eleven #2
I don’t want to be lying to Hank about what I’m doing with my time. But we built the whole original plan together, over the dinner table
and when I learned to cook in his kitchen and when I started applying to schools. Hank would need someone to take over the
restaurant someday, and when I was younger, it seemed like an absolute dream come true. I loved Half Moon House, loved the
diner aesthetic that lent itself to its weekend brunches and could transform into something cozy and cool for the pre–dinner
rush happy hour. I loved everyone who worked there. I learned from them and Hank how to perfectly poach an egg, how to sear
a scallop, how to match ambiance to a meal. It was where I fell in love with the idea of running a restaurant. As a seventeen-year-old,
carrying on his legacy was all I wanted.
But things have shifted since then. Slowly, at first. When developing recipes was my favorite part of my culinary classes in school, I knew I’d be able to do that at the restaurant too.
Try new things out when there was time. Maybe after the first few years, once I really had my feet under me.
And when I started to share those recipes online—with Laurel’s help, of course—I assumed it would stay just a hobby.
It never occurred to me it could lead somewhere.
More than that, it never occurred to me to follow it.
I was already doing something I loved; I wasn’t looking for anything different.
Until I was. Until I’d suddenly signed a publishing contract, and cut back on my hours at the restaurant, and I still, for
whatever reason, hadn’t told Hank.
“Well, we’re all looking forward to having you back in the kitchen,” Hank says. My teeth sink into my lip almost painfully
as I nod, like he can hear me.
“Mmm-hmm,” I say noncommittally. “Me too.”
I toss my phone onto the coffee table after we hang up, the conversation crawling under my skin, and wander into the kitchen
in search of a distraction. Everett is there, lifting the electric kettle off its base. He raises it when he spots me on the
other side of the island.
“Tea?” he asks. It’s his version of the white flag Davi tried in vain to wave between us earlier, I think.
I shrug, my mind still too fixed on my call with Hank to bother being irritated by his general presence right now. “Sure,”
I say, slipping onto one of the stools. He grabs another mug from the cupboard, sets it next to his on the island.
I pick up the book sitting on top of Everett’s notebook.
“Hypothetical Physics,” I read from the subtitle. I glance up at him. “Considering a career change?”
Everett stares unwaveringly at the mugs in front of him as he fills them with hot water. “It’s just research.”
“Hmm,” I murmur, briefly flipping to one of the pages he has marked before setting it down again. “For the next movie?”
“Maybe,” he says. He still isn’t looking at me.
“Okay,” I say. “Hollywood is confidential, I get it.”
He does glance up at that, away from the relentless bobbing of the tea bags in the mugs, having been alternating between one and the other methodically as a way, I’m assuming, to avoid my gaze.
But now he meets it, and when he sees my expression schooled into what I hope is an open, if slightly apathetic, one, he relaxes a little, eyes taking on just a hint of the glow I know so well.
Our exchange from earlier, however brief, echoes in my head.
We’re being a little immature, don’t you think?
“It’s a whole space movie,” he says. “I’m still trying to figure out if it’s even feasible.”
“Star Wars or A Space Odyssey?” I ask.
Everett thinks for a second. “Arrival,” he says. “Interstellar, maybe.”
I nod. There’s a lot I could say, but being a little more mature doesn’t necessarily mean going back to who we were before. To me, it just means not arguing in front of everyone else.
Everett, however, picks up the thread. “Was that Hank?” he asks, tilting his head toward where I’d been sitting in the living
room.
I push my hair behind my ear and sigh, settling my forearms on the countertop. “Yep.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s great,” I say. “Hank is always great.” He is, and the steadiest force in my life. It had bothered me when I’d first
moved in with him. I thought his perpetually sunny attitude was the result of having a preteen thrust upon him, that he felt
like he always had to make everything great for me to compensate for what my parents did. But I’d quickly learned it was just
how Hank operated. He is an eternal optimist. It makes lying to him now all the worse.
“He must be excited about the cookbook,” Everett says.
I tense as he slides one of the mugs toward me. There’s no way Everett could know exactly which nerve to hit, but it’s like he’s found it, raw and exposed, and pressed a finger to it. I wrap my fingers around the mug and grip it tight.
“He doesn’t know,” I say, voice low.
Everett pauses with his mug halfway to his mouth, eyes narrowing.
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “How could I not tell Hank.”
The corners of Everett’s eyes soften at the same time his mouth tightens, openness and tension braided together.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” he says quietly, and takes a drink of his tea.
I wait, silent, to see if he’s going to offer up what he actually was going to say. When he doesn’t, I shift forward, drum my fingers against the sides of the mug. “He will be excited, you’re
right,” I say.
Everett glances up from under his brow. “When you do tell him,” he says.
“Of course.”
We stare at each other, the silence stretching taut. I’m wondering why I came over here at all, when I know nothing good lies
on the other side of this. The us of the past is a ghost I have no interest in getting to know again. Letting Everett make
me tea and asking him questions about his book and trying to explain the Hank of it all are best left to the girl I used to
be.
“Look,” Everett says on a sigh, rubbing a palm over his collarbone. My gaze settles on the movement for all of a half second
before it shoots back up to him. His eyes are cool, but there’s something behind them that’s familiar, some look I used to
see when it was just the two of us. Something almost hopeful. “Can we—”
Footsteps sound from the direction of Gabe’s room, his door creaking open. Everett straightens, eyes darting that direction, but it takes me a second to mirror him. I’m stuck on whatever it was in the way he looked at me that had me falling back into some memory of him. If it was even real at all.
“Well, look who’s talking,” Gabe says as he moseys into the kitchen, rubbing one eye with the back of his fist. He glances
between us when we don’t say anything. I offer him a grim smile.
“Tea?” Everett says, nodding toward the kettle. “Water’s hot.”
Gabe glances at the clock on the microwave, considering. “Think I’ll grab a beer and head down to the beach,” he says, opening
the fridge. He fishes a beer out, finds a bar key in a drawer, flips it open before turning back to us. His eyes flick between
us again as we watch him, silent. He tries for a grin and raises the bottle. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Everett beats me to an answer, and I add it to the mental tally I have of who’s winning favor more easily. Of course it would
always be Everett, no matter how much history I have with everyone in the house. He’s always been that way, had an air of
ease around him that draws people in, makes them want to be his friend.
Everett holds up his mug. “Cheers to that,” he says as he follows Gabe to the back door. He doesn’t look back at me as he
goes.