fifteen
This Summer
Everett stretches up to try the knob, but it is, in fact, locked.
“Can you seriously still lock people in?” I ask. “Is that legal?”
“Yes, it’s legal, Sutton,” Everett says flatly.
I narrow my eyes at him as he sits on the edge of one of the narrow bunks. There are two facing each other, a row of cupboards
the same dark wood as the floors at the end, a small porthole on either side. The rocking of the boat is more noticeable down
here, vaguely like I’m being tossed around in the waves, and I’m suddenly very aware of how little separates us from the miles
of deep, dark water below us.
Everett looks up at me as I cross my arms across my chest and pace to the end of the cabin. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say. I glance out the porthole, which is a mistake because there’s water halfway up it, which means that we are,
literally, partially submerged in the ocean. Which, clearly. I know how boats work. But that doesn’t mean I like it. I feel
much more comfortable aboveboard, with my whole body bathed in air and sunlight.
“So,” Everett says as I pace back to him.
“So, what?” I ask.
“So, we talk,” he says. I eye him skeptically. “Right?”
“We have talked,” I say.
“Are you referring to what happened up there?” he says, which sends a roil through my stomach. Words like up there are not helping my nerves right now. “I think you could loosely categorize that as an attempt at talking. Biting each other’s heads off might be more accurate.”
“Look,” I say, stopping in my pacing to face him from the end of the bunks. “We sit down here for thirty minutes and tell
Laurel everything is great when she opens the door. Okay?”
Everett looks like he doesn’t want to agree with me, and I sigh, slumping my hip against the mattress and pressing a hand
to my face. “I’m sure you have some witty comeback ready to go right now, but can you please just save it for later?”
“What’s wrong?” Everett asks. “Are you feeling seasick?”
“No.” I shake my head, face still hidden in my palm, so I only hear Everett move. I think maybe he’s going to check the door
again, so I jump a little when I feel a hand against mine, lowering it from my face as the other rubs over my shoulder.
“Your head?” he asks, and I’m so startled by the gentleness in his voice, the soft way he’s touching me, his proximity, that
I almost forget I’m mad at him for a minute. A memory flashes through me: a migraine the kind of which I hadn’t experienced
in years, a cold morning with Everett, feeling cared for.
I swallow, shake my head, try not to breathe in too deeply, lest I be lured further in by Everett’s historically intoxicating
scent. “No.”
“Is Cousin Hugh’s wine still iffy?” he asks, which prompts a small laugh out of me. I watch as one corner of his mouth lifts.
“I’m sure it is,” I say, forcing my gaze up to his. “But that’s not it.”
Everett nods. For one quiet, breathless moment, his eyes skim down my face, and I’m questioning if it really is just the waves and the small space that has my stomach doing somersaults.
Everett’s expression goes cloudy, whatever was there suddenly blotted out. He clears his throat and drops his hands from me.
I miss the warming pressure of his palm against my shoulder. But that realization sends a shock wave through me, and I step
back—or try to, but there’s only bed behind me, so it seems more like I’m rearing away from him.
Everett appears to take the hint, because he nods toward the bunk. “Why don’t you sit down,” he says, voice returned to its
previous flat tone.
I sit and watch as he wanders into the space at the end of the cabin, bends to look out the porthole, hands in his pockets;
he straightens again and tips his head back, squinting at the ceiling. It feels like five minutes must pass, but in reality,
it can’t be more than a painfully quiet sixty seconds.
“I keep thinking about the water,” I finally say. Everett’s attention snaps back to me.
“The water?” he asks.
I nod. “How deep it is,” I say. “If there’s some shipwreck or giant shark or dead body beneath us.”
Understanding clears his cloudy expression. “Ah,” he says. “The water.” I swear I can hear what he would have said if this
were five, ten years prior, can picture his wry expression in my head. The odds are there might be, maybe. But I’ll get you out of here long before we find out.
“I like the ocean,” I insist, shaking the image of past Everett from my head and forcing myself to focus on the present. “I
like this whole boat tradition.”
Everett nods. “I know you do.”
“Good,” I say. “Just wanted to . . . clear that up. My phobia isn’t that pervasive.”
