fourteen
Second Summer
If I’d thought it was hard to ignore Everett that first summer, the second was torture. I told myself it had to be something
about not being able to have him every time I caught myself staring at him a minute too long, or letting my arm brush against
his whenever we were close enough.
He did nothing to help. Aside from not looking away first when our gazes would catch and possessing arms in the first place,
he asked me twice more about staying, always dropped casually, almost jokingly into conversation, my answer always the same.
I’ll think about it. Because as much as I told myself I would say no the next time he asked, almost hoping he would, the word seemed to completely flee my vocabulary when it came up.
On Friday morning, a full forty-eight hours since the last time he’d asked me—something that was nagging at the edges of my
brain and I was actively trying to ignore—Everett sat on the coffee table across from me, putting a finger on the edge of
my book and tilting it down.
“Excuse me,” I said, acting annoyed. In reality, I’d been aware of his proximity as soon as he walked into the room, read the same line over and over until he sat in front of me. Laurel and Davi were lying out on the beach while Gabe was still sleeping. “I was reading that.”
Everett grinned. “I’m teaching you how to surf.”
I shook my head, nerves tinged with the possibility of very real fear racing up my throat. “I’m not a huge ocean person.”
“Shocked you’re Laurel’s friend, then,” he said. I smirked. “Shocked you’re on this trip at all.”
“Plenty of people don’t want to dive into shark-infested waters.”
He leaned in then, eyes narrowing playfully. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” he said. “The sharks around here?”
He shook his head. “Not actually all that interested in you.”
I closed my book and set it next to me. “You say that now. But what happens if I crack my head open falling off the surfboard?
They’ll come swarming.”
“Sutton,” he said, still leaned in close to me. I had my legs curled under me, but if I didn’t, his would have been bumping
against mine, and something about the sheer possibility had me sweating. “I promise you that I would never let you crack your
head open. And—” his eyes flicked down to my knees, like he’d suddenly had the same thought as me “—I happen to know you’re
at least half lying about the whole ocean thing. You swim every day here.”
“I am afraid of sharks, though,” I reiterated as his gaze latched on to mine again.
“Probably healthy to be at least a little afraid of them.” He held a hand toward me. “Now, are you in or out?”
“I’m not sure surfing is really on my bucket list,” I said, even as I grabbed his hand and stood up.
I hated to admit how much I liked riding in his car, one hand gliding through the air out the window and the music up loud. He drove us a few miles down the coast and parked in the lot of a bar that had two-for-one deals we’d taken advantage of earlier this week and last summer.
But it turned out that, where surfing was concerned, I was not an ocean person.
Everett ran me through jumping up on the board on the beach. By the time I’d paddled over my tenth wave, though—tiny, hardly
a speed bump in the ocean—without trying to stand up, Everett knew it too.
“You’ve got it,” he said, returning to my side. “I believe in you.” He sat up so he straddled his board. Water droplets sprayed
off his hair as he shook his head back, trailed down his chest.
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I’m not sure I believe in me.”
He leveled me with a serious look. “Sutton.”
“What?” I said. My pulse was thumping in my throat in a way I was convinced he could see, some muscle twitching as rapidly
as water boiling on the stove.
“You believe in yourself,” he said. “You’re not afraid of anything.”
“You know that’s not actually a compliment.” My eyes furiously scanned the water in front of me like I might find a spot of
dry land on it. We weren’t actually that far out, seeing as this was supposed to be a beginner’s lesson, but for some reason, I was feeling the same kind of bottomless sensation in my stomach you get when you’re about to drop
on a roller coaster or, I’d imagine, before you do something like jump out of a plane, off a bridge. “I think someone not
being afraid of anything would indicate a certain brand of narcissism. And, hey—” I glanced over at him, suddenly irritated
“—you’re the one who said it was probably healthy to be a little wary of sharks earlier, and— What?”
Everett was grinning, which only irked me more. “Still feeling nervous?”
“I—” I started, confusion rising and waning in the space of one breath. “Oh my god, I hate tricks like that. Just replacing one emotion with another isn’t—”
“You’ve got to paddle now,” Everett interrupted.
“What?”
“No matter how you feel about my teaching methods, you’ve got to start paddling now if you want to make this wave,” he said,
but in my moment of hesitation, it was too late, and this time the drop in my stomach wasn’t just from nerves but from the
sudden lurch of the board beneath me, the wave bigger than either of us had anticipated.
“Everett!” I yelped as the board rocked, falling forward to grip it with my hands. He steadied it immediately, leaning over
to wrap an arm across the front.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he held me there. I watched as the wave bobbed toward the shore in front of us now, and considered,
for a moment, how ridiculous I must look from that vantage point, a dot of a person screaming as the water rose like a tiny
wrinkle in a blanket beneath them. I looked over at Everett, breathing hard. “Come on.” He waved me in the direction of shore.
“I shouldn’t have pushed it. Let’s go.”
