thirty-one
Sixth Summer
Laurel and Stephen’s Wedding
I spent most of the year between our last summer together and Laurel’s wedding trying to mend things. By the time the day
of her actual wedding rolled around, we were back on steadier footing, but I think it was due largely in part to the fact
that she didn’t want any drama surrounding the weekend, and less to do with the fact that she’d totally forgiven me. I could
see the way the crack that I’d put in our relationship spidered out. Case in point, it was always the plan that I would be
Laurel’s maid of honor, but at the last minute, she’d decided she wouldn’t have bridesmaids at all, revoking her bridal party
invitations to all of us. I told myself it wasn’t about me, even as she started to ask me to help her again, assigned me tasks
that I would have been doing had I still been her maid of honor. It wasn’t about what I’d done.
Davi and Gabe were quick to come around. They knew Everett and I were sorry, and so we were fine. But I worried about our
foundation, something I had thought was unshakable. Our group chat had gone quieter than ever. There would be no trip to Poppy
Cottage this year. Even if we were fine on the surface, there was permanent damage below.
I spent weeks hunting down the best revenge dress I could find for Laurel’s rehearsal dinner, and hated that all Everett had to do was put on a suit tailored to him to make a point when he walked in.
My anger at him had slowly settled into a simmer, always there, but something I could move to the back burner. I dumped every
thought I had about him into that pot, the good and the bad. The idea of Everett next to me at the farmers market as I wandered
the stalls, a head of tousled golden-brown hair on a patron at the restaurant and the sharp ache that followed, the fire that
leapt up in me when Laurel posted a photo to her story that included a hand I’d recognize anywhere wrapped around a beer glass—all
of it went in, stewed together until I couldn’t sort the pieces out from one another.
So by the time I saw Everett arrive at the restaurant in Mendocino where Laurel and Stephen were holding their rehearsal dinner,
the impact of him was already muddied. I was angry, I knew, but mostly it felt like something itchy I was forced to wear.
I wanted nothing but to shake his presence off, couldn’t deal with the fact that the whole argument hadn’t just made him and
our entire history disappear, that he was here now, a part of this, no matter how I felt about it.
He arrived with Gabe and Mia, and I watched as Laurel hurried over to them, throwing her arms around all of them in a group
hug.
“Careful,” Davi said from his seat next to me. We’d been here since this afternoon, had helped set up, and hadn’t received
that kind of greeting from Laurel. He plucked the olive out of his empty martini glass. “Better school your face into something
more pleasant.”
I stared at where Laurel was beaming up at Everett, felt like a feral creature had just awakened in my stomach. “She certainly forgave him quickly,” I muttered so only Davi could hear me.
“Yeah, well, Everett isn’t her best friend,” Davi said. My gaze snapped to his, lips parting. He shrugged. “We’re all best
friends, I know. But you two are different. I don’t think Laurel even knew you had that kind of lie in you. We all just thought
you and Everett liked flirting with each other.”
It stung, sharp and shocking, but I knew he was right. He’d confirmed, twice now, that everyone else was at least aware of
whatever sparked between Everett and me, a fact that embarrassed me to no end. I pictured myself every summer for the last
five years, thinking I was treating him like anyone else, when I must have looked ridiculous, bantering with this guy who
I could never have. I understood what Davi meant too. That I was Laurel’s best friend, so the hurt went deeper. But still,
I couldn’t shake the jealousy I felt over the way she’d forgiven Everett and might never forgive me. I worried that if it
went on too long, our positions would be flipped, and he would be the best friend, while I was the one who didn’t have to
rise to any higher expectations, an afterthought.
I vowed to myself, at that table, to not let that happen. I would prove myself to Laurel until she trusted me again, the way
she used to.
The evening passed quickly after that. I said a terse hello to Everett and ignored him the rest of the night, not even glancing
his way except for the few moments I could feel Laurel eyeing me like she was checking in on my behavior, and I would force
myself to look at him when he talked, smile and nod until I knew she’d looked away.
Laurel and Stephen’s wedding day dawned perfect and sunny, not a single cloud in the sky.
I felt the sharp reminders of what this day was supposed to be everywhere, though.
When I spent the morning on a hike with Gabe and Davi instead of with Laurel, or all of us together.
When I showed up to Laurel’s room just an hour before the wedding and she was already in her dress.
When I watched from the fifth row instead of standing beside her, as they were married with the ocean sweeping out behind them.
It was a perfect wedding, though, and even if I didn’t participate, I could see the things Laurel had let me help her with
everywhere, in the flowers and the music and the lighting and the favors, tiny details we’d pored over on the phone and on
my trips to LA. Proof, I thought, that we weren’t entirely broken.
