The Unexpected Everything(70)

Clark nodded, but his eyes traveled to my bare feet, and I saw his smile falter. He looked down at the flowers he was holding, and I saw some of the happiness in his expression fade, replaced by embarrassment. “Oh,” he said. “Did you not want to—”

“No,” I said immediately. “It’s just . . .” I tried, very quickly, to think of the best way to spin this, then gave up and realized I should probably go with the truth. “It turns out I sort of didn’t tell my dad I wasn’t coming home last night.”

Clark’s eyebrows flew up. “Uh-oh.”

“Yeah,” I said, glancing back toward the kitchen. “So I’m kind of grounded.” I was embarrassed even to say it. Even though he was only two years older than me, Clark was basically an adult—living on his own, with the freedom to do whatever he wanted. Nobody was grounding him or telling him what to do. This must have seemed beyond juvenile to him. “I’m really sorry about this.”

Clark shrugged. “It’s fine,” he said, giving me a smile. “I mean, I’m disappointed, but I understand. We’ll do it another time. When you’re not grounded. When will that be?”

I felt relief spread through me—until he’d said it, I hadn’t realized how much I’d been preparing myself to hear him say something polite but vague, which I would have known meant we wouldn’t be having another date. “A week,” I said with a shrug, like this was nothing. “Not so long.”

Clark glanced down at the flowers in his hand, then held them out to me. “These are for you. Sorry if it’s totally cliché to bring them.”

I looked down into the bouquet, and it was a moment before I could answer him. “No,” I said. A guy had never brought me flowers before—unless it was my prom corsage, which I didn’t think counted, since I’d had to order it myself and give explicit instructions for where and when to pick it up. These were beautiful—all purples and pinks and the occasional daisy. “I mean, it’s . . . really nice.” I looked down into the flowers for one moment more, not wanting him to see just how touched I was by them.

“And,” Clark said, presenting the CD to me with a flourish. “This is more of a joke than anything else. You don’t have to listen to it.”

“What is it?” I asked, taking it from him, then recognizing the familiar font on the cover. This one showed a crow and a flaming sword. A Murder of Crows, the title read. By C. B. McCallister.

“I know you don’t read,” Clark said, and I raised an eyebrow at him. “But I thought maybe you wouldn’t have anything against listening. It’s the audiobook, so it’s like someone telling you a story.”

“Ha ha,” I said, turning it over and reading the back. I felt my eyes widen. “This takes nineteen hours?”

“Yeah,” Clark said, not seeming fazed by this. “And those are just the first two discs. There’s like twelve, but I didn’t want to scare you.”

“Andie,” my dad called. I looked up from the CD to see him hovering in the doorway, clearly not sure what he should do—or what I wanted him to do.

“Clark came by to pick me up for a date,” I said, trying to get this over with quickly. “Because I didn’t know I’d be grounded.”

“Ah,” my dad said, his eyes traveling down to the flowers in my hand.

“Sir, I just want you to know Andie was amazing last night,” Clark said, giving me a smile, as I felt myself freeze.

“Last night?” my dad asked. His voice was still totally calm, but this was the way he sounded in debates when he realized his opponent had just made a mistake.

“Right,” I said quickly, trying to jump in before this got any worse. “So here’s the thing—”

“When Andie helped out with my dog who was sick,” Clark went on. It took all my willpower not to bury my head in my hands. “She was great.” He looked from me to my dad, finally seeming to get that something was going on. “Was that a secret?” he whispered to me.

“I didn’t know you stayed the night at Clark’s,” my dad said.

“I told you it was for work,” I said, realizing as I did that I should have probably just told him the truth right from the beginning, as opposed to hoping he would never find out.

“It was totally professional,” Clark said, jumping in. “Nothing else . . . I mean that wasn’t at all what . . .”

“Nothing happened.” I looked down at my feet, not quite able to believe that I was having to say this, to my dad, in front of Clark. “I just went over there to take care of the dog, and then we took shifts staying up to make sure he was okay.”

My dad looked at me evenly, his eyes narrowed slightly, like he was trying to see if I was telling the truth. After a moment he must have decided I was, because he nodded slightly. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay?” I’d expected a lot worse. I’d expected him to grill Clark and me for details, trying to find discrepancies in our stories, the way he had when he was a lawyer. And the truth was, something had happened last night—nothing that I was even sure I’d be able to articulate to him, but something nonetheless.

“I believe you.” I’d just started to relax when he went on. “But your grounding just got extended. It’s ten days now.”