“No,” I said as he started to lean forward, ready to paddle back to the beach. “I still need to stand up.”
“You did great,” he said. “We can try again another day.”
“We don’t have another day,” I said. “We leave after tomorrow.”
“Then we can try again next summer,” he said. I’d expected him to ask me to stay again, was almost disappointed that he didn’t.
I glanced over my shoulder. Another small wave was rolling in toward us, far enough for me to prepare. “This is the one,”
I said to him. “I’m standing up.”
Everett’s eyebrow tugged upward. “You sure?”
I nodded, even though it was shaky. “Yep. This is it.”
The corners of Everett’s mouth turned down as he considered, but he nodded and dropped forward to paddle a little away from
me, giving me space.
“You can do it!” he called to me as I fell forward, feet on my board behind me. Like a push-up, Everett had told me while we practiced on the beach. Or a burpee. He’d laughed when I’d glared at him about it.
The same nerves Everett told me he didn’t think I had started to bubble up, but the wave was under me before they could take
root, and Everett was telling me to “Paddlepaddlepaddle!” And I was pushing up, getting my feet under me, and Everett was cheering, and for one tiny second I wasn’t afraid at all.
It felt a little like flying.
I fell immediately.
But Everett was there when I popped up, in the water too, his board bobbing gently toward shore, and I was wrapping myself
around him, laughter jostling out of me.
“You did it!” he said, pulling his head back to smile at me. We were pressed together as much as we could be as we both pedaled
to stay afloat, salt water sluicing off his shoulders under my palms.
“And here you thought it was time to go,” I said. Everett threw his head back, a laugh barking out of him. I wanted him to
kiss me, I realized, when he looked back at me and I could see the water clinging to his eyelashes, wanted to taste the salt
on his lips. He seemed to realize it then too, hands tightening on me for a split second before he was loosening his grip.
“Is that enough for today?” he asked.
No. “Mmm-hmm,” I mumbled, nodding as we let go of each other and kicked off in the direction of our boards.
We didn’t waste any time lingering on the beach.
We walked in silence back to the rental shop and rinsed off our boards there before returning mine and heading back to the car.
Everett leaned his surfboard against the trunk and reached inside to retrieve two towels.
He slung one around his neck and returned to me where I stood with my back against the driver’s side door.
It was warm out, hot even, but there were goose bumps on my arms.
Everett wrapped the towel around me, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. We were staring at each other, too serious. He
pulled the top of the towel up over my head and scrubbed a hand on top of it, dragging a laugh out of me. I squirmed my head
out from under his hand but didn’t move away from him, even though I knew I should have. Instead I grabbed onto the ends of
the towel he still had hanging around his neck, his bare stomach brushing against mine.
“Better?” he asked, hands still on my arms. I could feel the heat of his palms through the terry cloth, the rise and fall
of his breath against my abdomen.
“Loads,” I said. We had been this close in the ocean, his arms wrapped around me as he pedaled his legs below, heart thrumming
against mine; and yet, it hadn’t felt like this. Maybe because I was just a little afraid of drowning out there. Maybe because I was warmer and back on dry land. Maybe because I’d been trying all week not
to think about Everett like that, look at him like that, dream about him like that. But at his car, bodies pressed together,
it was all I could think about. My eyes traced along the sharp angle of his jaw, up to the achingly soft curve of his lips,
the straight bridge of his nose. By the time they landed on his eyes, my hands had climbed to his shoulders, the pads of my
fingers brushing over his skin and the remaining hints of salt water there.
Everett stared at me as I traced the tips of my fingers to his collarbone, over his sternum, down until he was lifting an arm to lean it above my head, forehead dropping to the car just next to mine, breath against my ear.
He pressed a kiss to the spot just below it and I gasped, curling closer toward him, adding to the pressure between us.
Everett looped his other arm around my waist and drew me against him, moving his mouth up to mine in slow, hungry movements.
I arched against him, bringing my hand back up to thread into his hair, the other grasping for the side mirror like I was
losing my balance. It was as good as our last kiss was—better even, sharper, a want behind it that felt somehow time sensitive.
Which it was, I remembered as Everett’s hand dropped to the small of my back, pressing me against him, and I moaned into his
mouth, an incriminating sound.
“Stay with me this weekend,” he said, the words a rasp against my lips as his thumb pressed into my hips, fingers urging me
somehow closer to him. It was the question I wanted him to ask in the ocean, the one he’d been asking all week even when he
wasn’t actually saying it, in lingering glances and the way we spoke to each other, in elbows bumped together in the kitchen
and invitations to teach me how to surf. It was pointless to deny wanting it, and as his other hand raked up my side, drew
circles over the damp fabric of my bikini top, I wondered if we even needed to. If it could just be instinctive. He kissed
me again, tongue dipping into my mouth. That sound came out of me again and he drew back, leaning his forehead against mine.
“Sutton.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. I didn’t even think to say no. Of course I was always going to say yes. “I’ll stay.”