This Summer
I need you. It’s a worrying text to get from your best friend, especially when it’s delivered fully out of the blue, no context provided, after she’s been dodging your messages for the last several months. My communication with Laurel has been spotty for several years now, if I’m honest. But we always find our way back to each other.
I need you. Like a bat signal sent up, one that had me booking the next flight to Los Angeles to see her, and the reason I am now, six months later, driving her down the Pacific Coast Highway in the direction of a beachside resort I haven’t seen in five years. We might have changed since then, but as we pull into the porte cochere outside the main building, it’s clear Malibu Springs, terrible as its name may be, has not.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Laurel, who is barking breakneck French into her phone. She nods and waves a perfectly manicured hand at me as I step out of the driver’s side of her car.
Ralph, a front-desk staple here and someone with whom my relationship has been a bit of a mixed bag, looks up as I walk in, career hospitality on his newly lined face. “Welcome,” he coos as I approach the mahogany front desk. “Checking in?”
“To the Wild Horse Villa,” I say. I slide my ID across the counter before pulling up our reservation confirmation on my phone.
Ralph makes an approving face, which is strange because Ralph has only once before looked at me without disdain twisting his expression. “Have you stayed with us before?” he asks.
“I have,” I say, giving him a tight smile. “But we’ve usually been in the Wildflower cottages.”
“Ah.” His tone is pinched. Something like recognition passes across his face, eyes narrowing in my direction, but his face brightens at something on his computer screen. “We have Ms. Im’s card on file. You’re all set,” he says.
“Ralph?” Laurel asks when I hop back into her car.
“Ralph,” I confirm.
“Still hates us?”
I nod as I guide the car toward the tight corner that will take us away from the main hotel and back down toward the bluff where Wild Horse Villa sits. “Still hates us.”
Laurel rolls her window down and leans her head out, drawing in a breath as she shuts her eyes. “At least some things never change.” I glance over at her, the narrow set of her shoulders, and wonder if she’s actually looking thinner in the months since she shared the news of her divorce or if it’s just all the time we haven’t spent together in the last five years that’s painting her image differently for me.
“When is everyone else arriving again?” I ask, like I don’t already know. Like we haven’t gone over the plans I made for this week a hundred times.
Laurel looks back at me, raising an eyebrow. “Gabe and Davi are on the same flight this afternoon.Heis driving down tonight.”
“Great,” I say nonchalantly as I round the bend toward thevilla, its white stucco walls stark against the bright blue sky. “Looking forward to it.”
Laurel snorts. “Sure you are.”
I ignore her because it doesn’t matter how I’m feeling about seeinghimagain. We’re all here for her this week, to help as she navigates what she’s calling the start of her “new life.”
Laurel Im, best friend, formerRock Bandchampion, absolutely hopeless cook, is also the textbook definition of a social media star, and creator of one of the largest culture and lifestyle empires around. It started back in college: posting her outfits, recaps of her daily life, her recommendations for everything from mascara to green juices, but it wasn’t until after graduation that she started to blow up. Since then, Laurel has launched a line of athleisure wear, started a podcast, signed deals with brands like Hoka and Bombay Sapphire and Knix, hosted trips where she leads tarot card readings and hikes through the Italian countryside. She is an influencer to the highest degree, maintains a lifestyle most people could only dream of, and has the best hair of anyone I know.
Her appeal only grew when she married Stephen four years ago, the boyfriend the internet was obsessed with. He was perfect for her: model-handsome and just as busy as she was, her biggest supporter and the picture of a doting husband.
That is, until Laurel told me she needed me, that she needed all of us, because she and Stephen were getting divorced. Out of nowhere, with zero warning. We agreed to gather at the resort we used to visit each year the week the divorce would be finalized to be there for her. To support her through it.
We haven’t been back here in five years. Not since our last stay at Poppy Cottage, where a secret I hadn’t kept alone nearly destroyed the group of friends I’d been calling family for a decade.
Nearly.Laurel’s invitation, I hope, is a new beginning for all of us. To return to what we used to have: a group so tight-knit it rivaled movies, a reality so good it almost seemed made up. The kind of closeness I had searched for all my life. What has felt off track for the last five years will be righted again this week. I’m sure of it.
The Wild Horse Villa is a far cry from Poppy Cottage, but the last time we stayed there, the romance of its tiny space and desperately needed repairs was starting to wear off, so it makes sense that we move to a bigger space. That, and part of Laurel’s invitation was her paying for a week in the sprawling Spanish Revival home we’re dropping our bags in the foyer of now.
Not that any of us took her up on it. As soon as she sent the invite, the rest of us started our own group chat where we figured out how we’d surreptitiously pay her back so Laurel wouldn’t have to spend a penny on her own divorce week, save for the party she’s throwing herself on Friday and the rest of us have been left completely in the dark about.
“Here I let you make me think staying in that A-frame was so romantic,” Laurel says as she sets her suitcase at the foot of the terra-cotta-tiled stairs, leaning her head back to look at the vaulted, beamed ceilings, the light filtering in through the skylights there.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, wrapping my arms around her shoulders. “You loved sharing that tiny room with me every summer.”
“I will miss you always kicking me in your sleep,” she says. She tucks her hands around my wrists and sighs. “I’ll miss how uncomplicated things were there.”
I try not to tense, to acknowledge what’s obviously missing from that statement.Until the last summer.But it’s Laurel who’s brushing off the moment, breaking away from me.
