“I’m having a good week,” I told him. I motioned at the world around us. “Are you having a good time?”
“You didn’t tell me you had such great friends,” he said, voice low.
The top was on the Bronco, but the windows were down, and Laurel, Davi, and Gabe were singing loudly enough that they wouldn’t have heard Everett even if he’d shouted. Still, it had me seizing up, shifting in my seat.
“They’re the most important thing in the world to me,” I said. I met Everett’s eyes when he glanced at me, almost in a challenge.
“It seems like you all take care of each other.”
“We do,” I said. “We’re family.”
He navigated us around a sharp curve before he spoke again. “Do you want to tell me about Zoey?” he asked.
The sting the question sent through me surprised me. “She betrayed Gabe,” I said. “She’s not one of us anymore.”
Everett glanced sideways at me, back at the road. “She’s got to be missing this,” he said.
“She caused the breakup,” I said, defensiveness edging my voice. “She broke Gabe’s heart.”
“I’m not saying she’s in the right,” Everett said. “Just that it would be hard to lose this.”
“Then don’t screw people over,” I said.
Everett did that huff of a laugh again: just an exhale, really, through his nose, accompanied by a barely there smile, like he knew something I didn’t. I would have found it annoying if it didn’t have me leaning in, curious, every goddamn time.
“You’re not big on chances, are you?” he asked.
I crossed my arms over my chest as we continued to climbout of the canyon. “I don’t think what Zoey did really deserves a second chance.”
“I agree with you,” Everett said, in that easy way of his. I prickled at it, his levelheadedness. His ability to just carry on a conversation even when I was irritated. “I just wouldn’t ever want to do something you deemed unforgivable.”
“You don’t even know me,” I said then. “How do you know what I find unforgivable?”
“I don’t,” he said. “But it strikes me that you set a pretty high standard.”
“What, and you just let people get away with anything?”
“Oh, no,” he said, surprising me. We came up on a stop sign at the top of the road, and he glanced over at me, a crooked grin on his face. “I think I might be as unforgiving as you are.”
I laughed a little, out of shock or relief, I couldn’t tell, but as he looked back at the road again, I realized that I didn’t believe him. Not at all.
We got our food and Everett drove us to an overlook he knew about, where we could see all the way to the water. We grabbed a blanket from his trunk and spread it directly on the gravel in the parking lot and passed around French fries and milkshakes, and it was another one of those nights that had made me fall in love with my friends in the first place: In the middle of all the mad rush of the world, we were always a safe place where I could be still.
six
This Summer
After Everett and I finish up the salad, we all grab pizza and take it out to the table on the back deck. The sun has mostly set, but Laurel plugs in the globe lights strung on the pergola the table sits under, flicks on the heat lamps sitting in the corners.
“The cottage didn’t even have a real tableinside,” Davi says as he sits down next to me, a black fleece tugged on over his shirt.
“Bet you’ll be happy to cook in a real kitchen this week,” Gabe says to me from his spot next to Everett across the table. Laurel is at the head presiding over all of us, her hands folded under her chin like she’s surveying her children. Her eyes catch on me, twinkling.
“Ask Sutton about her cookbook,” she says.
Gabe jerks upright so aggressively he almost drops the slice of pizza he just picked up from his plate. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” I say. I got the news just a few weeks ago. Laurel had been the one to first set up the account where I shared recipes after I started appearing as a guest in the videos of a few former coworkers who had found success as internet chefs. I was resistant to it then—still am—but it led to this.
