Now it was Clark’s turn to look nonplussed. “Reporters?” he asked. He looked at my dad and snapped his fingers. “You’re . . . I saw you on CNN,” he said. “I thought you looked familiar! Senator—”
“Congressman Walker,” my dad interrupted. Then he added, “At least, I used to be.”
I could see it in Clark’s face, the dawning realization of just why my dad looked familiar and why he’d been on CNN in the first place. “Oh, right,” he said, his voice quiet. “Sorry—I didn’t . . .” He looked at me, and I looked down at my sandals. “I didn’t realize,” he said quietly, now looking more embarrassed than ever.
“I was going to mention it later,” I muttered.
“I’m sorry, but have you two met before?” My dad looked between us and then let out a big belly laugh.
Clark and I glanced at each other, and I felt my face get hot. It was bad enough for both of us to probably be thinking that without my dad coming out and saying it.
“Well, you two have fun,” my dad said, starting to head back toward his study, a laugh still lingering in his voice.
I turned to Clark when he was gone. “Should we go?”
“Let’s,” Clark said immediately.
• • •
Twenty minutes later I set my menu aside and looked across the table at Clark at the Boxcar Cantina. It was a Mexican place in town that Tom loved, and so Palmer was always insisting we go there after his opening nights and for his birthday. It was small, and a little bit dark, with candles in brightly colored glass holders on all the tables and a roving mariachi band Palmer always tipped extra so they’d play mariachi “Happy Birthday” for Tom. It had been Clark’s pick—he’d asked as we drove over if it was okay with me—and when we’d arrived, I’d been surprised and impressed when he gave his name to the hostess, who walked us to a table, holding our laminated menus.
Now that we were no longer in his kitchen, Clark seemed a lot less nervous—holding the car door open for me, making small talk, taking charge of things in a way I appreciated, since we were on the kind of date I usually didn’t go on.
“So,” Clark said, setting his own menu aside and smiling at me. “Congress, huh?”
I raised an eyebrow back at him. “Bestselling fantasy novels?”
He laughed, still sounding a little embarrassed. “Maybe we should start over,” he said, holding out his hand across the table to me. “Clark Bruce McCallister.”
I smiled at that. “Alexandra Molly Walker.” I reached across the table and took his hand. His palm was cool against mine, and as his fingers closed around my hand, I felt something run through me. It wasn’t a spark, or a shiver, or anything I’d heard described in cheesy love songs. It was more like when someone touches you on a spot near where you’re ticklish, that kind of heightened awareness. Like I’d never known there were so many nerve endings in my fingers. I pulled my hand back quickly, even though something in me was telling me to leave it there and also see what would happen if I touched his arm.
“Bruce?” I asked, placing my hands around my water glass, trying to get myself to focus.
“Yeah,” Clark said with a shrug. “I thought using my initials for my books made me sound more grown-up.”
“Totally,” I said, my voice overly serious. “It’s very distinguished.”
He smiled at that and leaned forward slightly, toward me. “So where’s the ‘Molly’ come from?”
I kept my expression the same, but I could feel the low-level anxiety start to build somewhere around my stomach, which was starting to knot. I hadn’t expected to be confronted with this—not right now, not right off the bat. “It was my mom’s name,” I said quickly, giving him a bright smile, thinking that now would be a great time for our waiter to take our order, or bring us some chips, or something.
“Was?” Clark asked, adjusting his glasses, his voice a little softer.
I took a breath, even as I made sure to keep my expression neutral, wishing I had some kind of prop in front of me. I usually didn’t have to deal with this. Any reporter who ever talked to me knew, of course. And all the guys I’d dated at school had already known about my mom. This was not an explanation I’d had to give that often. “She passed away five years ago,” I said, keeping my voice light, running over the surface of these words, not letting myself get pulled down into the emotion of what they actually meant. To hear me say it, you would think that it was just no big deal. I ended the sentence with a note of finality, the one that every guy I’d dated had understood to mean that I wanted to move on and had happily obliged.
“I’m so sorry, Andie,” Clark said, his eyes seeking mine across the table, as I looked over his shoulder, like I was fascinated with the wall decor. “That’s terrible. What happened?”
The anxiety that had been in my stomach was now traveling in the express lane up to my chest, causing my heart to pound and making it harder to breathe. “It was a long time ago,” I said, hitting the note of finality even harder, wanting more than anything for Clark to understand this.
“So,” I said brightly, picking up my menu again, like I was fascinated by the differences in the fajita dishes. “What do you think you’re going to order?” I looked back at him, making sure to keep my expression happy and a little blank. But it didn’t look like Clark was picking up on this. He still looked sympathetic, but he also looked confused, like I’d just started speaking French and hadn’t told him why.
“What can I get for you two tonight?” Our waitress, in a black and pink BOXCAR CANTINA T-shirt, had appeared at our table, pen poised above her order pad.
I had never been so happy to see a waitress, and I hoped that by the time we’d finished ordering, the awkward moment would have passed and we could start having a nice, normal date. “The bean and cheese burrito and a Diet Coke,” I said, handing her my menu. “Thank you.”
She nodded and wrote it down, then turned to Clark. “And for you?”
