“Everett!” I call once I’m in earshot, but he doesn’t turn around. I finally reach him and put a hand on his shoulder. It tenses beneath my palm. “I didn’t mean that, Everett. I said it because—”
“I know why you said it,” Everett says, turning back to me. He doesn’t look angry. He looks a little lost, hopeless, and it’s so much worse than mad. “Don’t you think I know? We were so close to having it, Sutton. But of course it would never work.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means we’re the same. We both love being in control, but it’s all an illusion. It’s why neither of us can be in a successful relationship. We’re summer people, remember?”
“Please stop quoting me,” I say, a desperate tinge to my voice. “I don’t believe that anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because of this week,” I say. “Because of yesterday.”
“We’ve had five years of not talking about this,” Everett says, that same sad, defeated expression on his face as he looks down at me. “One week can’t change that.”
“Maybe it can,” I say. “Maybe we were just young and stupid, and maybe now that I know how I feel, we—” I break off. Everett is so close to me, chest almost bumping mine.
“What?” he asks softly.
“Nothing,” I say. There are enormous things to admit to between us, things to apologize for, and I can’t do it on a cold, dark beach. It has to matter. “I don’t want to have this conversation while one of us is drunk.”
Of everything that’s happened tonight, I don’t expect thatto be the thing that gets to him, that makes him drop whatever facade it is he’s been clinging onto, but at this, he falters back a step. “Fuck,” he says. I watch as he drags a hand down his face, as he looks at the beer he’s still clutching. “I am drunk, aren’t I.” He says it like he never has been, like he’s just realizing it now.This is why my head is spinning.
“I’m afraid so,” I say.
Everett looks stymied for a minute, and then he turns around, lifts his arm, and flings the bottle at the ocean. We watch it glide in a smooth arc, end over end, sending the remainders of its contents raining down over the sand before it disappears into the water.
We stand in silence for a minute. Everett’s back is to me, so I can’t see his expression, just the rise and fall of his shoulders.
“Feel better?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer for a long moment. I take a step closer to him, reaching a hand toward his shoulder. “Everett?”
“Shit,” he says.
And bolts for the water.
I call his name but he ignores me, and it’s so dark out here that before long I have to take off after him just to keep track of him. I don’t know what I expected a drunk Everett to be like, but it certainly wasn’t this erratic. “What are you doing?” I shout. “Everett!”
I speed up, watching in horror as he hops on one foot, bringing his other up to wrench his shoe off. He manages to do the same with the other without toppling over or breaking his leg, but it too gets launched in the direction of the water, never to be seen again.
“Stop!” I call out to him just as he reaches the water’s edge, pants immediately soaked to his knees as a wave comes crashing in. “Everett, you’re drunk! You’ll drown!”
“I want to save the oceans!” he calls back to me as he goes in farther, up to his waist.
“What?” I’m at the water too now, and I toss my heels onto the sand.
“Laurel asked if I wanted to save the oceans that first summer, and I do!” he shouts back at me. “I’m not—” I’m up to my calves when a wave comes in and smacks him in the chest, momentarily stopping him. “I’m not a completely shitty person!”
“Everett, you’re not even a little bit a shitty person!” I shout after him. I’m up to my hips now, the water colder than I anticipated, and he’s far enough out that I’m starting to worry, arms working like he might dive in. “Please stop!” I call. “It’s just one bottle! The ocean forgives you! You don’t owe it your life!”
He looks over his shoulder at me then, almost like he hears how ridiculous this is, like he’s going to laugh at it. I’m almost smiling too when the wave hits him, hard, and he goes under.
“Everett!” My voice feels like a tiny shard in the darkness as I go rushing forward, almost getting my knees taken out by the same wave. I shout his name again, over and over until I’m far enough out that when I put my foot forward it doesn’t meet sand and I lurch into the water, taking a face full before I start paddling, panic rising in my chest.
He’s a good swimmer, I remind myself, in the roughly thirty seconds I’ve been looking for him. He’s a better swimmer than I am, and it’s not that deep here. But as the water crashes to shore in the distance, as I hold my breath and bob with another wave coming in and I don’t see him, I worry that I’m wrong. I start to feel frantic, arms wheeling, looking in every dark, endless direction.Everett, I think,this one stupid night can’t be it.
An arm wraps around my middle just as I’m about to call his name again and starts hauling me toward shore as another wave crashes toward us. We get our feet under us just in time andmanage to outrun it, Everett’s arm dropping from my waist as soon as we hit shore and he falls to all fours, coughing heartily like a sailor tossed overboard, just returned to land. I stumble farther up the beach, arms wrapped around my elbows, suddenly freezing and furious and afraid.
