twenty-three
This Summer
When we get back from the movie that night, Laurel grabs another bottle of wine out of the fridge, holding it aloft.
“Let’s get drunk on the beach!” she says. Davi cheers, and Gabe, who is already tipsy on one glass of wine, grabs glasses
from the cupboard.
“You coming?” Gabe asks, glancing at where Everett is standing near the stairs, and at me, hovering near the island.
“I’m pretty beat,” Everett, who has never in his life gotten drunk on a beach, says.
“Aw,” Laurel says, pouting out her lower lip. “Did we go too far with the Cooney commentary on the way home?”
Everett laughs, shaking his head, but I saw the way his grip on the wheel flexed the more Laurel leaned between the seats,
pretending to be a reporter and asking about his inspiration, his process, his idea for his next project. After a while I’d
leaned forward and turned up the radio to just below blasting right as a U2 song came on. If I didn’t know that Laurel had
already had her fair share of wine that night, I’d have believed the song was her all-time favorite, given the verve with
which she started singing along as Everett cast me a grateful glance.
“I’ll catch up,” I say when the three of them glance my way, holding up my phone. “Promised Hank I’d give him a call.”
They leave, whooping and hollering, through the back door, the bob of the flashlight Gabe grabbed their only giveaway as they
make their way down the beach.
I turn at the creak of the bottom stair, Everett heading up.
“Are you—” I blurt, heart jumping into my throat when he glances back down at me. We stare at each other for a minute, Everett’s
eyebrows raising, before I finally shake my head. “Never mind. Sleep well.”
Everett looks like he may say something else, lips falling apart, and I want him to. I want him to tell me to come upstairs
with him, or to close the gap between us and take my face in his hands, continue what we started earlier. But I can’t find
it in myself to do either of those things, so I don’t blame him when he nods, tells me to say hi to Hank, and continues upstairs.
I wait a beat before I follow him. When I get into my room, I toss my jacket onto the chair in the corner and sit cross-legged
in the middle of my bed, staring down at my phone in front of me like I might actually call Hank. I didn’t promise Hank that
I’d call him tonight. But Everett going to sleep felt, for a minute, like some kind of code we were both in on.
It takes three steps to cross to my door, Everett’s face burned into my brain as I throw it open. Halfway down the hall, though,
I lose my courage and pause. I hover, half turned toward my door, listing every reason I shouldn’t knock on his door in my
head.
You haven’t talked about anything that happened.
What happened did happen.
Laurel would kill you.
You’re not twenty-two anymore.
Laurel would kill you, Laurel would kill you, Laurel would kill you.
I whirl on my heel at the last echo of it in my head, something like indignation rising up in me as I march toward his door.
But just as I’m almost there, my hand starting to lift so I’m ready to knock before I can lose my nerve, it opens.
Everett, in the short-sleeve button-down he had on under his sweatshirt, freezes at the same moment I do, a skip on a DVD.
Until some muscle near his mouth twitches, like he’s trying not to smile.
“Hi,” he says as my own lips start to curve. I press them together to no avail.
“Hi,” I say. Suddenly you’re not twenty-two anymore feels like such a lie. Every version of me that has ever hooked up with Everett is in this hallway right now, all shoving
me directly toward where he stands, one arm braced on the doorframe.
“Going somewhere?” he asks. The grin on his face is familiar, one I know well. It says we’re in on the same secret, that there’s
something going on here only the two of us could understand. Something about it emboldens me.
“I don’t know,” I say, squarely in front of his door. “Are you?”
He pretends to frown, thinking. “Thought I heard something in the area of your room.”
“Funny,” I say. “I swear it came from your room.”
He drops his arm, steps close enough to me that I have to tilt my head just a little to look fully at him. Still, he doesn’t
touch me. “Heard there’s a party on the beach,” he says.
“Mmm-hmm,” I say, nodding. “Heard there’s something better going on in here.”
This is the piece we’re good at, I know.
The flirting, the banter, the lead-up, and what comes after.
And my rational brain knows it’s a bad idea, but my animal brain gets one whiff of Everett and all logic switches off.
Moves my hand so my fingers graze against his, flicks my eyes over his shoulder, lets him pull me into his room and lean me against the door, smiling up at him until he kisses me again.
There’s still some small voice listing all the reasons this is a bad idea in my head, but it’s muffled, drowned out by our
bodies pressing together, Everett’s hands gathering mine and pinning them above my head, skimming back down until they land
on my hips.
“I hated thinking about you at lunch with him today,” Everett says when he dips his mouth to my neck, breath warm against
my skin. “I didn’t go into town with everyone else, because I was losing my mind every second you were gone.”
“I hated being there,” I admit, the words rushing out of me before I can think about it. I arch against Everett as his hand
falls to my ass, pressing me closer to him. “I wanted to be with you.”
“Then be with me,” Everett says, voice vibrating against my skin. “I’ll come to San Francisco.”