“I’ll take the Reaper-ito,” Clark said, and the waitress—her name tag read BECCA—paused and looked at him.
“Did you read the menu description for that?” she asked warily. “Because most people send it back when they realize they can’t handle it.” I glanced toward my menu, which was currently tucked under her arm, and wished I hadn’t given it back quite so quickly.
“I did,” Clark said, adjusting his glasses and smiling at her.
“So you know it has Carolina Reapers in it?” she asked, starting to sound annoyed. “That it’s the hottest thing we serve here?” Clark nodded, still smiling, and Becca huffed and wrote the order down. “Something to drink?” she asked. “You’re going to need it.”
“Just a Coke.”
“And could we get some chips?” I interjected, starting to get a little worried by the fact that none had appeared at our table yet.
Becca nodded and took Clark’s menu. “What kind of salsa?”
“Mild,” I said at the exact same time Clark said, “Hot.”
“I’ll bring both,” she said, rolling her eyes as she headed away, leaving us with each other, and slightly strained silence, once again.
“So what’s a Carolina Reaper?” I’d never seen a waitress warn someone off a menu item before, not even when Toby had ordered the seven-dollar lobster.
“It’s the hottest peppers you can eat,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I’m really impressed they actually have it on the menu. You don’t see it that often.”
I wasn’t quite able to stop myself from recoiling. “Why would you want to do that to yourself?”
“I guess you’re not so into spicy foods?”
I shook my head and took a sip of my water, like my mouth needed to be cooled down just thinking about this. My friends teased me about it, but I preferred all my food pretty bland. I’d gotten adept over the years at eating around offending sauces and garnishes. My dad was the same way—it had become one of those things reporters write about, how he always traveled with his own supply of bread and pe
anut butter. My mom had been the one to push both of us out of our comfort zones, to make reservations at Ethiopian and Peruvian restaurants, who got us to try Korean barbeque, soup dumplings, and escargot. But without her, both of us had retreated back to what we liked, and for me that was bean and cheese burritos, extra-cheese pizza, and hamburgers without any vegetables on top. “Not so much,” I said, still trying to understand why someone would order something that spicy unless it was some kind of a dare. “But it sounds like you do?”
“Kind of,” Clark said, nodding his thanks at the busboy who dropped off two Cokes, a lemon wedge indicating the one that was diet. “It, uh . . . started as a game between me and my dad.”
“A game?” I asked, hitting my straw on the table to shuck off the wrapper.
“Yeah,” he said, a small smile starting to form on his face. “My dad’s really into the idea of mind over matter, that you can conquer your body’s reactions through discipline,” he said, shaking his head. “So one night when we were all at a restaurant—my mom and my sister too—I challenged my dad to order something with jalapeño in it. And he said he would if I would too. And then it kind of turned into a competition.”
“So who won?” I asked, taking a sip of my soda.
Something faltered in Clark’s smile for a second, and he pulled his glass toward him. “Still ongoing.”
“Well, you’ll have to tell him you ate this Reaper thing.”
Clark nodded. “Right. Sure.”
We both took sips of our sodas in unison, and then silence descended again. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him something about his family—like how old his sister was or what his parents did—but then I hesitated when I realized that if I asked him about his family, he’d probably want me to talk about mine.
Clark leaned forward, and I racked my brain quickly for some safe topic, something that we had in common. Usually with the other guys I’d been on dates with, there was shared experience. We had bosses or teachers to complain about, friends to gossip about, something mutual to provide help for these early conversations. I realized after a second that the only thing Clark and I really had was the dog. “So,” I said cheerfully, cutting him off right as he was starting to speak, “how’s Bertie doing?”
Talk of the dog, and his quirks, got us through the chips and into the meal. Whenever Clark would start to ask me something more personal, I would steer the conversation back to safer subjects—Bertie, the restaurant, the weather, the upcoming batch of summer movies. And the food itself became a subject when we started eating. I watched with alarm as Becca placed Clark’s food in front of him and braced myself when he took the first bite. But although he turned a little red and it looked like his glasses fogged up the tiniest bit, he soldiered on, and by the time he’d eaten most of his burrito, three of the kitchen staff, two of the waiters, and a busboy were lingering around our table watching him do it.
I offered to split the dinner check, but Clark insisted and paid with a silver credit card. Becca offered him a half-price discount on their DON’T FEAR THE REAPER T-shirt, but Clark passed, and when we got back to his car, he started driving right back to my house. I sat in the front seat of his Jeep, looking at the vacuum lines on the floor mats that indicated it had recently been cleaned, with the growing and undeniable feeling that this had not been a good date. I didn’t think it was my fault—I’d tried to keep the conversation light and fun, but it was like Clark had just been going along with it, like he wasn’t really having a great time. As I tried to figure out what was different, it occurred to me that most of the time when I was sitting in a restaurant across from a boy, we knew each other better and the date had honestly felt sometimes like a formality before we got to the making-out part at the end.
