twenty-seven
This Summer
I sneak out of Everett’s room while the others are still gone, text Laurel to say I was on a walk and will she grab me an
iced latte. The worst part, maybe, is that I don’t feel guilty in the way I think I should. Some part of me loves it, having
this secret again, like I’ve reclaimed something that’s mine.
But even so, by the time evening rolls around and Laurel leaves us all to head to her party, none of us allowed to join her
until it starts, I start to worry. That what Gabe said in Everett’s room is correct—this trip won’t continue. That I’m the
only one who will be bothered by that. And that Everett and I, by so easily giving in to something I swore we never would
again, have played some cosmic role in the final dissolution of this friend group, rendering all my hopes for this week pointless.
The invitation we received listed a black-and-gold dress code. Laurel left with a garment bag over her arm, so I have no idea
what she’ll be wearing, but I slip on the swirly, pleated gold dress I found just a week before the trip. When I walk out
of my room, Everett is shutting his door behind him dressed in a pair of black chinos and a soft black T-shirt, a cool black
jacket slung over his shoulder.
“Look at you,” he says as I walk over to him, spinning once so my dress fans out around me.
“Did I do it justice?” I ask, pausing just shy of him. Davi’s door is still cracked open.
“Do what justice?” he asks.
I look down at myself, lift up my hands. “An Oscar.”
Everett laughs, eyes drifting over my shoulders. “I so prefer you to an Oscar,” he says quietly.
We meet Gabe, also in all black, in the kitchen, and wait for Davi to descend. When he does, he’s in a gold shirt more sparkly
than my dress, typing furiously away on his phone.
“Now that’s an Oscar,” Everett says, nodding in his direction. I stifle a laugh as Davi looks up at us.
“What?” he says. “I wore this shirt for New Year’s last year. I’m not wasting it.”
“You look amazing,” I tell him as I start to herd him toward the door. “And we’re late.”
Everett drives us all to the party, placing bets on what we think it will be like. I laugh when he says he thinks Laurel will
be carried out in a coffin, throwing herself a literal funeral for her past life.
When we arrive, though, I don’t think it’s what any of us expected. “Okay,” Gabe says as we all stand in the doorway to the
bar Laurel has rented out for her party tonight. “This is . . . something.”
Davi lets out a low whistle on Gabe’s other side, eyes scanning over the black decorations dripping on every surface, hints
of gold poking through.
“Is it a funeral?” I ask, reaching out to cup a hand under a flower so purple it almost looks black.
“I don’t think so,” Gabe says. “It feels more . . . roaring twenties.”
I tilt my head back to look at the gold star lanterns strung above us, light bouncing off the gilded ceiling. “Pretty,” I say. “Not Laurel’s usual style.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Everett says from next to me. I drop my gaze to find him doing the same, eyes meeting mine. He shrugs
a shoulder. “She does keep talking about her new life.”
A blur of sparkling white comes racing toward us, bright against the dark backdrop of the bar. Laurel holds her arms out wide
as if to engulf all of us, a smile I haven’t seen all week splitting her face open.
“My babies!” she cries, squeezing us tight to her.
I meet Gabe’s eyes over her head. Babies? I mouth at him. Laurel has never called us anything remotely close to that before. He shrugs as she releases us.
“You look great, Laurel,” I say to her. She’s in a drapey white dress that sparkles like it’s made of something pearlescent,
glitter in her hair and tiny jewels dotted in a line above her eyebrows, highlighter on her cheekbones bright enough to strobe.
“It’s my new life outfit,” she says, holding her arms up and spinning. I catch Everett’s eye. He was right.
Another party enters behind us, and Laurel points us in the direction of the bar before greeting them with the same level
of enthusiasm she did us, which stings, somehow. Glancing around the room, I realize I don’t recognize anyone here. No one
who was at Laurel and Stephen’s wedding, except us. None of her LA friends I’ve met when I’ve visited her. Everyone looks
either as enthusiastic as Laurel or casually bored, like being here is checking an item off a list.
“Did Laurel ever tell you why she didn’t want us to plan this party?” I ask Davi as we reach the bar.
He shrugs, the shoulder of his shirt catching the light drifting down. “Who cares,” he says. “Are you mad you didn’t have to plan a party in addition to organizing this whole week?”
