twenty-one #3
“What?” I say, a breathy, nervous sort of laugh shaking out of me. When he doesn’t say anything, just opens his mouth and
closes it like he’s reconsidered, I face forward again and try to appear nonchalant. “We could still grab lunch sometime,”
I say.
“Right,” Everett says. “Meet somewhere between LA and San Francisco?”
I shrug a shoulder that feels about as casual as a marriage license. “Stranger things have happened.”
“Stranger than us happening again?”
I look sharply over at him, breath catching in my throat. But he’s staring straight ahead, at the spinning colors of the carousel.
I follow his gaze toward the winking lights. Something about it feels like a memory, sharp edges sanded down by time.
I worry sometimes that there isn’t enough proof of us to call the time we spent together real. We were only ever seen by people
when we were falling apart. Everything else comes in shimmering flashes and washed-out hazes, lens flares in corners blocking
things out or letting memories mix together. I can’t call up Laurel or Hank and say remember when, because we’re the only two who do, truly, remember. We are a carousel of moments that fell apart as soon as we tried to show
anyone else.
I look up at Everett, something steeling in my chest. “I didn’t know we were even a possibility anymore,” I say, instead of
the thousand other smarter things I could say right now. Things like, We should talk about what happened, or Up until two days ago we were locked in a who-hates-the-other-more competition. The answer to this question seems more important.
“I don’t know if I’m the one who needs to decide that,” he says. I glance down at my feet, the grass beneath them, because
I don’t know what to say. There are too many things to sort through here, and half of me thinks it might be less complicated
to just let it lie. But then I think about Everett’s lips on mine in the kitchen, his expression at the bottom of the stairs
after dinner at Cooper’s, the way he touched my face in the cabin on the sailboat. How my heart reacted every time: a jump
before it settled into some sure, steady rhythm, like I was exactly where I needed to be.
“Cooper and I went to that place on the beach that we found our third summer here,” I say finally, unsure why it’s the response
I go with. “Do you remember?” Please remember, I think.
Everett looks fully at me, eyes the color of stormy gray waves, rough and intense. “I remember everything, Sutton,” he says.
“I think all of my best days have been with you.”
It catches my breath, has me moving closer to him, startling as my chest brushes his and his hand grips my waist. I want to
be able to say things like that to him. Want to be the one who opens the door to the possibility of this, but there’s still
some part of my brain that snags on our history. On Laurel and Davi and Gabe, and how fragile our whole group is, how the
two of us going anywhere near this again would inevitably destroy that.
But I still find my head tipping back, face tilting up toward Everett’s. My eyes are still closing when we press together,
a breath apart. My phone buzzes in the pocket of my jacket, loud and jarring. I take a step back, blinking as I pull it out.
“Food’s ready,” I say, holding my screen up like proof.
Everett doesn’t press or try to keep us here any longer.
Instead, he nods us back in the direction of the trucks, and something about it reminds me of the way he was with the kid who asked for his autograph earlier, or who he was at a college party a decade ago.
That was always one of the confusing parts about us.
We could go from what felt like huge moments to casual in seconds. It was also what made it exciting.
But that was then. Now, it doesn’t feel quite as fun. It feels like we were just standing on the precipice of something and
were yanked violently back from the edge, sprawling on the ground. I can’t fully get my bearings.
“Hey,” Everett says as we near the food trucks. “What’s your prize?”
It’s only now that I remember the T-shirt under my arm. I unroll it, a small smile eking onto my face before I turn it toward
Everett, who groans.
“You can’t keep that,” he says, running a hand down his face.
“Oh, this is going to be a collector’s item someday,” I say. I’m glad for the distraction, feel the quick relief of our back-and-forth
settling over me as I twist the shirt to look at it again. The original artwork for Cooney is on the front, large and undeniable. “I’m going to sleep in this every night. Can you sign it for me, Director?”
“Nope,” Everett says. He swings an arm around my shoulders and plucks the shirt out of my hands, tucking it under his opposite
arm. Easy. Casual. No I think all of my best days have been with you in sight. We could be two friends or a couple in love to any outsider as I lean around him, try to grab at the shirt he stole.
“We’ll get you something better to sleep in.”
I lean into his side as we near the food trucks, letting myself, for just this moment, feel like I used to with him. Enjoy
it. Whatever that means.