The Unexpected Everything (6 page)

I turned my back on the Mustang and ran my hand over the
fabric of the couch. “This was surprisingly comfortable,” I said, and heard Topher give a short laugh.

“Well, it's no laundry room.” I pushed myself up slightly to look at him, and he smiled as he pulled a lock of my hair forward, winding it around his finger. “I was thinking about that night a few days ago, actually.”

“Were you?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Just about how lucky we were.” This made me sit up a little straighter, and I looked him in the eye, starting to get nervous, worried that he was suddenly changing the rules on me. “Lucky because we didn't get caught,” he clarified, and I felt myself relax.

“We really were.” It was three years ago, but I could remember so clearly what it had been like—the thrill of my first real party, then the flashing lights streaking in through the window and my utter panic when I realized that not only was I in trouble, but I might have wrecked my father's career. I was desperately searching for an exit in the chaos, and then, out of nowhere, was Topher Fitzpatrick, taking my hand in his. I didn't know him—we went to different schools, and I'd said only about five words to him the year before, at an event at the governor's mansion. But I saw in his eyes the exact same thing I was feeling—the paralyzing fear that comes with knowing just how high the stakes really are. He leaned closer to me to be heard above the noise of people running, panicking, bottles and glasses breaking as everyone tried to get out, and fast.

“Want to get out of here?” he'd asked. I nodded, and he held my hand tighter as we ran through the house. He stopped in front of a door that I would have run past and pushed it
open. It was a laundry room, a tiny space with a folding table, a stacked washer and dryer, and barely enough room to turn around. Topher pulled me inside, and we shut the door behind us and stood in the dark and waited.

We weren't discovered right away, and after a few minutes of both of us panicking that cops were about to fling open the door at any moment, we both relaxed a little and found our way to the folding table. We sat side by side next to a stack of fluffy, neatly folded towels, moonlight streaming through the tiny window above the dryer and the smell of fabric softener all around us. And when the panic that I was about to ruin everything had started to subside, I let myself appreciate this situation for the first time—that I was sitting very close to a cute gray-eyed boy in the moonlight.

We started talking, about school, about our parents, about the counter-spin we'd have ready in case we were discovered—that when we'd realized there was underage drinking happening, we'd removed ourselves from the situation immediately—until I realized that enough time had passed that we could probably go out safely. I turned to Topher to tell him this and saw that he was sitting closer to me than I'd realized and was looking at me thoughtfully, like he was studying my face. My heart started pounding hard, but I made myself keep looking into his eyes as he brushed a stray lock of hair from my forehead and then wound it around his finger once before tucking it behind my ear. And then, moving so slowly, he leaned over and gave me my very first kiss.

We'd ended up making out against the stack of towels until the party's host—sounding very annoyed—started banging on
all the doors in the hallway, telling people that the party was over and to either help him clean up or get the hell out.

“So,” Topher said, as I pushed myself off the table and tried to smooth my hair down. My lips felt puffy and I had a giddy, racing energy coursing through me. I'd just been
kissed
. I couldn't wait to tell my friends. I wondered if I looked any different. I turned to him and saw he looked slightly nervous, like he was bracing himself for something. “This—I mean . . . this doesn't have to mean anything, you know?”

I blinked, realizing that he was scared I would want to turn this into something—like I would expect him to be my boyfriend or something now. “No,” I said immediately. “Of course not.” I'd never had a real boyfriend, but I'd been watching Palmer and Tom for a month now, and even the idea of that kind of dependency on someone made me feel claustrophobic. “It was fun, though.”

Something washed over Topher's face when I said that, like he'd just seen something that he recognized—relief mixed with the happiness of an unexpected discovery. “It was,” he said, giving me a smile, “
so
much better than being arrested.”

And now, three years later, here we still were. I played with the buttons on his shirt, thinking about it. “I kind of think maybe we should have refolded the towels.”

Topher laughed. “You know, I think it warped me. For months I couldn't smell fabric softener without getting flashbacks.”

“So what are you doing this summer?” I asked, when I realized I didn't know, and after the silence between us was starting
to stretch on.

“Interning,” he said with a long sigh. “At my dad's office. Fun times.”

“Oh,” I said, a little surprised. Topher's dad was a litigator, and while there was nothing wrong with doing an internship with your parent, we both knew it wasn't the best thing for your résumé.

“I know,” he said as he ran his hands over my shoulders, smoothing down the fabric of my sleeves. “But I was too late for the good stuff. I didn't start applying until last month, and by then everything was gone. Internships, summer programs—even the volunteering slots had giant wait-lists.” He leaned away slightly, like he was trying to get a better look at me. “You took care of this back in March, didn't you?”

I gave him a tiny shrug. “February,” I said, holding back what I
really
wanted to say, which was that Topher should have known better. You had to get this stuff locked down early. The good jobs and internships and summer programs, the ones that looked impressive on your applications, the ones that mattered—they went fast. “But I'm sure your dad's office will be good,” I said, looking up at him, feeling beyond grateful, once again, that I was heading to Johns Hopkins and that this summer would be the furthest thing from a questionable gap on my résumé.

“I'll let you know,” he said, tracing the outline of my lips with his thumb for a moment.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked, propping myself up on my elbow. “Are you going to write me a postcard or something?”

Topher smiled at this. “Every day,” he said, matching my
tone.

I laughed at that and pushed myself off the couch. I left first this time, returning to the party and hoping that nobody could tell anything had happened, that I didn't look different at all.

•  •  •

Three hours later, I yawned as I headed up the driveway to my house, Palmer waving to me out the window of the minivan. Bri had asked me if I wanted to sleep over at her place—Toby was, of course—but I'd said no, mostly because Bri's evil, ancient cat, Miss Cupcakes, seemed to have some kind of feline vendetta against me.

