The Unexpected Everything (56 page)

“Hey,” my dad said, causing me to look over toward the stage, as though I could see anything there except faint dots.

“What—” I started. “How are you—”

“I'll tell you in a minute,” he said. “Where are you?”

“I'm in the parking lot with Palmer,” I said. “Oh—Palmer's here. And the car overheated, and I really need to get to New Jersey. . . .” I trailed off, still trying to grasp what was happening. “I still don't understand what's going on.”

“So you need a ride,” my dad said, and I could practically hear the smile in his voice. “Want to use mine?”

•  •  •

“So this is a campaign bus,” Palmer said, from her seat by the row that surrounded a table, where strategy sessions usually took place. She ran her hand over the tabletop and nodded her approval. “I like it.”

“Explain it to me again,” I said, leaning more into the aisle. My dad was sitting across from me, in the aisle seat as well. He and Walt had picked us up in the
TOWARD THE FUTURE
bus, and my dad had called AAA to tow my car back to Stanwich. Peter was not on the bus, and I was pretty sure my dad had left him back at the fairgrounds, which Walt seemed particularly happy about.

My dad smiled and shook his head. “I told you, you should have stayed to hear it.”

“So . . . you didn't let the governor say anything,” I said, now really regretting that I hadn't stayed, if only to see the look on Peter's face when things started going off script. “You just started talking?”

“I said I had an announcement,” my dad said. “And one that couldn't wait.”

“People are talking about it online,” Palmer said, scrolling through her phone, and my dad let out a short laugh.

“I'm not surprised,” he said.

“Me either.” I was still trying to get my head around it. My dad had given the speech he'd planned to give all along, the one that Peter had no knowledge of—the speech that said he would finish out his term but would not run for another one. That he wanted to spend more time with his family.

“So what now?” I asked.

My dad took a deep breath and gave me a smile. “I'm not sure,” he said. “I'm going to finish out my term and then . . . I guess I'll figure it out.”

“So I bet Peter's freaking out right about now,” I said, not quite able to stop myself from smiling.

My dad nodded. “Probably,” he said, then shrugged. “He'll get over it. And if he doesn't, it's not really my issue any longer.”

“Congressman?” Walt called from the front of the bus. “I'm going to need an address. Unless you just want me to go back to the pickup spot?”

“Coming,” my dad said, ruffling my hair like he used to do when I was little, then making his way to the front of the bus.

I crossed back to join Palmer at the table. She was looking like I felt—a little stunned by everything that was happening.
“Busy day,” she said, shaking her head, and I smiled as I sat in the seat across from her.

I nodded. “It has been.”

“And we're still going to New Jersey,” Palmer said, fixing me with a look that let me know she wasn't going to let me out of this. “We'll just get my car and I'll drive us.”

I nodded, pulling out my phone and looking at the time. I'd found the address of the bookstore on Clark's website, and mapped it from Stanwich—it was still another hour to get there. It would be cutting it close, but we could almost make it. I wasn't letting myself think about what would happen once I got there. For the moment it was enough to know that we were going. “Okay,” I said, nodding a few more times than I needed to. “Okay.”

“So I was thinking about Bri and Toby,” Palmer said, and I looked up at her, putting my phone away, glad to have some distraction from what we were heading toward. “I think we need to get them to sit down together and talk this out.”

“I agree,” I said, “but I don't see that happening, do you?” Palmer sighed and bit her lip. “I mean, even if we get them both to the diner, or wherever, when Toby sees Bri, she's just going to leave.”

“Or you,” Palmer pointed out. “They're both still pretty mad at you.”

“Right,” I said. We sat in silence for a moment, the weight of the situation—the hopelessness of it—seeming to press down on me like a physical force.

“We need to get them together,” Palmer said slowly, “somewhere they can't leave.”

I nodded, thinking that sounded good if we could work it
out. I suddenly remembered
Rio Bravo
and all the secrets and resentments that had come bubbling to the surface when the men were stuck in the jail together. We needed that, but hopefully with less singing. “That would be good,” I said, “but . . .” I looked over at Palmer to see that she was looking at the bus with newfound interest. “What?” I asked.

