The Unexpected Everything (33 page)

“I'm fine,” Bri said, laughing as she pushed him away.

I leaned over Clark and turned his wrist so that I could see his watch—it was black and chunky, you could apparently scuba dive with it, and it had taken me a little over a week to be able to tell time on it. “And I should get going,” I said with a sigh.

“Already?” Clark asked, and I nodded.

“Duty calls,” I said, then arched an eyebrow at him. “What do you say? Want to walk some dogs with me?”

“Seriously?” Bri asked, looking around at all of us. “I'm really the only one who thinks that sounds dirty?”

“I heard it this time,” Palmer said, nodding. She frowned at me. “Keep it clean, you guys. There are children here.”

“We'll try,” Clark said, getting to his feet and—unfortunately—pulling on his T-shirt.

“Did you see my moves?” Wyatt asked Bri as he flopped down in the sand next to her, despite the fact that Toby had moved so far over on her towel to make space for him, she'd forced Tom onto the sand.

“By ‘moves,' do you mean falls?” Bri asked. “Because those really were impressive.”

Wyatt laughed and made an obscene gesture at her, which Bri returned. “It's because the water was too deep,” he said, pushing his wet hair back. “If we were in a pool, it would be different.” He looked around at us. “Any of you acquire a pool since last year?”

Tom shook his head, and Wyatt shrugged, like he was letting it go, when Clark said, sounding just a little bit nervous, “I've got a pool.”

Everyone looked over at him, eyes lighting up, and I felt my stomach sink. I tried silently to tell him to walk this idea
back, pretend he thought they meant billiards, that it was under construction, anything. Because I knew my friends—they were pool-hungry maniacs with no sense of politeness at all when it came to using one.

“Really?” Toby asked, smiling at Clark, then glaring at me. “And why is this the first time we're hearing about it?”

“It's just . . .” Clark hesitated. “I mean, it's not my house. It's my responsibility for the summer, so I didn't want anything to happen to it. . . .”

“Wait,” Wyatt said, raising an eyebrow. “You live there alone?”

“Yeah,” Clark said, and I fought the urge to bury my face in my hands.

“This,” Palmer said, grinning, “is
awesome
.”

“Thanks for the invite, brother,” Wyatt said, hitting Clark on the back as Tom winced in sympathy. “Party at Clark's tonight?”

“Text us the address?” Bri asked, and I nodded, knowing there was no way to get him out of it now. I glanced at my phone and realized I really did need to get going—one of my dogs, Wendell, had a tendency to gnaw on doorframes when I was running late. I gathered up the rest of my things, pulling my sundress over my bikini and stepping into my flip-flops.

“So I'll see you guys tonight,” Clark said, starting to leave, taking the beach bag from me and slinging it over his shoulder. “I'll, um, get some snacks? Like chips, maybe?” He turned to me, and I nodded, reaching out my hand for his and giving it a squeeze as I realized that this was probably the first party he'd ever thrown. “And Toby?” She looked up at him from where she'd surreptitiously been putting on lip gloss. “For every curse,
there's a cure. You know that, right?” Wyatt looked over at him, frowning, and Clark added quickly, “It's a thing in my books. You know, with the dragons.”

“We should go,” I said quickly, feeling the need to avert my eyes from Toby's expression and how hopeful she suddenly looked.

•  •  •

“Tell me their names again,” Clark said as he looked at the five dogs in front of us.

“Well, that one's Bertie.” Bertie was currently running circles around Clark, who was trying to untangle himself, in what was pretty much a perpetual loop.

“Thanks for that,” Clark said, wobbling slightly as Bertie lunged for a squirrel.

“And that's Rufus,” I said, pointing to the terrier mix who was chewing his own leg. “Jasper, Pippa, and Wendell.”

“Whatever happened to Rover and Spot?”

“I'm walking them later tonight,” I said, and Clark laughed. He leaned down to kiss me, and I kissed him back, hoping that the five dogs on their leashes would keep calm for a few moments.

