twenty-eight
Fifth Summer
I had three weeks to prepare for a trip my brain had previously been careening toward in anticipation, and yet, by the time
Davi parked the car in front of the cottage, I still didn’t feel prepared.
Everett and I had agreed to wait until the end of the trip to tell everyone about us, but that felt like its own kind of torture.
We’d spent every night on the phone since he’d been in San Francisco, and I swore even my nail beds missed him. Something
had broken open in me when he’d left my apartment the weekend he came to visit me, and out had spilled years of repressed
longing, tangling with the goopy mess that came with finally giving in to this. Suddenly I was someone I never thought I would
be, dragging Everett by the hand back to my doorway every time he started to leave, face splitting in two every time it was
his name I saw on my phone screen, almost falling asleep at the prep station at work because neither of us wanted to hang
up the night before.
Laurel and Everett both had work to wrap up that day, so they were heading down in their separate cars that evening. Davi,
Gabe, and I stopped at the grocery store on the way into town, and after unloading our things and stocking the fridge, Davi
and I headed to the beach and left Gabe inside to call Mia.
“Think you’ll ever want to talk to someone like that?” Davi asked me as we spread our towels on the sand.
“Hmm?” I said, twisting the cap off my water bottle and taking a long drink, pretending like I hadn’t heard him.
Yes, I wanted to say. Yes, there’s someone I want to talk to every day, all of a sudden, and I don’t know what to do with myself now that it’s happened.
I’m the person you and I used to make fun of.
Davi dropped onto his towel and stretched his legs out in front of him. The sun glinted off the water in front of us. It had
been a hot May, and it seemed like the earth had trapped some of that, holding on to it for our visit here. He glanced back
at the house. “I’m just happy Gabe’s happy. Remember our first summer here?”
Every comment felt like some jab designed to get the truth out of me. I knew it wasn’t about me, but the secret had clawed its way to the surface and almost scratched its way out, some monstrous thing I was now desperate
to get off my chest.
“Yeah,” I said, sitting on my towel next to Davi. I pivoted my mind away from what I wasn’t saying, reminded myself that no
one knew anything. “I’m still so mad at Zoey.”
Davi shot me a look then, one I couldn’t quite read.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said, then, when I wouldn’t stop staring at him, “just that Gabe is really happy now. He wouldn’t have even
met Mia if things hadn’t fallen apart with Zoey, you know?”
“I know,” I said. “But what she did is still messed up.”
“Sure.” Davi shrugged. “I’m not saying you have to be best friends with the girl again. But we all mess up. If Gabe has moved
on from it, isn’t it time we do too?”
His words rolled through me, knocking against years’ worth of grudges I’d staunchly set up in my lifetime.
The girl sophomore year of high school who had made up a rumor that I’d been internet stalking my homecoming date for months, because she wanted to go with him.
The guy Laurel briefly dated junior year of college who forgot her birthday.
The professor who told Davi he wasn’t cut out for law school.
The big one, of course; my parents. But Zoey too.
Her betrayal loomed larger to me than so many others, for some reason, and I’d assumed it did for all of us.
The idea of the others moving on from it rattled against my foundations, unsteadied me.
But then, Gabe’s laugh trickled down to us as he stepped out onto the back deck. I twisted to look at him, at the way he smiled
as he talked to Mia, and felt something gentle brush against my ribs. Gabe wasn’t worrying about Zoey anymore. He was happy.
He was in love.
Unbidden, Everett’s face flashed into my head, jerking my gaze back toward the water. Something glimmered at the edges of
my mind, an idea brought on by Davi’s words. Maybe, if everyone had moved on from Zoey, what Everett and I had done wasn’t
such a betrayal. Maybe things would be okay.
It was a big maybe, though. I thought about what I would do if I learned one of them had been lying for so long, what kind
of wall I’d erect between myself and all the hurt it caused. You didn’t treat people you loved like that. You didn’t put others
before them. It was what I’d done since I’d met Everett. I’d kept some piece of him to myself, and I’d enjoyed it.
