“My babies!” she cries, squeezing us tight to her.
I meet Gabe’s eyes over her head.Babies?I mouth at him. Laurel has never called us anything remotely close to that before. He shrugs as she releases us.
“You look great, Laurel,” I say to her. She’s in a drapey white dress that sparkles like it’s made of something pearlescent, glitter in her hair and tiny jewels dotted in a line above her eyebrows, highlighter on her cheekbones bright enough to strobe.
“It’s my new life outfit,” she says, holding her arms up and spinning. I catch Everett’s eye. He was right.
Another party enters behind us, and Laurel points us in the direction of the bar before greeting them with the same level of enthusiasm she did us, which stings, somehow. Glancing around the room, I realize I don’t recognize anyone here. No one who was at Laurel and Stephen’s wedding, except us. None of her LA friends I’ve met when I’ve visited her. Everyone looks either as enthusiastic as Laurel or casually bored, like being here is checking an item off a list.
“Did Laurel ever tell you why she didn’t want us to plan this party?” I ask Davi as we reach the bar.
He shrugs, the shoulder of his shirt catching the light drifting down. “Who cares,” he says. “Are you mad you didn’t have to plan a party in addition to organizing this whole week?”
“I didn’t—” I start, but Davi raises an eyebrow at me. “We all helped organize this week.” I think back to our texts, conversations, the feeling of seeing Everett’s name pop up on my phone so frequently after years of avoiding it as much as I could. Confirmations we were a go, that we’d pay Laurel back for everything. But it’s true that I was the one who picked the house we’d stay in. Who called to book the sailing tour. Who reminded everyone of our itinerary the week before we were set to arrive so we could be on a schedule if Laurel wanted us to be. So we could be organized without looking too organized. So we could avoid any painful, awkward silences, but mostly so we could be reminded of what this week used to mean to us.
“Maybe,” Davi says as the bartender approaches. “But Laurel didn’t call the rest of us when she wanted it to happen. She called you. You’re the one who’s always making sure everything is perfect.”
He turns to the bartender and orders for both of us, leaving me with his words bouncing around my head as they try to land, burrow in.
I’d thought Laurel called me for the same reason she always did: because there was something between us that went just one level deeper than it did with everyone else. It was a secret I thought she and I had both harbored; that we would always be each other’s first call.
But maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe I’m not always her first call. Maybe I’m the best atorganizingthings, atmaking sure everything is perfect. It starts to settle, to take root, this idea that I am a function to Laurel instead of her undisputed person.
I try to dislodge the thought. Tell myself that maybe it’s just a mark of our friendship, instead of something damning.
“Sutton?” Davi’s voice brings me back to the present. He’s handing me a martini. “Got you three olives.”
“Thanks,” I say. At the other end of the bar, Gabe and Everett are laughing about something, and as Davi wanders off to talk to a woman in a backless black dress, I start to feel completely alone. It’s not fair, I know. I told Everett we should act normal, and this week, at least after the boat, normal for us is a sort of cool friendliness. I could join him and Gabe, or follow Davi, or track down Laurel, or find someone else to talk to. I could stand here alone and drink gin martinis all night.
But something about Davi’s words are still ringing in my head, the implication behind them, and being the only one without someone to talk to, and really, the very fact of this party has something sinking in me. Like whatever supports I’ve put in place to hold this week aloft have eroded away, and all my expectations are finally crashing down. The magic sheen I’ve been trying to force onto everything is fading, replaced instead by the glossy facade of this room, where I know exactly four people.
Except, there might be five. A head of salt-and-pepper hair catches my eye as it approaches the bar, several pairs of eyes watching the same way I am as he passes, as his gaze meets mine and he smiles.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Cooper says when he reaches me. He leans one arm on the bar, effectively blotting out my view of Gabe and Everett. He’s in a black button-down, the sleeves accentuating his biceps. Arms that take work, I think. A body like that requires a lot of effort.
“Cooper,” I say, lifting my glass in his direction. “I forgot you’d be here.”
Cooper claps a hand to his chest, like I’ve wounded him. “Am I that forgettable?” he asks. “Wasn’t it just yesterday I saw you?”
It startles me, the fact that it was only a day ago that I had lunch with Cooper. That I came home and Everett lifted me onto the kitchen counter, and everything changed from there. I’m shocked by how much can shift in such a short time.
“Not forgettable,” I tell Cooper, forcing a smile onto my face. I can’t figure out how to fix things right at this moment, but I can fake my way through a good night. “A pleasant surprise.”
Cooper grins and nods at my drink. “You good?” he asks. I nod, and he orders before asking if I want to find a place to sit down.
I glance over my shoulder as I follow Cooper toward a wall of low-sitting tables. IwantEverett to be looking at me, I realize, and for a minute I can’t sort out why. I wonder what part of me hopes he’ll be watching. If it’s the ugly, angry part I came into this week with, hoping in some way to make him jealous. If it’s the part that drove me to his room last night, that hiked my pulse every time we were caught alone today, searching for some confirmation that there’s more to this than revisiting the past. That this isn’t just another party, and I’m not just another person, and we matter.
But when I do find him in the crowd, he’s frowning at his phone, no cool gaze for mine to latch on to at all.
I look away, focusing on Cooper’s broad shoulders as I follow him, surprised when I can’t tamp down the sinking feeling in me like I used to.
I wish I could sort out why I can’t seem to make myself actually want Cooper, especially as yet another person passes by, eyeing him until they realize his attention is undividedly on me and they move on, disappointed. I wish I could pinpoint what it is, exactly, about this handsome, successful, incrediblydecent man that isn’t doing it for me, that seems to be doing it for absolutely everyone else.
The only thing that comes to mind, again and again, is a breathy admission on a kitchen counter, every lie I’ve told myself unraveling as I told Everetthe’s not you. Last night, and this morning, and how it felt every minute before we walked into the party.
As if Cooper can read my mind, he glances around the room, searching for someone. “You know, I’d love to track down that director friend of yours,” he says. “Talk to him about film school. My daughter was furious she missed meeting him.”
“Everett?” I say, stupidly, like the mere mention of him doesn’t have warmth shooting through me. “He’s around here somewhere.”
