I narrow my eyes at Everett as soon as they’re out of the room.
“Glad to know we’ve moved past things,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm.
I think about the last time I saw him, at Laurel and Stephen’s anniversary celebration just last year. I’d volunteered to do a grazing board for them, and was out back at their house when Everett arrived, a tray of radishes and French butter in one hand and three baguettes tucked under my arm. I thought I’d moved on since seeing him at Gabe and Mia’s baby shower, when we’d ended up partnered together for games, and a diaper that was supposed to end up on a stuffed animal wound up torn in half. Since we’d gotten in an argument at the bar where we gathered to celebrate Davi’s thirtieth birthday party.
I couldn’t even remember what had sent things south each time, why we couldn’t even manage to be civil for a few hours for our friends, but I had a sneaking suspicion it was whateverstarted simmering under my skin when he walked onto the back patio of Laurel and Stephen’s Larchmont house. Some angry thing that still lived in me, some part that hated that I couldn’t get rid of him, erase him from my life completely. Whatever it was, Everett seemed to mirror it. Even our hellos were terse, as if we wanted to fight. The spark that had once existed between us didn’t give way to something good anymore. Instead, it was the hot, angry edge of a pan just pulled off the stove, a burned fingertip that sent rage flooding through both of us.
Wherever it came from, it ended with a hand accidentally smashed into the butter and a baguette flung toward the pool where it floated, waterlogged, as we both wilted guiltily under Laurel’s cold stare from where she stood framed in the back door.
So this week has to be better.Wehave to be better.
Everett sighs and runs a hand through his hair, a little roughly, draws in a deep breath, like he’s been living in this particular memory too. Like he’s also remembered that this trip isn’t about us. “We’re being a little immature, don’t you think?” he asks.
It’s at this moment that I remember my arms are crossed. I drop them, try to appear far more adult than I feel right now.
“You’re right,” I say.
The words feel like barbed wire coming out.
We make it through the rest of the day unscathed, largely because we simply don’t talk to each other. Our only slipup is when I’m sitting in the living room, talking to Hank while Laurel and Gabe nap and Davi answers some emails in his room, apparently banished there by Laurel, who got tired of him staring at his phone on the beach. It hadn’t occurred to me to care where Everett was or what he was doing.
“How’s work, kid?” Hank has just asked me when the back door opens. I twist to see Everett coming in, a book and a notebook tucked under his arm, a pen in its spiral spine. Our eyes latch for just a minute, that same frustrating tingle running along my neck before I turn around again.
“Um,” I say. I usually spend the summer working various private chef gigs, away from the restaurant. But this summer is different. This summer is about the cookbook, and so I haven’t taken on clients. “Work’s great. Mostly the same.”
The lie stings a little coming out, but I still haven’t been able to bring myself to have this conversation with him. The one that would make him hate me.
I don’twantto be lying to Hank about what I’m doing with my time. But we built the whole original plan together, over the dinner table and when I learned to cook in his kitchen and when I started applying to schools. Hank would need someone to take over the restaurant someday, and when I was younger, it seemed like an absolute dream come true. I loved Half Moon House, loved the diner aesthetic that lent itself to its weekend brunches and could transform into something cozy and cool for the pre–dinner rush happy hour. I loved everyone who worked there. I learned from them and Hank how to perfectly poach an egg, how to sear a scallop, how to match ambiance to a meal. It was where I fell in love with the idea of running a restaurant. As a seventeen-year-old, carrying on his legacy was all I wanted.
But things have shifted since then. Slowly, at first. When developing recipes was my favorite part of my culinary classes in school, I knew I’d be able to do that at the restaurant too. Try new things out when there was time. Maybe after the first few years, once I really had my feet under me. And when I started to share those recipes online—with Laurel’s help, of course—Iassumed it would stay just a hobby. It never occurred to me it could lead somewhere. More than that, it never occurred to me to follow it. I was already doing something I loved; I wasn’t looking for anything different.
Until I was. Until I’d suddenly signed a publishing contract, and cut back on my hours at the restaurant, and I still, for whatever reason, hadn’t told Hank.
“Well, we’re all looking forward to having you back in the kitchen,” Hank says. My teeth sink into my lip almost painfully as I nod, like he can hear me.
“Mmm-hmm,” I say noncommittally. “Me too.”
I toss my phone onto the coffee table after we hang up, the conversation crawling under my skin, and wander into the kitchen in search of a distraction. Everett is there, lifting the electric kettle off its base. He raises it when he spots me on the other side of the island.
“Tea?” he asks. It’s his version of the white flag Davi tried in vain to wave between us earlier, I think.
I shrug, my mind still too fixed on my call with Hank to bother being irritated by his general presence right now. “Sure,” I say, slipping onto one of the stools. He grabs another mug from the cupboard, sets it next to his on the island.
I pick up the book sitting on top of Everett’s notebook.
“Hypothetical Physics,” I read from the subtitle. I glance up at him. “Considering a career change?”
Everett stares unwaveringly at the mugs in front of him as he fills them with hot water. “It’s just research.”
“Hmm,” I murmur, briefly flipping to one of the pages he has marked before setting it down again. “For the next movie?”
“Maybe,” he says. He still isn’t looking at me.
“Okay,” I say. “Hollywood is confidential, I get it.”
He does glance up at that, away from the relentless bobbingof the tea bags in the mugs, having been alternating between one and the other methodically as a way, I’m assuming, to avoid my gaze. But now he meets it, and when he sees my expression schooled into what I hope is an open, if slightly apathetic, one, he relaxes a little, eyes taking on just a hint of the glow I know so well. Our exchange from earlier, however brief, echoes in my head.We’re being a little immature, don’t you think?
“It’s a whole space movie,” he says. “I’m still trying to figure out if it’s even feasible.”
