“After you, really,” he said, moving back to give me a wide berth and not meeting my gaze.
I hurried through the door, ignoring the way his mere presence made every tiny hair on my neck stand on end.
I didn’t care that Everett had a girlfriend. I hadn’t imagined that our arrangement would continue forever, that we’d be octogenarians meeting up for two days of shenanigans in a beach shack and still not telling our friends. We’d grow up, we’d change, we’d move on.
But I couldn’t deny the fact that I sensed him as he walkedout the door behind me, as we started down the steps and he helped me lay out towels, even as he lounged at the opposite end of our row, almost pointedly. For some reason, not being able to have Everett made me more aware of him than ever.
It was, inconveniently, going to be a long week.
Laurel broke up with Winona on a phone call two days later, hours before she was supposed to arrive. We were about to head out to catch Isaiah’s sailboat, when Laurel walked back inside from the deck, where she made the call. She sniffed, plonked her floppy sunhat onto her head, and grabbed her bag from the counter.
“Ready?” she said to the three sets of eyes staring at her. “Come on.” She waved us toward the door. “Captain Isaiah will be pissed as hell if we’re late.”
Isaiah had never once scolded us for being late, but even so, we scrambled after her, throwing bags over our shoulders and shoving our feet into sandals, grabbing jackets off hooks. Everett was walking behind me and caught my elbow when I tripped on the lip of the door on my way out, in the same way he’d saved me from tumbling into the basket on our first day here. Something about avoiding him made me clumsy, taking pains to steer clear of his path and only throwing myself into less convenient ones. I turned back to him, every iota of my attention homing in on the scrape of his warm palm against my skin. I looked down at it, trailed my gaze slowly back up to his. When our eyes caught his were wide, almost startled, that icy gray in his irises flashing even brighter as his pupils dilated.
“Careful,” I said, nodding back down at his hand. “What would Maud say if she were here?”
He frowned and dropped his hand.
On the boat, Laurel finally relaxed. She curled up at the bow next to me and dipped her head onto my shoulder, sighing.
“I’m relieved,” she said, before I could even ask her. “But I’m a little sad too.”
“Of course you are. You loved her.”
“I don’t know,” Laurel said. She straightened, squinting out at the water. “I think I really wanted to.”
“You’ll find someone you’re sure about,” I said. At this, she leveled me with a skeptical glance, like I’d said something ridiculous. “What?”
“Come on,” she said. “You don’t believe in things like that.”
“I—” I started, eyes flicking of their own accord toward where Everett stood with Davi a few feet away, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked out toward where Davi pointed at something. A dolphin or a wave or some speck in the distance. For a half second, I pictured him like this with Maud, surrounded by wealthy, artsy people on a boat somewhere halfway across the world, and he suddenly felt like a stranger to me.
I cleared my throat, looking back to Laurel. Luckily, she was staring down at the water, and hadn’t caught my slipup. My not saying anything had been as good as a confirmation for her, that I didn’t believe in things like real love.
“I do think you’ll find your person, Laurel,” I insisted, drawing her attention back up to me.
“Sure,” she said. “It’s just kind of hard to think you mean it when you don’t want that for yourself.”
My throat went dry at her words. “I want that,” I said, voice not much more than a rasp. I took a sip of the wine that Isaiah had handed us as we’d boarded; better this year than others. When Laurel gave me the same look as she had before, I felt my eyes widen, my shoulders hitch. “Why do you think I don’t want that?”
“Sutton,” she said. “You havesituations. Maybe you go on a few dates with someone, but it never lasts. You don’t do relationships.”
“And that means I don’t want one?” I asked, surprising even myself at the irritation in my voice. I never snapped at Laurel.
She shrugged. “You’re like Davi,” she said.
“Davi has a theory that no relationship should last longer than six months,” I said. “In college, he used to lecture us on monogamy not being natural. Just because I’m not currently in a relationship I’m like Davi?”
The look Laurel gave me was almost pitying, mouth turning down at the corners. “You’ve never been in a relationship, Sutton,” she said.
I flipped through my mental Rolodex of our shared experiences, trying to find something to prove her wrong. The guy I spent a semester hanging out with sophomore year of college, or Jake, the line cook at Hank’s restaurant who I slept with for three months straight. But none of those things would equal a relationship to Laurel. Or, if I was honest, to me.
I’d thought Laurel knew me better, though. That she understood that just because I wasn’t like her—someone who loved being with someone else, who chased it like staying single was a death sentence—didn’t mean I didn’t eventually want to find someone. But that it was easier said than done. Finding someone who wouldn’t let you down. Who would stay.
One memory did pop up, though, as I kept digging for evidence.Everyone will disappoint you, I’d said to her through her first breakup we’d experienced together, her head in my lap as she cried over the TA with a pierced eyebrow who’d left his dirty socks in our kitchen sink.Don’t let them.
I looked up at Laurel. I didn’t know how to explain to her that it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in love as a concept. It wasthat I knew the person who would be worth it had to be exceptional. Extraordinary. Someone you would never have to doubt and who would never let you down. And when I thought about it that way, maybe she was right. Maybe I wouldn’t find someone, because the person I was looking for didn’t exist.
