twenty-nine
Fifth Summer
That first summer I’d searched for a private moment with Everett and failed, but on that last day, after I forced myself to
be fine during dinner and almost no sleep afterward, it was almost too easy. Gabe walked up to the main hotel while he called
Mia, the sun finally out again that morning. Laurel and Davi went on a mission to get wood for our bonfire that night, the
tradition we always ended the trip with. I’d anticipated some excuse to get him out of the house so we could talk, so I could
end this before it went any further, but I found myself alone with Everett far too soon.
He was standing near the couch, frowning at his phone when I came out of the room I shared with Laurel, and he looked up immediately,
face clearing.
“Is it work?” I asked, gesturing to where he tucked his phone into his pocket. “You should finish it.”
“It can wait,” he said, and I wished he hadn’t. I wished he would delay this longer. Give us more time, but it was the same
as my conversation with Laurel yesterday: I knew something that he didn’t, so it was unfair of me to want more.
“What’s up?” he asked, and for a brief second I wondered if I was wrong. If he could sense something was off. He hadn’t closed the space between us, hadn’t pulled me into his arms like he usually would.
I considered him before I said anything. We wouldn’t be the same after this, I realized. There wouldn’t be stolen days or
the hope of them. The secret we’d shared would be in the past, buried, and with it, whatever thread tied us together. But
the only way to fix this was to end it here, before anyone else knew, before it could hurt anyone beyond the two of us.
“I don’t think we should tell everyone,” I said, finally. “About us.”
Everett was quiet. “Now?” he asked after a long minute. “Or ever?”
I swallowed, my chest aching. “Ever.”
His lips just parted, and it wasn’t until that moment that I realized there was no better outcome here. The idea of hurting
Everett hit me as hard as hurting everyone else, but for some reason, I could convince myself we mattered less. There would
be other people, had been other people. What I felt for Everett wasn’t unique. It couldn’t be.
But I saw something in his eyes, just a brief flash, that had a deeply specific, personal corner of my heart fracturing because
I knew it so well. It was the thing Laurel always told me I wasn’t addressing: how what my parents had done had shaped me.
And it was what Everett’s father had done to him. It was being left behind, having someone choose something else over you
time and time again, feeling safe and having the rug ripped out from under you. I was doing it to him now.
I knew Everett too, though, and just as predicted, the hurt was only legible on his face for a second. He brushed it away
with a practiced, level expression. “Okay,” he said, but then, “Can I ask why?”
It surprised me—we were so much the same that I’d assumed he’d want to get it over with quickly, not spend too much time picking over the wreckage. “Because of everyone else,” I said, shaking my head. “Because we would hurt so many people. It’s better if it just dies here.”
“Right.” Everett’s eyes glanced across the ground at my feet before he looked at me again, assessing. Something in the way
he watched me raked against my skin, like he was seeing too much. “It’s not just that, though, is it?”
“What?” I asked, irritation starting to spark in me. Just let it go, I wanted to say to him. Don’t make this harder.
“I don’t think this is because of hurting everyone else,” Everett said, not unkindly. “I think it’s because it could hurt
you.”
My defenses sprang fully to life then, a familiar shuttering of anything else I might be feeling. It was how I always dealt
with things: keeping them in strict order, compartmentalizing. But I’d let Everett spill over into so many areas of my life
in the last few years, without even realizing it. Something about it made me angry, that I couldn’t shut him out so easily.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Come on, Sutton,” he said. “You hate the idea of not being in control. A relationship comes with some measure of that. There’s
a chance we both get hurt here, and you might not have a say in that.”
“We aren’t even a couple, Everett,” I snapped, because what he said dug too deep, hit a dead center bull’s-eye in my chest.
“Of course,” he said. “Neither of us do relationships.”
It was too close to what Laurel had said on the boat last summer. It seemed almost like some sort of challenge—one I didn’t
want to back down from.
“There’s nothing here to hurt us,” I said. “But there’s a lot to hurt everyone else. The way we’ve been lying.”
“Nothing,” Everett repeated then. “There’s nothing here that could hurt you?” When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “The last five years meant nothing to you.”
For a brief, bright moment, my anger faltered, and I could almost feel his hand on my waist as he said it, like he’d closed
the space between us and this was all just some stupid joke, some scene we were rehearsing in case anyone else got word of
us. We’d kiss, and it would all be fine.
