twenty-two
Fourth Summer
We slid into our fourth summer after a marathon of planning: tweaking dates so we could overlap as much as possible, moving
things around again when new plans came up, cutting things short and extending them again and trying out every possible variety
because we’d all just gotten so busy over the last year. And still, after everything, Gabe wouldn’t be there.
I have to take two weeks off for the wedding in August, he’d said the last time I’d talked to him about it. I’m using up enough vacation time as it is. I just can’t swing it this year.
I understand, I’d told him. Because logically, I did. Not everyone had the luxury of setting their own schedules, and we’d all see each
other for a few days surrounding the wedding anyway. But the other part of me, the part that railed against any kind of change,
the wholly unreasonable part, wanted to tell him to quit his job and make the trek to California so we could all be together.
We promised each other this one week, I wanted to say. How big of an ask is one week a year?
On top of us being down one person again, this summer wouldn’t be the same for another reason. There wouldn’t be two extra
days at the end of the week, because Everett, surprise of all surprises, had a girlfriend.
“What’s it like dating the most beautiful woman in the UK?” Laurel asked after we’d all arrived and settled into the living room of the cottage. Davi was grabbing water in the kitchen, and Everett and I sat at either end of the couch, like holding space between us was important.
Laurel leaned across the coffee table, holding up her phone to Everett as if he needed a reminder of who his girlfriend was.
On her screen was a picture of him with Maud Turner at the red-carpet premiere of her last film, looking as much like a Hollywood
couple as they did at Cannes for the showing of his most recent project the month prior. Everett in an expensive black suit,
Maud in something bespoke and fashion forward.
They’d even been papped a couple times, coming out of Osteria Mozza or sitting outside Stir Crazy. It was those that bothered
me the most, for some reason. Not that any of them should bother me. But I would zoom in on Everett’s face whenever Laurel
sent me the photos, eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, like I could find clues there about whether or not he was happy.
On the red carpet he was a presence, charming, laughing, and chatting. Everett at a party. But in these pictures some of that
fell away, and so I studied them for signs they were real. If he loved her, if they did things like cooking together or surfing
or if he turned on Ina Garten on Saturday mornings while they sipped coffee and woke up slowly. Probably. Probably those things
weren’t just ours. And it was silly of me to think so.
“You’re just returning to us from France, aren’t you?” Laurel asked, when Everett just waved off her first question. “Fancy
man.” And he did look fancy, tanned in a way that suggested yacht decks rather than mornings on his surfboard, his shirt so
soft against my skin when I hugged him that I had to double-check it was, in fact, just a T-shirt.
The movie Everett had worked on two summers ago—Just an indie, he’d called it, nothing special—had been making its rounds at film festivals to much aplomb, garnering award buzz and landing him his next jobs and, maybe
most importantly, budgets. While he was no household name, he was becoming increasingly well-known in the film community.
And his relationship with a certain gorgeous, up-and-coming actress didn’t hurt his growing reputation either.
“You’re just getting back from a month in Bali, aren’t you?” Everett asked Laurel, deflecting her question.
“I am,” she said. “The wellness retreat was a success.”
“Remind me,” Davi said, as he flopped onto the couch next to me and it made a disagreeable sound. “If we have a wildly successful
influencer and the next Spielberg in the room with us, why are we still staying in this shithole?”
“Take that back,” Laurel scolded him. “This place is not a shithole.”
Davi looked around skeptically at the tiny room, but didn’t say anything else.
It had come up, briefly, when we booked the cottage this year. A discussion of whether we should upgrade to something a little
more comfortable, but Laurel had dismissed it, saying the whole point of the trip was staying here, specifically.
“Is Winona still coming down for a couple days?” Everett asked Laurel.
Her face clouded at the mention of her girlfriend of a year. Everett and I exchanged a quick glance, the first we’d shared
since he arrived. “I don’t think so,” Laurel said, voice going a little far-off. Her expression matched, gaze drifting out
the door. She would have made a great close-up in one of Everett’s movies.
“Everything okay?” I asked her, but she just gave me a wan smile.
“Fine,” she said. It was a small sting, unintentional, but there nonetheless. Laurel wasn’t telling me something, and as far as I knew, we told each other everything. But, I reminded myself, she would tell me when she was ready.
I stood up, brushing my hands on my shorts. “Should we head to the beach?” I asked.
Laurel brightened at this. “I’ll grab the wine!”
Davi followed Laurel into the kitchen while I scooped beach towels out of the basket by the back door. When I straightened,
I smacked into half of a solid chest and an arm, stumbling back a step and almost landing back in the basket before Everett
caught me around the waist and hauled me upright again.
“Thanks,” I said, taking pains not to breathe him in, let the familiar smell of him light up any neural pathways that only
led to bad decisions. A bad decision couldn’t be made this week anyway, so there was no point in even letting my brain go
there.
And yet, as I looked up at him, eyes latching on to his, those usual nerve endings flared to life regardless, sparking everywhere
we touched.
Everett let go of me and waved me toward the door at the same time I nodded him in the same direction. We repeated the dance
until we both stepped forward, bashing together again.
“After you, really,” he said, moving back to give me a wide berth and not meeting my gaze.
I hurried through the door, ignoring the way his mere presence made every tiny hair on my neck stand on end.
I didn’t care that Everett had a girlfriend. I hadn’t imagined that our arrangement would continue forever, that we’d be octogenarians
meeting up for two days of shenanigans in a beach shack and still not telling our friends. We’d grow up, we’d change, we’d
move on.
