Sixth Summer
Laurel and Stephen’s Wedding
I spent most of the year between our last summer together and Laurel’s wedding trying to mend things. By the time the day of her actual wedding rolled around, we were back on steadier footing, but I think it was due largely in part to the fact that she didn’t want any drama surrounding the weekend, and less to do with the fact that she’d totally forgiven me. I could see the way the crack that I’d put in our relationship spidered out. Case in point, it was always the plan that I would be Laurel’s maid of honor, but at the last minute, she’d decided she wouldn’t have bridesmaids at all, revoking her bridal party invitations to all of us. I told myself it wasn’t about me, even as she started to ask me to help her again, assigned me tasks that I would have been doing had I still been her maid of honor. It wasn’t about what I’d done.
Davi and Gabe were quick to come around. They knew Everett and I were sorry, and so we were fine. But I worried about our foundation, something I had thought was unshakable. Our group chat had gone quieter than ever. There would be no trip to Poppy Cottage this year. Even if we were fine on the surface, there was permanent damage below.
I spent weeks hunting down the best revenge dress I could find for Laurel’s rehearsal dinner, and hated that all Everett had to do was put on a suit tailored to him to make a point when he walked in.
My anger at him had slowly settled into a simmer, always there, but something I could move to the back burner. I dumped every thought I had about him into that pot, the good and the bad. The idea of Everett next to me at the farmers market as I wandered the stalls, a head of tousled golden-brown hair on a patron at the restaurant and the sharp ache that followed, the fire that leapt up in me when Laurel posted a photo to her story that included a hand I’d recognize anywhere wrapped around a beer glass—all of it went in, stewed together until I couldn’t sort the pieces out from one another.
So by the time I saw Everett arrive at the restaurant in Mendocino where Laurel and Stephen were holding their rehearsal dinner, the impact of him was already muddied. I was angry, I knew, but mostly it felt like something itchy I was forced to wear. I wanted nothing but to shake his presence off, couldn’t deal with the fact that the whole argument hadn’t just made him and our entire history disappear, that he was here now, a part of this, no matter how I felt about it.
He arrived with Gabe and Mia, and I watched as Laurel hurried over to them, throwing her arms around all of them in a group hug.
“Careful,” Davi said from his seat next to me. We’d been here since this afternoon, had helped set up, and hadn’t received that kind of greeting from Laurel. He plucked the olive out of his empty martini glass. “Better school your face into something more pleasant.”
I stared at where Laurel was beaming up at Everett, felt like aferal creature had just awakened in my stomach. “She certainly forgave him quickly,” I muttered so only Davi could hear me.
“Yeah, well, Everett isn’t her best friend,” Davi said. My gaze snapped to his, lips parting. He shrugged. “We’re all best friends, I know. But you two are different. I don’t think Laurel even knew you had that kind of lie in you. We all just thought you and Everett liked flirting with each other.”
It stung, sharp and shocking, but I knew he was right. He’d confirmed, twice now, that everyone else was at least aware of whatever sparked between Everett and me, a fact that embarrassed me to no end. I pictured myself every summer for the last five years, thinking I was treating him like anyone else, when I must have looked ridiculous, bantering with this guy who I could never have. I understood what Davi meant too. That I was Laurel’s best friend, so the hurt went deeper. But still, I couldn’t shake the jealousy I felt over the way she’d forgiven Everett and might never forgive me. I worried that if it went on too long, our positions would be flipped, and he would be the best friend, while I was the one who didn’t have to rise to any higher expectations, an afterthought.
I vowed to myself, at that table, to not let that happen. I would prove myself to Laurel until she trusted me again, the way she used to.
The evening passed quickly after that. I said a terse hello to Everett and ignored him the rest of the night, not even glancing his way except for the few moments I could feel Laurel eyeing me like she was checking in on my behavior, and I would force myself to look at him when he talked, smile and nod until I knew she’d looked away.
Laurel and Stephen’s wedding day dawned perfect and sunny, not a single cloud in the sky. I felt the sharp remindersof what this day was supposed to be everywhere, though. When I spent the morning on a hike with Gabe and Davi instead of with Laurel, or all of us together. When I showed up to Laurel’s room just an hour before the wedding and she was already in her dress. When I watched from the fifth row instead of standing beside her, as they were married with the ocean sweeping out behind them.
It was a perfect wedding, though, and even if I didn’t participate, I could see the things Laurel had let me help her with everywhere, in the flowers and the music and the lighting and the favors, tiny details we’d pored over on the phone and on my trips to LA. Proof, I thought, that we weren’t entirely broken.
It wasn’t until the end of the night that he found me. I thought I’d almost made it through unscathed, as the dancing wound down and Laurel threw her bouquet and the bar started to close up. I stood next to a low stone wall on an overlook near the tent where things were wrapping up, just outside the golden glow of the party, and had been looking out at the dark ocean, the sound of the waves crashing in drowning out any approaching footsteps.
“Sutton.” His voice sent a familiar flutter through my stomach, one that now had my shoulders rising up toward my ears, one I didn’t want to feel. I turned my head to look at him, unsmiling. The sleeves of his white button-down were rolled up, jacket abandoned somewhere, his hands in his pockets. I’d avoided looking at him all night, and still he’d been there. Two seats down from me at the wedding, at our table at dinner, spinning Laurel’s gleeful grandmother on the dance floor. Everett was a point of light wherever he went,the most popular person in the room, and I couldn’t deny it any more than I could pretend it wasn’t what had drawn me to him in the first place. Beautiful, golden boy who would only break your heart.
I looked back out at the dark horizon, not saying anything to him.
He waited a minute, quiet next to me until he said, “We don’t have to talk. But—”
“Good, then,” I cut in, casting him a sideways glance. “I don’t want to talk.”
Everett’s mouth closed, his brow furrowing the smallest bit. “Okay,” he finally said. He stood for a moment longer before turning, starting back toward the tent.
Something lodged in my throat. Words or an ache, I couldn’t tell, but before he was out of earshot I turned, calling after him. He looked back at me, and the small glimmer of hope on his face plunged straight into my chest, pinning me in place for a moment until I brushed it into that pot that simmered on the back burner of my brain. “There was a better way to do it,” I said. “You didn’t have to trick me.”
He glanced down at the ground, shook his head before he looked back up at me. “I didn’t do what you think I did, Sutton,” he said. “I wasn’t paying attention to anything but you that day.” Something about that, the almost angry way he said it, punched at the tender spot near my sternum, but I didn’t let myself hang on to it for long.
“I just don’t see why I should trust you,” I said, not because I wanted to be cruel. Because it was a question I’d been turning over when I did let myself pull him to the forefront of my mind. If I’d made a huge mistake this whole time, misjudged him entirely.
Everett’s eyes narrowed at this. “You don’t seeanyreason to trust me?” he asked. “After everything?”
I thought about what he was referring to. Our whole history. Secrets shared and secrets kept and something between us that felt frighteningly important. But I could so easily reduce it tojust two days every summer. Two days together, without any outside context, and it became simple to say I didn’t know him.
“I hurt the most important people in my life because of something that should have never happened,” I said. It was different than what I’d said before, that it was his fault. I still blamed him, but my part in all of it had crept up more recently, reminding me that Everett wasn’t alone in this. “I can’t remove you from that.”
“What happened wasn’t just about you,” Everett said. “You think I cared so little about everyone else that I just wanted to make you look bad? They’re my friends too.”
“But they heardyousay it.”
