“I see,” Everett said, joining me by the oranges as I plopped a few into a bag. “But no abbreviations for your friends. Just Laurel, Gabe, Davi.”
“Everett,” I said.
“Yes?”
“You forgot—” I stopped at the look on his face, cool and amused, and bumped his shoulder with mine. “Okay, smart-ass.”
“Good to know, though,” he said as we handed the vendor our spoils. He pulled out his wallet and handed the guy cash before I could stop him. “Here I was thinking we weren’t friends.”
“I mean, we’re at least friends-adjacent,” I said. For some reason, I found myself blushing. “I don’t know. What do you think we are?”
Everett’s smile turned playful as we started toward the next stall. “I think you’re someone I look forward to seeing every year,” he said, mouth dipping close to my ear. “Especially when we have two days to ourselves.”
“You know, you almost had me at that first part,” I said as I directed him toward another stall. “For a minute, it sounded like we really are just friends.”
“I’m sure we can come up with a term for what we are,” Everett said.
“Fuck buddies?”
He clapped a hand to his chest with a wounded expression, and I laughed. “Surely we’re more than that.”
“I mean, a friend you look forward to spending two less-than-innocent days with...” I said, shrugging as I grabbed two bags of locally made tortillas. “What else would you call it?”
“That first year was incredibly innocent.”
I fixed him with a flat stare that I hoped would remind him of our kiss in the doorway on our last night together, which was, at least to my memory, decidedlynotinnocent and more realistically what set this whole thing in motion.
“Fine,” Everett said. He pulled out his wallet to pay but I stopped him again. “But I don’t think we’re just fuck buddies either.”
“Friends with benefits?” I suggested as we headed back toward the entrance to the market.
“I think that’s the same thing,” Everett said.
“Well, then, sir, I believe we are at an impasse,” I said. We’d made it to the sidewalk, the coffee shop in view.
“We’ll keep thinking about it,” Everett said. “Come up with something uniquely our own. Maybe one of your abbreviations.”
“Friends with bennies,” I said, prompting a groan out of him. “F buds.”
“Okay, let’s decide on something that sounds less like a dispensary,” Everett said. He grabbed the tote bag I was carrying and added it to the one already over his shoulder as we started down the sidewalk.
“You know, for a fuck buddy, you’re certainly a gentleman,” I said. If it were just the two of us on this trip, I think he might have slung an arm around my shoulders on his laugh. But because we tended to keep that level of familiarity firmly within our planned forty-eight hours together, save for our hug thatmorning, his smile wasn’t paired with any physical mark of affection, instead just a warming to his gaze as he looked down at me that had me feeling a little like I’d been plunked into a bath, muscles relaxing.
“Summer people,” I said suddenly.
“What?”
“Maybe that’s what we are,” I said. “We’re each other’s summer people.” It made sense. It was something beyond just friends with benefits, which didn’t really seem to sum up this weird relationship. I looked forward to spending time with just Everett as much as I did sleeping with him every summer. There was something to our containment that made me feel freer than ever, that made the two days we spent together precious. Our time together was equivalent to a perfect summer day. Clear, sunny, fleeting.
Everett nodded, smiling, and for some reason, I was relieved. “Summer people,” he said. “I like that.”
nineteen
This Summer
Cooper calls me Thursday morning to ask if I want to grab lunch that afternoon and talk about the cookbook. We’re all gathered around the table out back drinking coffee, and Laurel waggles her eyebrows at me, urging me forward as soon as I say “Hi, Cooper!” in an overly cheery falsetto.
“I’d love to get together today,” I tell Cooper. Laurel claps her hands together across from me, and despite a conscious effort not to, I glance at Everett sitting next to her. His eyes slip away from mine as soon as I look at him and he takes a long drink of his coffee, expression inscrutable.
