seventeen
This Summer
Everett and I manage to make it through most of Wednesday without openly—or privately, for that matter—bickering. Whatever
truce we struck in the cabin of the sailboat seems to have stuck.
We spend the morning at Laurel’s favorite hiking spot, a few miles down the coast. It’s a trail that takes us far up and away
from the road at first, before eventually flattening out and winding its way along a brush-dense path, high above the ocean.
Our second summer here, Everett and I lagged behind, arms brushing as we tried to walk side by side on the narrow trail. We
pointed out the dots of people on the beach, tried to make up stories for them. A family here for a reunion, half of them
happy with the location and the rest wishing they’d picked a ski trip in the winter. A young couple in an argument over who
was supposed to pack the sunscreen and forgot. A lonely wanderer, maybe here from a different time, collecting information
to take back to wherever he was coming from.
This summer, we end up at the back together out of sheer coincidence.
Or, I’m pretty sure it’s coincidence. Laurel links arms with Davi and calls to Gabe over her shoulder as we reach the top of the incline, in a move that leaves Everett and me to bring up the rear and that I’m not sure I trust is entirely unintentional.
She’s testing us, seeing if we actually worked through things yesterday.
But Everett and I walk in silence. He’s behind me for a while, until I stop under the pretense of taking a long drink of water
and he draws ahead. Then he needs to stop to tie his shoe and I prance past him, before I have to peel off my T-shirt to hike
in my sports bra, the sun beating down heavier than anticipated, and he overtakes me.
Eventually our game of leapfrog gets boring, and I keep pace with him from behind, attention caught by the way the sun in
his hair makes it look almost dark blond. When he turns around, ostensibly to check I’m still there, I just smile at him,
ignoring the faint press I feel against my sternum.
That evening, I get ready in Laurel’s room for dinner at Cooper’s. We’re both in front of the mirror above the dresser.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her for what I think has to be the fourteenth time. She’s still been distant today, pointedly avoiding
being alone with Everett or me. Laurel pauses, an eyeshadow brush in hand, and meets my eyes in the mirror.
“You don’t have to keep apologizing,” she says. “Just keep not fighting with each other and I’ll forgive you.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m just sorry that we distracted from the week at all.”
Laurel looks away from me and leans into the mirror. “Let’s just focus on making the rest of it good.”
“Of course,” I say. I almost say I’m sorry again, this time for things long past, but I don’t.
Laurel and I didn’t talk about what had happened right away.
At first, she wouldn’t answer my calls. Then, for a while, I think we were pretending it hadn’t happened at all, until the guilt of not saying anything finally got to me and it just burst out one day when I was visiting her for a long weekend in LA. The thing,
even then, was that she hadn’t seemed all that interested in my apology. Thanks, she’d said quickly, and when I asked if she wanted to talk about it, she just shook her head, and that was that.
I knew it was because she had to be angry, had to feel so betrayed by what Everett and I had done, that the only way forward
was to pretend it hadn’t happened. But the longer we didn’t talk about it, the more I felt like I had to atone for it, until
that was a new, permanent facet of our relationship. I would forever need to prove to Laurel how sorry I was. It was why this
week had seemed so perfect. Here, maybe, was an opportunity to finally settle things. If we went back to how we all once were—FaceTiming
every month, texting every day, going on this trip every year—the small, proverbial step she’d taken back from me would disappear.
I’d let my anger at Everett get in the way of the most important goal this week. I wouldn’t let it happen again.
“Cooper’s cute,” I muse idly as Laurel blends her eyeshadow, hoping to draw her back in, out of her anger at me.
It seems to work. Her eye catches mine again in the mirror and she smiles—a real smile, not the distracted one she’s been
wearing so often this week.
“I knew you’d like him,” she says. “I bet you two will be making out in his kitchen by the end of the night.”
“Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I say. “I don’t even know if he can properly poach an egg yet.”
“Can’t marry a man who makes a bad egg,” Laurel parrots, half rolling her eyes in a jovial way. I laugh, and lean into the
mirror next to her.
This, I think as we keep getting ready, laughing like we used to when we were in college. Our rooms were across from each other,
and we’d huddle in front of the shitty, ten-dollar full-length mirror that sat at the end of the hall. Zoey was usually with
us, refilling cups with cheap liquor and juice, whatever we had on hand. Laurel would ask to do my makeup until I’d give in
and let her while I played music on my phone. If Davi or Gabe came upstairs we’d shoo them away. The second floor was girls
only on those nights, some small oasis just for the three of us.