But he hadn’t closed the distance between us. We were still two islands. “Not nothing,” I said. Everett was right about one
thing, no matter how little I wanted to admit it, I wished I could control this, but he was a variable I’d never expected.
I shrugged a shoulder, said as casually as I could muster, “They were fun.”
“Fun,” Everett said. “Five years of lying to everyone, of sleeping together, of breaking this pact you care so much about—that
was fun for you?”
I’d been too focused on Everett to hear the lock of the door turn behind me, but the sound of the door banging open had me
jumping, turning to see three of the most important faces in the world to me ranging from shock (Gabe), to something like
humor (Davi), and finally, to anger, pure and unfiltered, on Laurel’s perfectly sun-kissed face.
“You’re joking,” she said. I choked, no sound coming out of me. “You two are sleeping together?”
“Were,” Everett clarified behind me, too fast, and I whirled, expecting to find some smug expression on his face but he just
shrugged, like What else am I supposed to say?
I wanted to ask when they got there, know how much they heard, but I knew none of that mattered. What mattered was that Everett
and I had broken the only real promise we’d ever made, the one we’d all sworn on in this very room, and lied about it.
“I’m so sorry,” I said quickly, turning back to face them.
“You’re unbelievable,” Laurel said, stomping past us into the kitchen, where she set down the bag she was carrying with a
loud clink.
“Laurel,” Davi said. “Come on. We’ve talked about how much they flirt with each other.”
“Don’t come on me,” Laurel spat at him, which had Davi stepping back, holding up his hands, and the reality that they’d discussed this descended
on me. She looked at Everett and me, still standing a good few feet apart. I’d lost my one ally. “You’ve been sleeping together
for five years?”
That, at least, cleared up how much she’d heard.
“When did you even find the time that first summer?” she asked. I winced before I could stop myself.
“We met at a party,” Everett said, stepping in at least for this.
Laurel’s gaze pivoted to him. “A party?”
“It was before graduation,” I said. “We—” I broke off, unsure of how to say it.
“We hooked up,” Everett said. “It was nothing.”
His voice was flat, emotionless as he said it, and that was it. Whatever had started in San Francisco was gone. Truthfully,
whatever had started five years ago was gone. It confirmed what I’d always been nervous about. Even through our time together,
that one night hadn’t been some magical thing. The connection between us was the same as it was between anyone else. Predictable.
Something that could be easily ended. No harm done. But I felt something close to that in that moment, hurt pricking up like
I’d never felt before.
“Hold on,” Laurel said. “You two knew each other?” Our silence seemed to be the tacit confirmation she needed, because she
laughed once, a bark of a sound. “Round of applause, really. I mean, you had me fooled.”
“Laurel, it was for two seconds,” I said. “It didn’t matter.”
“Two seconds?” Davi said from where he and Gabe still stood in the doorway, mostly to Everett. “That’s pretty short, man.”
“Davi, not now,” I said, shooting him a pleading look that made him go silent again. “It was one night,” I said to Laurel.
“He was just another guy.” I hoped it sunk in for Everett, that I could play this game too. If it meant nothing to him, I
would convince myself it was true.
“Except he’s not just another guy,” Laurel said, crossing an arm over her middle. “He’s Everett. He is very much a very important guy to everyone in this room. And you didn’t think you should tell us, at any point? Maybe, I don’t know, when we specifically
asked about it when we made the pact?”
I hated the word pact. Hated that it made us sound like a bunch of Boy Scouts sitting around a campfire. And yet it loomed so large in my life,
held so much weight that it felt almost sacred, this promise we’d made to each other at such a pivotal point in our lives,
when we were all heading our separate ways.
It was Gabe who broke the silence, finally, after Everett and I had stood there for a solid minute, both of us apparently
unable to offer up any sort of explanation or apology.
“You should have told us,” he said, almost surprising me. I’d been so wrong, that they wouldn’t care, that because they’d
forgiven Zoey they would forgive this. And of course that was the case. What Zoey had done was in the past, faded for everyone
but me, the person who couldn’t ever seem to let anything go, but this was now. I touted this group as unbreakable, but here
I’d been for years, so casually destroying it. “We deserved to know.”
