thirty-two
This Summer
I don’t know where to look for Everett. I have a sinking feeling he might be on the beach somewhere, impossible to find in
the endless dark, and so I decide to try all other options before heading out there. I call the front desk of the resort in
case he got a car back. Concierge Ralph hasn’t seen him, and actually sounds concerned when I ask. Everett is high-profile
enough for him now.
He isn’t at the bar across the street or sitting on a bench. He isn’t walking on any of the streets I circle, or at the twenty-four-hour
market where we sometimes get late-night provisions. I drive toward the surfboard rental shop and scan the buildings in between,
moving so slowly someone honks at me and I have to pull over, rest my head against my hands on the steering wheel, and take
in a series of deep breaths until the shaky feeling that’s been in me since my conversation with Laurel subsides.
I’m making a U-turn from the surf shop when I spot it: a neon yellow arrow pointed toward the door of a bar we went to a handful of times in our first couple years here.
And even though I think it would be the last place Everett would go, even though I’m starting to think I might have to head out to the beach, I turn across the road and park in the lot, jog up the ramp toward the door.
It’s busy inside, people lined up around the U-shaped bar and others at the two pool tables at one side of the room. Eighties
music drifts down from speakers long past their prime, crackling and popping. I crane my neck to look around, and I’m about
to go, about to give up what I already knew was an unlikely option, when I spot him.
Not all of him, exactly. The top of his head, fingers raked into his hair as he rests his elbows on the bar on the far side,
sitting next to the wall. I push through the crowd to get to him.
“Everett,” I say when I reach him, spreading a hand across his shoulders. “Are you okay? I’ve been looking everywhere for
you.”
When he lifts his head to look at me, it’s like it takes him a minute to recognize me. But when he does, that smile that first
charmed me ten years ago spreads across his face.
“Sutton Hale,” he says, spreading an arm out toward me. I half hug him, his arm settling heavy over my shoulders. “How are
you?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I say, trying to get a good look at his face as he slides his arm off my shoulders again and drops a clumsy hand
to the neck of the beer bottle in front of him, toying with it. “And you might be drunk?”
“Am I?” Everett frowns, picks up the bottle and considers it before he looks at me. “Maybe.”
The lone empty stool in this place is next to him, and before the college-aged girl standing behind me can slide onto it I
grab it and drag it closer, sitting down.
I’ve never seen Everett drunk, can count on one hand the number of times I’ve even seen him tipsy, and something about it
sets off alarm bells in me. I reach out, spreading a hand over his knee.
“Everett, what happened?” I ask him. He’s a little slow, but he looks down at my hand on his leg, beer hovering between his mouth and the bar, still frowning.
“What happened when?” he asks. I tilt my head, give him a second to figure it out. “Oh, at the party?” I nod and he laughs,
takes a long drag of his beer.
“Could I have a water?” I ask the bartender. I take the bottle Everett’s balancing against the lip of the bar and set it out
of his reach, replace it with the cup of water the bartender hands me.
Everett watches it all with a sort of sleepy fascination, a soft smile on his face. He reaches out at one point and untucks
the ends of my hair from under the collar of my jacket, spreads a hand across them so they lie flat against my back, then
rests a heavy forearm on my shoulder again.
“You were right, Sutton Hale,” he says.
“What was I right about?” I ask.
He leans in a little closer. “I’m a nepo baby.”
My brow creases in confusion, recalling past conversations, self-deprecating jokes he made that never really felt that funny.
So you’re in the family business, I said that first summer, when I learned who his father was. “You’ve called yourself a nepo baby before, Everett.”
“Yes,” he says. “But I didn’t know just how much of a nepo baby I am.”
I shake my head. “What do you mean?”
“I got a call a few hours ago. You know that stupid movie I made a couple years ago?” Everett asks. All the edges of his words
are rounded, ineffective. “The one with the kids. The one Laurel made us all see this week.”
“Cooney isn’t stupid, Everett,” I say. “You love that movie. Everyone loves that movie.”
“Well, it turns out,” he says, “that my father—you know my father?”
“Yes, I know your father,” I say, with less disdain than I’m currently feeling.
“My father, Ben Astor, America’s favorite actor, is friends with the head of a certain studio that might have given me funding for a
certain stupid movie that launched my whole stupid career.”
