“You’re going to have to land onEverettat some point, sweetie,” Davi says. “Or we’re all in for another disaster.”
I hear Laurel’s footsteps start to descend the stairs at that moment, her timing impeccable. I can’t be sure if Davi is referring only to what happened five years ago, or to one of the several incidents that have occurred since, but either way it doesn’t surprise me that he’s the one bringing up the obvious tension in the room. Davi tends to be the bluntest among us. But even so, it rattles me, this reminder that, probably, I’m not the only one who has what happened at the forefront of my mind.
“Everything okay?” I ask Laurel when she appears and stops next to Davi with a slight crease between her eyebrows.
“Fine,” she says almost absentmindedly, eyes scanning the kitchen. “Do we have wine?”
“Gabe’s grabbing some,” I say. Laurel nods, clearly distracted. “Did you and your manager get everything figured out?”
“Oh, sure,” she says. She sits down next to Davi and digs her hand into the bag he offers her. “Just finalizing the details for the post announcing the divorce on Friday.”
Davi and I exchange a quick glance before we look back at her.
I’d anticipated Laurel’s mood might be less than her usual bubbliness this week, had thought it would be a trip spent taking long walks on the beach, talking, drinking too much, maybe burning a picture or two of Stephen. But instead, she’d asked me to organize it as if we were re-creating every one of our old traditions in this place.
It seems she intends this week to be a celebration, which would be fine, great, even, except for the fact that none of us has any idea what happened between her and Stephen. So while there’s been plenty of the usual Laurel—bubbly, bright, happy—there have also been pockets of this in the last several months. Some air of distractedness around her, a glimpse of a sadness she staunchly denies feeling at all.
“Do you have to announce the divorce?” Davi asks as Laureltakes the bag of pretzels from him. “I mean, isn’t not announcing kind of the cool new announcement?”
“I think that’s for baby announcements,” Laurel says, tone gone light. That’s the thing about these moments: They slip away quickly, and usually after someone else asks a follow-up question, makes it clear they’ve noticed the shift in her mood.
There’s a beep at the door, the mechanical whir of the dead bolt unlocking. For a half second, I hope it might just be Gabe. Fifty-fifty odds aren’t the worst I’ve ever had. But if this were a horse race I’d lose, because it isn’t the shoulders of a former high school football star and a stack of pizza boxes coming through the door. It is instead a head of thick, golden-brown hair pushed back by a pair of sunglasses, cold-weather gray eyes underneath, a long-sleeved black T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up, the last suitcase to arrive set by the table in the entryway. It’s a Bronco-driving, surfing, amusingly charming, infuriating film director. It is, despite Davi’s warnings,him.
“Everett!” Laurel crows, hopping off her stool to greet him.
“Hey,” Everett says, setting his sunglasses and keys on the table before he wraps an arm around her shoulders, envy shooting through me. Not that Laurel is hugginghim, but thatheis huggingLaurel, that their own friendship that has nothing to do with me or the rest of us is on full display. Iknowthat they see each other more often than the rest of us, simply because they both live in Los Angeles and frequently overlap when they’re traveling, because they’refriends. We all are, I remind myself.
“How are you doing?” Everett asks when they release each other. The fact that Everett gets to ask this at all grates on me. After probably the twentieth time I asked her, Laurel told me in a fit of uncharacteristic exasperation that she’d delete my number if I didn’t stop asking herhow she was doing.
“I’m okay,” Laurel says. “Glad we’re all here.”
“Me too,” Everett says, eyes drifting over her shoulder to mine. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I say, tucking my hands into the back pockets of my jeans and shifting between my feet. I don’t wave. We don’t hug. Just,hi, hi, before it goes silent between us.
“Okay, we’re all adults,” Laurel says. She waves us together. “Hug and make up.”
It takes a beat for either of us to step forward, but when we do, it’s to practically collide in the middle, all elbows and shoulders and nothing fitting like it used to. I pat his back once, in what I think is a friendly move, but skepticism is painted all over Laurel’s face when we pull apart. She is unconvinced.
“Are you good?” Everett asks, head ducked a little toward me. This, at least, is familiar. And he is too, I suppose, of course he is, but I don’t want him to be. I don’t want to feelanythingat the steel gray of his eyes, the pine and salt and cinnamon scent that’s now impossible to escape given his proximity. But I do feel something. Irritation. A bristle up my spine, heat coiling in my stomach, a reminder that, try as I have for five whole years, I haven’t let that last summer go.
“I’m good,” I say—or snap, I can’t tell. There’s a sound like waves crashing in the distance rushing around in my ears, a painful tick in my throat. “Are you good?”
“Great,” he says, voice matching mine. A little annoyed, but trying to hide it.
“Fine,” I say.
“Fine,” he repeats, andthisis why you don’t hook up with, date, or become otherwise romantically intwined with your friends. Because you’ll end up standing across from each other repeating things likefineat thirty-two years old.
Luckily, the front door opens at that moment and Gabecomes walking back in, pizza boxes in hand, another box from the wine shop next to it balanced precariously on top. Everett and I step markedly away from each other.
“Just in the nick of time,” Laurel says on a barely stifled sigh. I step forward to help with the boxes, but Everett does at the same time, and we’re knocking into each other again.
“I’ve got it,” I say as I grab the pizza out of Gabe’s hands a little roughly. The box on top starts to shift and Everett, being disappointingly closest to me, grabs it before it falls, bottles clinking together inside. I pivot on my heel and march back toward the kitchen.
“Looks like things are going well here,” I hear Gabe say in a low voice to Laurel at the same moment I realize Everett is following me, wine box in hand.
He sets it on the island, clearly trying to communicate something with me through the intense, pointed expression he’s wearing. I ignore him and slide the pizza into the oven and set it to its lowest temperature, turning back toward the fridge, but there’s a chest in my way.
