The Unexpected Everything (42 page)

•  •  •

“Talk,” Palmer said, pointing her Twizzler at me. “Andie. Details.”

I rolled over to look at her, holding my hand up to cut the glare. We were sunbathing on Palmer's roof, all four of us. Our schedules had aligned for the afternoon, and it wasn't until we'd set up there, with towels and snacks, that I realized it had been a while since it had been just us—no boyfriends or crushes or Tom. And how much I'd missed just the four of us hanging out. “What?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew. And it was one of the reasons I'd wanted to hang out with them
today—I needed some girl talk, and to figure out what I was feeling, in a way I never seemed to be able to except when we were together.

“Come on,” Bri said, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head. “You and Clark. Spill.”

I wasn't quite able to stop myself from smiling as I smoothed out the edges of my towel. This, truthfully, was a new experience for me. My friends and I all knew every detail of what the others had done with guys—but I usually didn't have anything to contribute to this conversation. I'd been keeping things vague with them and letting them believe I was still safe within my old boundaries.

“Wait, what?” Toby asked, as she paused in applying her spray-on sunscreen to her legs. She turned to me, her expression incredulous. “Don't tell me the queen of first base is actually doing something.”

“She totally is,” Palmer said, nodding with authority. “You don't lose that many IQ points if you're just kissing someone.”

“First of all,” I said, busying myself with smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in my towel, “why does first base get such a bad rap? It's like the most important base.”

“This is true,” Bri said, nodding. “And I know it's true, because in every movie, the first baseman is always really cute.”

“I'm just saying, wait until you try the other bases,” Palmer said, waggling her eyebrows at us.

“No,” Toby said, holding up her hand. “Please no. Every time you talk about sleeping with Tom, I end up picturing him naked.”

“You might be surprised to know—” Palmer started, raising an eyebrow as Toby waved her hands in front of her face.

“Seriously, stop it.” She shuddered. “And now I'm seeing it,” she said, shaking her head. “And I can't unsee it.”

“All I'm saying,” Palmer said, turning to me, “is that the other bases are just more
interesting
.”

“Mmm-hm,” Bri said, taking a long drink of her soda.

“Yeah,” I murmured without thinking, replaying the night before in my head.

“Wait, what?” Toby asked, suddenly sitting up straight. She raised her sunglasses and looked closely at me. “Are you . . . and Dogboy . . . ?”

“Clark,” I said automatically.

Bri shook her head, starting to smile. “Andie, you are so busted,” she said. “I need details
now.
”

“Wait a sec,” Palmer said, eyes wide. “You guys haven't done it yet, have you?”

Toby's head whipped over and she stared at me.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “But . . .” This was, after all, what I'd wanted to talk to them about. But also, once I talked to them about it, once I said the words and they became part of our conversation, I knew this would become real in a way it hadn't been before. “But we're talking about it. Like . . . happening-in-the-next-two-weeks talking about it.”

“Oh my god,” Palmer said, grabbing my arm and smiling at me. “That's so huge.”

“I can't believe you thought I would have done it without telling you,” I said, shaking my head. “Did you really think I would have forgotten to mention something that big to you guys?”

“I don't know,” Bri said, her voice muffled as she dug in her
bag for something. “Sometimes people don't always tell each other every single thing. I mean—”

“Wait,” Toby said, talking over her as she looked around at all of us. “So this means all you guys are off, like, rounding the bases and I'm still in the dugout. I'm the person selling Cracker Jack in the stands.”

“This metaphor is getting weird,” Palmer murmured to me.

“You and Palmer are leaving me and Bri behind,” Toby said as she dropped her sunglasses down again and Bri started looking through her bag once more. “But after this, nobody can go off and have experiences without me. I'm falling way too far back.”

“So what's the plan?” Bri asked, looking up from her bag. “Have you guys talked about it?”

I nodded, then hesitated. Something had been bothering me more than I ever would have let Clark know. “It won't be his first time, though.”