“You’re right,” Everett said, beating me to it. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you.”
“I’m sorry too,” I said.
“Are you two together now?” Gabe asked, glancing between us.
“No,” Everett and I said at the same time, voices laced with the same level of vitriol. Gabe raised an eyebrow.
“There is no world in which Everett Bridges and I would ever be a couple,” I said, not bothering to glance at Everett for
his reaction.
“But there’s a world where you might have been, isn’t there?” Laurel said. I looked at her. “You’re still lying to us.”
“We—” I started, feeling like something was strangling around my throat. I wanted the hard, ugly parts of this to be over.
“We discussed it,” I finally said. “But it would never work.”
Laurel crossed both her arms at this. “Did you think at all about what would happen if you two broke up? What that would mean
for all of us?”
“Of course we did,” I said. “That’s why we’re not—” I broke off, her next possible words bouncing to the front of our brain.
Oh, so it’s our fault. An anticipated accusation that I couldn’t prove she’d say, but could see the possibility of written on her face.
I watched as Laurel took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a minute. I hated being on the outside of it, being the reason
for it. I wanted to be the solution. But I stood still until she looked at all of us again, expression cool.
“Listen,” she said. “There’s still plenty of daylight left. I don’t really want to be here anymore.”
“Laurel,” I said, but she shot me a look that told me I was the last person she wanted to hear from. Our conversation from
yesterday shattered around me, along with all my efforts to get this thing with Everett over with quietly, quickly, so there
would be no collateral damage. I’d ended up hurting everyone.
“I don’t care what anyone else does, but as far as I’m concerned, this trip is over.”
“Laurel,” Gabe said as she shoved her way toward our room. “Come on. This doesn’t have to be such a huge deal.”
“No, I think it’s an enormous deal,” she said, whirling furiously on Gabe. “I think that two of our best friends thought it
was fine to lie to us for years, and I’m not going to stick around to find out what else they’re hiding. I think we’re done here.”
She slammed the door to the bedroom, rattling the framed picture that hung on the wall next to it.
Davi and Gabe looked at where Everett and I still stood, both of us frozen. “She’ll get over it,” Davi said. “She always does.
Just give her some time.”
I nodded, but I didn’t totally believe him. Laurel needed time when she was upset about other things: when Davi ate the last
of her cheese from the fridge, when she went through a breakup, when she was stressed out. But she’d never needed time because
of something I’d done. Something like this.
“We’ll pack, I guess,” Gabe said. “Are you good to leave tonight?”
“Mmm-hmm,” I mumbled softly, arms crossed protectively in front of me.
They headed upstairs, leaving me alone with Everett in the living room.
“Davi’s right,” Everett said after a minute. “We can try to talk to her again in a couple of days.”
My gaze jerked up to him then, and I didn’t care that everyone was in earshot, that we were standing in a tiny house with
absolutely no privacy, where I’d thought it would be a good idea to have what needed to be a private conversation with him
in the first place.
“There is no we,” I snapped.
Everett, who had returned to his usual self, the brief fight in him from earlier gone, looked surprised. “Sutton,” he said. “Let’s not—”
“No,” I cut in, a shimmering kind of rage settling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t care that Everett was looking at me
like he used to, that there was something like hope behind his eyes that we could move past this. Something had occurred to
me as Laurel stormed into her room about Everett’s position during our argument, his view of the front door. “Did you know
they were coming?”
Everett’s eyebrows slanted together. “What?”
“When you said everything out loud earlier. When you summarized our whole pointless relationship, did you know they were at
the door?”
“Of course not,” Everett said, disbelief flashing across his face. “Sutton, I wouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. I could hear Gabe’s and Davi’s movements still above us, our voices carrying up to them. “All
I know is that the three most important relationships in my life are ruined, and it’s because of you.”
I could see my words slam into him, hitting home. Three relationships, and one person at fault. The person I never should
have welcomed into my life the way I did. Maybe Laurel was right. Maybe I didn’t give anyone a second chance. But in that
moment, I was fine with it. I owned every problem she and Everett said I had, decided to wear them like a badge of honor.
Everett was nodding. “Pretty sure we did the ruining together, Sutton,” he said.
I didn’t answer him. I turned on my heel and marched out the front door, slamming it shut behind me.
We never stayed at Poppy Cottage again.