It was a perfect four days. Sun-warmed sand, sleeping with the windows thrown wide, drinks on the beach, dinners on the back deck, salty hair, and talking like we all used to, and laughing until we couldn’t breathe. It all lasted four wonderful days until the clouds went gray and the kind of weather that never fully breaks into a storm, just hangs heavy above you, descended.
“Okay,” Laurel said, dropping down next to me on the couch where I had my laptop open in front of me, a spreadsheet on the screen. The others were in town, on a mission to find the things we needed for the seafood feast we were making that night. “It’s time to talk wedding.”
Laurel met Stephen roughly two weeks after breaking up with Winona. It wasn’t surprising—that was her usual timeline—but what did surprise us was their engagement approximately ten months later. Laurel, it seemed, had finally found the person she had been so ardently searching for since we’d met. I was her maid of honor, like we’d always planned, and she was eager to nail down the specifics.
“The place in Mendocino is free next June,” I said, scrolling to the venues column on the spreadsheet.
“My number one?”
“Your number one,” I said. “I called last week and they have you and Stephen penciled in. You’ll need to put down a deposit by the end of the month if you want to lock it down.”
“I love you!” Laurel crowed, flinging her arms around my neck. “What else have you planned for me?”
I ran her through the list. Potential vendors and her top two bands and weekends we could set aside for me to come to LA, helpwith whatever she needed. By the time we got to the florist she’d been eyeing since before she met Stephen, she sat up, squeezing my hand and leaning over to lower my laptop screen.
When I looked over at her, her eyes were watery. “What’s wrong?” I asked, worry flickering through me. “Do you not like the catering options for the rehearsal dinner? Because I’ll call the sashimi guy again—”
“No, it’s not the sashimi,” Laurel said, almost laughing. “It’s just that I love you a lot.”
“I love you too,” I said. I pushed my laptop aside, turned fully to face her. “That’s why we’re going to make this the best wedding ever.”
“I know it will be,” she said. “But I don’t just mean the wedding. I mean—” She sniffed, glancing quicky away before looking at me again. “I mean everything, Sutton. I don’t think anyone has ever made me feel more cared for than you do. I mean, you’re basically working a second job as my wedding planner. You always do so much to make this week happen.” She gestured around the cottage. “You love all of us so well.”
It should have been amazing to hear. It should have finally contradicted something I’d secretly worried about for years, that it was all too much, that nobody really wanted to be on this trip as badly as I did, that I was overbearing. But instead, all that came to my mind was Everett. The lie we were keeping, to be sure, and the guilt of keeping it, but the fact that he made me feel that way.Cared for. Not that Laurel didn’t, of course she did. But there was this other person, someone I felt so much for, that understood me. That helped me to put down the things I was carrying every time we were together. And he was the one person it would hurt Laurel to learn I wanted to be with. It could never be simple between us.
“Promise me,” Laurel said, dragging my attention back toher. She took my hand in both of hers, staring seriously at me. “Promise me that we’ll never let anything come between us.”
Every hope I’d had for our last day here, every confidence I’d felt that it would be okay once Everett and I came clean, that our friends would be happy for us, wilted.
“What would come between us?” I asked, voice a little hoarse.
She shrugged. I was a horrible person. I knew exactly what would come between us, and I was just letting her carry on. “I don’t know. Sometimes I just think about Zoey, and how she was our friend too. I feel a little guilty about what happened there.” I didn’t say anything, could tell there was more she needed to get off her chest. “But then I think about you, and how loyal you are, and how you would never do something like she did. You would talk to all of us first if something was going on that could mess up what we all have. I think that you’d put us before anything else. And we’re all just so lucky to have that.”
I didn’t think I’d felt such an acute sense of guilt before, if it had ever sliced so deeply, turned me inside out and shoved all the terrible things I’d done into my face. Laurel was right—I prided myself on putting our group above all else, but that wasn’t what I’d been doing at all, not for years now. I’d chosen someone else, someone new, over them time and time again. I’d thought it was innocent. But I was awful, a liar, disloyal to the people I considered my family.
“Do you promise?” she asked, giving my hands a little jostle.
“What?”
“Promise that nothing will ever come between us.” Laurel let out a small laugh, almost rolling her eyes. “Not that you ever would.”
All I could see was Everett. I could feel the perimeters ofmy heart curling inward, protective, blotting out some truth I’d only just started to feel comfortable admitting to myself. How I felt about him. The things I wanted with him. Some future that now felt like dandelion seeds on the wind. I was never meant to keep it.
“Of course,” I finally said, just as the front door opened and the others came in, Davi chattering on about some work thing or other. Laurel squeezed my hand one final time, the period on our promise.
“Did they have the good scallops?” she asked, pushing herself up from the couch and walking over to peek into the bags they’d brought in, as if something hadn’t just ended, as if life was just supposed to carry on.
The conversation dulled around me as they carried things into the kitchen, as I turned my head and caught Everett’s eye when he came in last, shutting the door behind him. He held up a carton of the peaches I’d told him to find if he could, and I tried to smile at him, but it was strained. Earlier this morning, he’d grabbed my hand and pulled me back into the house when the others raced out onto the beach to catch a quick five minutes of sunlight breaking through the cloud cover. We’d tucked ourselves against the wall, kissing and roaming our hands over each other’s bodies until I almost shouted to the others that we had something to tell them, that there was a secret I couldn’t keep a minute longer.
But keeping what had happened between us secret mattered more than ever now. What was most important had suddenly crystalized. There was only this group, and the new promise I’d just made to Laurel, and the fact that I wouldn’t allow my heart to break; not over someone who was never really mine.
twenty-nine
Fifth Summer
That first summer I’d searched for a private moment with Everett and failed, but on that last day, after I forced myself to be fine during dinner and almost no sleep afterward, it was almost too easy. Gabe walked up to the main hotel while he called Mia, the sun finally out again that morning. Laurel and Davi went on a mission to get wood for our bonfire that night, the tradition we always ended the trip with. I’d anticipated some excuse to get him out of the house so we could talk, so I could end this before it went any further, but I found myself alone with Everett far too soon.
He was standing near the couch, frowning at his phone when I came out of the room I shared with Laurel, and he looked up immediately, face clearing.