Davi picked up his book and opened it before setting it on his face, tucking his hands behind his head. “Wake me if a tidal
wave comes,” he said, voice muffled.
“Sure,” I said, distracted.
By the time evening rolled around, I’d planted myself in the kitchen, the only place I could think to go where I wouldn’t confess everything to Davi and Gabe or combust from waiting to see Everett.
Three weeks, I reminded myself as I stabbed skewers through zucchini and mushrooms and peppers, perhaps a little too forcefully.
It’s only been three weeks. I wasn’t some kid with a crush.
My brain couldn’t possibly be rewired like this in such a short time. And yet, here I was,
almost taking out my thumb when tires sounded in the driveway and I missed the slice of red pepper I was holding.
I set the kebab down on the tray of completed ones, wiping my palms on the tea towel hanging from the oven handle before trying
to casually follow Gabe and Davi out the front door where Laurel was pulling in behind Everett, the two of them having driven
down in tandem.
She was the first out of her car, the key barely out of the ignition before she hurled herself across the driveway at us,
shoving herself into the middle of the circle so we could all hug her at once. “Everett!” she shouted over her shoulder when
he hadn’t joined us in the split millisecond it had taken her to climb out of her car. “You’re missing something!”
I watched over her head as Everett swung out of the Bronco, the orange light of sunset slanting across his face as his eyes
cut straight to mine, my breath immediately hitching when he smiled.
“Hurry up,” Laurel whined. Everett wrapped his arms around Davi’s and Gabe’s shoulders, never breaking my gaze. Not even the chant
Laurel started, something like beach week, beach week, could force my eyes away from his as we all huddled together in the driveway. His fingers found the back of my hand, my wrist,
sending sparks shooting their way up my arm and straight to my brain.
Three weeks, I heard in my head, but only vaguely, as Everett’s eyes sparkled in my direction. Maybe it was just three weeks. But a lot could happen in less time than that.
It was a perfect four days. Sun-warmed sand, sleeping with the windows thrown wide, drinks on the beach, dinners on the back
deck, salty hair, and talking like we all used to, and laughing until we couldn’t breathe. It all lasted four wonderful days
until the clouds went gray and the kind of weather that never fully breaks into a storm, just hangs heavy above you, descended.
“Okay,” Laurel said, dropping down next to me on the couch where I had my laptop open in front of me, a spreadsheet on the
screen. The others were in town, on a mission to find the things we needed for the seafood feast we were making that night.
“It’s time to talk wedding.”
Laurel met Stephen roughly two weeks after breaking up with Winona. It wasn’t surprising—that was her usual timeline—but what
did surprise us was their engagement approximately ten months later. Laurel, it seemed, had finally found the person she had
been so ardently searching for since we’d met. I was her maid of honor, like we’d always planned, and she was eager to nail
down the specifics.
“The place in Mendocino is free next June,” I said, scrolling to the venues column on the spreadsheet.
“My number one?”
“Your number one,” I said. “I called last week and they have you and Stephen penciled in. You’ll need to put down a deposit
by the end of the month if you want to lock it down.”
“I love you!” Laurel crowed, flinging her arms around my neck. “What else have you planned for me?”
I ran her through the list. Potential vendors and her top two bands and weekends we could set aside for me to come to LA, help with whatever she needed.
By the time we got to the florist she’d been eyeing since before she met Stephen, she sat up, squeezing my hand and leaning over to lower my laptop screen.
When I looked over at her, her eyes were watery. “What’s wrong?” I asked, worry flickering through me. “Do you not like the
catering options for the rehearsal dinner? Because I’ll call the sashimi guy again—”
“No, it’s not the sashimi,” Laurel said, almost laughing. “It’s just that I love you a lot.”
