The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,24

would help me figure out the next step. I hoped that in the course of telling them, something might hit me. “So this morning my phone rings at seven a.m., and . . .” I stopped suddenly, noticing that while Palmer was wearing normal clothes—jeans and a tank top—Tom was wearing a collared shirt underneath a brightly pattered red-and-white Christmas sweater. The collared shirt wasn’t that unusual—Tom usually looked like he was attending something slightly more formal than the rest of us—but the sweater was. “Tom, why are you dressed like a holiday card?”

Tom opened his mouth to reply as Carly, one of the waitresses who tolerated us, appeared at the table, pen already poised above her order pad. “Ready, doll?” Everyone Carly waited on got a nickname. She always called Toby “Freckles,” which Toby was less than thrilled about.

“Can I get the number one with crisp bacon and a Diet Coke?” I asked.

“White or wheat?” Carly asked without missing a beat.

“White, just the tiniest bit toasted. Like, more warmed than toasted. And hash browns instead of home fries.”

“Gotcha,” Carly said as she turned to go.

“And can you make the bacon really crisp?” Palmer interjected, leaning slightly across the table. “Like, more crisp than you would think. Cook it to an amount of crispness you think that nobody would ever want, and bring that out, and it’ll be perfect.”

“Sure,” Carly said, but still in the same tone that she’d taken my toast order, so I wasn’t sure she’d actually listened to any of this.

“Thanks,” I said to Palmer once Carly had departed.

“I’m just trying to save us all some time,” she said with a grin. “Remember the Bacon Incident of last May?”

Tom shuddered. “I do.”

I rolled my eyes and reached over for Palmer’s water glass to take a sip. “It wasn’t an incident,” I said, then focused back on Tom. “But why are you celebrating Christmas in June?”

“The holidays . . . just aren’t the holidays without a Country Table ham,” Tom said to me earnestly. “This year, that’s what I want for Christmas.”

I just stared at him for a moment. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s for an audition,” Palmer explained, and I could hear the pride in her voice. It was one of the reasons that they worked so well together. The two of them were beyond supportive of each other, and they both still seemed to think they’d won the lottery by being with each other. If they weren’t Palmer and Tom, it would have been pretty insufferable. “In New York,” she added.

“Oh,” I said, feeling like things were starting to make more sense. Tom had gotten an actual agent when someone had seen him in last fall’s production of You Can’t Take It With You. Now he went into New York City pretty frequently to audition, clutching the headshot we’d all helped him choose. He’d booked some regional commercials, but so far, nothing national. “But why are you dressed like that now?” I asked. “Aren’t you hot?”

“A little bit,” he admitted, taking a sip of his water. “But I really want to get into character. Like, why does David—I’ve decided his name is David—care about ham so much? Why does he want a ham for Christmas? Is something else missing in David’s life? Probably, right?”

“And the sweater helps you come up with answers to these questions?”

“It can’t hurt,” Tom said, taking another long drink.

“Anyway,” Palmer said, turning to me. “So you got a call this morning at seven a.m. . . .”

“Right,” I said. “It’s a Baltimore area code, so of course I answer, and—”

“We’re here!” I turned to see Bri arriving at the foot of the table, with a grumpy-looking Toby in tow.

Tom sighed. “I’ve lost my seat again, haven’t I?”

“Fraid so,” Palmer said cheerfully as Tom slid out of the booth and went off in search of a chair.

“Hi,” Bri said as she slid in next to me. “Sorry we’re late. I literally had to drag Toby out of bed.”

I looked across at Toby, who was now slumped against Palmer, wearing what were unmistakably Bri’s clothes, nice ones, looking like she was about three seconds away from falling asleep again. “Hey, Tobes,” I said.

“It’s so early,” she moaned, rubbing her eyes. “And why does nobody at this table have coffee?”

“We’ll get you some coffee,” Bri said, already looking around for a waitress. “You big baby.”

“Babies don’t need coffee,” Toby said, burrowing her head into Palmer’s arm, who gave her hair a distracted pat. “Because people actually let