It had taken me three weeks, but I was finally getting the hang of this dog-walking thing. My car now had towels spread over the backseat and was stocked with treats and water and collapsible bowls. I could tell the difference now between a dog sniffing with purpose and just trying to stall and look at a squirrel a little longer. I'd found my favorite brand of plastic bag—orange, biodegradable, from Raiders of the Lost Bark, whose name thrilled Bri to no end. She'd almost lost it when I'd told
her about their other business, Temple of Groom. I had learned that my sweetest dog was Waffles the pit bull, and the most ornery one was Trixie the bichon, who looked like the meekest dog ever, just a white ball of fluff, but it was all a facade. She was the alpha and would growl down dogs who outweighed her by a hundred pounds. I'd learned that the big dogs were usually pretty happy to roll with things, while it was the little ones who were the most stubborn. I'd found out the hard way what happened when you were walking six dogs and a cat streaked across the road. I knew that Lloyd always wanted to smell the flowers, but if you let Leon do it, he'd sneeze for the rest of the walk. And I'd discovered that Bertie seemed to have no sense of how time worked—if he saw a squirrel in a tree, he'd run back to that same tree every day, like the squirrel would have been waiting there that whole time. “Bert springs eternal,” Clark had dubbed it. But mostly I began to realize that I was good at this. And there was a feeling of accomplishment when I drove back after a walk with a dog in the passenger seat and three dogs in the back, everyone tired and happy and panting out the windows, a feeling I'd
done something
that I'd never felt in any of my internships or summer programs before this.

“Remind me where we were,” Clark said, when we broke apart. He gestured for me to give him another leash, and after a moment's consideration, I gave him Rufus—I knew he and Bertie got along.

Our saga of Marjorie and Karl had continued to expand, taking quite a few twists and turns. The fact that Marjorie originally intended to kill Karl had pretty much been quietly forgotten by both of us, and I was always trying to give the road bandits they
encountered some kind of ailment that I would then try to get Marjorie to diagnose, despite Clark always vetoing this.

Clark had started today's installment in earnest when we'd picked up Pippa, but almost right from the start I'd had issues with his current direction. “I was telling you that Marjorie wouldn't say that,” I reminded him.

“Oh, right. Well, I think she would. It makes sense for the story.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Not going to happen. She's not going to get up and admit to everyone in a crowded tavern how she feels about Karl.” I realized that Wendell was in danger of getting tangled with Pippa and switched him over to my other hand.

“Why not? I think it's important.”

“Why does she need to tell everyone how she feels about him? Isn't it enough that Karl knows?”

“Does he, though?” Clark asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “Do you think it really counts unless other people hear it?”

“Of course,” I said immediately. “Probably more so.”

Clark shook his head, then stumbled a few feet as Rufus and Bertie lunged simultaneously for a squirrel that was running up a nearby tree. “Why do you think people get married with lots of guests there?”

“Probably for the toaster ovens.”

“You might be right. But I think it's more than that. I think there's something to saying it in front of people. It's like it means more when you say it out loud, where everyone can hear you.”

“Fine,” I said, relenting. I was starting to learn when Clark wasn't going to let go of something, and I wanted to get to what happened next. “Marjorie confesses all to random tavern folk.” I
looked over at him, wondering if I might be able to get something I'd been pushing for now that I'd given in to this. “Can we finally do my thing where Marjorie discovers penicillin?”

“I told you, there's no penicillin in this world.”

“But there's mold, right? Maybe Marjorie's just smarter than everyone else.”

Clark smiled at me. “You make a good point,” he said, pulling me in for a kiss as all around us dogs barked and leashes got hopelessly tangled.

•  •  •

“You okay?” I asked, looking across the table at my dad, who was staring down at his plate, his expression concerned.

“Maybe,” he said after a slight pause, picking up a chopstick and nudging a piece of sushi. “I'm not entirely sure what this
is
, though.”

I shook my head as I dunked my vegetable tempura in soy sauce. “I can't help you there.”