It wasn’t until the end of the night that he found me. I thought I’d almost made it through unscathed, as the dancing wound
down and Laurel threw her bouquet and the bar started to close up. I stood next to a low stone wall on an overlook near the
tent where things were wrapping up, just outside the golden glow of the party, and had been looking out at the dark ocean,
the sound of the waves crashing in drowning out any approaching footsteps.
“Sutton.” His voice sent a familiar flutter through my stomach, one that now had my shoulders rising up toward my ears, one
I didn’t want to feel. I turned my head to look at him, unsmiling. The sleeves of his white button-down were rolled up, jacket
abandoned somewhere, his hands in his pockets. I’d avoided looking at him all night, and still he’d been there. Two seats
down from me at the wedding, at our table at dinner, spinning Laurel’s gleeful grandmother on the dance floor. Everett was
a point of light wherever he went, the most popular person in the room, and I couldn’t deny it any more than I could pretend it wasn’t what had drawn me to him in the first place. Beautiful, golden
boy who would only break your heart.
I looked back out at the dark horizon, not saying anything to him.
He waited a minute, quiet next to me until he said, “We don’t have to talk. But—”
“Good, then,” I cut in, casting him a sideways glance. “I don’t want to talk.”
Everett’s mouth closed, his brow furrowing the smallest bit. “Okay,” he finally said. He stood for a moment longer before
turning, starting back toward the tent.
Something lodged in my throat. Words or an ache, I couldn’t tell, but before he was out of earshot I turned, calling after
him. He looked back at me, and the small glimmer of hope on his face plunged straight into my chest, pinning me in place for
a moment until I brushed it into that pot that simmered on the back burner of my brain. “There was a better way to do it,”
I said. “You didn’t have to trick me.”
He glanced down at the ground, shook his head before he looked back up at me. “I didn’t do what you think I did, Sutton,”
he said. “I wasn’t paying attention to anything but you that day.” Something about that, the almost angry way he said it,
punched at the tender spot near my sternum, but I didn’t let myself hang on to it for long.
“I just don’t see why I should trust you,” I said, not because I wanted to be cruel. Because it was a question I’d been turning
over when I did let myself pull him to the forefront of my mind. If I’d made a huge mistake this whole time, misjudged him
entirely.
Everett’s eyes narrowed at this. “You don’t see any reason to trust me?” he asked. “After everything?”
I thought about what he was referring to.
Our whole history. Secrets shared and secrets kept and something between us that felt frighteningly important.
But I could so easily reduce it to just two days every summer.
Two days together, without any outside context, and it became simple to say I didn’t know him.
“I hurt the most important people in my life because of something that should have never happened,” I said. It was different
than what I’d said before, that it was his fault. I still blamed him, but my part in all of it had crept up more recently,
reminding me that Everett wasn’t alone in this. “I can’t remove you from that.”
“What happened wasn’t just about you,” Everett said. “You think I cared so little about everyone else that I just wanted to
make you look bad? They’re my friends too.”
“But they heard you say it.”
“Oh my god,” Everett said, rubbing an exasperated hand down his face. “So you wouldn’t be so mad at me right now if you’d been the one they overheard?”
“I wouldn’t have done that on purpose—”
“I didn’t do what you think I did,” Everett cut in angrily. “Whether or not you want to admit it, Sutton, we created this
problem together.”
He stared at me, waiting for a response, but I could clearly see us here, going in circles, for the rest of the night. So
I crossed my arms over my chest and shrugged.
Everett’s expression morphed into one of disbelief for a second before his shoulders fell. I wanted him to say something else. What, I didn’t know, because nothing could fix this. That same ugly part of me that would
shut down any attempt he made to remedy things was still alive and well.
“All the best to you, then, Sutton,” he said after a long minute of silence.
And he left.
That should have been it. I should have let him walk away and figured out how to forgive him, in my own way.
And I might have, on some level, for the next four years.
Four years without a week in a house with him helped to dull what had happened.
But every time I thought I’d moved on, there he was, at some gathering that, if I weren’t still so obsessed with Everett Bridges on some level, should have been nothing.
Instead, it was arguments that pulled us all further apart, tiny jabs that proved that no matter how much time passed between us, the wound was deep enough that we both still felt it.
And as soon as Laurel’s text came in, I need you, as soon as the concept of the trip being re-created was even born, it all came rushing back to me again. I’d let things
sit without proper attention for so long that the emotional snarl in me that revolved around Everett had grown to behemoth
proportions, something that overwhelmed me the closer our arrival date at Wild Horse Villa loomed. And it seemed like it might
have been the same for Everett. We had both silently stewed in our hurt for so long, reminded of it just frequently enough
to feel it anew, that as soon as we saw each other we were right back in that living room saying ugly things, never having
faced what happened at all.