six
This Summer
After Everett and I finish up the salad, we all grab pizza and take it out to the table on the back deck. The sun has mostly
set, but Laurel plugs in the globe lights strung on the pergola the table sits under, flicks on the heat lamps sitting in
the corners.
“The cottage didn’t even have a real table inside,” Davi says as he sits down next to me, a black fleece tugged on over his shirt.
“Bet you’ll be happy to cook in a real kitchen this week,” Gabe says to me from his spot next to Everett across the table.
Laurel is at the head presiding over all of us, her hands folded under her chin like she’s surveying her children. Her eyes
catch on me, twinkling.
“Ask Sutton about her cookbook,” she says.
Gabe jerks upright so aggressively he almost drops the slice of pizza he just picked up from his plate. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” I say. I got the news just a few weeks ago. Laurel had been the one to first set up the account where I shared
recipes after I started appearing as a guest in the videos of a few former coworkers who had found success as internet chefs.
I was resistant to it then—still am—but it led to this.
“What does that mean?” Gabe says, glancing at Davi, who already knew because we talked on the phone last week and who reserves his enthusiasm for things like final products. “What do you need to do? When do we get it?”
“We’ve barely started recipe development,” I tell him. “It’s still very early.”
“Will you put the pistachio mint cookies in there?” Davi asks, interest apparently piqued.
“You have that recipe,” I answer, picking up my wineglass and taking a sip.
“Yes, but I’d like it in cookbook form, please.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“If you’re taking requests, that white bean thing you used to make for us in college should absolutely be in there,” Gabe
says.
“There’ll be a riff on something like that,” I say. I shake my head, rushing forward before things get too out of hand. “It’s
seriously still so early, but yeah, the cookbook is happening.”
“We knew her when,” Gabe says, forming a marquee with his hands.
“Please, we knew them when,” Davi says. “Everett had award season by the balls last year.”
“Gross,” Laurel says. Davi shrugs.
I realize I haven’t looked at Everett since Laurel mentioned the cookbook. I could feel his eyes on the side of my face as
I talked, and I knew, or suspected, why. It was a reminder, the first of many I was afraid of coming up this week. Of what
used to be. He was one of the first people I told I actually wanted to write a cookbook. Telling him, telling anyone, made
it real. But that doesn’t matter now. I look across the table at him, jaw set.
“I don’t think I ever congratulated you,” I say. “On the win.” I am pointedly leaving out the seven nominations and two other
wins that Cooney, the ode to the coming-of-age, science fiction greats of the eighties, garnered last year. Suddenly Everett’s name was everywhere, because winner of best director is one thing, but a young, hot, and eligible best director is another entirely.
“Thank you,” Everett says, eyes locked on to mine across the table. “Congratulations on the cookbook.”
The moment lasts just a breath too long, spreading unease through me. I set my wineglass down, clap my hands together. “Enough
about that,” I say. “What about everyone else?” It feels strange to have to ask, a poke at a sore spot in me, but I school
my expression into something neutral.
“The twins are starting preschool in the fall,” Gabe says, looking almost teary. “I can’t believe it.”
“I am up for a promotion,” Davi says.
“No work this week,” Laurel says, leveling him with an accusatory stare.
“Remind me what you were doing in your room this afternoon?” Davi asks. Laurel tosses what’s left of her crust in his direction,
but he dodges it, laughing. “I’m also officially the legal counsel to a musician who cannot be named but whose name you absolutely
all know and give so many shits about.”
“Tell us,” Gabe says. “I promise we won’t tell anyone.”
“You’ll tell Mia,” I say, pointing an accusatory fork at him.
“You always tell your spouse,” Gabe counters before looking back at Davi. “Mia won’t tell anybody.”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Davi says, holding up his glass. “But this artist may or may not be on your workout playlist,
Gabe.”
“That narrows it down to roughly two thousand people,” Gabe, who has famously never made a new workout playlist and instead
just keeps adding and adding and adding to the existing one, mutters.
“I’m doing a campaign with Alaska Airlines starting this summer,” Laurel says from her spot at the head of the table. She tips her wineglass toward Everett. “Maybe they’ll add more flights between Dubrovnik and Los Angeles.”
