eleven
This Summer
After the farmers market, we wander the shops in town for a while, our usual traditions popping up unintentionally. Laurel
buys everything that even slightly piques her interest: a pale pink cashmere scarf at one shop and Frye boots at the place
next door, an All-Clad pan I tell her is my favorite at the fancy kitchenware shop that she will most assuredly never use,
a vintage wedding ring at another place that she says signifies her marriage to herself.
Between that and our stop at the grocery store, we arrive back to the villa bogged down with packages, more things on order
to be shipped to Laurel’s place in LA.
“Hey,” she says to me as she straightens her laden arms and lets bags carelessly slip off of them into a heap on the floor
of the foyer. “We re-created our first day without even trying.”
“We did,” I say.
Davi comes in behind her, a paper grocery bag in his arms. “We never used to spend money on—” he pulls a bottle out of the
bag, squints at it “—hyperoxygenated water? Laurel,” he says. “How much was this?”
“It flushes out toxins,” she says. “I need to flush toxins out of my life right now.”
“Okay,” Davi says, ever-skeptical eyes already rolling, “but—”
I stop him, snatching the bottle out of his hand as Laurel flits into the kitchen. “Let her have her water,” I whisper. Davi
completes his eye roll but drops the issue.
Gabe and Everett bring the rest of the things in while I start unpacking in the kitchen. Laurel says she’s going upstairs
to change into her swimsuit.
“Anyone is welcome to join me on the beach!” she calls, picking over the bags at the foot of the stairs before she finds the
one she’s looking for and leaves.
Gabe watches her as she goes, waiting until she’s out of earshot to say, “Do you think she’s secretly still dating Stephen?”
“What?” I ask, at the same time Davi says, adamantly, “No.”
“Why would you think that?” I say, closing the fridge door. Everett opens it again as soon as it closes, eggs and butter in
hand. Our gazes lock for half a second, annoyed, before we both look away.
Gabe shrugs. “She just seems . . . off.”
“And the only explanation is that she’s secretly dating her cheating ex-husband?” Davi asks.
“Who said anything about cheating?” I say to him, trying to moderate my tone but failing. It comes out shrill, bouncing off
all the marble countertops in this kitchen.
“Come on,” Davi says. “He had to be cheating, right? To break those two up? They were like—” he waves a hand “—Goose and Amy, or whoever.”
We all look at him in silence, and even Everett closes the fridge door to squint at him.
“You know,” Davi says. “If I can fly, you can fly, or whatever the hell it is.”
“The Notebook,” Gabe translates. “Ryan Gosling.” Everett and I nod.
“That’s what I said,” Davi says. “They’re meant to be. You don’t just break up when you’re meant to be.”
“People break up for all sorts of reasons,” I say as I dig into another bag, pulling out a box of cereal and a wedge of Parmesan.
“Meant to be or not.”
Everett makes a sound behind me. It could have been a cough, a clearing of the throat, something entirely unrelated to what
I said. In all likelihood, it was, but in my mind, there is no world in which it wasn’t a scoff. I pivot on my heel to look
at him where he’s placing apples in a fruit bowl on the counter.
“Why do you think people break up, Everett?” I say.
“Hmm?” he says, casually, like he didn’t hear me.
“We’re trying to figure out what exactly happened between Laurel and Stephen,” I say, gesturing to where Davi and Gabe are
standing on the opposite side of the island, watching us. “So what’s your take on why people split up?”
Everett turns fully toward me, hips sinking back against the counter behind him, hands sliding casually into the pockets of
his jeans. He shrugs his shoulders, the movement hitching his sleeves a quarter-inch higher on his arms, revealing more of
his tanned biceps. My eyes snap back to his face.
“I think that sometimes it just doesn’t work anymore,” he says. “Maybe they just got tired of it.”
“Tired of it,” I repeat. “So you think that if you get bored you should just leave?”
“I think if you’re bored in the first place, it’s probably not the right relationship for you,” Everett says.
“Tired of what, then?” I ask. “Of being with someone? Of being married?”
Everett draws in a deep breath, eyes glancing across the surface of the island behind me. I think he might not answer, so I turn to the counter again, tugging another bag toward me a little too forcefully.
“Tired of the work of it,” he says, finally. I bristle, an aggravated pinch running down my spine.
“Shocker,” I mutter, yanking a jug of orange juice out of the bag.
