“Ceding control,” I add, throwing a hand out toward the ocean for emphasis. Laurel laughs. “Yeah,” I say. “But it’s kind of exciting too. Think about all the great and terrible things there are still left to happen.”
“Let’s start with some great,” Laurel says. “Please.” At this, she does rest her head on my shoulder, loops an arm through mine. I press my cheek against her hair.
“Agreed,” I say, looking out at the same ocean that’s sustained moments like these for so long and will again. Maybe not next summer, maybe not the one after. Things will grow and change and shift, and this is probably the last time we’ll sit in this exact spot. But it doesn’t mean everything is gone. It doesn’t mean things are worse. It just means there’s more, always, to look forward to. More ways to learn each other and grow together and support one another, even if it isn’t from a bedroom across the hall or a daily FaceTime or a there-every-second kind of friendship. Maybe that’s the best part of it, after all, that we are the kind of people who will still be there, even after all of that. Even after five long, hard years, we’ll come back together and emerge, stronger than ever, on the other side.
I squeeze Laurel’s hand as the front door creaks open inside the cabin, one of the others coming to check on us. We’ll invite them in with open arms, pull them into whatever this new version of all of us is. But for now, I repeat Laurel’s words like some hope cast into the water, where it might catch on a wave and come back to us again and again. “Let’s start with some great.”
thirty-six
This Summer
“Think Ralph will have us arrested if he finds us out here?” Davi asks that night as we all huddle around the bonfire we’ve built out back of Poppy Cottage.
After getting a weepy Laurel off the back deck, we went into town and wandered the market and the grocery store until we had enough food for a feast tonight. It was easy to see that some dam had broken as we wandered the aisles of the overpriced corner store, as Laurel tried every sample available at the market, as we sang along at the top of our lungs to The Police and Billy Joel and Linda Ronstadt in the Bronco on the way back to the villa.
We cooked an elaborate meal and ate it out back as the sun went down, racing to fill the gaps that had been left this week. Things we hadn’t done, things we hadn’t said. It felt like some part of my heart was mending as we sat around the table, a piece that had been hanging on by a thread sewn back on.
Everett was close by all day, but never obviously so. We still had things to talk about, after all, and this last night was about all of us. But I still let my hand brush against his, stood shoulder to shoulder with him at the kitchen island, let my knee find his under the table.
When the sun went down, we drove back to Poppy Cottage, ducking under the caution tape strung between the rows of A-frames and out to the beach, back to where it all began.
“I don’t think he can technically arrest us for being on a public beach,” Gabe answers Davi, tipping his beer bottle back.
“Don’t underestimate Ralph,” Laurel says, raising her own bottle toward him.
Sparks dance off the fire and into the air, disappearing into the night sky. I’m in between Laurel and Everett, and I press closer to her as she lays her head on my shoulder, while my fingers reach for Everett’s in the sand.
“Good week,” Davi says after a while, eyes fixed on the flames.
We all laugh, Davi grinning, but finally Gabe agrees with him. “Yeah,” he says. “Good week, after all.”
It’s quiet for a minute before Everett speaks up. “So are we going to do this?”
It’s a tradition that’s gotten a little muddied over the years, since we couldn’t all be here every summer. On top of that, we’re out of practice. But Laurel smiles at the idea, and Gabe leans forward, ready. Davi is the first to speak up.
“I’m afraid I won’t get this promotion at work,” he says.
“You’ll get it,” Laurel says. She sighs. “I’m afraid ‘Laurel’s New Life’ is actually going to be a giant dumpster fire.”
“Well, with that attitude,” Davi says, and she laughs, kicking sand in his direction.
“It’s not going to be a dumpster fire,” I tell her, pressing my cheek to the top of her head. “It’s just one foot in front of the other.”
“I’m worried about the kids starting school,” Gabe says. “I’m also worried that Mia wants to start trying for another this year.”
“You, Greatest Dad in the World, afraid of that?” Everett asks jokingly.
“I’m worried about loving them as much as Riley and Chloe,” Gabe says. “How can that happen three times?”
“It’ll happen,” I say. “You’ve got nothing but room in that heart of yours, Gabe.” He smiles and nods at me, and I realize that this has turned more into easing each other’s fears than just listing them. Maybe that was always the point. I take a swig of my beer, set the base of the bottle in the sand. “I’m pretty afraid of starting off on this new path,” I say. “I always knew what would happen at the restaurant.”
“It could have blown up,” Davi points out. “You could have been inside.”
“Jesus, Davi,” Laurel says, laughing. She sits up straight and looks at me. “I think this is a really good thing for you. I think you’re going to be surprised how good it is.”
“Me too,” Everett says on my other side, and I have to blink, nudge him to go so I don’t get too emotional in front of everyone. He meets my eyes. “I’m afraid of what happens after this week,” he says. He glances around at everyone, but I think what he says next might mean more than one thing. “I’m afraid of what happens to us.”
We sit with it for a minute, the fire taking everything we’ve said up and away, a release somehow. Jobs, kids, new lives. All of us. Things that we can only hold on to for so long until we have to let them go, trust that the care we’ve put into them will carry them forward. Carry us forward.