We go around the table like this, the talking that Laurel wanted us to postpone until now, a circle of updates that we never
used to need but that are now essential for all of us to truly be caught up on one another’s lives. It’s obvious when it comes
to something either I or Everett don’t know, and it quickly emerges that it’s not just the three groups that exist among us,
but four. Laurel, Davi, and Gabe are their own. I try not to let it bother me. We each have our own, unique relationships
with each other. But I want us to feel cohesive again. Right now, it seems more like we’re just round-robin-ing our life updates.
“Mia and I are thinking about a different house,” Gabe says. “The four of us are starting to outgrow the space where we are
now. But we love that house.”
“It’s a great house,” Everett says. I add it to my mental list of Things to Keep Track Of. He’s been there. I haven’t.
“See, this is another reason I don’t want kids,” Davi says. “Who can afford to level up their real estate every time they
pop out another gremlin?”
“Maybe an entertainment lawyer representing someone we all give so many shits about?” I tease.
“And they aren’t gremlins,” Gabe says. “Except around the holidays, maybe. They get really insane in December.”
“Our eternal bachelor,” I say, wrapping an arm around Davi’s shoulders and stretching up to tuck my chin on top of his head.
“What about you?” he asks, shifting so he sits up. “Relationship status?”
I shrug. “Same as always. Who’s to say.”
“That means she just dropped the last guy she was seeing for . . . two weeks?” Laurel says.
“I’ll have you know I went on eleven dates with him,” I say proudly. “But he really wanted to define things. Was ready for a real relationship.”
“Perish the thought,” Everett mutters from across the table, which has me turning to him.
“Let me guess,” I say. “You started something with an actress you met at some event or other a few months back and you just don’t know why it didn’t work out.”
Everett, worthy opponent that he is, has the audacity to not look rattled. Instead, he relaxes back in his chair, takes a
drink of his wine. Says, in his perpetually winning tone, “She was a screenwriter. And it was last year.”
Gabe snorts at this, then straightens his mouth, eyes quickly flashing my way.
“Well,” Laurel says after another beat of silence, during which Everett and I stare, hard-eyed, at each other. “Since we’re
on the topic of relationships, I’d like to say thank you to everyone for making this week work.”
It’s like the fight is punched out of me. I can see it in Everett’s expression too, as four faces pivot toward her. Here it
is. The moment she lets us know what happened. But instead, Laurel just picks up her glass.
“To divorce!” she cries, holding it aloft.
Davi is the only one who joins in. At the rest of our silence, Laurel takes a swig and rolls her eyes.
“It’s okay, guys,” she says. “I thought this would be it, and it’s not.” She swipes her hands together, like she’s dusting
flour off of them rather than a whole relationship that not just she, but all of us, thought would last.
It’s Everett who says something first, and I hate him for it. Not just because I want to beat him to the punch, prove to Laurel that I am the best friend, but also because I agree with what he says.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
I don’t know what does it. Maybe it’s the fact that I think it’s what we all want to ask. But I find my hackles rising, and
before I know it I’m piping up too, saying something I don’t totally agree with, but not quite at Laurel or the group at large.
At him directly. “If Laurel says she’s okay, then she’s okay,” I say, grip tight on my wineglass. I thrust it toward the sky,
my brown eyes locked on to Everett’s cool ones. “Here’s to moving on.”
There’s a brief beat before the others echo me. I stare back at Everett as he raises his glass, last of anyone. His eyes don’t
leave mine as he echoes the cheer and takes a healthy sip of his wine. He doesn’t look away until he’s setting it down on
the table.
Everett sits back and Gabe jumps in with a story about his flight here, clearly trying to change the subject. I wait as long
as I physically can to glance at Everett, not wanting to give him a single iota of proof that I care what he thinks. That
he’s here. That he exists at all.
But I’m not so lucky. When I look over at him, he’s already watching me, lying in wait. I don’t look away. I stare back at
him as he lifts his glass almost imperceptibly in a private toast of our own, cementing something I hadn’t known we’d agreed
on. If this is what this week is going to be like, so be it, his glass and the expression on his face say.
Let the games begin.