twenty-five
This Summer
I stay in Everett’s room that night. I spend the night, like I told him I never do, like I always have with him. We fall asleep
wrapped together and wake up in the same position.
Everett plays with my hair as I hug an arm around his chest. I’m happily still ignoring everything we haven’t discussed, the
impossibility of all of this, when there’s a knock at his door.
“Everett? You up?” Gabe says from the other side of the door.
Everett’s hand freezes in my hair. I widen my eyes at him. Gabe knocks again.
Pretend you’re asleep, I mouth at him. Everett’s eyes flick to the doorknob, like Gabe might just come in. Which, I realize with a sinking in my
stomach, is true. Gabe used to barge into my room in college whenever he felt like it.
“Um,” Everett calls as I scramble out of bed, grabbing my dress from the floor and launching into the bathroom. “Just a second!”
I hear Everett root around as I partially shut the door behind me, probably trying to locate a pair of pants. Gabe knocks
a third time.
“Sorry,” Everett says as he opens the door. “What’s up?” I press myself closer to the counter in here, shutting my eyes, as if that would make me invisible to Gabe if he came in.
“Do you have any Tylenol? Ibuprofen?” Gabe asks. “Usually I’d ask Sutton, but I can’t find her.”
“Yeah,” Everett says, and something in his voice has me casting around the bathroom, heart pounding when my eyes land on the
bottle of ibuprofen sitting near the sink. I hear Gabe move into the room as Everett starts toward the bathroom.
“Man,” Gabe says. “Might have to fight you for this room next time. You know, if there is a next time.”
“It’s yours,” Everett says as he leans around the door. I already have the ibuprofen stretched out toward him, his fingers
brushing mine as he takes it. “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” Gabe says, in his tone that unmistakably means settling in. I hear him sit on the edge of the bed, the sheets of which my underwear are undoubtedly tangled in.
“You good?” Everett asks. I’m still holding my dress in front of me, and I settle in against the counter, repressing a sigh.
I love Gabe, but now is not the time for one of his talks.
“I don’t know,” Gabe says. “Has this week felt off to you?”
“Hmm,” Everett murmurs, and I try to picture him, standing with his arms crossed and a frown on his face. “Maybe a little
awkward.”
“Forced is what I was going to say,” Gabe answers. My head straightens at this. I’m surprised to hear this coming from Gabe,
of all people. Affable, comforting, never one to really complain.
“I think it’s just been a while,” Everett says.
“Maybe.” I listen, trying to parse the silence. “I’m just worried about how disappointed Sutton will be if this is our last
time here.”
I wish so much, in this moment, that I wasn’t standing naked in Everett’s bathroom.
It’s a unique embarrassment to have to listen to other people talk about you, even if it is just Gabe worrying.
Am I truly the only one who thought this week could mean something?
That we might start this tradition again?
“The trip was Laurel’s idea,” Everett points out.
“I know,” Gabe says. “But I think this trip might have always meant more to Sutton than the rest of us, you know? I don’t
want her thinking this week means we’ll start coming back here again.”
I bite my lip, look down at my feet. I don’t want to hear this, don’t want to know that my friends feel sorry for me. But then Everett is answering. “This trip meant a lot to me too,” he says, something like defensiveness edging his
voice.
I don’t get to hear Gabe’s response, because there’s another knock at the bedroom door, followed by Laurel’s voice. “Did you—”
she starts, then, “Oh, thank god you have ibuprofen.” I listen as she flops onto the bed next to Gabe, my pulse racing anew.
“Have you seen Sutton? Her room’s empty.”
“Yeah, no, I haven’t seen her,” Everett says, and I can imagine him dragging a hand through his hair, anxious to get them
out of there. “I was about to take a shower.”
“Okay,” Laurel says. There’s no other sound of movement.
“I—” Everett says, then, “Okay.”
I press myself into the counter as he trudges into the bathroom. He shuts the door behind him and flicks on the fan, eyes
locked on to mine as we try to communicate something silently, all What the fuck was that and What else was I supposed to do and Kick them out!
After probably a minute of this, Laurel and Gabe murmuring on the other side of the door about lord knows what, Everett turns
on the shower before leaning against the wall across from me.
We stare at each other like that for a while, wary at first, until one side of his mouth twitches.
I can’t help smiling, clamping my lips together to keep it from growing but failing miserably.
After a minute, I have to press my hand to my mouth to keep from laughing, Everett’s shoulders shaking silently as he drops his head back against the wall behind him.
I close the space between us, checking to make sure the door is locked as I do. His chest is warm under my palm. My dress
falls to the floor between us as I press against him. His gaze goes heavy, no laughter left there anymore.
“Everett, we’re going to go on a coffee run!” Laurel calls as Everett’s hands skate up my back. “Want anything?”
“I’m good!” he answers, my lips running along his collarbone.
“Tell Sutton where we are if you find her!” Gabe shouts before they’re gone.
Everett tilts my head up, kissing me as soon as his bedroom door closes behind them. I don’t think we’ve ever been quite this
reckless before, and I can’t bring myself to care.
“Did you mean what you said?” I ask after a while, breathless. “That this trip meant a lot to you?”
“Of course it did,” Everett says. “Though maybe not in the way it did to you.”
I pull away from him a little, just enough to see his face. Something about his words has my spirits falling, the same way
they did when Gabe said what he did about me. “What do you mean?”
Everett’s fingers skim across my shoulder blades, down my spine. “I loved the trip,” he says. “I love everyone here.” His
eyes scan my face as his throat bobs, before he continues. “But those two days with you always meant more to me, Sutton. They
were always the most important part.”
My breath catches in my chest. Suddenly, last night becomes infinitely more complicated. My just once feels insane. I don’t know if I can tell him I feel entirely the same, because it was like the week and the two days existed
separately for me. The week was something sacred, this time left with the people I called family, and the two days were just
ours, special. I hadn’t wanted to admit how much they meant to me then, have been actively ignoring how much I’ve felt the
absence of them, of him, since it all ended.
But for Everett, I realize, all of this had been new. All of us, and even his renewed friendship with Gabe. We might have
absorbed him easily, but he didn’t have the same history of those four years together. What he did have, though, was the two
of us. And what we had was sacred in its own way too.
“They were important to me too,” I say, eyes locked on to his as I do. I want him to know that, even if this doesn’t continue
outside of this room. If I walk out of here and last night and right now are nothing but a memory, a cap on whatever complex,
beautiful, maddening thing our relationship has been.
The idea leaves me feeling a little empty.