“Laurel,” Davi said. “Come on. We’ve talked about how much they flirt with each other.”
“Don’tcome onme,” Laurel spat at him, which had Davi stepping back, holding up his hands, and the reality that they’d discussed this descended on me. She looked at Everett and me, still standing a good few feet apart. I’d lost my one ally. “You’ve been sleeping together for five years?”
That, at least, cleared up how much she’d heard.
“When did you even find the time that first summer?” she asked. I winced before I could stop myself.
“We met at a party,” Everett said, stepping in at least for this.
Laurel’s gaze pivoted to him. “Aparty?”
“It was before graduation,” I said. “We—” I broke off, unsure of how to say it.
“We hooked up,” Everett said. “It was nothing.”
His voice was flat, emotionless as he said it, and that was it. Whatever had started in San Francisco was gone. Truthfully, whatever had started five years ago was gone. It confirmed what I’d always been nervous about. Even through our time together, that one night hadn’t been some magical thing. The connection between us was the same as it was between anyone else. Predictable. Something that could be easily ended. No harm done. But I felt something close to that in that moment, hurt pricking up like I’d never felt before.
“Hold on,” Laurel said. “You two knew each other?” Our silence seemed to be the tacit confirmation she needed, because she laughed once, a bark of a sound. “Round of applause, really. I mean, you had me fooled.”
“Laurel, it was for two seconds,” I said. “It didn’t matter.”
“Two seconds?” Davi said from where he and Gabe still stood in the doorway, mostly to Everett. “That’s pretty short, man.”
“Davi, not now,” I said, shooting him a pleading look that made him go silent again. “It was one night,” I said to Laurel. “He was just another guy.” I hoped it sunk in for Everett, that I could play this game too. If it meant nothing to him, I would convince myself it was true.
“Except he’s not just another guy,” Laurel said, crossing an arm over her middle. “He’s Everett. He is very much avery important guyto everyone in this room. And you didn’t think you should tell us, at any point? Maybe, I don’t know, when we specifically asked about it when we made the pact?”
I hated the wordpact. Hated that it made us sound like a bunch of Boy Scouts sitting around a campfire. And yet it loomed so large in my life, held so much weight that it felt almost sacred, this promise we’d made to each other at such a pivotal point in our lives, when we were all heading our separate ways.
It was Gabe who broke the silence, finally, after Everett and I had stood there for a solid minute, both of us apparently unable to offer up any sort of explanation or apology.
“You should have told us,” he said, almost surprising me. I’d been so wrong, that they wouldn’t care, that because they’d forgiven Zoey they would forgive this. And of course that was the case. What Zoey had done was in the past, faded for everyone but me, the person who couldn’t ever seem to let anything go, but this was now. I touted this group as unbreakable, but here I’d been for years, so casually destroying it. “We deserved to know.”
“You’re right,” Everett said, beating me to it. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you.”
“I’m sorry too,” I said.
“Are you two together now?” Gabe asked, glancing between us.
“No,” Everett and I said at the same time, voices laced with the same level of vitriol. Gabe raised an eyebrow.
“There is no world in which Everett Bridges and I would ever be a couple,” I said, not bothering to glance at Everett for his reaction.
“But there’s a world where you might have been, isn’t there?” Laurel said. I looked at her. “You’re still lying to us.”
“We—” I started, feeling like something was strangling around my throat. I wanted the hard, ugly parts of this to be over. “We discussed it,” I finally said. “But it would never work.”
Laurel crossed both her arms at this. “Did you think at all about what would happen if you two broke up? What that would mean for all of us?”
“Of course we did,” I said. “That’s why we’re not—” I broke off, her next possible words bouncing to the front of our brain.Oh, so it’s our fault. An anticipated accusation that I couldn’t prove she’d say, but could see the possibility of written on her face.
I watched as Laurel took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a minute. I hated being on the outside of it, being the reason for it. I wanted to be the solution. But I stood still until she looked at all of us again, expression cool.
“Listen,” she said. “There’s still plenty of daylight left. I don’t really want to be here anymore.”
“Laurel,” I said, but she shot me a look that told me I was the last person she wanted to hear from. Our conversation from yesterday shattered around me, along with all my efforts to get this thing with Everett over with quietly, quickly, so there would be no collateral damage. I’d ended up hurting everyone.
“I don’t care what anyone else does, but as far as I’m concerned, this trip is over.”
