I bristle at the comment, even though I know I’m keeping a secret from her, yet again. In that moment, though, I’m exhausted. Tired of Laurel being mad at me, of trying to atone for what happened foryearsnow. Of making something up to someone who can’t seem to decide if she actually forgives me or not.
I watch for a minute as she waves at people milling past, nothing but her public self. I think back to every time I’ve watched her shift, a social chameleon I used to envy. Now it has me questioning if the version I’ve always had of her is even real.Look at me, I want to shout at her. But instead, the question bubbles up in my throat and bursts out of me, sharp and sudden. “Why did you text me first?”
She moves her face like she might glance at me, but her eyes don’t leave the crowd. “When?”
I know Laurel is going through something. I know she might be heartbroken. I know that my only job is to be here for her right now, but suddenly, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep pretending things are fine, that this week is in any way normal. When she’d texted me that she needed me I’d felt some kind of pride wash over me, like it was proof she still needed me, but I don’t feel needed, or even wanted, right now.
“When you and Stephen split up,” I say. “Why did you text me first?”
At this, she does finally look at me. “I knew you could make this week happen,” she says.
“That’s it?” I ask. “You wanted to start up this tradition again, and you knew I’d be the one to plan it for you?”
She’s taken another sip of her drink and almost laughs as she sets her glass down on the table again. “Sutton,” Laurel says. “This trip was never about tradition. We all know what this week really is.”
I shake my head. “What is it?”
Laurel’s head tilts, almost like she pities me. I still don’t know what I’m missing until she says it. Until she’s speaking to me like I need to be helped along. “Look at all of this,” she says, gesturing to the party at large. “Honey, this week was never about going backward. It was a goodbye.”
I’m still not caught up. Or, maybe I am, but I don’t want to be. Don’t want to hear what she’s saying. “To what?” I ask. “To this place? Because we can go somewhere else. We can plan other trips, we—”
“Sutton.” The tone in which she says it is grating in its condescension, like I’m a child she’s carefully delivering news to. “Be realistic. This week was a way to say goodbye to us.”
My throat seizes. “To you and me?” I ask.
If Laurel catches my reaction, she dismisses it. “To everyone,” she says. “To the family we used to be. To my old life.”
“Used to be,” I repeat. Laurel nods, and for some reason, it sparks an angry ember in my chest. “What, do Davi and Gabe feel the same way?” I don’t include Everett. I can’t bring myself to.
“We haven’t been talking about it,” Laurel says. “But everyone knows.”
“Ididn’t know,” I say, almost shrilly. A man in a gold suit startles a little, looking at me, then Laurel, raising an eyebrow as if asking if she needs help.I’m her best friend!I want to yell at him, but instead she waves him off, nodding that she’s okay. Her expression flattens when she looks at me again.
“Everett and I—” I start, swallowing over the burgeoning lump in my throat. “I know we messed things up when we broke our promise to everyone. I know we shouldn’t have lied to you for so long, but, but we’re fine now, we—” I break off, unsure of how much to say. Knowing it can’t be much withoutEverett here with me. Then I remember that there might not even be anything to tell anymore, given how he seemed at the party tonight, his disappearing act.
But Laurel is looking at me like I just said something crazy. She shakes her head, brows drawn together. “Sutton, no one cares about you and Everett hooking up what, five, ten years ago? God,” she says, looking almost baffled. “We aren’t in college anymore. We made that pact ages ago.”
“But it’s why we stopped coming on this trip,” I insist, sure this has to be the reason. Because it has been the reason—I’vebelievedit’s the reason—that everything fell apart. I’ve blamed myself for it since it happened, thought that my poor decisions caused the fracturing of my family. I’ve put so much energy into fixing things, railing against people who didn’t seem towantto fix things, that it’s impossible that Everett and I breaking the pact isn’t what caused this. “It’s when everything fell apart.”
Laurel shakes her head again, slowly, like I’m once again that child she has to help arrive at the right conclusion. “I was mad about you lying, sure. But things had been changing for a while before that, Sutton,” she says. “No one could even come on this trip anymore. We were spread out all over the place.” She shrugs a shoulder. “We grew up.”
It’s that, such a general statement accompanied by such a casual gesture, that does it for me. It settles what she’s saying over me somehow, presses down.
“We’ve been trying these past few years,” I say, almost to myself. “We text. You and I still—”
“Talk on the phone every few months?” she says. “Collab on socials?”
I nod. Stupidly, I guess, because Laurel rolls her eyes, like it’s nothing. I thought I’d been giving her the space she said she needed after my relentless apologies following that last argument between me and Everett. The one that ruined everything, that left us all shattered.
“The most we’vereallytalked has been to plan this week, though,” Laurel says, like the rest of our relationship doesn’t mean anything. “Doesn’t that say something?”
“But this week has been great, hasn’t it?” I say. I need my effort to mean something. “I mean, it’s been like it was.”
“Nothing is like it was,” Laurel says softly.
I stare at her for a long, quiet minute. Her tone is so final, so assured. It dawns on me, finally, that she’s been thinking about this for a while. That what the rest of us thought was support was actually a last hurrah for her.
“No,” I say suddenly, something almost manic pushing at my chest. “What we have is rare, it’s important, it’s—”
