The Unexpected Everything

“I was just leaving,” she repeated back, matching my inflection and shooting me a tiny smile. “Talk to you later,” she said as she opened the door. I pulled it back for her and she mouthed, Oh my god! to me before turning back to my dad, her face composed and polite. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Walker,” she called.

“And you as well,” my dad said, his voice warm and sincere, like she was just the person he’d hoped to see in his house unexpectedly today. “Please give my best to Mark and Kathie.”

“Will do,” she said, giving him a tiny wave before she headed out the door, pulling it shut behind her.

I looked at my dad in the sudden silence of the foyer, trying to figure out how I could get him back to his office without letting him know that’s what I was trying to do. Or maybe I could drive down the street and meet Clark at the gatehouse to avoid any possibility of overlap. “So—” I started, just as my dad said, “Are you going somewhere?”

“Oh,” I said, then nodded. “Yeah . . . I’m . . . going out to dinner. A friend is picking me up.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Why hadn’t I just said I was meeting someone? I didn’t have Clark’s number, but if I was out by the street early enough, I could have flagged him down from out there.

My dad nodded, and silence fell between us again. I had just taken a breath to say that I’d see him later when he asked, “Which friend?”

“You don’t know them,” I said, then heard, from somewhere on the second floor, a clock begin to chime. Was it seven already? I pulled my phone out from my bag and saw that the clock upstairs must have been fast—it was five to. But either way, I needed to wrap this up now.

“I don’t?” my dad asked, folding his arms, and again I cursed myself for not just saying that I was meeting Toby or Bri at the diner.

“I don’t think so?” I said, letting the sentence rise in a question as I started to edge toward the door. “I’d better get going.”

“Wait a second,” my dad said, running a hand over the back of his neck. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, like he was an actor in a bad play, speaking words he hadn’t totally memorized. “I, uh . . . Should you be going out with someone I don’t know?”

I looked at him for a second, trying to decide if the question was rhetorical, or if he actually wanted an answer. Also, I didn’t understand why he was suddenly acting like a father in a sitcom. I hadn’t asked my dad for permission to go anywhere in years. He either hadn’t been around to ask, or if he happened to be home, he’d nod and wave at me, usually while taking a call, as I yelled that I was going out. This had to feel as weird for him as it did for me. “Look,” I started, just as I saw a slightly dented Jeep signal and then pull slowly into our driveway.

I tried as fast as I could to think of something, then felt my pulse start to pick up when I realized I no longer knew how to get out of this. But the last thing I wanted was for Clark to be here, in my house, talking to my dad. I hadn’t realized how much I liked keeping these worlds separate until it appeared they were about to collide. I looked out to the driveway, wondering what my dad would do if I just left, walked out the door and met Clark before he’d even made it halfway to the porch. But before I could do anything, Clark came into view, and I realized my moment to escape had passed and this was inevitable. I wondered, as I watched him walk up the path and then climb the front porch steps, if this was what pilots felt like when they realized they were going to crash but still had to wait for the impact.

My dad frowned as Clark got closer, then looked at me, his jaw falling open like he’d just figured something out. “Andie—are you going on a date?”

“Kind of,” I muttered as I reached to pull open our door. Our front doors were half glass, and I knew it already looked weird enough that I was standing around waiting for my date—along with my father. My plan had been to pretend to read a magazine in the kitchen, not even coming close to the foyer until I heard the doorbell. You weren’t supposed to let your date know that you’d been waiting around for them to arrive. You were supposed to be much too busy and interesting for that.

I opened the door, and there was Clark, standing on the porch, hand half-outstretched toward the bell. “Hi,” I said, giving him a quick smile, wishing I had more time to really appreciate the fact that he was wearing a light-blue button-down with his jeans, that his brown hair looked like it had been recently combed, and that he was just so cute it was almost unfair. “Come on in,” I said, hearing how high-pitched and stressed my voice sounded, which I was pretty sure wasn’t making the best first-date impression. “My dad’s . . .” I let this trail off when I realized there wasn’t an easy way to sum this up, and just stepped back to let Clark inside.

“Hi,” Clark said to me, smiling wide, then looking at my father and standing up a little straighter. “Hello, sir,” he said. My dad’s eyebrows shot up, and I knew Clark had gained some points in his eyes. First impressions were big with him.

“Dad, this is Clark Goetz-Hoffman,” I said, just as Clark said, “McCallister.”

“What?” I turned to look at him.

“Clark McCallister,” Clark said.

“I thought your last name was Goetz-Hoffman.”