I'd finished walking the dogs and said good-bye to Clark—who seemed to be taking his party-throwing responsibilities way too seriously and had headed to the store to buy provisions and two kinds of dip—when I got a text from my father, asking if I felt like getting dinner. We weren't all meeting up at Clark's until later, and I'd been surprised to realize that, in fact, I did feel like it. Our two-dinner-a-week plan was officially in full swing now that I was no longer grounded. It wasn't like we hadn't been eating dinner when I'd been stuck at home every night, but it had been much more casual—my dad would eat in front of an eighties basketball game, and sometimes I'd join him in his study with my own plate, looking up facts about the
game on my phone and irritating him by being able to call what happened next and pretend I was just really good at guessing. Or we'd both be in the kitchen together, me with my organic chemistry textbook (I was trying to get ahead for next year), him with the paper or one of the nonfiction books he was always reading, about things like the history of salt or tires. We would eat in silence that didn't feel strained and talk only if we had something to say.

But when he'd suggested sushi tonight, it had felt okay—it had actually seemed like a good idea. Well, at least until my dad had gotten his food.

“Why did you order that?” I asked, as a waiter came out with two more plates, set them on either side of my dad, frowning down at the rolls still untouched on the plate in front of my father, like he wasn't eating fast enough. I'd gotten what I always got at sushi places, where not liking fish was a definite handicap, but my dad had ordered “Chef Knows Best,” which meant he didn't get a choice in anything, but things were brought out to him and he was expected to eat them. In other words, pretty much my worst nightmare.

My dad picked up a roll with his chopstick, then set it down and took a drink of his sake, like he was trying to get up the courage to take a bite. “Well,” he said, looking across the table at me, “it was what your mom always liked to do when she had the option.”

“Oh.” We had started talking about her slowly, in little pieces here and there. But I still wasn't used to it yet. “She did?”

“Yeah,” my dad said, picking up the roll again and eating it this time, but taking a long drink when it was over, so I didn't
think I really needed to ask him how it was. “She used to say that normally everyone is telling the chef what
they
want. She thought it was nice to switch it up for a change.”

I smiled and picked up a carrot just as two more plates arrived, the waiter starting to look seriously peeved. My dad must have picked up on this, as he started to eat more quickly. “So any big plans tonight?” he asked, wincing slightly as he chewed.

“Oh,” I said, just to stall. I had a feeling that telling him I was going over to Clark's house, where there would be no supervision, and if Wyatt was involved, there would probably be beer, would not go over so well. “I think I might just have a quiet night at Bri's,” I said with what I hoped was a casual shrug. “Watching movies, you know.”

“Uh-huh,” my dad said as he looked around, then dropped a napkin over the sushi remaining on his plate. He gave me an even look. “So I take it you won't be seeing a certain novelist?”

“Well,” I said, stalling. “I mean, who can say, really, what will or will not happen?”

My dad laughed at that, surprising me. “I think you could have a future in politics, kid,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, when you do see Clark—”

“
If.
I mean, it's a
possibility
. . . .”

“Tell him I have something I want to discuss with him.”

I set down my chopsticks and looked across the table at him. It was one thing for my father to start acting a little more like a dad. It was quite another for him to have the
what are your intentions with my daughter?
conversation. “Um, what's that?”

“It's about his book. He just introduces this whole new
concept—this Luminosity thing—right as the first one ends. I'm going out tomorrow to get the second one.”

“Wait, you read his book?”

My dad nodded and laid his chopsticks across his plate. “I thought I should check them out. It really is impressive that he's a published author. It's quite an accomplishment for someone your age.”

I nodded, figuring it might be best not to point out that Clark had actually written the first one when he was three years younger than I currently was. “So was it good?”

My dad looked at me in surprise. “You haven't read them?”

“I'm getting around to it,” I muttered as I took a drink of my Diet Coke, not sure if I could explain why I hadn't yet. I was pretty sure the reason (well, one of them) was that when Clark and I were just hanging out, it was like I could forget he had this whole other life, where he was a professional author with a job and a tax return, who lots of people on the Internet were mad at.