“Sutton Hale,” he said, leaning back again. I could feel my cheeks heat and was grateful for the dark. “Nowthatsounds like you’re going to be someone people know.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but the door flew open at that same moment, a guy in a polo spilling out and peering drunkenly around the deck until his eyes landed on me.
“Have you seen Everett?” he asked.
“I’m here, Shane,” Everett said, pushing back the door where Shane had cornered him in with it. “What’s up?”
“We need ice,” Shane said. “And beer.”
“I brought you more beer an hour ago,” Everett said.
“And everyone has really enjoyed it,” Shane said. “Are you drinking? Can you go? I’m about to kick John’s ass atMario Kartin the basement and I—”
“I’ll go,” Everett cut in.
“Great,” Shane said, digging into his pocket. “Shit, I don’t have any cash on me.”
“I’ll get it,” Everett said.
Apparently, that was all the convincing it took for Shane. “Guys!” he shouted as he spun back toward the kitchen, the door slamming behind him. “He’ll get it!” A chorus of cheers went up.
“Sutton,” Everett said, reaching into his jeans pocket to pull out a set of car keys. “It’s been great. I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening, wherever it takes you.”
“You too,” I said as he started down the back steps. And that might have been it, might have made our lives far less complicated if some cosmic force hadn’t landed a fist against my stomach, punching my next word out of me. “Wait.”
Everett turned with his foot on the bottom step, gaze slanting up to mine. I felt it again: heat in my cheeks, stretching down my neck and across my chest this time. “Want some company?”
The way Everett’s mouth turned down at the corners, like he was trying to suppress a smile, like heknewI might ask, almost made me take it back. Instead, I raised an eyebrow, waiting.
He jerked his head to the side, beckoning me toward him. “Come on, then, Sutton Hale.”
I followed him around the side of the house and toward what I assumed was his car: a nondescript sedan, the same as most students drove in Southern California, either handeddown from older siblings or purchased as a high school graduation present by their parents. But he started across the street just as I was about to reach for the handle toward a classic sixties Bronco, the top removed and its paint the perfect shade of muted sage green.
“This is your car?” I asked as he walked around to the passenger side, unlocking it and holding it open for me.
“This is my car,” he confirmed as he closed the door behind me, patting a hand on it for good measure. I took in the interior, clearly new, lovingly refurbished as he walked around the front and climbed into the driver’s seat. He glanced sideways at me as I ran a finger over the brown leather of the seats. “What?”
“I can’t tell if I love or hate this,” I said as the engine rumbled to life.
Everett laughed as he put the car in Drive and pulled out of the spot. “Dance Hall Days” came out of the speakers when his phone connected to the stereo, loud, and he reached over to turn it down before asking, “Why’s that?”
“I’m no car aficionado, but don’t refurbished models like this usually go for, like... a shit ton of money?”
“They do tend to,” he said. “But my mom’s husband is into fixing up cars, so I mostly paid in labor for this one.”
“Really?” I asked. Everett nodded as he turned out of the neighborhood and onto the main road, the wind whipping through my hair as we picked up speed. California was already warming up this time of year, but it was still chilly at night, and I wrapped my hands around my bare arms, suppressing a shiver. Everett noticed, and at a stoplight he reached into the back bench seat and produced a well-loved Devon College crewneck.
“Here,” he said. “It’s a little early to have the top off,” heexplained as I tugged the dark blue sweatshirt on over my head, catching a whiff of something warmly familiar, crisp pine and cinnamon, and something almost salty underneath it. “But I drove down the coast this week to surf.”
“Wow.” I refastened my seat belt. “So you’re, like, a real Californian.”
“Los Angeles born and bred, I’m afraid. Where are you from?”
“Bay Area,” I said. I gave him a wry look. “Different kind of Californian.”
Everett nodded as he shifted gears, which I, for some reason, found unbearably hot. We talked back and forth as we drove the rest of the way to the gas station, basic things like majors (me: culinary arts, Everett: film school), why we’d picked them, how we’d ended up at Devon in the first place. I’d ended up here because of the scholarships they offered, but it hadn’t seemed meant to be until I met my friends, the people who weren’t here tonight. It was as if all the other schools had been out of reach simply to pull me here, with them. But I didn’t tell Everett that part of things just yet.
At the gas station, we grabbed two cases of PBR out of the cooler before starting down the candy aisle, where he paused in front of a display. “Want anything?” he asked me.