“I love you too,” I said. I pushed my laptop aside, turned fully to face her. “That’s why we’re going to make this the best
wedding ever.”
“I know it will be,” she said. “But I don’t just mean the wedding. I mean—” She sniffed, glancing quicky away before looking
at me again. “I mean everything, Sutton. I don’t think anyone has ever made me feel more cared for than you do. I mean, you’re
basically working a second job as my wedding planner. You always do so much to make this week happen.” She gestured around
the cottage. “You love all of us so well.”
It should have been amazing to hear. It should have finally contradicted something I’d secretly worried about for years, that
it was all too much, that nobody really wanted to be on this trip as badly as I did, that I was overbearing. But instead,
all that came to my mind was Everett. The lie we were keeping, to be sure, and the guilt of keeping it, but the fact that
he made me feel that way. Cared for. Not that Laurel didn’t, of course she did. But there was this other person, someone I felt so much for, that understood
me. That helped me to put down the things I was carrying every time we were together. And he was the one person it would hurt
Laurel to learn I wanted to be with. It could never be simple between us.
“Promise me,” Laurel said, dragging my attention back to her. She took my hand in both of hers, staring seriously at me. “Promise me that we’ll never let anything come between us.”
Every hope I’d had for our last day here, every confidence I’d felt that it would be okay once Everett and I came clean, that
our friends would be happy for us, wilted.
“What would come between us?” I asked, voice a little hoarse.
She shrugged. I was a horrible person. I knew exactly what would come between us, and I was just letting her carry on. “I
don’t know. Sometimes I just think about Zoey, and how she was our friend too. I feel a little guilty about what happened
there.” I didn’t say anything, could tell there was more she needed to get off her chest. “But then I think about you, and
how loyal you are, and how you would never do something like she did. You would talk to all of us first if something was going
on that could mess up what we all have. I think that you’d put us before anything else. And we’re all just so lucky to have
that.”
I didn’t think I’d felt such an acute sense of guilt before, if it had ever sliced so deeply, turned me inside out and shoved
all the terrible things I’d done into my face. Laurel was right—I prided myself on putting our group above all else, but that
wasn’t what I’d been doing at all, not for years now. I’d chosen someone else, someone new, over them time and time again.
I’d thought it was innocent. But I was awful, a liar, disloyal to the people I considered my family.
“Do you promise?” she asked, giving my hands a little jostle.
“What?”
“Promise that nothing will ever come between us.” Laurel let out a small laugh, almost rolling her eyes. “Not that you ever
would.”
All I could see was Everett. I could feel the perimeters of my heart curling inward, protective, blotting out some truth I’d only just started to feel comfortable admitting to myself.
How I felt about him. The things I wanted with him.
Some future that now felt like dandelion seeds on the wind. I was never meant to keep it.
“Of course,” I finally said, just as the front door opened and the others came in, Davi chattering on about some work thing
or other. Laurel squeezed my hand one final time, the period on our promise.
“Did they have the good scallops?” she asked, pushing herself up from the couch and walking over to peek into the bags they’d
brought in, as if something hadn’t just ended, as if life was just supposed to carry on.
The conversation dulled around me as they carried things into the kitchen, as I turned my head and caught Everett’s eye when
he came in last, shutting the door behind him. He held up a carton of the peaches I’d told him to find if he could, and I
tried to smile at him, but it was strained. Earlier this morning, he’d grabbed my hand and pulled me back into the house when
the others raced out onto the beach to catch a quick five minutes of sunlight breaking through the cloud cover. We’d tucked
ourselves against the wall, kissing and roaming our hands over each other’s bodies until I almost shouted to the others that
we had something to tell them, that there was a secret I couldn’t keep a minute longer.
But keeping what had happened between us secret mattered more than ever now. What was most important had suddenly crystalized.
There was only this group, and the new promise I’d just made to Laurel, and the fact that I wouldn’t allow my heart to break;
not over someone who was never really mine.