“Oh my god,” Everett said, rubbing an exasperated hand down his face. “So you wouldn’t be so mad at me right now ifyou’dbeen the one they overheard?”
“I wouldn’t have done that on purpose—”
“I didn’t do what you think I did,” Everett cut in angrily. “Whether or not you want to admit it, Sutton, we created this problem together.”
He stared at me, waiting for a response, but I could clearly see us here, going in circles, for the rest of the night. So I crossed my arms over my chest and shrugged.
Everett’s expression morphed into one of disbelief for a second before his shoulders fell.I wanted him to say something else. What, I didn’t know, because nothing could fix this. That same ugly part of me that would shut down any attempt he made to remedy things was still alive and well.
“All the best to you, then, Sutton,” he said after a long minute of silence.
And he left.
That should have been it. I should have let him walk away and figured out how to forgive him, in my own way. And Imight have, on some level, for the next four years. Four years without a week in a house with him helped to dull what had happened. But every time I thought I’d moved on, there he was, at some gathering that, if I weren’t still so obsessed with Everett Bridges on some level, should have been nothing. Instead, it was arguments that pulled us all further apart, tiny jabs that proved that no matter how much time passed between us, the wound was deep enough that we both still felt it.
And as soon as Laurel’s text came in,I need you, as soon as the concept of the trip being re-created was even born, it all came rushing back to me again. I’d let things sit without proper attention for so long that the emotional snarl in me that revolved around Everett had grown to behemoth proportions, something that overwhelmed me the closer our arrival date at Wild Horse Villa loomed. And it seemed like it might have been the same for Everett. We had both silently stewed in our hurt for so long, reminded of it just frequently enough to feel it anew, that as soon as we saw each other we were right back in that living room saying ugly things, never having faced what happened at all.
thirty-two
This Summer
I don’t know where to look for Everett. I have a sinking feeling he might be on the beach somewhere, impossible to find in the endless dark, and so I decide to try all other options before heading out there. I call the front desk of the resort in case he got a car back. Concierge Ralph hasn’t seen him, and actually sounds concerned when I ask. Everett is high-profile enough for him now.
He isn’t at the bar across the street or sitting on a bench. He isn’t walking on any of the streets I circle, or at the twenty-four-hour market where we sometimes get late-night provisions. I drive toward the surfboard rental shop and scan the buildings in between, moving so slowly someone honks at me and I have to pull over, rest my head against my hands on the steering wheel, and take in a series of deep breaths until the shaky feeling that’s been in me since my conversation with Laurel subsides.
I’m making a U-turn from the surf shop when I spot it: a neon yellow arrow pointed toward the door of a bar we went to a handful of times in our first couple years here. And even though I think it would be the last place Everett would go, even though I’m starting to think I might have to head out tothe beach, I turn across the road and park in the lot, jog up the ramp toward the door.
It’s busy inside, people lined up around the U-shaped bar and others at the two pool tables at one side of the room. Eighties music drifts down from speakers long past their prime, crackling and popping. I crane my neck to look around, and I’m about to go, about to give up what I already knew was an unlikely option, when I spot him.
Not all of him, exactly. The top of his head, fingers raked into his hair as he rests his elbows on the bar on the far side, sitting next to the wall. I push through the crowd to get to him.
“Everett,” I say when I reach him, spreading a hand across his shoulders. “Are you okay? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
When he lifts his head to look at me, it’s like it takes him a minute to recognize me. But when he does, that smile that first charmed me ten years ago spreads across his face.
“Sutton Hale,” he says, spreading an arm out toward me. I half hug him, his arm settling heavy over my shoulders. “How are you?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I say, trying to get a good look at his face as he slides his arm off my shoulders again and drops a clumsy hand to the neck of the beer bottle in front of him, toying with it. “And you might be drunk?”
“Am I?” Everett frowns, picks up the bottle and considers it before he looks at me. “Maybe.”
The lone empty stool in this place is next to him, and before the college-aged girl standing behind me can slide onto it I grab it and drag it closer, sitting down.
I’ve never seen Everett drunk, can count on one hand the number of times I’ve even seen him tipsy, and something about it sets off alarm bells in me. I reach out, spreading a hand over his knee.
“Everett, what happened?” I ask him. He’s a little slow, but he looks down at my hand on his leg, beer hovering between his mouth and the bar, still frowning.
“What happened when?” he asks. I tilt my head, give him a second to figure it out. “Oh, at the party?” I nod and he laughs, takes a long drag of his beer.
“Could I have a water?” I ask the bartender. I take the bottle Everett’s balancing against the lip of the bar and set it out of his reach, replace it with the cup of water the bartender hands me.
Everett watches it all with a sort of sleepy fascination, a soft smile on his face. He reaches out at one point and untucks the ends of my hair from under the collar of my jacket, spreads a hand across them so they lie flat against my back, then rests a heavy forearm on my shoulder again.
“You were right, Sutton Hale,” he says.
“What was I right about?” I ask.
He leans in a little closer. “I’m a nepo baby.”
