twenty-six
Fifth Summer
San Francisco
It was May, and the first notes of summer were just starting to simmer in my bones. If I told anyone else this, they would
think I was crazy, but I swore I could feel it, smell it when I walked out the door, taste it in the tomatoes we used at the
restaurant and the lemon I squeezed into my water in the mornings. Summer was already weaving its way into my life.
Part of this feeling was just my usual connection to this time of year. But this summer, it was partly due to the fact that,
after a Herculean effort, everyone would be coming to the beach house. And the other part (maybe the biggest part, though
I was still a little hesitant to admit it to myself) was the fact that Everett was coming to visit me that second weekend
of May.
Well, not visit me per se. He had a few meetings here, and he’d called last month to tell me, to see if I wanted to hang out while he was in
town. I’d been surprised to see his name pop up on my phone. We didn’t really call each other, though we had been texting
more, just the two of us, since he’d broken up with Maud last fall. Nothing of particular note, but it felt significant, somehow,
like our summer selves had leaked into our real lives.
But by the time he knocked on my door at noon the Friday he was set to arrive, I had only the foggiest memory that someone was coming over, because of the sharp, senses-obliterating migraine pulsing behind my right eye.
I squinted against the light streaming in through my living room windows as I shuffled toward the door, tugging the blanket
around my shoulders up over my head in a makeshift hood to block it out further. Something about the cold metal of the doorknob
under my hand made my stomach turn, and I had to swallow against the bile that suddenly rose in my throat.
“Fuck,” I said when I opened the door. Everett’s winning smile faltered, understandably, but his expression quickly morphed
into concern as he took me in: gray sweatpants, one leg bunched above my calf, a faded Devon College T-shirt, hair that needed
to be washed falling out of a braid I’d thrown it into yesterday afternoon when the first hints of a migraine started to creep
in and I went through my usual routine: ibuprofen, a Diet Coke, and a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. I hadn’t had consistent
migraines in over five years and so had stopped filling the prescriptions I used to take to prevent and mitigate them, and
started cursing myself for that decision as soon as none of my home remedies helped and I started to see spots.
Everett was at my door because Everett was supposed to be at my door. But somewhere between the black dots that had started flashing across my vision last night and trying not
to puke this morning, I’d forgotten about our plans.
“Are you okay?” he asked as I closed my eyes.
“I remembered you were coming,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “I promise.”
I startled a little when a palm settled against my forehead. “You don’t have a fever,” Everett said. “How are you feeling?”
“I have a migraine,” I explained. Something about the gentle pressure of his hand against my head seemed to infinitesimally ease the pain there.
If I were feeling better, I would have paid attention to all my better judgments, but they didn’t even exist at the moment, and so I leaned into it. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Everett asked. His other arm slipped around my shoulders, familiar, taking my weight as I rested
against him.
“I didn’t tell you,” I said. “We were supposed to—”
“Hey,” he said. “No apologizing, okay?” He rubbed at my shoulders and I let out a contented sound that quickly morphed into
a groan when the vibrations sent a new wave of pain through my entire brain. “Come on.”
I remember Everett directing me back into bed, pulling the blankets up over me. I remember him refilling my water glass and
handing me more ibuprofen when I asked for it and checking to make sure I had everything I needed, and I remember him pushing
me back down when I sat up, insistent we do something, that I wouldn’t let this weekend pass us by, that I knew, historically, the migraine would run its course in a few more
hours. I’ll be right here, he said, or something like it, as I shut my eyes again, maybe I’m not going anywhere.
It would have horrified me to be like this in front of any other man I’d dated, or slept with, or whatever it was Everett
and I did. If I hadn’t set twelve extra alarms to get up and do everything to look as human as possible, to avoid canceling
plans, I wouldn’t have let them in the apartment. I would have pretended I wasn’t home and then that I forgot about the date
and I would never tell them I felt bad. I wouldn’t let them tuck me into bed with my morning breath and my laundry basket
out in the open and then just wander, unchecked, into my apartment.
But as soon as my bedroom door clicked softly closed behind Everett, I started to drift off. I didn’t worry about disappointing him, about being perfect. I felt better with him here. More than that, I realized, I wanted it to be him. Not Laurel or Gabe or Davi. Everett.