“Well,” Everett says. He walks down the narrow aisle between the bunks and drops onto the same spot he was in before, directly across from me. “I’ve seen you master this phobia before.”
I don’t say anything, just widen my eyes in confirmation at the memory, mouth set in a straight line.
I haven’t done a lot of dredging up the good memories Everett and I share. That effectively means I haven’t really dredged
up any memories we share in the last four years. There’s just one, really, that I’ve examined more than I ought to. The one that
defines us for me now.
But the memory he’s talking about is one of those good ones, even if it’s laced in nerves. There’s also an excitement there,
the same kind I used to associate only with Everett, and a feeling of triumph, and a deep want that colors the whole thing
in swirling reds and dark purples. That whole second summer with him is like that for me, somehow shimmering ephemeral and
heavy at the same time. The most I’ve ever wanted someone and that desire’s quick answer, two days of giving in to what we
hadn’t that first summer.
“I’ll get Laurel to let us out,” Everett says and stands, starting toward the door.
“Wait,” I say. He turns back to me. “I can do it,” I say. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?” he asks, which only sends another current of stubbornness through me, a need to prove that I can sit in a boat’s
cabin for thirty minutes without freaking out.
“Yes,” I bite out.
Everett sits down across from me again, elbows on his thighs and his folded hands hanging between his knees. He looks a little
like a coach about to give a player a pep talk. I steel myself, the waves in my stomach matching the rhythm of the waves around
us.
“So,” he says. “The cookbook.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “What, are we talking now?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “We can sit here in silence for half an hour, or—” he holds one hand out to read the watch on his
wrist “—twenty-four minutes and about forty-five seconds, if you’d rather.”
I don’t say anything in response, which I guess Everett must take as confirmation that I would rather, because after a moment he kicks his feet up onto the bed and lies down, hands tucked behind his head.
“Are you going to nap?” I ask after another minute.
“Not a lot of options down here, Sutton,” Everett says. His eyes are still open, staring straight ahead.
I look around at the room, at the dark blue of the quilts on the bunks, the wobbly light coming in from the portholes, the
clasps on the cabinets. Think about how the mattresses stay put. Wonder what the light looks like when the boat is docked.
Consider the effectiveness of the clasps in rough water, until I can’t take it anymore.
“I’m nervous about it,” I blurt. “The cookbook.” Everett turns his head to look at me, something like disbelief on his face.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says. “I’ve just never known you to be nervous about something in your professional life. Sharks, sure. But
not cooking.”
I shake my head. “This feels different. It feels . . . important.”
Everett sits up at this, like it’s caught his attention. He swings his feet to the floor and fixes me with the full force
of his gaze. A spark shoots down my spine at it, as I remember what it’s like to be the subject of his undivided attention,
how it feels to have Everett Bridges interested in only you.
“Was cooking in Hank’s kitchen not important?” he asks.
I sigh, shaking my head. “It was,” I say. “Of course it was. But I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted anything this much. I thought the thing I wanted most in the world was to take over the restaurant once he finally decided to retire.”
Everett nods. “Last I remember, you were still pretty hell-bent on that,” he says.
I let myself think about the last time we were really together, weeks before everything went south, for exactly two seconds.
San Francisco. A chilly pier. Things I thought were true finally spoken out loud.
“Why haven’t you told Hank?” Everett asks softly after I’ve gone quiet for too long. I glance up at him, still wary of this
conversation. Not just with him, but with anyone.
At some point in the last few years, I stopped wanting to own a restaurant. Or maybe I never really wanted that. Maybe it
was the impression of it all: If I was ambitious enough, if I achieved enough, I would somehow matter. To the world, to people
paying attention, to the people who already loved me. To my parents. But the truth was, the people who loved me didn’t mind.
I could be the person sticking hot dogs on the rotating rack at a 7-Eleven and I still mattered to them just as much as if
I were crafting Michelin-starred meals comprised of things like tallow foam and lavender essence—served under a glass dome
on a pillow, of course.
But I didn’t want to run a business. I wanted to feed people. I wanted something akin to the feeling I got when we all sat
down to our last meal at the summer house every year—here is how food brings us together. Here is one of the most human, basic
things, and we’ve gathered around to make something beautiful.
It seemed harmless not to tell Hank at first. To keep my good news to myself.