Palmer smiled at me. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

•  •  •

I had not expected, when I'd woken up that morning, that by the afternoon I would be in this situation. In all the vague ways I'd imagined my day going—maybe getting a coffee and picking up some dog-walking shifts—this had not been one of the options. Riding in a bus with my dad's face on it, barreling across New Jersey, en route to tell Clark I was in love with him, while trying to get Toby and Bri to talk to each other, had been nowhere in my list of possibilities. And yet here we were. We weren't in the Mustang, but I had a feeling my mom would have approved.

“Say something,” I said to Bri, who sat across the bus table from me, her arms folded, looking hard out at the window like she couldn't hear me.

“I'll say something,” Toby snapped, from her seat across the aisle. “This is kidnapping. You can't just force people to be on a bus together.”

“Nobody forced you onto the bus,” Palmer pointed out from where she was standing in the aisle between Toby and Bri's rows. “You came on voluntarily.”

Both of them scoffed in unison, and Palmer and I exchanged a look. When we'd asked my dad if this would be possible—leaving out, for the moment, that Bri and Toby were currently
not speaking to each other—we'd made it seem like we all just wanted to ride down to Clark's bookstore event together and that Bri and Toby were excited by the idea of being on a campaign bus.

My dad had bought this and checked with Walt, who just shrugged and said he'd been paid for the whole day, so as long as we didn't go over the mileage, we were okay, and that it didn't make any difference to him where we went. Once we'd gotten the go-ahead, Palmer and I had strategized. When we'd decided on the plan—we'd pick up Bri and Toby as we went through Stanwich en route to New Jersey, and they'd just have to work it out as we all rode down to the bookstore together—we'd realized we had to actually get them both on the bus, together, in order for this to work.

We'd finally decided to go with the nuclear option—Palmer telling both of them that she and Tom had broken up and that she needed to see them at once. Palmer had knocked on every piece of wood on the bus afterward, convinced she was somehow jinxing her relationship by lying about it. But we knew this was the only thing that would get both of them to agree. They'd figured out the ruse pretty quickly, but there's not a whole lot you can do when you're riding on a campaign bus that's flying down the New Jersey Turnpike, with a driver who refuses to stop at the rest stops.

My dad had figured out that Palmer and I had been doing some creative embellishing but had only told me sternly that we'd talk about it when we got home and had gone to the front of the bus to sit with Walt, casting occasional glances into the back of the bus and shaking his head. I got the sense
that I'd probably be grounded again in the near future.

But I also had the feeling, like on the night of the scavenger hunt when he got to drive like James Bond, that he was secretly enjoying this.

Bri and Toby were still refusing to talk to each other, and as the miles whipped by outside the window, I found myself getting more and more nervous. What if even getting them trapped in a space together wasn't enough? What if we really weren't going to be able to get past this?

“Guys,” Palmer said in her best reasonable voice, “Andie and I really think that if you just talk to each other . . .” Toby just shook her head, and Bri looked down at her hands.

“I mean, we're stuck on a bus together,” I pointed out. “We might as well make the best of it.”

“We're stuck on this bus
because
of you,” Toby snapped. “Don't make it seem like it's just a big coincidence.”

“I know,” I said, looking between them. “And I'm really sorry, guys. I truly am. I shouldn't have interfered like I did. I just . . . wanted us to be okay.”

Toby let out a short, humorless laugh, and Bri stared hard out the window, neither one of them speaking.

Palmer and I exchanged a look, but there didn't seem to be a ton to say after that. Silence fell, while I tried to think of a new approach we could take, something that would shake this up.

•  •  •

“Toby,” Bri said ten minutes later, breaking the silence. “Please just talk to me.”

Toby folded her arms tighter across her chest, and I saw Palmer take a breath, like she was about to jump in, but I caught
her eye and shook my head, hoping that maybe, if we gave her enough space, she'd come around. “What do you want me to say?” Toby finally asked. “I don't have anything to say to you.”