I didn’t have time to mull it over. I was asleep before I could consider the why.
When I woke up, my apartment was quiet. The long lines of late afternoon sun slanted in through my blinds. I groaned when
I checked my phone; I’d been asleep almost four hours. But it had helped. The headache behind my eye had reduced to a dull
pulse, and the nausea that usually accompanied my migraines was gone.
I stood and stretched, wondering if I’d dreamed up Everett altogether. But when I wandered into the living room, there he
was, flesh and blood, on my couch. Asleep.
Hovering in my bedroom doorway, I watched him for a minute, the faint rise and fall of his chest, the arm he had crooked above
his head, before a light in the kitchen caught my eye. I wandered over, following my nose to a pot on my stove that I lifted
the lid on.
“You’re up.”
I jumped at the sound of Everett’s voice, turning to where he was sitting up, eyes sleepy.
“You made me soup?” I asked, lid still in hand.
Everett nodded, rubbing the heels of his hands over his eyes. His hair stuck up a little in the back. “You told me once that
Hank used to make you soup when you had a migraine.”
“I did?” I asked. I looked at the pot, at the soup that he’d clearly gone out and gotten ingredients for, made in my kitchen
without my help, and back at him. “I don’t remember that.”
Everett’s hands had fallen, and he looked between me and the stove, chewing on his lower lip before he finally said, “I do.”
Something in my chest shifted. I put a hand to the spot, like it was physical, like I might find a new bruise or scar where
I felt it, but there was nothing. No permanent reminder of the change, only a certainty in my body that the way I was looking
at Everett then was different than how I looked at him before, and I started to worry there wasn’t anything I could do about
it.
I swallowed, settled a hand against the counter in an attempt to appear casual. “Can we have some soup?” I asked.
Everett sprang up, came over to me. I watched as he opened cupboards and drawers like he knew where things were, which he
must have because he made the soup to begin with.
Having him there, in my small kitchen, felt off-limits, somehow, like I was breaking a rule. Inviting him into my life outside
of the trip, something I did with the others but we’d never done with each other. The days at the beach always felt more innocent,
like they were some continuation of a version of ourselves we never got to be. But this, having him in my apartment, having
him take care of me, the sudden ache in my chest at the sight of him, was new.
He nudged me after I’d been standing there in silence for a minute, eyes stuck on his movements as he navigated my kitchen.
“Go sit down,” he told me, and I complied, let myself be taken care of. Everett brought me soup and a blue Gatorade, another
thing he remembered, and we ate and turned on the cooking channel and watched Molly Yeh make a hot dish and I was so happy
that I almost started crying.
Later, when my headache was almost gone and Everett was washing our dishes, I ducked into the bathroom to take a shower, rinse
off the feeling of having lain in bed all day. When I came back out, wrapped in my robe, Everett was sitting at my table,
coat on.
“Hey,” he said, glancing up at me. “Feel better?”
“Loads,” I said. I hovered near the end of the table. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
He stood up, reached out, and tucked a damp strand of hair behind my ear. “I liked doing it.”
My lips parted as his hand fell, and I worried that if I didn’t say something then, I never would. I turned to follow his
gaze to my front door, and noticed, for the first time, his suitcase sitting there.
“It’s getting late,” Everett said as I looked back at him. “I should probably get going.”
I swallowed and nodded, the courage I’d felt before still burning in my chest but flickering now.
Everett brought a hand up to the back of my head, brow furrowing almost like he was concentrating. He let out a breath, a
small hmm at the back of it, a sound of consideration, before he kissed my forehead. When he drew away, I forced my eyes wide-open.
“Text me when you’re up in the morning, okay?” he said. “We can still do something.”
“Okay,” I said.
I turned as he started down the hall, picturing, for a minute, if he did stay. What would happen if Everett was in my apartment
in his sweaters and socks every Saturday morning, if we weren’t just summer people, not just group-text people, not two people
who kept a secret, but two people who did this all the time. What would happen then?
“Or—” I said. Everett was at the door, one boot in hand, but he looked back at me. My pulse felt like the drum of an overeager
middle school marching band kid, almost painful. I wanted him, enough that I found myself forcing the words up and out of
my throat so they lay bare between us. “Or you could stay.”