Unless Toby never found out.
I pushed myself up to standing and walked over to the couch in Bri’s room, the one that was parallel to the bed, and felt something inside of me click back into place. Peter’s words from this morning were echoing in my head. We had to shape this narrative and figure out a plan while we still could. This was still fixable.
It had to be fixable. The four of us had to be okay. My friends had been the one thing I could always count on, and with everything else beginning to spin out of my control, I needed us to stay together. My dad might have a foot out the door, but I wasn’t about to let us fall apart.
“Bri,” I said, leaning forward. “Tell me how you see that playing out. You telling Toby you’ve been sneaking around all summer and lying to her.”
Bri’s chin trembled slightly as she pulled at a thread on her comforter. “I . . . ,” she started, then shook her head.
“Exactly,” I said, not looking away from Bri. “So . . . what if she doesn’t need to know? What if she doesn’t have to go through all that?”
Bri blinked at me. “Andie?”
“Who does it benefit for her to find out?” I asked, making my voice as calm and reasonable as possible. “You’ve been keeping this a secret all summer. What’s a few more weeks?”
“What do you mean?” Bri asked, though the expression on her face told me she knew exactly what I meant.
“I mean,” I hesitated, then made myself say it. “Have you guys talked about what is going to happen when Wyatt leaves?”
“No,” she said, and I could hear her start to get defensive. “Have you and Clark?”
I swallowed hard. “No,” I admitted, feeling my heart clench, the way it always did when I had to think about this. “But,” I said, trying to focus on Bri as I told myself that ours wasn’t even close to the same situation, “do you think that this is . . . like, a long-term thing?” I winced even as I said it and braced myself for her to throw the same question back at me, one about Clark that I couldn’t come close to answering.
Bri looked down at the floor, and I could see her lip was trembling and I felt horrible for putting her through this. I told myself firmly that this was for the best—not only for Bri, but for all of us. “I don’t know,” she finally said, in a half whisper.
“That’s okay,” I said, sitting down next to her. “And it’s understandable. You guys are still figuring it out. But since you’re not totally sure it’s going to be a long-term thing . . .” I let my sentence trail off, hoping that Bri would fill in the blanks.
“What if Toby finds out that we were both keeping this from her?” Bri finally asked, looking up at me. “And Palmer, too. How do you see that playing out?”
“I think it’s better than the alternative,” I finally said. “Don’t you?”
I held my breath while I watched Bri struggle with this. She had to be able to see it. Because the four of us, together, was everything. And we had to stay that way—we had to do what we had to to make it happen.
“Okay,” Bri finally said, nodding once.
“It’s for the best,” I said, feeling relief flood through me. “For all of us.”
“You’re sure about this,” she said, not exactly phrasing it like a question.
I nodded, quashing any small voices of doubt that were trying to tell me that I was doing this all wrong and that there was more going on here than just Bri and Wyatt. This was the only way we were going to make it out of this unscathed. And so I nodded and looked Bri right in the eye. “I am.”
Bri nodded, and I felt a weight start to lift off my shoulders. It was all going to be okay. I had the same feeling as when you duck at the very last second and miss something you would have walked right into—realizing just how close you came to danger. And then the relief that followed when you realized you were safe, that everything was going to be fine.
? ? ?
“What do you think?” Clark asked, as he swung his car into the parking lot of the Boxcar Cantina. “I thought it might be nice . . . kind of romantic . . .” He adjusted his glasses, and I saw how nervous he was about his surprise.
“It’s great,” I said, leaning across the car and giving him a quick kiss. We hadn’t been back here since the night of our first date, and I liked that we were going back now, when everything between us was different, on the cusp of another first.
I started to get out of the car, but Clark practically ran around to my side and opened my door for me. “Thanks,” I said, stepping down and taking the hand he offered me. Clark closed my car door and then slid his arms around me.