“You can't . . . ,” Bri said, then stopped and tried again. “I never meant to hurt you, T. You have to know that. It was the last thing I wanted.”

“And yet,” Toby said, and I could hear the anger in her voice, the way she was biting off the ends of her words, “guess what happened. Gosh, who could have foreseen that totally bizarre occurrence?”

“I'm so sorry,” Bri said, and I could see that she was on the verge of tears. “I wish you would just listen to me—”

“So you can say what?” Toby snapped. “That you went ahead and did something you
knew
would break my heart, but you didn't care enough about me to stop? Or even to tell me what was going on so I didn't have to find out like that?”

“Tobe,” Palmer said, leaning toward her. “Maybe—”

“Although why am I even surprised?” Toby asked, shaking her head. “Of
course
this is happening to me. Of course not only can I not be with the guy I like, but he falls for my best friend.” She looked right at me, and I felt myself drawing back. “You don't believe I'm cursed,” she said with a short, unhappy laugh, “but what the
hell
do you call this? I'm the only one of us in this situation. Everyone else is happy and in love with their perfect boyfriends, and I'm alone, just like I always am.” Toby's voice broke, and she wrapped her arms around herself and looked out the window, her chin shaking.

“Well, Andie's not,” Palmer said, clearly trying to lighten the mood. “That's one of the reasons we're going to New Jersey.”

“We're going to
New Jersey
?” Toby asked, closing her eyes for just a moment. “Perfect.”

“Tell me what I can do,” Bri said, leaning across the table toward her, and I could see she was getting blotchy, the way she did when she was trying to stop herself from really crying. “There has to be something. We can't just keep not talking like this. I miss you so much.”

I thought I saw something in Toby's face soften for just a moment, but then it was gone. “Okay,” she said, turning to face Bri and folding her arms. “Are you still with Wyatt?”

“Toby,” I started, but she was already talking over me.

“Are you still
sleeping
with Wyatt?” she asked, and from the front of the bus, I heard my dad clear his throat and then start asking Walt very loud questions about the bus's gas mileage.

“Look,” Bri said, leaning toward Toby. “If you'd just listen—”

“You want to be friends again?” Toby asked. “You want to stop fighting?”

“Yes,”
Bri said, her eyes searching Toby's face. “I do.”

“Fine,” Toby said. “If you break up with him, we can be friends again.”

Bri drew back. “That's not fair.”

Toby let out a short laugh, the kind with absolutely no happiness in it. “What's not
fair
is that you snuck around behind my back and stole the guy I was in love with. That's what's not fair.”

“You weren't in love with him!” Bri yelled. “You were in love with the idea of him, just like you always are.”

“Excuse me?” Toby asked, her voice rising as well.

I glanced to the front of the bus, worried, but if Walt seemed bothered by the fact that he was driving a busful of
teenage girls—two of whom were screaming at each other—it did not seem to be fazing him in the slightest.

“Guys,” Palmer said, her voice soothing, “maybe just—”

“A real friend wouldn't ask me to break up with him,” Bri said, shaking her head. “I can't believe you're asking me to do that, Toby.”

“A real friend wouldn't have done it in the first place,” Toby shot back, and I could hear the raw pain underneath all her anger and bravado. “Especially not you. Especially not my
best
friend.”

“So let me understand this,” Bri said, and I could hear the pain in her voice as well. “You want me to break up with Wyatt for you?”

“What am I supposed to do?” Toby asked, her voice anguished. “Am I supposed to still be your best friend and hear everything about this? Listen to you talk about how in love you are? I'm supposed to be
happy
for you?” Toby's voice broke, and she drew in a raggedy breath. “I can't do that,” she said, shaking her head, just once, to either side. “I just can't. And I want to be friends again, Bri, god,” She said, starting to speak faster now, the words coming out all in a rush. “I miss you so much, you have no idea. I want to be friends again and I hate that you're doing this to us—”