The Unexpected Everything

“Come on,” Bri said, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head. “You and Clark. Spill.”

I wasn’t quite able to stop myself from smiling as I smoothed out the edges of my towel. This, truthfully, was a new experience for me. My friends and I all knew every detail of what the others had done with guys—but I usually didn’t have anything to contribute to this conversation. I’d been keeping things vague with them and letting them believe I was still safe within my old boundaries.

“Wait, what?” Toby asked, as she paused in applying her spray-on sunscreen to her legs. She turned to me, her expression incredulous. “Don’t tell me the queen of first base is actually doing something.”

“She totally is,” Palmer said, nodding with authority. “You don’t lose that many IQ points if you’re just kissing someone.”

“First of all,” I said, busying myself with smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in my towel, “why does first base get such a bad rap? It’s like the most important base.”

“This is true,” Bri said, nodding. “And I know it’s true, because in every movie, the first baseman is always really cute.”

“I’m just saying, wait until you try the other bases,” Palmer said, waggling her eyebrows at us.

“No,” Toby said, holding up her hand. “Please no. Every time you talk about sleeping with Tom, I end up picturing him naked.”

“You might be surprised to know—” Palmer started, raising an eyebrow as Toby waved her hands in front of her face.

“Seriously, stop it.” She shuddered. “And now I’m seeing it,” she said, shaking her head. “And I can’t unsee it.”

“All I’m saying,” Palmer said, turning to me, “is that the other bases are just more interesting.”

“Mmm-hm,” Bri said, taking a long drink of her soda.

“Yeah,” I murmured without thinking, replaying the night before in my head.

“Wait, what?” Toby asked, suddenly sitting up straight. She raised her sunglasses and looked closely at me. “Are you . . . and Dogboy . . . ?”

“Clark,” I said automatically.

Bri shook her head, starting to smile. “Andie, you are so busted,” she said. “I need details now.”

“Wait a sec,” Palmer said, eyes wide. “You guys haven’t done it yet, have you?”

Toby’s head whipped over and she stared at me.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “But . . .” This was, after all, what I’d wanted to talk to them about. But also, once I talked to them about it, once I said the words and they became part of our conversation, I knew this would become real in a way it hadn’t been before. “But we’re talking about it. Like . . . happening-in-the-next-two-weeks talking about it.”

“Oh my god,” Palmer said, grabbing my arm and smiling at me. “That’s so huge.”

“I can’t believe you thought I would have done it without telling you,” I said, shaking my head. “Did you really think I would have forgotten to mention something that big to you guys?”

“I don’t know,” Bri said, her voice muffled as she dug in her bag for something. “Sometimes people don’t always tell each other every single thing. I mean—”

“Wait,” Toby said, talking over her as she looked around at all of us. “So this means all you guys are off, like, rounding the bases and I’m still in the dugout. I’m the person selling Cracker Jack in the stands.”

“This metaphor is getting weird,” Palmer murmured to me.

“You and Palmer are leaving me and Bri behind,” Toby said as she dropped her sunglasses down again and Bri started looking through her bag once more. “But after this, nobody can go off and have experiences without me. I’m falling way too far back.”

“So what’s the plan?” Bri asked, looking up from her bag. “Have you guys talked about it?”

I nodded, then hesitated. Something had been bothering me more than I ever would have let Clark know. “It won’t be his first time, though.”

“He’s done it?” Toby asked, looking shocked. “Way to go, Homeschool.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking a drink of my Diet Coke, which was mostly just crushed ice by now, then started to tell my friends about it. I’d suspected he had—he seemed to know a lot about the Colorado College dorms for someone who wasn’t spending a lot of time there. But when we crossed the line from “something that might possibly happen someday” to “something that’s actually going to happen in the foreseeable future,” Clark had told me about his ex-girlfriend and that they’d been pretty serious for a while. This had led to a night I wasn’t necessarily proud of, in which I’d googled “C. B. McCallister girlfriend Colorado College pretty” trying to get a visual on what his ex looked like, without success.

“Whoa,” Toby said, looking at me closely when I’d finished recounting the story, complete with embarrassing failed Internet stalking. “You really like him. Otherwise, you would have told us everything already, whether we wanted to know or not. And you wouldn’t care about his ex this much.”

I looked down at my cup, shaking it, like I could somehow get some more Diet Coke to emerge from the ice, wondering why I suddenly felt so much like I was going to cry.