I knew she could tell I was upset as she reached out to squeeze my shoulder. “I believe you,” she said. “If you say you want that, then I believe you.”
I forced a smile, nodding, marveling at how I’d gone from having a good time with my friends to spiraling into self-doubt in a matter of minutes.
Laurel stood up to grab more wine. I let my attention be pulled back to Everett after a while. The breeze washed out the crisp lines of his pale blue shirt. If I unfocused my eyes, he almost blended in with the scene behind him, shirt just another part of the water, golden hair the sun sparkling above.
Something occurred to me as I continued to stare at him, a sharp twist in my stomach. I blinked away the blurriness, tried to shake away the thought, but it stuck.
No one could let you down, ruin anything, if all you ever gave them was two days.
twenty-three
This Summer
When we get back from the movie that night, Laurel grabs another bottle of wine out of the fridge, holding it aloft.
“Let’s get drunk on the beach!” she says. Davi cheers, and Gabe, who is already tipsy on one glass of wine, grabs glasses from the cupboard.
“You coming?” Gabe asks, glancing at where Everett is standing near the stairs, and at me, hovering near the island.
“I’m pretty beat,” Everett, who has never in his life gotten drunk on a beach, says.
“Aw,” Laurel says, pouting out her lower lip. “Did we go too far with theCooneycommentary on the way home?”
Everett laughs, shaking his head, but I saw the way his grip on the wheel flexed the more Laurel leaned between the seats, pretending to be a reporter and asking about his inspiration, his process, his idea for his next project. After a while I’d leaned forward and turned up the radio to just below blasting right as a U2 song came on. If I didn’t know that Laurel had already had her fair share of wine that night, I’d have believed the song was her all-time favorite, given the verve with which she started singing along as Everett cast me a grateful glance.
“I’ll catch up,” I say when the three of them glance my way, holding up my phone. “Promised Hank I’d give him a call.”
They leave, whooping and hollering, through the back door, the bob of the flashlight Gabe grabbed their only giveaway as they make their way down the beach.
I turn at the creak of the bottom stair, Everett heading up.
“Are you—” I blurt, heart jumping into my throat when he glances back down at me. We stare at each other for a minute, Everett’s eyebrows raising, before I finally shake my head. “Never mind. Sleep well.”
Everett looks like he may say something else, lips falling apart, and I want him to. I want him to tell me to come upstairs with him, or to close the gap between us and take my face in his hands, continue what we started earlier. But I can’t find it in myself to do either of those things, so I don’t blame him when he nods, tells me to say hi to Hank, and continues upstairs.
I wait a beat before I follow him. When I get into my room, I toss my jacket onto the chair in the corner and sit cross-legged in the middle of my bed, staring down at my phone in front of me like I might actually call Hank. I didn’t promise Hank that I’d call him tonight. But Everett going to sleep felt, for a minute, like some kind of code we were both in on.
It takes three steps to cross to my door, Everett’s face burned into my brain as I throw it open. Halfway down the hall, though, I lose my courage and pause. I hover, half turned toward my door, listing every reason I shouldn’t knock on his door in my head.
You haven’t talked about anything that happened.
What happeneddidhappen.
Laurel would kill you.
You’re not twenty-two anymore.
Laurel would killyou,Laurel would kill you, Laurel would kill you.
I whirl on my heel at the last echo of it in my head, something like indignation rising up in me as I march toward his door.
But just as I’m almost there, my hand starting to lift so I’m ready to knock before I can lose my nerve, it opens.
Everett, in the short-sleeve button-down he had on under his sweatshirt, freezes at the same moment I do, a skip on a DVD. Until some muscle near his mouth twitches, like he’s trying not to smile.
“Hi,” he says as my own lips start to curve. I press them together to no avail.
“Hi,” I say. Suddenlyyou’re not twenty-two anymorefeels like such a lie. Every version of me that has ever hooked up with Everett is in this hallway right now, all shoving me directly toward where he stands, one arm braced on the doorframe.