I pause, let the words settle. I can’t think of a worse thing for Everett to find out, and yet, I know he knows the sway his
father has. Know he’s aware that no matter how far he tries to run from him, there are people that just know he’s Ben Astor’s kid, and even if he hates it, he can’t escape it. There was always a chance his father might do something
like this. But even so, I can’t imagine what it must feel like.
“Everett,” I say. “All that means is that Cooney, which is a great movie, got—”
“That’s not even the worst part,” he interrupts, leaning in even closer.
“It’s not?”
He shakes his head. “My dad wants me to repay the favor,” he says. He leans in so his lips are against my ear, hot and heavy.
“He’s going to be the lead in my next movie.”
I lean away from him as he does too, stretching toward where I set his beer. He lifts it in a cheers toward me before draining
the rest of it, setting it back down on the bar top.
“Can you say no?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Casting loves the decision. Think he’s perfect for the role. Which—” he lifts a hand toward the bartender
again “—he probably is.”
“No he’s not,” I say.
“You don’t even know what the movie is about,” Everett says, which stings for some reason.
“I know you’re reading all those books about physics,” I say. “I know people are already thinking it will be a contender during
award season because it’s your next movie.” I read it somewhere this spring, that whatever the follow-up to Cooney would be, everyone was expecting it to be big.
Everett looks confused, then surprised, then away from me completely when the bartender sets another beer and a shot of whiskey
in front of him. He hands her a fifty and tells her to keep the change.
“Everett, slow down,” I say as he tosses back the shot. He winces, chases it with his beer before looking back at me.
“Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing people drink about?”
“People, maybe,” I say. “You don’t.”
Everett stands up, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair and slinging it over his shoulder. “I don’t know, Sutton,”
he says. “Remember what you said?”
“When?” I ask, twisting on my stool to look at him.
“You said you can’t see any reason to trust me.” The words run cold through me, twisting deep into my stomach.
“Everett, I didn’t mean that,” I say softly.
“No, I think it’s probably a good thing. Turns out, I can’t even trust myself.”
I watch as he slaps far too much cash on the bar, even though he’s already paid, and starts through the crowd, a little unsteady
on his feet as he goes. I can feel it, that pot boiling over, everything we’ve avoided talking about this week starting to
burn. I was stupid to think we could ever ignore it, could just go back to some time before it happened. The moment we fell
apart will continue to define us until we address it.
I jump off my stool, swinging the strap of my purse over my head just as he disappears out the door.
By the time I weave my way through the crowd and outside, he’s already halfway down the beach, walking toward the ocean like he might disappear into it.
I take my heels off and run to catch up with him.
“Everett!” I call once I’m in earshot, but he doesn’t turn around. I finally reach him and put a hand on his shoulder. It
tenses beneath my palm. “I didn’t mean that, Everett. I said it because—”
“I know why you said it,” Everett says, turning back to me. He doesn’t look angry. He looks a little lost, hopeless, and it’s
so much worse than mad. “Don’t you think I know? We were so close to having it, Sutton. But of course it would never work.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means we’re the same. We both love being in control, but it’s all an illusion. It’s why neither of us can be in a successful
relationship. We’re summer people, remember?”
“Please stop quoting me,” I say, a desperate tinge to my voice. “I don’t believe that anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because of this week,” I say. “Because of yesterday.”
“We’ve had five years of not talking about this,” Everett says, that same sad, defeated expression on his face as he looks
down at me. “One week can’t change that.”
“Maybe it can,” I say. “Maybe we were just young and stupid, and maybe now that I know how I feel, we—” I break off. Everett
is so close to me, chest almost bumping mine.
“What?” he asks softly.
“Nothing,” I say. There are enormous things to admit to between us, things to apologize for, and I can’t do it on a cold,
dark beach. It has to matter. “I don’t want to have this conversation while one of us is drunk.”
Of everything that’s happened tonight, I don’t expect that to be the thing that gets to him, that makes him drop whatever facade it is he’s been clinging onto, but at this, he falters back a step.
“Fuck,” he says. I watch as he drags a hand down his face, as he looks at the beer he’s still clutching.
“I am drunk, aren’t I.” He says it like he never has been, like he’s just realizing it now. This is why my head is spinning.
“I’m afraid so,” I say.