While I knew Laurel texted her mom and grandmother every minute detail of her life, Hank and I had always been a little more need-to-know.
Things are good, I’m safe, yes I want to go to the game next weekend, no we don’t need to talk about that guy I was seeing for a while. That sort of thing.
And I told myself it didn’t mean much anyway—I’d let him know eventually, and I could couch it as more press for the restaurant.
A whole new client base to bring in, now and when I started running the place. Which I was partially convinced I would still
do. Even if I didn’t want it, I hadn’t fully let it go. A pattern, it would seem, in my life. Selective fixation.
Everett is still waiting for my response, ever patient, ever focused. “I just . . .” I start, kicking a toe against the floor.
“Hank has done everything for me.” I swallow, afraid to say the next part out loud. “How do you disappoint someone who’s done
everything for you?”
Everett’s brow draws down. Half of me can’t believe I’ve said it, and to him of all people. The other half is relieved to
have it out there and, if I’m honest, not all that surprised that it’s Everett I’ve said it to. Laurel and I aren’t exactly
having many deep talks lately, and while I know Gabe and Davi would be sympathetic, they think differently about this sort
of thing than I do. To Davi, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Gabe would ask why I couldn’t do both.
“I know what you’re going to say,” I cut in, needing to beat Everett to the punch. “Hank loves me, he just wants me to be
happy, I’m not a disappointment. It doesn’t change anything.”
At first, Everett doesn’t respond. He just looks at me, and I know I’m right. But then, just as I’m about to start talking
again, he responds.
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
I frown. Everett leans a little closer to me.
“All of that is true,” he says. “Hank loves you, he does just want you to be happy, and you aren’t a disappointment.” He pauses. “But maybe this does disappoint him,” he continues. “And that’s okay.”
I suck in a breath like I might respond, like a retort is already brimming behind my teeth, but nothing comes. My shoulders
tense, eyes narrowing in Everett’s direction.
“It’s your life, Sutton,” he says quietly. “You’ve got to do what you want with it.”
For a minute, I let those good memories rise up to the surface. How it always was between us before the one moment I now let
define Everett for me. Easy, I used to think. Simple. But further down, if I linger long enough in the past, something deeper.
Not as surface level as I’ve convinced myself it was. A connection no one could make up. I think about who we used to be,
and it makes these past forty-eight hours seem so foolish.
“I didn’t come here this week wanting to fight with you,” I say.
I see one corner of Everett’s mouth twitch, and I almost want to say it for him, for the past version of him that seems to
have followed us into this cabin. Could have fooled me.
“Neither did I,” Everett says instead, and I’m almost disappointed. “Seems like we both failed.”
I almost want to ask why, where he thinks all the fight in us came from if neither of us intended it, but there’s a shadow
lurking on the other side of that question, too big for me to consider right now.
“How would you feel about a truce?” he asks.
I’m surprised at the small chime of disappointment that rings through me.
A truce seems almost temporary, acknowledges that there isn’t anything beyond this week.
But I know that already. Everett hasn’t been in my future for years now, so it’s unreasonable to feel a little duped by a truce for the rest of the week.
It’s what Laurel asked of us, after all.
I nod and hold a hand out to him to shake. His palm is warm against mine as he takes it. “I can’t promise I’ll be your best
friend,” I say.
Everett grins as he squeezes my hand. “Wouldn’t expect any less from you, Hale,” he says, the old nickname sending a zip down
my spine. We let go and I tuck my hands quickly under my legs as Everett glances at the watch on his wrist.
“Well, thirty minutes is about up,” he says. “You proved yourself.”
“Proved myself?”
Everett nods. “You mastered your phobia,” he says. “You’re never one to back down from a challenge.”
“Hey,” I say as it dawns on me what he did. “Offering to get Laurel to open the door isn’t exactly a challenge.”
“It was enough of one for you,” he says. “Congratulations, Sutton. You’re two for two.”
“That was sneaky,” I say.
Everett shrugs. “Worked last time.”
For a minute, the tension in my body relaxes. I let myself just sit here with Everett as if nothing is wrong. As if we didn’t
hurt each other, and all the anger between us has just floated off into the ether. As if we’ve actually, finally moved on.
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess it did.”