Free The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson Page A

loved to dare people, and last year she’d challenged Toby to get the seven-dollar lobster. When it had arrived, it had looked so suspicious that she’d called off the bet immediately, before anyone got food poisoning. “I was over on Sound View,” I started. “And—”
    â€œMorning, Andie,” Tom said as he approached the table with a smile. Then he looked at where I was sitting and his face fell. “Does this mean I’ve lost my seat?”
    â€œAfraid so,” Palmer said, patting the spot next to her. “Scoot in, babe.”
    We had a very particular seating arrangement at the diner. Palmer and I sat across from each other, closest to the jukebox, Bri next to me, and Toby across from her. When one of us wasn’t there, Tom got to sit across from Palmer, but if we were all there, he had to pull a chair up to the end of the table. He didn’t really complain about it, maybe because he understood that this seating arrangement had come before he had. Tom had, over the last three years, pretty much become a de facto member of our group, but he was always really respectful of the fact that we were still a foursome and seemed to have a sixth sense for when we needed girl time.
    Tom slid next to his girlfriend, kissed her on the cheek, and then turned to me. “So what’s going on?” he asked. He looked down at his own plate, which had about two bites left on it. “Pancake?” he offered, and I shook my head.
    I’d known Thomas Harrison—he always did a bit about how nobody could ever tell if he had two last names or two first names—since third grade. I’d never really thought about him all that much. He was the quiet, neatly dressed kid who sat in the middle of the classroom and was in every single play in elementary and middle school—usually the character part, but occasionally the lead. If I’d thought about it, I would have assumed he was gay, based on nothing other than the most superficial of reasons and the fact that I’d never seen him with a girl.
    But on the third day of high school, I’d been at my locker trying to figure out what I’d done with my biology book when Palmer had grabbed my arm. “Who is that ?” she’d whispered, her voice higher than normal.
    â€œWho is who?” I asked, trying to look around Tom Harrison, who was carefully placing his books in his locker, for whoever it was Palmer was talking about.
    â€œ Him ,” she’d whispered, her nails digging into my arm, and I saw she was looking right at Tom, her cheeks flushed. They’d started going out a week later, and they’d been together ever since.
    â€œWell,” I started, leaning forward, ready to tell them what happened. My mind had been spinning the whole drive over, unable to attach to anything concrete that would help me figure out the next step. I hoped that in the course of telling them, something might hit me. “So this morning my phone rings atseven a.m., and . . .” I stopped suddenly, noticing that while Palmer was wearing normal clothes—jeans and a tank top—Tom was wearing a collared shirt underneath a brightly pattered red-and-white Christmas sweater. The collared shirt wasn’t that unusual—Tom usually looked like he was attending something slightly more formal than the rest of us—but the sweater was. “Tom, why are you dressed like a holiday card?”
    Tom opened his mouth to reply as Carly, one of the waitresses who tolerated us, appeared at the table, pen already poised above her order pad. “Ready, doll?” Everyone Carly waited on got a nickname. She always called Toby “Freckles,” which Toby was less than thrilled about.
    â€œCan I get the number one with crisp bacon and a Diet Coke?” I asked.
    â€œWhite or wheat?” Carly asked without missing a beat.
    â€œWhite, just the tiniest bit toasted. Like, more warmed than