The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,153

that worked out really well, didn’t it?”

“Toby—” I started, looking around the group, at all the people who were currently furious at me, willing myself to think fast enough, to figure out how to fix this.

“You were supposed to be my best friend,” Toby said to Bri, and I could see that she was crying now too, tears she tried to wipe away with angry swipes across her face.

“I am,” Bri said, looking up at Toby, her voice anguished.

Toby shook her head and dropped Bri’s phone on the counter. “No,” she said quietly, sounding shattered. “You’re not.” She walked across the lobby, yanking the glass door open and then pausing once she got outside, looking around for a moment before turning right and walking toward the parking lot, her shoulders hunched.

Bri looked down at her phone on the counter, then swallowed hard as she picked it up and put it in her back pocket. “You guys should probably go,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Bri—” Palmer said, but Bri was already talking over her.

“Really. I just want to be alone, okay?” Palmer and I looked at each other, and I knew we were both weighing the same thing—trying to decide if she really meant it, what we should do in this totally uncharted territory. “Please,” Bri said before either of us could come to a decision. “Please just go.”

Palmer gave me a tiny nod, and I took a step toward Bri—not sure what I was even going to say but feeling like I couldn’t just leave like this, without a word. But Bri crossed her arms tightly over her chest and looked down, giving me every indication that she meant what she said—that she wanted to be alone.

Palmer walked toward the door first, and I followed, still a little unable to believe that this had happened, was still happening, right now. It was like a slow-motion car accident that nobody was doing anything to stop. I followed Palmer out the door, out of the air-conditioned theater and into the hot, humid night, the cicadas sounding even louder than usual somehow.

“Toby was my ride,” Palmer said, and I nodded.

“I’ll drive you.” It felt like we were trapped in a bad play, neither one of us saying what we really wanted. We started to walk to the parking lot, and I looked back one more time to see Bri, looking lost in the empty theater, her hands over her eyes, her shoulders shaking.

I made myself look away, and Palmer and I walked to my car, not speaking to each other while she canceled her diner order and I texted Clark to let him know about the change of plans. I unlocked the car and Palmer got in, slamming her door hard and then turning to face the window. I looked over at her as I started the car, practically feeling the anger and resentment coming off her in waves. We didn’t say a single word on the way back to Stanwich Woods. Every time I’d take a breath to say something—I didn’t even know what—Palmer would turn away from me more in her seat, until she was totally facing the window and all I could see was her back.

When I went through the gatehouse, Jaime barely looking up from his novel to wave me in, Palmer said, “You know, Tom’s been acting really weird.”

Normally I would have made a joke here, asking her how can you tell? or something along those lines, but I knew this was not the moment for that. “He has?”

“Yes. Like he’s been hiding something.” She turned to face me. “He knows, doesn’t he? You told Clark, and he told Tom.”

I nodded, swallowing hard. I was almost to Palmer’s house, and even though the street was deserted, I put on my blinker to turn into her driveway. “But—”

“So not only were you keeping a secret from me, you were making my boyfriend lie to me.”

“I had to tell someone,” I said. “I was doing the best thing I could think of to keep us together and I just wanted to know—”

But she was already unbuckling her seat belt, shaking her head as she got out of the car. She slammed the door hard and walked fast across her driveway, not once looking back at me.

• • •

When I got home, my dad wasn’t waiting up to talk to me. I could see the light was on in his study, but I didn’t make a move to walk down the