His grip on me tightens. Even if what he’s saying is impossible, it has me swimming in memory, things I’ve been denying for
years now, like how we seem to notch perfectly together, or how every single one of my sighs is swallowed up by him like something
rare to be collected. Our kiss in the kitchen was a frantic rush to fit something in before we were caught. But this is slow
and heady, hands taking their time exploring and any gaps between us slowly filling in, a sort of melding together.
Instead of answering him, I kiss him again, roll my hips against his and revel in the rough sound he makes.
“You used to be such a T-shirt man,” I say, looking down at the button I’m fumbling with until I get it. “You never used to
wear shirts like this.”
“You never wore a dress like this,” Everett says, palms skimming up over my arms to my shoulders as I finish unbuttoning his shirt.
“Sure I did,” I say, though I’m not sure it’s true, am too distracted to really think about it as I slide my hands over his
stomach, his muscles jumping under my touch. “Maybe you just weren’t paying attention.”
“I paid attention to everything, Sutton,” he says before lowering his face to mine again, kissing me slowly. His fingers slide
over my exposed sternum before dipping underneath the fabric of my dress, palm curving over my breast, drawing a soft sound
out of me as I curl into his hand. I deepen the kiss, fingers lacing into his hair as Everett pushes the straps of my dress
off my shoulders.
We should slow down, I know. I should pause to consider what Everett’s then be with me really means. I should think about the others, should think about what happened, should think about the fact that I’ve spent
the last five years angry with him. But I’m so tired of shoulds. I’m tired of worrying about what everyone else wants. I’m tired of trying so hard to pretend I don’t want this.
I nudge Everett toward the bed, straddling his hips when he sits down underneath me. “Sutton,” he says, palms skimming up
my back. “Are you sure we should do this?”
“Not at all,” I say on a sigh, hands diving into his hair. “But I want to. Just once, at least.”
I lean down, move his shirt out of the way so I can kiss his shoulder. He stiffens underneath me, and for a minute I think
he’s going to stop this. But in the next breath, he’s hooking his arm across my lower back, the other steady on my waist as
he flips us, holding me to him to shift me farther onto the bed before he lowers himself over me.
“Okay,” he says in an uneven voice as his lips skim down my neck, skate across my chest.
I draw Everett back up to me and push his shirt off his shoulders, hands dragging down his back, every muscle in him tense.
He unzips the side of my dress and I arch up so he can pull it off of me. I’m not wearing a bra, and Everett immediately dips
his head to my chest, his other hand hooking into the waist of my underwear, pressing into my hip.
My fingers coil into his hair as he returns to me, kisses me again. We shed the rest of our clothes quickly, impatiently,
kicking things to the side of the bed and grinning into each other’s mouths until he slides against me. Any laughter is replaced
by harsh breaths, sounds stifled against shoulders because part of keeping this between us tonight is staying quiet in case
the others return from the beach, which seems impossible the more we move together, chasing friction, connection.
“Condom?” I ask him.
He reaches over to his nightstand, fumbles with his wallet for a minute before he sets it there again, the ubiquitous foil
packet balanced on top. He’s starting to move down my body but I stop him, reach over and grab the condom from where he set
it. He gives me a quizzical look.
“It’s been five years since we’ve done this,” I say to him as I rip the packet open. “The rest can wait.” I don’t pause to
think about the fact that I’m implying there will be a next time.
“Sutton,” he starts, but anything else he was going to say is lost as I work the condom onto him, as I pull him back down
to me and cant my hips up toward him.
“Please,” I whisper in his ear. The hand he has on my hip flexes.
Everett’s head drops into the curve of my shoulder, teeth just sinking into my skin there as he pushes into me, a deliciously aching stretch that I’ve been missing for years.
This, I think as our chests meet, as we breathe together before we start moving again.
This is what you were always avoiding. What you were missing.
Some connection with Everett that sat on the other side of fear, of worry that the two of us would ruin each other. Sex with
each other was always amazing, but in a fun, no-holds-barred way. We explored and learned each other in a way only our agreement
could produce. There was nothing to be embarrassed about, so it was almost like a lesson each time—here, this is what you like, and let’s try this, and we should definitely do more of that next time.
Vulnerability in a way that only came from how we both managed to keep our deeper, darker emotions always just out of reach.
The only goal was to feel good.
But now, after this week, after five years of denying him, there’s a pleasant ache in my chest too, some sort of awe at being
this close to a person. To him.
Everett kisses me as we rock together, his mouth soft against mine. I moan into his mouth when he shifts his hips just so,
hitting a spot deep inside me, letting him capture and keep the sound. Eventually, our pace starts to quicken, Everett hiking
my thigh up against his hip. I bite his shoulder, the same place he did mine, to muffle the sound when I cry out. His head
fits into the curve of my neck again, but he turns it this time, kisses my neck so gently it makes that place in my chest
balloon, swell until I’m afraid I might burst. The combination of sweat on skin and fingers digging in with a kiss so soft
it’s barely there is enough to send me over the edge, but I wait until I can tell he’s there too, until I can pull him over
with me.
I say his name, as barely there as his kiss on my neck, but his lips find mine and I know he heard it.