“I think they’ll forgive us.”
“And if they don’t?”
Everett’s jaw jumped, his eyes flicking between mine. I was nervous for his answer. “You’re more important to me,” he said quietly, roughly, my heart glowing with it. “But,” he continued, grip on me loosening just a little. “They’re your best friends,” he said.
“They’re—”
“Mine too, I know,” he said. “But they’re everything to you, Sutton. If you’d rather we don’t tell anyone because it could risk upsetting the order of things, I understand that. We can—we can forget this.”
He looked so hopeful then. It needled at something tender in my chest, that he thought I wouldn’t agree with him. That this—us—might not be more important to me. But he was right, in a way. If being with him came at the cost of the dissolution of the most important group of people in my life, I wasn’t sure we should tell them. And yet, here he was, real to me in a way that made me feel whole. There were so many moments with Everett that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
“We tell them,” I said. “On the trip. In three weeks.” I nodded. “I want to.”
Everett kissed me, relief washing over his face, and I felt it too. As his hands roamed over my skin and we moved together, pulses syncing up perfectly, as sweat dried on our skin and I lay with my cheek against Everett’s chest. Some sense that this was right. That they would all understand. That everything would be okay.
twenty-seven
This Summer
I sneak out of Everett’s room while the others are still gone, text Laurel to say I was on a walk and will she grab me an iced latte. The worst part, maybe, is that I don’t feel guilty in the way I think I should. Some part of me loves it, having this secret again, like I’ve reclaimed something that’s mine.
But even so, by the time evening rolls around and Laurel leaves us all to head to her party, none of us allowed to join her until it starts, I start to worry. That what Gabe said in Everett’s room is correct—this trip won’t continue. That I’m the only one who will be bothered by that. And that Everett and I, by so easily giving in to something I swore we never would again, have played some cosmic role in the final dissolution of this friend group, rendering all my hopes for this week pointless.
The invitation we received listed a black-and-gold dress code. Laurel left with a garment bag over her arm, so I have no idea what she’ll be wearing, but I slip on the swirly, pleated gold dress I found just a week before the trip. When I walk out of my room, Everett is shutting his door behind him dressed in a pair of black chinos and a soft black T-shirt, a cool black jacket slung over his shoulder.
“Look at you,” he says as I walk over to him, spinning once so my dress fans out around me.
“Did I do it justice?” I ask, pausing just shy of him. Davi’s door is still cracked open.
“Do what justice?” he asks.
I look down at myself, lift up my hands. “An Oscar.”
Everett laughs, eyes drifting over my shoulders. “I so prefer you to an Oscar,” he says quietly.
We meet Gabe, also in all black, in the kitchen, and wait for Davi to descend. When he does, he’s in a gold shirt more sparkly than my dress, typing furiously away on his phone.
“Nowthat’san Oscar,” Everett says, nodding in his direction. I stifle a laugh as Davi looks up at us.
“What?” he says. “I wore this shirt for New Year’s last year. I’m not wasting it.”
“You look amazing,” I tell him as I start to herd him toward the door. “And we’re late.”
Everett drives us all to the party, placing bets on what we think it will be like. I laugh when he says he thinks Laurel will be carried out in a coffin, throwing herself a literal funeral for her past life.
When we arrive, though, I don’t think it’s what any of us expected. “Okay,” Gabe says as we all stand in the doorway to the bar Laurel has rented out for her party tonight. “This is... something.”
Davi lets out a low whistle on Gabe’s other side, eyes scanning over the black decorations dripping on every surface, hints of gold poking through.
“Is ita funeral?” I ask, reaching out to cup a hand under a flower so purple it almost looks black.
“I don’t think so,” Gabe says. “It feels more... roaring twenties.”
I tilt my head back to look at the gold star lanterns strung above us, light bouncing off the gilded ceiling. “Pretty,” I say. “Not Laurel’s usual style.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Everett says from next to me. I drop my gaze to find him doing the same, eyes meeting mine. He shrugs a shoulder. “She does keep talking about her new life.”
A blur of sparkling white comes racing toward us, bright against the dark backdrop of the bar. Laurel holds her arms out wide as if to engulf all of us, a smile I haven’t seen all week splitting her face open.