“He's done it?” Toby asked, looking shocked. “Way to go, Homeschool.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking a drink of my Diet Coke, which was mostly just crushed ice by now, then started to tell my friends about it. I'd suspected he had—he seemed to know a lot about the Colorado College dorms for someone who wasn't spending a lot of time there. But when we crossed the line from “something that might possibly happen someday” to “something that's actually going to happen in the foreseeable future,” Clark had told me about his ex-girlfriend and that they'd been pretty serious for a while. This had led to a night I wasn't necessarily proud of, in which I'd googled “C. B. McCallister girlfriend Colorado
College pretty” trying to get a visual on what his ex looked like, without success.

“Whoa,” Toby said, looking at me closely when I'd finished recounting the story, complete with embarrassing failed Internet stalking. “You
really
like him. Otherwise, you would have told us everything already, whether we wanted to know or not. And you wouldn't care about his ex this much.”

I looked down at my cup, shaking it, like I could somehow get some more Diet Coke to emerge from the ice, wondering why I suddenly felt so much like I was going to cry.

“Andie,” Palmer said, her voice gentle and much quieter than usual, as she leaned closer to me, “it's okay if you like him. It's
good
.”

I nodded, even though I could feel that my lip was starting to tremble. This wasn't even what I was getting upset about. It was something bigger, and so scary, that I was mostly avoiding thinking about it and hoping it would just go away. “I know that,” I said. “But . . . he's leaving at the end of the summer.” I hated even saying it out loud, though it had been circling around in my head ever since I'd realized it the night of the scavenger hunt. Usually, end dates like this didn't bother me. Usually, I loved them. But this was different.
Clark
was different. And I was starting to realize why all my three-week relationships had been so easy to get over—there was nothing at stake, so there was nothing to lose. And I knew that if we took this next step, if we went there, it would be that much harder when he headed back to Colorado.

And it wasn't like it was a surprise to me. I had known, almost from the beginning, that Clark would be leaving when
the summer was over. His life was back in Colorado, in an apartment in Colorado Springs that was currently sitting empty, though he had hired someone to collect his mail and leave a different light on every time, in the hopes of making it seem like he'd never left. I'd known this, of course. So why was it suddenly feeling like brand-new information?

I looked up and saw my friends all had identical sympathetic expressions on their faces, and I looked away from them and reached for the Doritos. “Let's talk about something else,” I said, hearing how falsely cheerful my voice sounded but going on anyway.

“Really?” Palmer was looking at me like she was debating whether or not to let me off the hook.

“Really,” I said firmly enough that she nodded and motioned for me to share the Doritos.

“We could talk about Toby's
date
this week,” Bri said, brightening.

Toby slumped back on her towel. “I'm still not happy about any of this,” she said. She pointed to me and Palmer. “You two are my witnesses.”

“Maybe it'll be good,” I said, propping myself up on my elbow to look at her. “Maybe this is how the curse gets broken. Maybe this is how you stop selling the Cracker Jack.”

“I don't think so,” Toby said with a sigh.

“You don't know that,” Palmer said cheerfully.

“It's that weird guy from the projection booth,” Toby said flatly.

“Oh,” Palmer said more quietly.

“Craig is a nice guy,” Bri said firmly. “And he knows a ton
about movies.”

“Cause that's always the first thing I look for,” Toby muttered.

“You can at least give it a shot,” Bri said.

“Or you could just flirt with Gregory,” I said, thinking about how every time I was at the Pearce he was going out of his way to try and talk to Toby, who barely acknowledged him. “I can tell he likes you.”

“Ooh, from the museum?” Palmer asked. “He's totally cute-ish!”

“Ugh,” Toby said, rolling over onto her stomach, clearly done with all of us and this conversation. “I'm going out with what's-his-face from the movie theater, okay? So just leave me alone.”

“You know his name,” Bri said, nudging Toby's leg with her foot. “Don't pretend you don't.” Toby nudged Bri back—though it looked like it was maybe more of a kick.

“Hey!” Bri said, half yelling and half laughing. She reached out to retaliate as Palmer threw her empty Sprite bottle at them.

