“And they aren’t gremlins,” Gabe says. “Except around the holidays, maybe. They get really insane in December.”
“Our eternal bachelor,” I say, wrapping an arm around Davi’s shoulders and stretching up to tuck my chin on top of his head.
“What about you?” he asks, shifting so he sits up. “Relationship status?”
I shrug. “Same as always. Who’s to say.”
“That means she just dropped the last guy she was seeing for... two weeks?” Laurel says.
“I’ll have you know I went onelevendates with him,” I say proudly. “But he really wanted to define things. Was ready for a real relationship.”
“Perish the thought,” Everett mutters from across the table, which has me turning to him.
“Let me guess,” I say. “You startedsomethingwith an actress you met at some event or other a few months back and you just don’t know why it didn’t work out.”
Everett, worthy opponent that he is, has the audacity to not look rattled. Instead, he relaxes back in his chair, takes a drink of his wine. Says, in his perpetually winning tone, “She was a screenwriter. And it was last year.”
Gabe snorts at this, then straightens his mouth, eyes quickly flashing my way.
“Well,” Laurel says after another beat of silence, during which Everett and I stare, hard-eyed, at each other. “Since we’re on the topic of relationships, I’d like to say thank you to everyone for making this week work.”
It’s like the fight is punched out of me. I can see it in Everett’s expression too, as four faces pivot toward her. Here it is. The moment she lets us know what happened. But instead, Laurel just picks up her glass.
“To divorce!” she cries, holding it aloft.
Davi is the only one who joins in. At the rest of our silence, Laurel takes a swig and rolls her eyes.
“It’s okay, guys,” she says. “I thought this would be it, and it’s not.” She swipes her hands together, like she’s dusting flour off of them rather than a whole relationship that not just she, but all of us, thought would last.
It’s Everett who says something first, and I hate him for it. Not just because I want to beat him to the punch, prove toLaurel that I am the best friend, but also because I agree with what he says.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
I don’t know what does it. Maybe it’s the fact that I think it’s what we all want to ask. But I find my hackles rising, and before I know it I’m piping up too, saying something I don’t totally agree with, but not quite at Laurel or the group at large. At him directly. “If Laurel says she’s okay, then she’s okay,” I say, grip tight on my wineglass. I thrust it toward the sky, my brown eyes locked on to Everett’s cool ones. “Here’s to moving on.”
There’s a brief beat before the others echo me. I stare back at Everett as he raises his glass, last of anyone. His eyes don’t leave mine as he echoes the cheer and takes a healthy sip of his wine. He doesn’t look away until he’s setting it down on the table.
Everett sits back and Gabe jumps in with a story about his flight here, clearly trying to change the subject. I wait as long as I physically can to glance at Everett, not wanting to give him a single iota of proof that I care what he thinks. That he’s here. That he exists at all.
But I’m not so lucky. When I look over at him, he’s already watching me, lying in wait. I don’t look away. I stare back at him as he lifts his glass almost imperceptibly in a private toast of our own, cementing something I hadn’t known we’d agreed on.If this is what this week is going to be like, so be it, his glass and the expression on his face say.
Let the games begin.
seven
First Summer
On the morning of our last full day at the cottage, Saturday, I proposed my own tradition. We’d make one final, special dinner together that night, and so we traipsed to the farmers market where we wandered between stalls, Laurel sampling everything while I picked out ingredients and put them into the bag I carried and another Everett had dutifully extended my way at each stall. I smirked at him as I placed a quart of tomatoes into it, hand-pulled pasta at another, as I deposited a carton of peaches into his waiting arms.
At the house, Laurel turned on Patsy Cline and poured everyone wine, her one contribution. Gabe sliced the baguettes I put in front of him and Davi grabbed the slivered almonds out of the oven before they went from toasted to burned. It had always been this way with my friends. None of them liked to cook. I’d tried to get them into it on some level during our three years living together, in the hopes I might have at least one sous-chef on occasions like this, but the three of them were much more the drink-and-keep-the-chef-company variety than the cooking variety.
Everett, I discovered, was no better. But he did at least try.
“Have youuseda knife before?” I asked as he tried to dice an onion next to me. He’d said he could when I handed it tohim, like it was simple, like everyone knew how to properly do it. Which I thought everyone should, really, but I wasn’t about to tell my friends that.
“Yes,” he said as he sliced another painfully slow sliver off the halved onion. He’d gotten that far. “Obviously.”
“Okay, here,” I said, reaching over and taking the knife from him. I held the onion with my nails against it, sliced it horizontally before cutting a series of vertical slices in it. “And then you just chop, okay?” I said, mimicking the motion with my hand. When I looked up his eyes were already on me, and I felt that same flush rise up my neck that I did at that stupid party. I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got it.”
