The Unexpected Everything(41)
“I liked the other dress better,” Toby said from my computer screen. I was video chatting with her—and Bri, in theory, though Bri was in the middle of a fight with both her younger sister, Sonia, and her older sister, Sneha, so every few minutes she would storm off-screen, then return a while later looking vexed.
I hesitated, looking at my closet. “No!” Palmer said, seeing where I was looking. “Andie, no. This dress is great. Look, let’s ask a boy.” She snapped a picture of me before I could stop her and started typing on her phone—sending it to Tom, I assumed, though I wasn’t sure if he even counted, since whenever he weighed in, he was always careful to tell us that while we might look fine, Palmer definitely looked better.
I turned back to the mirror and smoothed down my hair. Palmer had walked over from her house only a few minutes after I’d gotten home and had been supervising the process ever since. We had gone through most of my clothes together, and we’d decided on a denim dress with flat black sandals and dangly earrings. I felt dressed up, but still like myself, and I had liked the outfit before Toby had weighed in. “What do you mean?” I asked, walking over to the computer.
“Eh,” Toby said from my screen with a one-armed shrug. “I just don’t know if it’s, you know, dynamic enough.”
“It’s great,” Palmer said, glaring at Toby. “Bri?” she called, but Bri didn’t appear in her window, and we were just looking at her Alien poster staring back at us.
“You think?” I asked, pulling down on the hem and tucking my hair behind my ears.
“Yes,” Palmer said firmly. Her phone beeped, and she glanced at it, then held it out to me. “And Tom agrees. He said you look, and I quote, ‘not bad.’?”
“That’s not really a great endorsement,” I said, glancing over at my screen, where Toby gave me an I told you so look. “Maybe I should try the other dress again?”
“No,” Palmer said, turning my computer screen around to face the wall while Toby yelped, “Hey!” “You seriously look great. And we don’t have time for you to change again.”
I glanced down at my phone and realized she was right. I looked back in the mirror and decided that I looked fine. After all, Clark been seeing me in my dog-walking clothes for a week. “Okay,” I said, letting out a long breath and then turning to Palmer. “Let’s do this.”
She nodded and rolled off my bed, pocketing her phone in her cutoffs. “Bye, Toby,” she called, and I leaned over to the screen and waved, seeing that Bri still hadn’t reappeared.
“Text me updates,” Toby said, giving me a wink. “Have fun!”
We walked down to the foyer together, Palmer leading the way—she knew my house as well as her own. “So,” she said, stopping at the door to dig her keys out of her purse, “if it’s going really well, bring him to the Orchard later.”
I smiled at that, feeling my cheeks get hot at the thought of things going well enough that I’d bring him to meet my friends after the first night. For that to happen, there would definitely be some kissing. “Let’s just see how this goes.”
“Andie?” I turned around to see my dad standing in the hallway that led from his study, squinting at me. He had stopped wearing his button-downs in the last few days, and now he was wearing what he wore at more casual events on the campaign trail or strategy sessions—khakis, a polo shirt, and loafers. I honestly wasn’t sure I’d ever seen my father in a T-shirt. I wasn’t entirely sure he owned one.
“Yes?” I called back, looking at Palmer and then widening my eyes at her. I had assumed my dad would stay in his study, reading or watching old sports games, like he’d spent the last few days doing. I was going to write a note and leave it on the kitchen counter before I left, but that was as much as I’d decided to do in terms of alerting him to my plans for the night.
“I thought I heard—” my dad said as he walked down the hall toward me, and I felt my stomach sink. I’d hoped he had a quick question that I could shout back the answer to, and then he could have gone back to watching eighties basketball players and their disturbingly short shorts. “Oh,” my dad said when he saw Palmer. “Sorry—I didn’t realize Andie had anyone over.”
“Hi, Congressman Walker,” Palmer said cheerfully. A second later, though, when she realized what she’d said, she paled. “I mean . . . Mr. Walker,” she added quickly. My dad was still looking at her, so she glanced at me, then tried, “Alexander?”
“Mr. Walker’s fine,” my dad said, giving her that practiced smile he used when he was working a rope line. “How are you doing, Palmer? How are your parents?”
“Oh, they’re fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Palmer was just leaving,” I said, before my dad could start asking about her brothers and sisters—I could practically see him slipping back into concerned-candidate mode, wanting to show her that he remembered her siblings’ names, that he’d held on to tiny snippets of information. We didn’t have time for that. It was going to be tight, but I was hoping I could get her out of here—and my dad back in his study—before Clark arrived. I had never ever done the guy-parent introduction thing and I really didn’t want to start now. I raised my eyebrows at Palmer, and she nodded.