“Hmm,” Everett mumbled. He didn’t add anything else.
“So your dad is an absent dick of a father,” I said, quoting his words from earlier. It was clear Everett didn’t want to talk more about it right now, and I wasn’t going to force him to, curious as I was. Everett’s gaze flicked up to mine again, confirmation enough for me. I nodded toward the living room. “Want to raid the minibar and rack up a tab on your dad’s card?”
“Yes,” Everett said, wincing a little. “But I’m fairly certain the minibar is included in a place like this.”
I scoffed as I stood up. “Something only a son of the rich and famous would know,” I said.
Everett laughed as he followed me.
ten
First Summer
The rain finally cleared after an afternoon of watching Food Networkreruns on the couch, so we left the house in search of dinner.
We pulled up to a quiet pier, the sky a brilliant pink in the post-rain glow, lights diffused in the mist that still hung in the air. We grabbed food at a burger stand and stood at their counter, dipping fries into milkshakes and wondering if anyone on the Food Network had ever acknowledged what we both thought was the general superiority of the combination.
After a while, we started walking toward the end of the pier, where there was a wide view of the last streaks of light across the sky.
“So, what about you?” Everett asked as we walked.
I cast him a sideways glance. “Whataboutme?”
“You’ve heard my whole sad story,” he said. “What about you?”
“You haven’t told me your whole sad story,” I pointed out. “You’ve told me one tiny part of your whole sad story. And what makes you think I have one?”
“Don’t we all?”
I smirked. “Spoken like someone who wants to make movies.”
Everett laughed and clapped a hand to his chest, like I’d wounded him. “Come on,” he said. “You’ve got to havesomething.”
“What if I don’t?” I said. “What if I was raised in a household full of marvelously well-adjusted people and never encountered a setback in my entire life? What then?”
“Did you?” Everett asked me. “Grow up in a household full of well-adjusted people and never encounter a setback in your entire life?”
I looked at him, sucking at my lower lip to try to hide the smile that always seemed to pop up around him. Even then, when he was asking a question like that, I couldn’t seem to help it. He stared at me, waiting me out. Finally, I shook my head. “No.”
He nodded as if in confirmation. “See,” he said. “Even if your answer had been yes, I still think there would have been something.”
“How’s that?”
“Everyone has some kind of setback,” he said. “Or thing or issue or whatever it is. I think even that thinking you don’t have a thing would probably constitute having a thing.”
“And your thing is your famous father,” I clarified.
Everett gave me a look like he might wink at me, like he was just taking all of this so lightly. “He’s part of it.”
We were walking toward the end of the pier, where the water stretched out underneath the sunset, residual stormy waves cresting gray under the final fades of the brilliantly colored sky.
I could always not tell him, I knew. Leave our relationship as it was: somewhere between something and nothing, a sort of safe place to be whatever version of myself I wanted to be. But I was finding it hard to be anything but myself with Everett in a way that startled me. Outside of Laurel, I’d never beenso immediately comfortable with someone. She told me once it felt like Gabe and Davi, Zoey too, had had to earn knowing me, that there was some wall almost visible to her when we were all together at first. That it wasn’t until six months in that she noticed it missing.You can talk to anyone, she’d said.But it’s like there’s some point system. Only once they’ve proved themselves do youactually relax. It hadn’t bothered me. I knew what she meant, and it seemed bizarre to me that all relationships weren’t formed this way.Show me you’ll stay, and I might let you. But she’d proved me wrong. As soon as I met her, waiting outside our freshman math class wearing a shirt that readKirsten and Sandy Cohen Adopted Me, I knew we’d be friends. There was no probationary period with her.
I looked over at Everett, a breeze rifling through the soft wave of his hair. Maybe it was something about that night, being without my friends, that made this happen. Maybe it was the secret we shared. Maybe it was the fact that there was something in his sadness that matched mine, even if I didn’t know all of it. Maybe it was that we just had that tiny slip of time together.
“I was mostly raised by my uncle,” I said.
“Hank,” Everett said, and I nodded confirmation. “I’ve heard that name a few times this week.”
