seven
First Summer
On the morning of our last full day at the cottage, Saturday, I proposed my own tradition. We’d make one final, special dinner
together that night, and so we traipsed to the farmers market where we wandered between stalls, Laurel sampling everything
while I picked out ingredients and put them into the bag I carried and another Everett had dutifully extended my way at each
stall. I smirked at him as I placed a quart of tomatoes into it, hand-pulled pasta at another, as I deposited a carton of
peaches into his waiting arms.
At the house, Laurel turned on Patsy Cline and poured everyone wine, her one contribution. Gabe sliced the baguettes I put
in front of him and Davi grabbed the slivered almonds out of the oven before they went from toasted to burned. It had always
been this way with my friends. None of them liked to cook. I’d tried to get them into it on some level during our three years
living together, in the hopes I might have at least one sous-chef on occasions like this, but the three of them were much
more the drink-and-keep-the-chef-company variety than the cooking variety.
Everett, I discovered, was no better. But he did at least try.
“Have you used a knife before?” I asked as he tried to dice an onion next to me. He’d said he could when I handed it to him, like it was simple, like everyone knew how to properly do it. Which I thought everyone should, really, but I wasn’t about to tell my friends that.
“Yes,” he said as he sliced another painfully slow sliver off the halved onion. He’d gotten that far. “Obviously.”
“Okay, here,” I said, reaching over and taking the knife from him. I held the onion with my nails against it, sliced it horizontally
before cutting a series of vertical slices in it. “And then you just chop, okay?” I said, mimicking the motion with my hand.
When I looked up his eyes were already on me, and I felt that same flush rise up my neck that I did at that stupid party.
I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got it.”
But Everett didn’t have it. Eventually, I put him on pasta duty, which was to watch the pot with his hands clasped behind
his back and to stir when I prompted him to. I already had a timer set.
“What do you usually eat?” I asked as he watched the pot.
“You know,” he said. “Things that don’t require a lot of preparation.”
“Like what?”
“Coffee,” he said. “Apples.”
“You eat coffee and apples?”
“Toast,” he said. “I’m great with toast.”
“Oh my god,” I laughed as I whisked the salad dressing. “You are not surviving on coffee and apples and bread.”
“Okay, I eat other things, but you’re making me nervous,” he said, smiling sheepishly at me. “You’re really good at this.”
“I studied this,” I said. “I’m sure if I came to a film set I’d be equally wowed.”
“But your thing is part of basic survival,” he said. “No one needs movies to survive.”
“Hmm,” I said as I set the whisk down. “I might argue otherwise.”
Everett grinned. “Can I tell you something?”
“You can tell me anything,” I said, almost unbidden. It was something I’d say to Laurel or Davi or Gabe, and I found myself
surprised to be saying it to Everett. Still, I waited, curious.
“I watched a lot of Food Network growing up,” he said, glancing over at me. “And I still can’t cook.”
I slapped the back of a hand against his chest. “You say that like it’s some big secret.”
“Shouldn’t I be able to properly dice an onion if I was raised on Ina Garten?”
“Hey,” I said. “Ina has faith in your abilities yet.”
“Does she,” Everett said flatly, as the timer I’d set for the pasta went off.
I bumped him out of the way, pot holders in hand, but he didn’t go far. Instead, I ended up with one half of my back pressed
to his chest, glancing over my shoulder at him. Laurel was right: He was beautiful, and I felt my breath hitch in my throat
as I looked up at him, as I remembered his hands skimming down my sides, hoisting me up against him. I tried to smile, brush
past the thump in my chest. “She does.”
Everett, Gabe, and I cleaned up after dinner while Laurel and Davi worked on getting a fire started down on the beach. When
we joined them, Davi was standing guard over it, arms spread wide in presentation.
“Look at my creation!” he said, clearly pleased with himself.
“It only took us seven tries,” Laurel said. “Proud of us?”
“So proud,” I said, dropping onto the sand next to her. Everett sat across the fire from me.
We all watched the flames whip their embers toward the sky in silence for a while. We could feel it hanging heavy over us,
the next step this week had been gently leading us toward.
“I can’t believe this is it,” Gabe said then. He looked around at all of us. “I kind of thought college would just last forever.”
“Me too,” Laurel said, leaning her head against my shoulder. I scooped an arm around her, squished my cheek against her hair.
“I’m really afraid of being lonely in Seoul.”