So this, this tiny moment with Laurel, is exactly the type of thing I won’t give up for anything—or anyone.
Cooper’s house is a rambling ranch-style home six miles away, tucked down a road lined with orange trees and perched high
enough that he has a spectacular view of the ocean. A huge deck wraps its way around three sides of it, floor-to-ceiling windows
reflecting the sky.
Gabe lets out a low whistle as we all climb out of the car. “You could fit three of my house in this yard alone,” he says.
“What kind of chef did you say he was, exactly?” I mutter in Laurel’s ear as we walk up to the house. I’m carrying a bottle
of wine, Laurel balancing a bouquet of flowers in the crook of her arm. The sweet scent of citrus mingles with salty air as
we start up the front steps.
“He got this house in the divorce,” she hisses back as Davi rings the doorbell. “But a very successful one. The last restaurant
he worked in got a Michelin star while he was there. You should see the house his ex-wife got.”
My mouth curves down, eyebrows raising in an impressed frown. “Suddenly my cookbook feels pretty stupid.”
Laurel makes a tsking sound, elbowing me.
“Your cookbook isn’t stupid.” I jump a little, twisting to see Everett standing behind us. I hadn’t even realized he was there.
“Thanks,” I say after a second of staring at him, his eyes gone a little shadowed. He nods as the door swings open.
“Welcome!” Cooper says, throwing an arm wide in greeting. “Come in, come in.” He’s wearing beige pants and a navy-blue cashmere
polo, the sleeves tight against his biceps. “Good to see you,” he says as I walk by, leaning in a little closer than he did
to anyone else.
“Good to see you too,” I say, pausing in the doorway to look up at him. His eyes crinkle as he smiles, a dimple appearing
in his cheek. He’d called me yesterday to confirm tonight’s menu, and I hadn’t hated hearing his voice over the phone. What
I said to Laurel earlier was true. Cooper is cute. I can get on board with this, especially if it means distracting from Everett.
But like he heard my thoughts, Everett clears his throat behind me.
“Come in!” Cooper booms again, turning his attention to Everett as I hustle forward after Laurel.
Cooper takes our things and hangs them in a coat closet by the door, thanks us for the wine and flowers, which he grabs a
cool ceramic vase for from a bookshelf in the entryway before gesturing for us to follow him.
“This is the place,” he says, sweeping a hand out as we pass by a huge sunken living room, dark beams on the ceiling catching the light filtering in through the windows.
He leads us over to a wet bar in one corner, where he sets the flowers and the vase.
“Dining room is through there,” he says, nodding toward the room adjacent.
“And kitchen,” he says, seemingly directly to me, “is that way. But what are we drinking, first?” He examines the wine bottles we handed him, a red and the sparkling white the captain’s cousin makes.
“Seems like we should save these for dinner.”
“Actually, Hugh’s Hooch is great at any time of the day,” Davi says, leaning forward to point at the label on the sparkling
wine that had, our first summer here, read Hugh’s Hooch in Sharpie but is now professionally designed and named.
“Oh, I know Hugh’s work when I see it,” Cooper says, setting the wine on the counter. “Sure you want to dive in now?”
“He’s kidding,” Laurel says, which I’m not entirely sure Davi was. “If I remember correctly, you make the best Manhattan on
the West Coast.”
“My specialty,” Cooper says. Gabe and I exchange a glance, and I’m relieved to know I’m not the only one who’s feeling like
things are suddenly a little different than they were before we got here. This is a side of Laurel I don’t think anyone—save
Everett, maybe—is very familiar with. Some subtle shift in her mannerisms, away from the girl who ate Funyuns for breakfast
and more toward someone who loves a Manhattan made by a Michelin-star chef at his wet bar in his multi-million-dollar Malibu
home.
Cooper makes everyone drinks before leading Laurel, Gabe, Davi, and Everett toward the pool patio, leaving them at a table
there and walking me toward the kitchen.
“Oh my god,” I say, rushing over to the six-burner Wolf range as soon as we walk in. “My kingdom for this stove.”
“Wouldn’t cook on anything else,” Cooper says. I eye the rest of the kitchen, clocking what we have in common. Design-wise
it’s a little industrial for my liking, but he has good taste in appliances, though I think he must have taken out an insurance
policy on this kitchen alone.