“I didn’t—” I start, but Davi raises an eyebrow at me. “We all helped organize this week.” I think back to our texts, conversations,
the feeling of seeing Everett’s name pop up on my phone so frequently after years of avoiding it as much as I could. Confirmations
we were a go, that we’d pay Laurel back for everything. But it’s true that I was the one who picked the house we’d stay in.
Who called to book the sailing tour. Who reminded everyone of our itinerary the week before we were set to arrive so we could
be on a schedule if Laurel wanted us to be. So we could be organized without looking too organized. So we could avoid any
painful, awkward silences, but mostly so we could be reminded of what this week used to mean to us.
“Maybe,” Davi says as the bartender approaches. “But Laurel didn’t call the rest of us when she wanted it to happen. She called
you. You’re the one who’s always making sure everything is perfect.”
He turns to the bartender and orders for both of us, leaving me with his words bouncing around my head as they try to land,
burrow in.
I’d thought Laurel called me for the same reason she always did: because there was something between us that went just one
level deeper than it did with everyone else. It was a secret I thought she and I had both harbored; that we would always be
each other’s first call.
But maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe I’m not always her first call. Maybe I’m the best at organizing things, at making sure everything is perfect. It starts to settle, to take root, this idea that I am a function to Laurel instead of her undisputed person.
I try to dislodge the thought. Tell myself that maybe it’s just a mark of our friendship, instead of something damning.
“Sutton?” Davi’s voice brings me back to the present. He’s handing me a martini. “Got you three olives.”
“Thanks,” I say. At the other end of the bar, Gabe and Everett are laughing about something, and as Davi wanders off to talk
to a woman in a backless black dress, I start to feel completely alone. It’s not fair, I know. I told Everett we should act
normal, and this week, at least after the boat, normal for us is a sort of cool friendliness. I could join him and Gabe, or
follow Davi, or track down Laurel, or find someone else to talk to. I could stand here alone and drink gin martinis all night.
But something about Davi’s words are still ringing in my head, the implication behind them, and being the only one without
someone to talk to, and really, the very fact of this party has something sinking in me. Like whatever supports I’ve put in
place to hold this week aloft have eroded away, and all my expectations are finally crashing down. The magic sheen I’ve been
trying to force onto everything is fading, replaced instead by the glossy facade of this room, where I know exactly four people.
Except, there might be five. A head of salt-and-pepper hair catches my eye as it approaches the bar, several pairs of eyes
watching the same way I am as he passes, as his gaze meets mine and he smiles.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Cooper says when he reaches me. He leans one arm on the bar, effectively blotting out my view of
Gabe and Everett. He’s in a black button-down, the sleeves accentuating his biceps. Arms that take work, I think. A body like
that requires a lot of effort.
“Cooper,” I say, lifting my glass in his direction. “I forgot you’d be here.”
Cooper claps a hand to his chest, like I’ve wounded him. “Am I that forgettable?” he asks. “Wasn’t it just yesterday I saw
you?”
It startles me, the fact that it was only a day ago that I had lunch with Cooper. That I came home and Everett lifted me onto the kitchen counter, and everything changed from there. I’m shocked by how much can shift in such a short time.
“Not forgettable,” I tell Cooper, forcing a smile onto my face. I can’t figure out how to fix things right at this moment,
but I can fake my way through a good night. “A pleasant surprise.”
Cooper grins and nods at my drink. “You good?” he asks. I nod, and he orders before asking if I want to find a place to sit
down.
I glance over my shoulder as I follow Cooper toward a wall of low-sitting tables. I want Everett to be looking at me, I realize, and for a minute I can’t sort out why. I wonder what part of me hopes he’ll be watching.
If it’s the ugly, angry part I came into this week with, hoping in some way to make him jealous. If it’s the part that drove
me to his room last night, that hiked my pulse every time we were caught alone today, searching for some confirmation that
there’s more to this than revisiting the past. That this isn’t just another party, and I’m not just another person, and we
matter.
But when I do find him in the crowd, he’s frowning at his phone, no cool gaze for mine to latch on to at all.
I look away, focusing on Cooper’s broad shoulders as I follow him, surprised when I can’t tamp down the sinking feeling in
me like I used to.
I wish I could sort out why I can’t seem to make myself actually want Cooper, especially as yet another person passes by, eyeing him until they realize his attention is undividedly on me and they move on, disappointed.
I wish I could pinpoint what it is, exactly, about this handsome, successful, incredibly decent man that isn’t doing it for me, that seems to be doing it for absolutely everyone else.