“What did Maud do?” I asked.
“Oh, she told me about it like it was funny. She actually said it was charming. Told me I shouldn’t be so worked up about it.”
He’d dropped his gaze again, reached down and trailed his fingers through the sand before shaking them off and resting his forearm on his bent knee again. I wanted to say something helpful, meaningful, but all I could think wasyour dad is an asshole. And while I was sure Everett agreed, I didn’t think it was the best comment at the moment.
We were quiet for a while until he said anything again, but when he did, his eyebrows tilted together, throat bobbing before he asked his question. “What was your impression of Ben Astor? Before you knew me.”
“He seems...” I trailed off, not sure exactly what descriptor I was looking for. Nothing quite seemed to sum up how Ben Astor appeared on the surface. He was the kind of celebritywho was always just kind of there, ubiquitous in a way only a long and prolific career and early status as a heartthrob could create. I might have said something else before I met Everett. I finally settled on what I hoped was the most judicious, “He seems charismatic.”
Everett smirked at me. “He does know how to work a red carpet, doesn’t he?” he asked. I shrugged and Everett looked toward the horizon, something like bitterness on his face.
I leaned in a little closer to him, hoping he might look up at me. When he didn’t, I still pressed forward, said what I thought was important in the moment. “If he said something like that to me, I think I’d knee him in the groin.”
Everett chuckled. I wanted to ask him everything—what his relationship had been like with his dad growing up, why he didn’t want to talk about him—but I knew I had to wait him out. Let him say it first.
“He was drunk, when he said it,” Everett said, mouth twisting as he shook his head resignedly. “Or I’m 90 percent sure he had to be. Not—” he said severely, holding a hand up “—not that it excuses it at all. He’s a dick when he’s sober too. But Maud didn’t really seem to care.”
“I’m sure she cared,” I said softly, uncertain if he’d even hear me.
“My dad is an alcoholic,” Everett told me. I watched the bob of his throat as he swallowed. “Though he’d never call himself that. He’s an addict in every sense of the word, though. Drugs, sex, fucking...attention.” He shook his head, and I found myself wanting to slide my fingers between his or anchor them against the back of his neck or use them to rub circles on his shoulder. “But he keeps it so well hidden, he’s so high functioning, no one would ever know. I don’t think he even knows.
“He met my mom when she was sixteen,” he continued, andI found my hand snaking closer to his in the sand, not touching, just there, like if I did make contact he’d stop. I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted to know everything. “He was twenty-four. She was an extra on some movie he was in. She was pregnant with me by the time she was eighteen. I wasn’t his first kid, but I was the first he stuck around for. For a few years, at least. Anyway, he left when I was four, and I already had another half sister by then. Do you know he has eight kids, that he knows of? Only two of them with the same woman. His PR team should win a fucking award.” He said it like he was sharing something he read in a tabloid, gossip about some beloved celebrity, but I could see it there, the question in his eyes.That’s fucked up, right? Tell me you think so too.But before I could say anything, he was looking away again.
“Anyway,” he said, like he was shaking it off. “We’re all terrified of becoming our parents, right?”
Something twisted in my chest. Because I knew exactly how he felt, but also because of how he was lumping his experience in with everything else, like it made it matter less, sweeping an arm across a table laden with all his experiences to clear it.
“I don’t think so, Everett,” I said. “I don’t think everyone feels that way.” When he didn’t answer me, I tried for another route. “What about your mom?”
His face changed at this, a smile just lifting one corner of his mouth. “She’s a makeup artist,” he said. “And she’s happy. She got remarried when I was seventeen, and they have two kids together.” He gave me a wry look. “I have a lot of siblings.”
“Are you close with all of them?”
“No,” he said. “My mom’s kids, I guess? I want to be, but they’re eight and six. I feel like more of an uncle to them. And the sister my dad had when I was four—Amy—we’re really close. She lives up in Santa Barbara. I’ve tried to reach out tothe others, though. One of them, my brother, keeps in pretty close touch. And some of them were friendly enough, but some of them weren’t interested or never answered my messages. I think having a shared disdain for your father isn’t necessarily enough to make you want to strike up some close sibling relationship.”
“That’s got to be hard,” I said. I considered my next words carefully, teeth sinking into my lower lip. “But I think the siblings you are close with are pretty lucky.” I looked out at the water, swallowed over the tightness in my throat. “All I wanted was a sibling when I was growing up. Someone who got it. Even if it was just Amy, at least she has someone who gets it. What it’s like to have not just aparent like thatbutthatparent.”
Everett was quiet for a minute. I could feel his eyes on my face before I looked at him, and when our gazes did lock, there was some understanding there. “That’s why they’re all so important to you, isn’t it,” he said, voice soft.
I shrugged, trying to brush it off. “Everyone’s friends are important to them.”
Everett shook his head. “I don’t care abouteveryone,” he said. “That’s why they’re so important to you, isn’t it?” His tone was firm the second time, like I couldn’t avoid it.
I looked at him dead on, trying to shove the Laurel of it all out of my head when I said, “I think anyone who stays is important.”
A shadow passed over his face, clouding it for half a breath, before he was nodding, mouth twisting into a small knowing smile. “We make quite a pair,” he said.
Something occurred to me as he said it. “Is that why you don’t like drinking that much? Your dad?”
“Yeah,” Everett said slowly, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck. “Something like that. Some shitty childhood memory lodging itself into my psyche and informing this habit.” I could tell there was more to it, whatever memory he momentarily retreated into as he stared at the sand in front of him, but I could also tell it wasn’t something he wanted to relive just then. Something he would share with me only if he wanted to. He looked back up at me suddenly, a blaze in his eyes I hadn’t seen there before. “Maybe it’s not true for everyone,” he said. “But I’m fucking terrified of being anything like my father. I hate that the only thing I want to do with my life is so closely tied to who he is. I hate that I want anything close to something he’s done.”
I did reach for him at this, cupping his face in my hand and rubbing a thumb across his cheekbone. I was still surprised at the way the closeness to him made me feel, a fluttering in my stomach and a heat in my cheeks, a pull at my center. “That might be the one good thing you got from him,” I told him, hoping he knew how much I meant it. “That passion for something. But you won’t be him, Everett. You’re too good.”
I wished so much there wasn’t a Maud, in that moment. I watched as his eyes dipped to my mouth, briefly, and I realized with a deep rush of dislike for myself that I would have let him kiss me then, that I would have let him do more than that.
That was always the problem with Everett. Our time together was like some break from reality, the one time I let go of control in any real way. He wasn’t part of any plan, couldn’t possibly fit into any real plan, and that was part of the allure of it. I was a different version of myself with him, someone who let the world rest lightly on her shoulders, who was open to whatever our brief time together would bring. There were no repercussions to be felt, no aftershocks save for sometimes seeing him in my dreams. We were free of consequences.
But other people were a consequence. Other people werereal, could be hurt, and Everett knew this, drawing away from me and hopping to his feet, holding out a hand to help me up. I could see it in his eyes—he knew. Even if we hadn’t done anything, a line had been crossed. Not only in the way I touched him, but in what he’d shared too. Everett didn’t talk to people like that, didn’t share things readily, and I had a sneaking suspicion Maud didn’t know any of it. But I did. And I was far from just a friend.