“You guys, we are on a
roof
,” she said. “No fighting until we're on the ground!”

•  •  •

We all descended through Palmer's room when it started to get dark out and then congregated on her gravel driveway, talking—but not saying good-bye, since I knew I'd be seeing them in a few hours, except for Bri, who was working concessions at the evening show and was trying to bribe us with popcorn to come and hang out with her.

“But it's really not
that
bad,” she was saying as she and Toby walked to her car. I'd walked over from my house, but was feeling sun-stunned and lazy enough that I was considering asking them for a ride.

“That's what you said before we actually saw the movie,” Palmer reminded her as Toby flung her stuff into the backseat. “Not falling for that one twice.”

“Andie?” Bri asked hopefully.

I shook my head. “But text when you're done and we'll tell you where we are.”

“Fine,” Bri said with a sigh as she got into the driver's seat. But a moment later she stood up again and turned to me. “Oh, I almost forgot. The woman you work for—does she handle cats, too?”

“Yes,” I said a little warily, since I was well aware of the cat under discussion. Maya and Dave mostly did dog walking, but there were a fair number of cat-sitting clients on the roster as well.

“Good,” Bri said, shoulders slumping with relief. “Text me her info, would you? My mom needs someone to bring Miss Cupcakes to the vet and I almost lost a finger last time.”

“Sure,” I said, pulling out my phone and doing it while it was still fresh in my mind, saying a silent apology to Maya. “Done.”

“Thanks,” Bri said, getting into her car. I could already hear her arguing with Toby about something, indignation mixed with laughter, as they pulled out of Palmer's driveway and headed out, Bri waving out the window as they went.

I shouldered my canvas bag—the slight prickling of my skin letting me know I might have missed a spot or two with the sunscreen—and started to head toward my house, only to find Palmer falling into step next to me. “Come on,” she said, nodding down the road. “I'll walk you home.”

I looked down at Palmer's bare feet with their flip-flop tan lines. “Shoes?” Palmer waved this away, and we started walking together, almost in the center of the road.

“About Clark,” Palmer said, after we'd been walking in silence for a moment or two, and I knew suddenly this was the reason she'd wanted to walk me back—apparently she hadn't actually let me off the hook at all. “Don't fixate on the fact that he's leaving.”

“But . . .” We walked in silence for a few more steps. We'd totally passed my house by now, but neither of us had even paused in front of it—we were both aware, without having to talk about it, that this was just a ruse to keep talking. I knew that Palmer would wait until I was ready to speak again, and it gave me the space to get my thoughts together a little more. “What if we take this huge step together, and then . . . ?” I let the sentence trail off. I didn't even want to think the words required to finish it.

“Just because the summer's over doesn't mean you guys have to be,” Palmer pointed out. “Even if he goes back to Colorado, planes do exist. You guys could figure it out.”

I shook my head, not really able to take this in. “I just feel like I should have planned for this.”

“Here's the thing,” Palmer said. “You've been really happy this summer.” I looked over at her, and Palmer went on. “Like, the happiest I've ever seen you. And it's also the first time in forever you've had no plan. You've been enjoying the right now. I don't think that's a coincidence.”

“I know. But . . .”

“So maybe just keep doing that. After all,” she said, raising
an eyebrow at me, “this is a problem for Future Andie to solve.”

I smiled at that. “Well, Future Andie is
way
smarter than I am.”

“She totally is. She can handle this.”

“I just wish I knew what was going to happen next.”

Palmer nodded, then after a moment, said, “But you never really know. I mean, look at what happened with your dad.”

I nodded, thinking for a second about the summer I'd wanted to have, but almost couldn't get it to come into focus. A summer at Johns Hopkins would have meant not meeting Clark, which was getting harder and harder to imagine—like trying to picture a world without electricity. “You know some things, though,” I pointed out as we approached the Winthrop statue, and like we'd discussed it before, started to turn around and head back to my house. I thought about my friends, about how through all the crushes and boyfriends and bad kisses and horrible dates we'd had, the four of us had been together, constant and unshakable. “I know you guys are always going to be around.”