep,” she says. She tucks her hands around my wrists and sighs. “I’ll miss how
uncomplicated things were there.”
I try not to tense, to acknowledge what’s obviously missing from that statement. Until the last summer. But it’s Laurel who’s brushing off the moment, breaking away from me.
“I bet I know one thing you’ll love about this new house,” she says, throwing her arms wide to show off the sprawling kitchen
sitting opposite the living room just off the entryway. I follow her over there. “No more telling us all to get out while
you cook.”
“Yes, because you were so often in the kitchen at the cottage.” I spread my hands on top of the mammoth marble island, nod at the pasta arm over the six-burner
gas stove. “I want one of those in my own home someday.”
“I’ll get you one,” Laurel says, her brief moment of melancholy from earlier erased. She spins into the living room, collapsing
in a heap onto a plush white armchair there. “I’ll buy you a thousand weird wall faucets!”
After thoroughly admiring the first floor, we haul our things upstairs and choose our rooms—Laurel’s at the back of the house,
overlooking the beach, and mine at the front, small but with a balcony off to one side. We curl up out there on the outdoor
settees and peek over the wrought-iron railing every time we hear tires coming down the road until it is, finally, Gabe and
Davi pulling into the driveway behind Laurel’s car.
“Ahoy!” Laurel shouts down to them, the upper half of her body leaned over the railing.
“Hi!” Gabe calls, beaming up at us in khaki shorts and a T-shirt sporting the name of the college where he runs the admissions
department back in Denver. “How’s the view?”
“Excellent now!” I call down to him as Davi expels himself from the car behind Gabe, his curly black hair less coiffed than
usual.
“Did anyone pack any Dramamine?” he says, voice bouncing off the stucco walls. “I think I left mine in the bathroom at Burbank.”
“Davi!” Gabe booms, throwing a rough arm around his shoulders and almost lifting him off the ground in the process. Where Gabe is towering and brawny, Davi is stocky. And, currently, a little green. “Forget your Dramamine! Look where we are!”
“I see where we are,” I hear Davi mumble as he squints at his phone, probably responding to a work email even in his current,
nauseous state. “I still don’t travel well.”
“You and potato salad,” Laurel says. “Just get in here!”
“I have Dramamine, Davi,” I call down to him as Gabe bounds toward the house, leaving Davi swaying on his feet in the driveway.
We all settle in around the island in the kitchen. I scrub a hand over Gabe’s shorter haircut when he hugs me. Davi takes
the pills I gave him and keeps his sunglasses pulled down over his eyes.
“Gabe, we’re thinking you can have the room down here,” Laurel is telling them. “Davi, there’s a room upstairs with blackout
curtains that has your name on it.”
“Great,” Gabe says. “But who cares about room assignments? Let’s start catching up.”
“We have to wait until everyone’s here,” Laurel says. “I hate repeating things. Everyone should be here by seven.”
Gabe’s gaze flicks briefly toward me, but I ignore it.
“So what are we supposed to do until then?” Davi asks. “Sit in silence?”
“Well, Dramamine always knocks you out,” I say to him. “So at least we know what you’ll be doing.”
“I told Mia I’d call when we got in,” Gabe says, almost apologetically. Mia is Gabe’s wife, and currently on her own trip
with their three-year-old twins and her sister. We all knew that part of even getting Gabe here this week meant giving him
time and space to check in with them multiple times a day.
“I do have some emails I should respond to,” Laurel adds a little guiltily.
The kitchen goes silent for a minute, the immediate excitement of being reunited fading from our bodies and making room for
reality. That we haven’t all been together—not like this, at least—for years. There have been day trips, birthday parties
that only some of us could make it to. But the last time we were all in the same place at the same time was at Laurel’s wedding,
and on top of that not being an entire week away together, I think the day she married Stephen is the last thing any of us
want to bring up right now.
“Hey, come on,” I say. I need this week to be perfect. Not only for Laurel, but for all of us, so everyone in this room will
see how important it is that this group remain intact. “We’ll each take an hour to take care of whatever we need to, and then
we’ll reconvene here for drinks, okay?”
“So we’ll sit in silence, drinking?” Davi asks.
It hits me how strange this is, all of us together again not knowing what to do. The transition into this trip used to be
exciting, but now it feels like our first night at sleepaway camp, all of us a little unsure. I sink onto one hip, sighing.
“We’ll play a game or something.”
“I didn’t mean to make it awkward,” Laurel, who has never once looked as timid as she does right now, says. Her expression
pricks at something in my chest, the same thing I’ve been feeling since she sent her I need you text in the first place. Something she’s not telling me in all her nonchalance about the divorce. “We can catch up now,” she
offers.
“No,” I jump in. “You’re right. Repeating things sucks.”
The words are accompanied by a flash of irritation that I know, logically, is unfounded.
But emotionally, I am a cracking Hoover Dam, holding back five years’ worth of anger at the person who’s still missing from this situation.
The person who makes keeping this group intact so complicated, because it can’t just be the people in this room, much as I might wish it.
For this group to be intact, we still need him.
The one who my rational brain reminds me isn’t actually
making it impossible for us to talk right now, but whom my animal brain rails against for not being able to get here earlier.
The him of earlier. The him I don’t want to see.
Everett.