“Yeah, no, I haven’t seen her,” Everett says, and I can imagine him dragging a hand through his hair, anxious to get them out of there. “I was about to take a shower.”
“Okay,” Laurel says. There’s no other sound of movement.
“I—” Everett says, then, “Okay.”
I press myself into the counter as he trudges into the bathroom. He shuts the door behind him and flicks on the fan, eyes locked on to mine as we try to communicate something silently, allWhat the fuck was thatandWhat else was I supposed to doandKickthem out!
After probably a minute of this, Laurel and Gabe murmuring on the other side of the door about lord knows what, Everett turns on the shower before leaning against the wall across from me.
We stare at each other like that for a while, wary at first,until one side of his mouth twitches. I can’t help smiling, clamping my lips together to keep it from growing but failing miserably. After a minute, I have to press my hand to my mouth to keep from laughing, Everett’s shoulders shaking silently as he drops his head back against the wall behind him.
I close the space between us, checking to make sure the door is locked as I do. His chest is warm under my palm. My dress falls to the floor between us as I press against him. His gaze goes heavy, no laughter left there anymore.
“Everett, we’re going to go on a coffee run!” Laurel calls as Everett’s hands skate up my back. “Want anything?”
“I’m good!” he answers, my lips running along his collarbone.
“Tell Sutton where we are if you find her!” Gabe shouts before they’re gone.
Everett tilts my head up, kissing me as soon as his bedroom door closes behind them. I don’t think we’ve ever been quite this reckless before, and I can’t bring myself to care.
“Did you mean what you said?” I ask after a while, breathless. “That this trip meant a lot to you?”
“Of course it did,” Everett says. “Though maybe not in the way it did to you.”
I pull away from him a little, just enough to see his face. Something about his words has my spirits falling, the same way they did when Gabe said what he did about me. “What do you mean?”
Everett’s fingers skim across my shoulder blades, down my spine. “I loved the trip,” he says. “I love everyone here.” His eyes scan my face as his throat bobs, before he continues. “But those two days with you always meant more to me, Sutton. They were always the most important part.”
My breath catches in my chest. Suddenly, last night becomesinfinitely more complicated. Myjust oncefeels insane. I don’t know if I can tell him I feel entirely the same, because it was like the week and the two days existed separately for me. The week was something sacred, this time left with the people I called family, and the two days were just ours, special. I hadn’t wanted to admit how much they meant to me then, have been actively ignoring how much I’ve felt the absence of them, of him, since it all ended.
But for Everett, I realize, all of this had been new. All of us, and even his renewed friendship with Gabe. We might have absorbed him easily, but he didn’t have the same history of those four years together. What he did have, though, was the two of us. And what we had was sacred in its own way too.
“They were important to me too,” I say, eyes locked on to his as I do. I want him to know that, even if this doesn’t continue outside of this room. If I walk out of here and last night and right now are nothing but a memory, a cap on whatever complex, beautiful, maddening thing our relationship has been.
The idea leaves me feeling a little empty.
twenty-six
Fifth Summer
San Francisco
It was May, and the first notes of summer were just starting to simmer in my bones. If I told anyone else this, they would think I was crazy, but I swore I could feel it, smell it when I walked out the door, taste it in the tomatoes we used at the restaurant and the lemon I squeezed into my water in the mornings. Summer was already weaving its way into my life.
Part of this feeling was just my usual connection to this time of year. But this summer, it was partly due to the fact that, after a Herculean effort, everyone would be coming to the beach house. And the other part (maybe the biggest part, though I was still a little hesitant to admit it to myself) was the fact that Everett was coming to visit me that second weekend of May.
Well, notvisit meper se. He had a few meetings here, and he’d called last month to tell me, to see if I wanted to hang out while he was in town. I’d been surprised to see his name pop up on my phone. We didn’t really call each other, though we had been texting more, just the two of us, since he’d broken up with Maud last fall. Nothing of particular note, but it felt significant, somehow, like our summer selves had leaked into our real lives.
But by the time he knocked on my door at noon the Friday he was set to arrive, I had only the foggiest memory that someone was coming over, because of the sharp, senses-obliterating migraine pulsing behind my right eye.
I squinted against the light streaming in through my living room windows as I shuffled toward the door, tugging the blanket around my shoulders up over my head in a makeshift hood to block it out further. Something about the cold metal of the doorknob under my hand made my stomach turn, and I had to swallow against the bile that suddenly rose in my throat.
“Fuck,” I said when I opened the door. Everett’s winning smile faltered, understandably, but his expression quickly morphed into concern as he took me in: gray sweatpants, one leg bunched above my calf, a faded Devon College T-shirt, hair that needed to be washed falling out of a braid I’d thrown it into yesterday afternoon when the first hints of a migraine started to creep in and I went through my usual routine: ibuprofen, a Diet Coke, and a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. I hadn’t had consistent migraines in over five years and so had stopped filling the prescriptions I used to take to prevent and mitigate them, and started cursing myself for that decision as soon as none of my home remedies helped and I started to see spots.
Everett was at my door because Everett wassupposedto be at my door. But somewhere between the black dots that had started flashing across my vision last night and trying not to puke this morning, I’d forgotten about our plans.
“Are you okay?” he asked as I closed my eyes.
