The Unexpected Everything

“I guess I just . . . ,” Clark said as he adjusted his glasses. “I’ve never had a group of friends, so I didn’t . . .” He shook his head. “I didn’t know it could be like this.”


“Oh,” I said quietly, finally understanding what he meant. I didn’t want to tell him that it wasn’t always good, or wasn’t always like this, because the fact is that most of the time it was. I’d sometimes look at other people at my school—the girls who seemed to thrive on drama and were always fighting with their friends, the ones who didn’t even seem to like their friends that much—and know just how lucky I was. But I wasn’t sure that was what Clark needed to hear at the moment. “Well,” I said, as I moved closer to him, laying my head back down on his chest and hooking my foot over his, letting our legs tangle together. “Maybe you missed having a group before,” I said. “But you’re part of one now.”

Clark didn’t say anything for a long moment, and it was like I could practically feel him turning over these words, thinking about their implications. Finally, I felt him kiss the top of my head and rest his chin there. “How about that.”

“So next summer,” I said, “you’re going to want to refine your strategy early. If you want a chance of winning, that is, because—” It was like my brain caught up to what I was saying just a moment too late. Clark wouldn’t be here next summer. He’d be back in Colorado, or he’d be somewhere else, but he would not be in Stanwich, doing a scavenger hunt with my friends.

“Oh,” Clark said, pulling away a little so he could look at me and dashing my hopes that he had just not been paying attention to the last thing I’d said. “Um. Are you—”

“Never mind,” I said quickly, feeling like this was a conversation I really didn’t want to have. We had been having a nice moment, and the last thing I wanted to do was spoil it. I stretched up to kiss him, wishing I could rewind the last minute and delete it. “We’re good.”

We had to get moving not long after that. Clark finally gave me my keys back, and we kissed good-bye when he insisted on walking me to my car, even though it was only parked a few feet from his. After we’d kissed as long as we could without me really being in danger of staying out past my curfew, Clark got into his car and kissed me one last time through his open driver’s-side window, and I watched him drive away, his taillights growing fainter until he rounded the bend in the road and I lost them. Then I headed home, yawning.

I let myself in, and stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water. As I was drinking it, I saw a note taped to the kitchen TV, in my dad’s neat, slanted handwriting.

Well?

DID WE WIN?

I smiled at that, then looked down at the phone in my hand. I normally just texted my dad when I got home, so that even if he was sleeping, he could see the time stamp. But I was pretty sure I’d seen a light on as I’d driven up to the house, and as I glanced down the hallway, I saw that there was a light on in my dad’s study and that the door was cracked open.

I walked down the hall and knocked once before pushing the door open all the way. My dad was lying on the leather couch in his study, reading some papers that he was holding above his head. He pushed his reading glasses up and smiled when he saw me.

“Hi,” I said, leaning against the doorway, giving him a small smile back. “I’m home.”





Chapter THIRTEEN


“So Karl and Marjorie are on the run,” I said, as Clark, lying next to me on the couch, pointed the remote at the movie we’d been totally ignoring, silencing it. “But,” I said as I ran my fingers through his hair, “Karl doesn’t know Marjorie’s sold him out. Told the highwaymen about him.”

Clark tossed the remote in the general direction of the coffee table and started kissing down my neck. “Oh, are there highwaymen now?”

“Of course,” I said, twirling my fingers in his hair, leaning in to kiss him. “Every good story has them.”

? ? ?

“And so I asked Bri what I should do about Wyatt now, since he told me about this other girl he likes, and she had like nothing to say,” Toby said as she paced in front of me in the gallery that was mostly impressionist, except for the unicorn tapestry and the Warhol.

“Hmm,” I said, trying my best to focus on her, but finding that every few seconds, my thoughts were straying back to Clark. His eyes, his lips, his hands . . .

“Andie!” Toby said, waving her hand in front of my face. “Are you even listening to me?”

? ? ?

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