I swallowed and nodded, the courage I’d felt before still burning in my chest but flickering now.
Everett brought a hand up to the back of my head, brow furrowing almost like he was concentrating. He let out a breath, a smallhmmat the back of it, a sound of consideration, before he kissed my forehead. When he drew away, I forced my eyes wide-open. “Text me when you’re up in the morning, okay?” he said. “We can still do something.”
“Okay,” I said.
I turned as he started down the hall, picturing, for a minute, if he did stay. What would happen if Everett was in my apartment in his sweaters and socks every Saturday morning, if we weren’t just summer people, not just group-text people, not two people who kept a secret, but two people who did this all the time. What would happen then?
“Or—” I said. Everett was at the door, one boot in hand, but he looked back at me. My pulse felt like the drum of an overeager middle school marching band kid, almost painful. I wanted him, enough that I found myself forcing the words up and out of my throat so they lay bare between us. “Or you could stay.”
Everett hesitated for just a minute. My heart hammered in my throat the entire time. “Are you sure?” he finally asked.
I nodded. “If you don’t mind.”
His face softened into his usual, amused-at-the-world smile then. “I’ve never minded spending the night with you, Hale,” he said. Then, expression going serious, “I mean, not that we’respending the night together, just—”
“It’s okay,” I cut in quickly, something about his own embarrassment easing my nerves. We were both a little new to this whole part of things. “I know what you meant. We’ll sleep.”
And so we did. Everett left his boots by the door and grabbed his toothbrush out of his bag. There was a brief exchange about the couch that I quickly ended because I hadn’t meant he could stay so he could crash in my living room. He slid into bed next to me and we both rolled onto our sides and after a loaded, silent moment, he kissed me. A kiss good-night that wasn’t going anywhere, but maybe, if I thought about it, was leading everywhere.
In the morning, my migraine gone, I took Everett on the tour of Saturday morning San Francisco that I’d gone on with Hank so many times and now regularly embarked on myself—minus the early-morning fish market.
We wandered the farmers market, arms around each other to ward against the bite of the morning chill. Everett held the bag I’d brought while I filled it with things and we planned out a menu for that night: short ribs that I’d braise, Parmesan polenta, and minty greens.
We picked up coffee and too many pastries from a shop a few blocks down and sat on a bench outside, trading bites of orange rolls and a blueberry muffin. Everett liked his coffee hot and strong, I liked mine milky and iced, even in the relative cold of the morning, and Everett brought my hands around his own cup when he saw me shiver, held them there.
We walked down the pier at Fisherman’s Wharf. At the end Everett stood behind me, arms around me as we looked out at the gray and stormy water.
I leaned back against his chest, turning my head so my cheek brushed the soft cashmere of his sweater.
“Can I tell you something?” I asked, glancing up at him.
“Anything,” he said.
“I like this,” I said. “I’ve been here a hundred times alone,” I continued. “And I’m good at being on my own. Most things I like doing alone.”
Everett looked skeptical, not about what I said, but that it was really what I wanted to tell him, so I hurried to add the important part.
“But I like it better this way. I like being here with you.”
He smiled at that, chest rising under my cheek on what seemed like it might be a relieved sigh. I looked back out at the water. “I think I like doing most things better with you,” he said, voice low.
I smiled, staring out at the water as his words worked through me. It felt impossible, saying the things I was thinking out loud, and yet I couldn’t seem to stop them, as if all my willpower had been ground down to dust.
“Are you happy, doing what you do?” I asked him, eyes tracking a seagull diving toward the waves.
“Yeah,” Everett said after a while. “I am. I mean, it doesn’t come without its hard days, but I can’t imagine doing much else.”
“Are the hard days because of your dad?” I asked. “Because of how close your work puts you to him?”
Everett sighed, and I reveled in the movement of it, in being this close to him. “You might be the only person who knows how much I hate that part,” he said. “But I meant more aboutthe general stress of the job. I think I’d rather deal with the hard parts of making a movie than the hard parts of a different job any day.”
“Hmm,” I mused, burrowing in a little closer to him.
“What about you?” he asked. “Do you feel that way about taking over the restaurant?”
The skip in my chest was familiar at that point, like a heartbeat missed because of a loud clap of thunder or a door slamming suddenly. It echoed through me, touching on all parts of my history: Hank and everything he’d done for me, how he’d raised me. The kitchen where I’d learned to cook and fallen in love with the breakneck pace of it all. The promise that someday too that would be mine.
“I want to,” I said. “But there are some other things I’d like to do too.”