Laurel had landed an internship at a fashion house in Seoul after deciding she wanted to work abroad for a year following
graduation. She had family there and would be living with one of her cousins, but she’d still told me she was afraid of living
without us. I felt the same worry, heading back to San Francisco, where my closest friends were my Uncle Hank and the staff
at his restaurant.
Gabe took a long swig of his beer. “I’m afraid everyone’s going to pity me now that Zoey and I have broken up.”
“No,” Laurel said, at the same time I said, “If it seems like anyone is even considering pitying you, you call me and I’ll hunt them down.” Gabe tilted his head back, laughing.
“Okay, I’m afraid I’m going to be too good at law school and I didn’t aim high enough,” Davi said. Laurel kicked some sand his way.
“Come on,” she said.
“What?” Davi said. “I’m incredible. You all know it.” When we all smirked at him, he rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “I’m
terrified of not having this. I’m scared every friend I make from here on out is going to be surface level and I’ll never
be a part of something like this again.”
“But you are a part of something like this,” I said. “We’re forever.”
It was only me and Everett left then, and we looked at each other across the fire, a silent game of chicken. Finally, he sat
up a little, cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I made all the wrong choices in college and it’s too late to take them back now,”
he said.
“New guy,” Laurel said. “Coming in hot with the cryptic confessions.”
“Not the new guy anymore, remember?” Gabe said, clapping a hand on Everett’s shoulder. “One of us now.”
Laurel and Davi raised their glasses in agreement, but Everett looked at me expectantly. “What about you?” he asked.
“Um,” I mumbled, digging around for an answer that wasn’t the same as what Davi had said. It’s not that I wasn’t afraid of
the future, but I had some sense that there wasn’t much I could do to change it. I was certain our little party was forever,
that we would return to this place each year and re-create this magic. I had a plan for the next five years, knew how to handle
contingencies. Everything was well-kept around me. So long as things held steady, everything would be okay. But everyone was
looking at me, waiting, and I had to say something. “I’m afraid of how much I’ll miss all of you.” It was a cop-out, I knew,
but I couldn’t tell exactly why. Still, it had Laurel burrowing her head against my shoulder, and I meant it, so I let it
lie.
“Okay,” Everett said after a quiet, sad moment. “What about what we’re looking forward to?”
“I like that,” Laurel said, perking up. “One thing you’re afraid of and one thing you’re excited for. It can be a tradition.”
“Laurel also loves traditions,” I said to Everett across the fire, and he smiled when Laurel wrapped her arms around me.
“You love my traditions,” she said. “It’s what makes us so great.”
“Sutton, you first,” Gabe said. “You were last to go.”
“Fine,” I said. This one came easier. “I’m excited to work with Hank and the crew again.”
“I knew you’d say that,” Davi said, grinning over his beer.
It had been the plan since I’d moved for college. I’d study culinary arts, move back to San Francisco, and work at my uncle’s restaurant. I would run the restaurant someday, once Hank retired, so I wanted to spend as much time as I could working under him to learn the ropes.
“Everett,” I said, nodding at him. “Your turn.”
“I’m really excited to be back in that LA traffic,” he said, and when we all laughed, he insisted, “No, seriously. Good music,
time to think. Being able to get somewhere in fifteen minutes has been hell these last four years.”
“Okay, we need more,” Davi said. “If I had to be serious so do you.”
“Alright,” Everett said, picking at the label on his bottle with his thumbnail. “I’m headed up to Vancouver in October to
work on a shoot for a TV pilot and I’m pretty excited about it.”
“Gabe,” Laurel said. “If you have any other future famous friends hiding in the woodwork, feel free to bring them next summer.”
“Ha, ha,” Everett said as Gabe rolled his eyes at Laurel.
Davi was excited about going to law school in Illinois because it was one step closer to him living in New York, which he
felt much better aligned with his personality; Gabe was excited to have true seasons again; and Laurel was excited to share
her travels on social.
After a while, we all huddled together on the same side of the fire. It was a moment when none of it mattered: not the absence
of Zoey, not the fear of what life would look like without each other, not even the fact that, mentally, I’d been breaking
the promise we’d all made to each other all week, in life and in my dreams. Nothing, not even that, could get in the way of
that snapshot: five new adults, caught somewhere between training wheels and growing up. It was the perfect ending to something
I don’t think any of us could quite name yet.