As we drove along in silence, I realized that things were always so much simpler once you entered the post-make-out stage of a relationship. After you’d kissed someone, it became all inside jokes and cute references, and everything else was overridden by the need to kiss the person again. This haze softened everything and made it all easier. But it really didn’t seem like that was going to be in the cards for tonight. I was hoping we could get out of this with minimum awkwardness, so we could pretend we’d gone out tonight as friends—friends who, it turned out, didn’t have all that much to say to each other.
But it was too bad, I realized, as I looked at his profile, lit up by his dashboard light. He was really, really cute. And he seemed nice. But apparently, somehow, that wasn’t always enough. (I made a mental note to be sure to tell Toby, since this seemed to run counterintuitive to everything her Rom-Coms had told her.)
Clark slowed, signaled, and pulled into my driveway, and I felt myself let out a small sigh of relief. This strange date was almost over. It was still early—I could regroup, then find out where my friends were and meet up with them. I could still salvage the night, after all.
He pulled to a stop and put the car in park but didn’t turn off the engine or make any move to walk me to my door—which I was glad about. This didn’t need to get any more uncomfortable than it currently was. “So, thanks for dinner,” I said with a big smile, gathering up my purse, hand already hovering near the door handle. “I had a really nice time.”
Across the car, Clark looked at me for a moment. “You did?” he asked, sounding baffled.
Oh god. I could feel myself getting frustrated. That was just something you said, not something you actually meant. Most people understood that. I didn’t like going to Tom’s sketch comedy shows or my dad’s fund-raisers. But that didn’t mean I told either of them that. “Sure,” I said, keeping my smile in place.
Clark looked at me for a second longer, and by the dashboard light, I could see confusion knitting his brow. “I just . . . ,” he said slowly, then shook his head. “I mean, it was like you didn’t want to talk to me.”
I drew back slightly in my seat. Why were we recapping this? We’d clearly both had a bad time, so why weren’t we moving on? I had tried to talk to him, all night. He was the one who hadn’t wanted to talk about any of the subjects I brought up.
“We talked,” I said. I was fine with having a bad date. I was less fine with discussing it forever, not to mention incorrectly.
“No,” he said simply, shaking his head. “Not about anything real.”
I had opened my mouth to reply to this, but stopped with my argument half-formed. Because it was true. I hadn’t asked him anything real, because I hadn’t really wanted to know anything real. I wanted the date I always had—fun and easy and simple. I had no idea how to explain this. But I knew I needed to get out of his car. The way he was looking at me—the way he was talking about this—was making me feel retroactively embarrassed, like I’d spent the whole night doing and saying the wrong things, even though I’d been doing what I always did.
“See you around,” I muttered as I opened the door and stepped down to the ground. I was trying not to think about the fact I was supposed to see him tomorrow to walk the dog. But he might be calling Maya as soon as he drove away, requesting a different dog walker.
I shut his door, maybe a little harder than I needed to, and walked toward my house even though I had no intention of going inside. I was going to get in my car, find my friends, and start the process of telling them about this, so it could turn into something we could all laugh about. I walked toward my front door, pulling out my phone and waiting for Clark to drive off. I watched as his car pulled into our turnaround, backed out, and turned around so he was now facing the end of the driveway. But the car just sat there, idling, not going anywhere.
I realized after a moment that he was waiting to make sure I got inside okay. There was a piece of me that would have appreciated this under different circumstances. But not tonight. Tonight it was just annoying. I walked up to the side entrance and pulled open the screen door, then took out my keys and pretended to unlock it. I glanced toward the driveway, but his car was still there waiting. Rolling my eyes, I unlocked the door a
nd stepped inside, and only then did Clark drive away.
• • •
I pressed on the brakes even though there were no cars behind me and none in front of me, but I had a habit of missing the turn to get into the Orchard and not realizing it until I’d gone about a mile too far down the road, driving along with the sinking feeling that I should have been there by now. And I didn’t want to waste that time tonight. I wanted to vent to my friends. And then, once that was done, I wanted to move on. I’d spent the drive over working out my plan. I needed someone to replace who I had hoped Clark would be—someone to help me forget about everything that had happened in the last two weeks, someone to help me turn my summer around. And Clark clearly was not going to be that person, so I would have to find someone else.
As I was about to speed up, thinking I’d slowed too early, there was the old Orchard sign, with its two cherries, letting me know I was in the right place. I swung in, starting to relax the closer I got. At some point, the Orchard had been a functional orchard, but ever since I’d first heard about it—when Palmer’s oldest sibling, Fitz, was in high school and we were still in elementary—it had been the town party spot. Not so much in the winter, but in the summers it was filled with people from the three neighboring high schools and the occasional bored-looking Stanwich College student. And tonight it was just the place I wanted to be.
I swung my car into the open field that had been repurposed as a parking lot. I got out of the car, locked it, and walked toward the main part of the Orchard, where picnic tables ringed the open space and off to the side there was usually someone selling overpriced keg beer or cans from a cooler that never seemed to get very cold, despite the ice packed around them. I walked forward, looking around for my friends. I’d texted them when I’d stopped at the gatehouse and had heard from Tom (on Palmer’s phone) that they were en route. I was pretty sure I hadn’t beaten them there, but if I had, I’d just sit at one of the picnic tables and begin the process of putting this night behind me.