The Unexpected Everything

“Just . . . maybe don’t put so much pressure on it,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Maybe just have fun?”

“Easy for you to say, Andie,” Toby scoffed. “You always have a boyfriend.”

“Not at the moment,” Palmer pointed out.

“But most of the time,” Bri jumped in, backing up Toby as usual. “Like, what, sixty percent of the time?”

“More like seventy-five,” Toby countered.

“Poor Zach,” said Palmer with an exaggerated sigh. “I liked him.”

“We should really stop learning their names,” Bri said, deadpan, and Toby grinned.

“Totally,” she said. “It’ll make things easier. I’ll just give the next one a nickname.”

“Funny.” I tried to look at her sternly, but gave up after a minute and started to laugh. The thing was, they weren’t wrong. They would tease me like this after most of my breakups, calling me a serial heartbreaker. But it wasn’t intentional—it was just the way it always unfolded. First I’d get a crush on someone. This could, in truth, last much longer than the actual dating-the-guy part of things. I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else, I’d talk about him constantly, I’d spend way too long getting ready, just in case I saw him. Then we’d start going out—and usually, the first week or so was great. Lots of making out, lots of butterflies in my stomach, lots of giddiness and hand-holding and endless conversations, either in person or on the phone late at night. But, inevitably, after the third week rolled around, he would start wanting more, and I would start getting antsy. Whether it was physical or emotional, it was always more than I felt comfortable with. I could never understand when guys wanted to talk to you about your feelings. That was what my friends were for. Why was it impossible to keep things easy? Light, fun, not too serious, and nothing more than kissing.

At any rate, three weeks seemed to be about as long as this had ever been able to last. Whenever my friends brought it up, I pointed to my relationship with Travis Friedman, which had lasted five weeks and change, but I was always told this didn’t count, because two of those weeks were over winter break. But this was the way I liked things. I ended it (or he did), I had a few weeks’ getting over it and listening to lots of girl-power music and eating ice cream, and then, before too long, I’d start to crush on someone new and would begin the whole cycle over again. It worked for me. And honestly, I’d never understood the point of getting too serious with anyone you met in high school. It was high school. Best to keep it light and date seriously in college or med school, with people who were actually going to end up mattering.

“Wait a sec. Why are you even scoping out prospects?” Palmer asked, turned her head to look back at Toby. “What about Wyatt?”

Toby shook her head. “He’s not back in town yet.”

“He might be,” Bri said. “I saw he posted a picture yesterday that looked like downtown.”

“Wait, what?” Toby asked as she stopped short, nearly causing a pileup as she dug in her purse for her phone and then frantically started scrolling through it. “That should have been the lead item! Why didn’t you guys tell me?”

“I didn’t know,” I said, holding up my hands and giving her a don’t blame me face.

Wyatt Miller went to boarding school in Massachusetts during the year, but his family lived here in Stanwich, and he came back for summers. We’d met him last year when he’d been working the beach concession stand, and started giving us free fries and unlimited soda refills. We’d all started hanging out—Wyatt and my summer boyfriend, Nick, had gotten along really well—and it hadn’t taken Toby long to develop a massive crush on him. He’d still been with his girlfriend from boarding school then, so nothing happened over the summer. But when Toby saw that they’d broken up right around Valentine’s Day, she was sure that her moment had arrived. She’d asked him to our junior prom and was thrilled when he accepted—even though he kept making it very clear that they were just going as friends. At the after-party, when I’d been breaking up with my date—I hadn’t loved prom—Toby and Wyatt had tipsily made out. Toby was sure this was proof of his feelings for her, despite all of us gently—and then not so gently—telling her that it was probably just the effect of J?germeister and power ballads. Toby had tried to keep things going when he went back to boarding school, but Wyatt had reverted to treating Toby the way he treated all of us—totally platonically.

“Oh my god, I think you’re right,” Toby said, squinting at the brightness of the screen in the darkness, her voice rising with every word. “Why hasn’t he gotten in touch? Oh my god!”

“Shh,” I said, glancing around, not wanting to draw any more attention to us than we had to.

Toby nodded, then looked back at her phone. “Oh my god,” she said again, in a whisper this time.

“Okay,” Palmer said, stopping in front of a white house that I was relieved to see looked like any other house on the block, no sign of a party unless you were really paying attention to what kind of music you could hear faintly coming from it. “Are we ready? Andie?” I nodded and reached into my purse, then handed over my bottle of Diet Coke—three-quarters full—to her. “Any preferences?”