I let myself in and walked across the foyer, turning off lights while running through my checklist in my head. I'd get ready for bed, go over my packing list for Young Scholars one more time, then—I heard a
creak
of the floorboards behind me and whirled around, my heart hammering.

There was nobody right behind me, but in the long hallway that led down to my dad's study, I saw my father standing in the study's doorway, peering out at me. “Andie?”

I let out a shaky breath and took a step closer to him, squinting in the darkness. The only light was coming from the room behind him, stretching out a long thin line against the floor. “Hi,” I called, holding one hand up in an awkward wave and then immediately dropping it again. Now, in hindsight, it seemed ridiculous that I was that startled to hear someone else in the house. But I'd honestly forgotten he was here.

My dad took another step toward me, then stopped, both of us pretty much staying at our ends of the hallway. He ran his hand over the back of his neck, blinking at me like he was surprised to see me too. “I hadn't realized that you . . .” He cleared
his throat, then started again. “I guess I thought . . .” But this sentence trailed off too, and he pushed his shirtsleeve back to look at his watch. “It's late, isn't it?”

“Um, I don't know,” I said, stopping myself before pointing out that he was the one with the watch.

“It's after two,” he said, and I nodded, realizing that sounded about right.

“What were you doing up?” I asked, even though this really wasn't that unusual. When my dad was home, he worked late most nights. And the weekends that I took the train to D.C. to stay in the apartment he kept in Dupont Circle—visits that always were accompanied by carefully crafted social media messages about how I was going to see my dad—I sometimes didn't even see him; he was in his office or at meetings the whole time.

“I had to put some things in order,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “There's a lot I'm leaving half-done, and I want to make sure that it's taken care of.”

I nodded and took a step back toward the staircase. “So . . . ,” I started as my dad took crossed his arms over his chest.

“Is this when you normally come in?” he asked, sounding more confused than anything else. “Joy was okay with it?”

I bit my lip hard, to make sure I wouldn't laugh. I'd never really had a curfew to speak of. Ever since I was twelve, there had been a revolving crew of vaguely related people who'd come to stay and help out with me. There had been an actual nanny hired when I'd first come back from Camp Stepping Stone, the summerlong grief camp my dad had sent me to right after the funeral. But when his opponent during that election found out
about it, he started using it in his speeches as a way to trash my dad, saying that he would
never
hire outsiders to take care of his children. So the nanny had been let go, and I'd had the first of many distant relatives come to stay. This had ended the controversy, thanks to Peter's spin—my dad was just bringing in family to help out during a difficult time. It was pretty hard to demonize that, the grieving widower doing the best he could, even though his opponent kept trying, which probably contributed to my dad's keeping his seat that fall. They never stayed all that long, these second cousins and stepsiblings' children—they moved into the house or the furnished apartment above the garage, drove me around, and for the most part, let me do my own thing.

Once I was able to drive myself, the job had pretty much become symbolic, there in case someone questioned whether the congressman's daughter was living unsupervised by herself while he was in D.C. The most recent person had been Joy, my dad's stepsister's stepdaughter, but as soon as the scandal had exploded and my dad had moved back, she'd moved out, leaving a note on the kitchen counter telling my dad where to send her last check. But the high turnover of relatives meant I could tell them whatever I needed to when they moved in, and one of the first things I'd told Joy was that I had no curfew.

“Yeah,” I said now, taking another step toward the staircase. “She was fine with it.”

“Ah,” my dad said, nodding.

“Oh,” I said, remembering and turning back before I headed up the stairs. We were at opposite ends of the hallway now, and I couldn't make out his expression clearly anymore. “Peter texted. He wanted to know how you were doing.”

My dad looked at me for a moment, then sighed, his shoulders slumping slightly. “I'm fine,” he said, even though I could hear the exhaustion in his voice.

“Well, you should probably tell Peter that. He seemed worried.” My dad and I just stood there until the silence between us started to feel suffocating. “Night,” I said, turning away and not letting myself look back, not even waiting to hear if he said it back to me. Then I hit the last light switch, throwing the foyer into darkness, and took the steps up to my room two at a time.

My phone rang the next morning at seven a.m.

I rolled over and reached for it, squinting at the screen. I didn't recognize the number, but it was a Baltimore area code. I answered immediately. “Hello?” I asked, hating that it probably sounded like I just woke up.

“Good morning,” a woman's voice on the other end said. “This is Caroline from the Young Scholars Program at Johns Hopkins. May I speak to Alexandra Walker?”

“Speaking,” I said. I held the phone away from me for a moment and cleared my throat hurriedly, making myself sit up straight. Just hearing the words “young scholars” was enough for me to start feeling some giddy butterflies in my stomach. Maybe she was calling to give me a last-minute reminder, or an official, day-before welcome.

“Oh.” She cleared her throat, and I could hear some papers rustling on her end. “I'm sorry to call so early.”

“I was awake,” I assured her, hoping that my voice wasn't contradicting this as I spoke. “And I'm incredibly excited to start the program tomorrow.”

There was a pause, and I heard the papers rustling again.
“Yes,” she said, and then I heard her take an audible breath, the kind you take before something painful is about to happen. “About that. I'm so sorry, but we're going to have to withdraw your acceptance to our program this year.”

I froze, and felt myself blink twice. “Excuse me?” I asked, turning the volume up on my phone and pressing it harder against my ear, figuring I must have just misheard her.

“Yes, I'm afraid . . .” On the other end, the papers rustled again, and my heart started to beat very fast, like I'd just downed my daily latte in one gulp. “It looks like Dr. Rizzoli has withdrawn his letter of recommendation. And since we did not have another on file for you, your place went to one of the students on our waiting list.”