But I couldn’t deny the fact that I sensed him as he walked out the door behind me, as we started down the steps and he helped me lay out towels, even as he lounged at the opposite end of our row, almost pointedly. For some reason, not being able to have Everett made me more aware of him than ever.
It was, inconveniently, going to be a long week.
Laurel broke up with Winona on a phone call two days later, hours before she was supposed to arrive. We were about to head
out to catch Isaiah’s sailboat, when Laurel walked back inside from the deck, where she made the call. She sniffed, plonked
her floppy sunhat onto her head, and grabbed her bag from the counter.
“Ready?” she said to the three sets of eyes staring at her. “Come on.” She waved us toward the door. “Captain Isaiah will
be pissed as hell if we’re late.”
Isaiah had never once scolded us for being late, but even so, we scrambled after her, throwing bags over our shoulders and
shoving our feet into sandals, grabbing jackets off hooks. Everett was walking behind me and caught my elbow when I tripped
on the lip of the door on my way out, in the same way he’d saved me from tumbling into the basket on our first day here. Something
about avoiding him made me clumsy, taking pains to steer clear of his path and only throwing myself into less convenient ones.
I turned back to him, every iota of my attention homing in on the scrape of his warm palm against my skin. I looked down at
it, trailed my gaze slowly back up to his. When our eyes caught his were wide, almost startled, that icy gray in his irises
flashing even brighter as his pupils dilated.
“Careful,” I said, nodding back down at his hand. “What would Maud say if she were here?”
He frowned and dropped his hand.
On the boat, Laurel finally relaxed. She curled up at the bow next to me and dipped her head onto my shoulder, sighing.
“I’m relieved,” she said, before I could even ask her. “But I’m a little sad too.”
“Of course you are. You loved her.”
“I don’t know,” Laurel said. She straightened, squinting out at the water. “I think I really wanted to.”
“You’ll find someone you’re sure about,” I said. At this, she leveled me with a skeptical glance, like I’d said something
ridiculous. “What?”
“Come on,” she said. “You don’t believe in things like that.”
“I—” I started, eyes flicking of their own accord toward where Everett stood with Davi a few feet away, shielding his eyes
from the sun as he looked out toward where Davi pointed at something. A dolphin or a wave or some speck in the distance. For
a half second, I pictured him like this with Maud, surrounded by wealthy, artsy people on a boat somewhere halfway across
the world, and he suddenly felt like a stranger to me.
I cleared my throat, looking back to Laurel. Luckily, she was staring down at the water, and hadn’t caught my slipup. My not
saying anything had been as good as a confirmation for her, that I didn’t believe in things like real love.
“I do think you’ll find your person, Laurel,” I insisted, drawing her attention back up to me.
“Sure,” she said. “It’s just kind of hard to think you mean it when you don’t want that for yourself.”
My throat went dry at her words. “I want that,” I said, voice not much more than a rasp. I took a sip of the wine that Isaiah
had handed us as we’d boarded; better this year than others. When Laurel gave me the same look as she had before, I felt my
eyes widen, my shoulders hitch. “Why do you think I don’t want that?”
“Sutton,” she said. “You have situations. Maybe you go on a few dates with someone, but it never lasts. You don’t do relationships.”
“And that means I don’t want one?” I asked, surprising even myself at the irritation in my voice. I never snapped at Laurel.
She shrugged. “You’re like Davi,” she said.
“Davi has a theory that no relationship should last longer than six months,” I said. “In college, he used to lecture us on
monogamy not being natural. Just because I’m not currently in a relationship I’m like Davi?”
The look Laurel gave me was almost pitying, mouth turning down at the corners. “You’ve never been in a relationship, Sutton,”
she said.
I flipped through my mental Rolodex of our shared experiences, trying to find something to prove her wrong. The guy I spent
a semester hanging out with sophomore year of college, or Jake, the line cook at Hank’s restaurant who I slept with for three
months straight. But none of those things would equal a relationship to Laurel. Or, if I was honest, to me.
I’d thought Laurel knew me better, though. That she understood that just because I wasn’t like her—someone who loved being
with someone else, who chased it like staying single was a death sentence—didn’t mean I didn’t eventually want to find someone.
But that it was easier said than done. Finding someone who wouldn’t let you down. Who would stay.
One memory did pop up, though, as I kept digging for evidence. Everyone will disappoint you, I’d said to her through her first breakup we’d experienced together, her head in my lap as she cried over the TA with a
pierced eyebrow who’d left his dirty socks in our kitchen sink. Don’t let them.
I looked up at Laurel. I didn’t know how to explain to her that it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in love as a concept.
It was that I knew the person who would be worth it had to be exceptional.
Extraordinary. Someone you would never have to doubt and who would never let you down.
And when I thought about it that way, maybe she was right.
Maybe I wouldn’t find someone, because the person I was looking for didn’t exist.
I knew she could tell I was upset as she reached out to squeeze my shoulder. “I believe you,” she said. “If you say you want
that, then I believe you.”
I forced a smile, nodding, marveling at how I’d gone from having a good time with my friends to spiraling into self-doubt
in a matter of minutes.
Laurel stood up to grab more wine. I let my attention be pulled back to Everett after a while. The breeze washed out the crisp
lines of his pale blue shirt. If I unfocused my eyes, he almost blended in with the scene behind him, shirt just another part
of the water, golden hair the sun sparkling above.
Something occurred to me as I continued to stare at him, a sharp twist in my stomach. I blinked away the blurriness, tried
to shake away the thought, but it stuck.
No one could let you down, ruin anything, if all you ever gave them was two days.