“Excuse me,” I say, not looking at him, but he doesn’t move. I tilt my head back to stare up at him, frowning. “I told Laurel I’d make a salad.”
“We have to play nice this week,” he says, tone warning. His voice is only loud enough for me to hear, but I look around him to the foyer to check and see if anyone else might have heard. Davi joined Laurel and Gabe, and they’re laughing about something.
“This week isn’t about us,” I say.
“Exactly,” Everett replies. “So we can’t make it about us by bickering all the time.”
“I don’t think we’rebickering,” I say.
One of Everett’s brows tugs upward, doubtful. “How’d you do with those pizza boxes?”
“Great, thank you.”
I can see one corner of his mouth twitch bitterly, and I’m surprised at the thrill that runs through me, like I’ve won. I don’t like it.
“We’ll play nice,” I say. I wave a hand around him, shooing. “Now may I please get to the fridge?”
“Of course,” Everett says in far too cheery a voice, pivoting on one foot to let me past. “Do you need help?”
Yes. No. Not from you. I smile tightly. “Sure.”
Laurel plops onto one of the island stools as Everett washes his hands before I hand him an apple and a knife. Gabe claps a hand on his shoulder as he walks into the kitchen, and Everett momentarily sets down what I’ve given to him to hug him hello, exchange greetings with Davi.
“Seems like everyone’s getting along?” Laurel says, catching my eye as I yank a bunch of kale out of its bag with a little too much force.
“Mmm-hmm,” I say, ripping the leaves from their stems. “Everything’s great.”
“Can we get to talking now?” Davi asks as Everett returns to the cutting board, picking up the knife.
“Have you been sitting here in silence?” he asks.
“That’s exactly what I said,” Davi exclaims, throwing Laurel a wide-eyed stare.
“We were waiting for you to arrive,” I say, and it’s not the words exactly, but the tone in which they slide out of my mouth that turns it into a barbed comment. Which, depressingly, makes it all the easier to keep going. “No earlier flights?”
“You know, I tried to convince Delta to make Dubrovnik to Los Angeles their headline flight, but it wasn’t really the boon they were hoping for,” Everett says. Again, a sarcastic comment that might have gotten a laugh from me before, but nowis delivered with enough vitriol laced into it that I rip into the next piece of kale like I’m trying to tear a flag down.
“You were in Croatia?” I ask when I see Laurel eyeing me.
“Filming the next movie,” Gabe says. He’s rounded the counter and is pulling wine bottles out of the box, stashing whites in the fridge and uncorking a red.
“Have things been as rough as they were a month ago?” Davi asks Everett, and I am suddenly on the outside. It’s clear the four of them have their own group separate from the five of us, just like I do with Gabe, Laurel, and Davi. Just like I never wanted to happen.
“You didn’t have to come straight here,” Laurel says, skipping over Davi’s question. “You’ve got to be so jet-lagged.”
“Are you kidding?” Everett says, slicing into the apple. “Wouldn’t miss this. And things wrapped up fine,” he says to Davi. “But I’m glad to be off a film set for a while.”
Gabe pours everyone wine while I finish the salad, Everett grabbing the goat cheese from the fridge while I make the dressing in a move that feels competitively helpful.
Everett sets a salad bowl in front of me. I yank it a little too harshly and have to catch it before it careens to the floor and we have to explain broken porcelain to Ralph. When I straighten, Laurel is watching me, assessing. I clear my throat and set the bowl on the island, forcing a smile onto my face. Everett is right. We have to play nice this week, even if that’s all it is. Pretend.
five
First Summer
I couldn’t find a moment to talk to Everett alone that first night, and that quote fromGatsbykept ringing in my head, about large parties and how there isn’t any privacy at small ones. I’d never been more irritated with the size of our friend group than when I’d meet him in the kitchen and he’d look at me with a grin like we were in on the same thing, and suddenly Davi would be there, grabbing another beer from the fridge. Or when he was standing out back and I hurried to stand next to him only to discover Laurel there too, consoling Gabe. The fact of our small party never bothered me until I needed to talk to someone alone without drawing attention to it.
But if I thought Everett wouldn’t keep our secret, I underestimated him. He coolly navigated the whole evening like we’d never met before, shaking my hand and asking what my major was at dinner, while I in turn responded like Laurel did to the Bronco as if I’d never seen it before, demanding we all drive along the coast in it at some point on this trip, and pretended I was surprised to learn he wanted to be a director. To be fair, that was new. I’d learned he was in film school at the party where we met, but he hadn’t told me exactly what he wanted to do. I was quickly made aware that whatever casual intimacy I’d felt withhim during our one night together was more a result of Everett’s general vibes—easy, sunny, charming—than it was about what we’d learned about each other. Which was to say, very little.