“Excuse me?” Everett says. I can hear it in his tone: irritation, something I so rarely used to hear from him before. Even
then, it was always about something else outside of us. Something at work, bad weather. His dad, usually. Except, of course,
the last time. When anger seemed like the only thing left between us.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just that four months seems to be about your cutoff in a relationship, so I don’t know how valuable your
take is.”
“You asked me what my take is,” he points out. “And besides, what’s your cutoff? Two weeks?”
“At least I don’t call them relationships,” I say, looking back at him.
“Which means you probably aren’t qualified to comment on one either.”
“Okay, whoa,” Davi says, from behind us. I turn to see him waving a hand, Gabe watching silently next to him. “White flag,
or whatever.”
“Only one of us can wave the white flag,” I say.
“Then, I don’t know,” Davi says. He motions at Gabe. “Whatever you and Mia say to the heathens when they won’t shut up.”
“We usually tell our children, Riley and Chloe, to use their words better,” Gabe says with an annoyed glance at Davi. “And we don’t use the words shut up in any context.”
“Whatever,” Davi says. He sighs and looks at us. “Can we use our words, Everett and Sutton?”
“What, we’re children now?” I snap.
Gabe winces slightly. “A response like that would usually mean reflection time in their rooms.”
Davi’s face goes flat. “What the fuck is reflection time.”
“It’s like a time-out, but that language is too harsh now,” Gabe says, voice low as if Riley and Chloe are in the room with
us, learning all of his secrets. Davi holds up his hands.
“I’m never getting married, I’m never parenting,” he says. He points between us. “You two. Reflect. I’m going to the beach
with Laurel.”
“But look!” Gabe insists as he stands up and follows Davi. “You’re a natural already!”
I narrow my eyes at Everett as soon as they’re out of the room.
“Glad to know we’ve moved past things,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm.
I think about the last time I saw him, at Laurel and Stephen’s anniversary celebration just last year. I’d volunteered to
do a grazing board for them, and was out back at their house when Everett arrived, a tray of radishes and French butter in
one hand and three baguettes tucked under my arm. I thought I’d moved on since seeing him at Gabe and Mia’s baby shower, when
we’d ended up partnered together for games, and a diaper that was supposed to end up on a stuffed animal wound up torn in
half. Since we’d gotten in an argument at the bar where we gathered to celebrate Davi’s thirtieth birthday party.
I couldn’t even remember what had sent things south each time, why we couldn’t even manage to be civil for a few hours for our friends, but I had a sneaking suspicion it was whatever started simmering under my skin when he walked onto the back patio of Laurel and Stephen’s Larchmont house.
Some angry thing that still lived in me, some part that hated that I couldn’t get rid of him, erase him from my life completely.
Whatever it was, Everett seemed to mirror it.
Even our hellos were terse, as if we wanted to fight.
The spark that had once existed between us didn’t give way to something good anymore.
Instead, it was the hot, angry edge of a pan just pulled off the stove, a burned fingertip that sent rage flooding through both of us.
Wherever it came from, it ended with a hand accidentally smashed into the butter and a baguette flung toward the pool where
it floated, waterlogged, as we both wilted guiltily under Laurel’s cold stare from where she stood framed in the back door.
So this week has to be better. We have to be better.
Everett sighs and runs a hand through his hair, a little roughly, draws in a deep breath, like he’s been living in this particular
memory too. Like he’s also remembered that this trip isn’t about us. “We’re being a little immature, don’t you think?” he
asks.
It’s at this moment that I remember my arms are crossed. I drop them, try to appear far more adult than I feel right now.
“You’re right,” I say.
The words feel like barbed wire coming out.
We make it through the rest of the day unscathed, largely because we simply don’t talk to each other. Our only slipup is when
I’m sitting in the living room, talking to Hank while Laurel and Gabe nap and Davi answers some emails in his room, apparently
banished there by Laurel, who got tired of him staring at his phone on the beach. It hadn’t occurred to me to care where Everett
was or what he was doing.
“How’s work, kid?” Hank has just asked me when the back door opens. I twist to see Everett coming in, a book and a notebook tucked under his arm, a pen in its spiral spine. Our eyes latch for just a minute, that same frustrating tingle running along my neck before I turn around again.
“Um,” I say. I usually spend the summer working various private chef gigs, away from the restaurant. But this summer is different.
This summer is about the cookbook, and so I haven’t taken on clients. “Work’s great. Mostly the same.”
The lie stings a little coming out, but I still haven’t been able to bring myself to have this conversation with him. The
one that would make him hate me.