She thought about going out to the laundry room and digging Neal’s T-shirt out of the trash. . . .
The first time she’d stolen that shirt had been the first weekend she’d stayed at his apartment. Georgie had been wearing the same clothes for two days, and she smelled like sweat and salsa—but she hadn’t wanted to go home to change. Neither of them wanted the weekend to end. So she took a shower at Neal’s apartment, and he gave her a pair of track pants that were too small for her hips, and the Metallica T-shirt, and a pair of striped boxers.
She’d laughed at him. “You want me to wear your underwear?”
“I don’t know.” Neal blushed. “I didn’t know what you’d want.”
It was a Sunday afternoon; Neal’s roommates were at work. Georgie came back from the shower, wearing his T-shirt and the boxers—those were too small, too—and Neal pretended not to notice.
Then he’d laughed and pinned her to his mattress.
It was so rare to make Neal laugh. . . .
Georgie used to tease him about being a waste of dimples. “Your face is like an O. Henry story. The world’s sweetest dimples and the boy who never laughs.”
“I laugh.”
“When? When you’re alone?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Every night when I’m sure everyone is asleep, I sit on my bed and laugh maniacally.”
“You never laugh at me.”
“You want me to laugh at you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m a comedy writer. I want everyone to laugh at me.”
“I guess I’m not much of a laugher.”
“Or maybe you just don’t think I’m funny.”
“You’re very funny, Georgie. Ask anybody.”
She pinched his ribs. “Not funny enough to make you laugh.”
“I never feel like laughing when things are funny,” he said. “I just think to myself, ‘Now, that’s funny.’”
“My life is like an O. Henry story,” Georgie said, “the funniest girl in the world and the boy who never laughs.”
“‘The funniest girl in the world,’ huh? I’m laughing on the inside right now.”
Neal’s dimples dimpled even when he was just thinking about smiling. And his blue eyes shone.
They’d kept having this conversation over the years, but it had gotten a lot less playful.
“I know you don’t watch our show,” Georgie would say.
“You wouldn’t watch your show if it wasn’t your show,” Neal would answer. While he was folding laundry. Or slicing avocados.
“Yeah, but it is my show. And you’re my husband.”
“The last time I watched it, you said I was being smug.”
“You were being smug. You were acting like it was beneath you.”
“Because it is beneath me. Christ, Georgie, it’s beneath you.”
It didn’t matter that he was right. . . .
Anyway.
The first time she’d borrowed that T-shirt, Neal had laughed and pinned her to his bed.
Because he didn’t laugh when he thought something was funny—he laughed when he was happy.
CHAPTER 29
Everyone was gone now. Her mom had left the TV on in the living room, so the pugs could listen to Christmas carols.
Georgie sat at the kitchen table and stared at the Touch Tone Trimline phone mounted on the wall.
Neal wouldn’t call now, from the past. She didn’t really want him to.
She just didn’t want this to be over.
Georgie wasn’t ready to lose Neal yet. Even to her past self. She wasn’t ready to let him go.
(Somebody had given Georgie a magic phone, and all she’d wanted to do with it was stay up late talking to her old boyfriend. If they’d given her a proper time machine, she probably would have used it to cuddle with him. Let somebody else kill Hitler.)
Maybe the Neal she’d talked to all week was on his way to California, maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was a figment of her imagination—but that Neal still felt like he was within reach. Georgie still believed she could make things right with him.
Her Neal . . .
Her Neal didn’t answer anymore when she called.
Her Neal had stopped trying to get through to her.
And maybe that meant that he wasn’t hers. Not really.
Neal.
Georgie stood up and walked over to the phone, running her hand down the cool bow of it before lifting it off the cradle. The buttons lit up, and she carefully pressed in Neal’s cell number. . . .
The call immediately went to voice mail.
Georgie got ready to leave a message—though she wasn’t sure what to say—but she didn’t get a beep. “We’re sorry,” said one voice. “This mailbox is . . . full,” said another. The call disconnected and Georgie heard a dial tone.
She crumpled against the wall, still holding on to the receiver.
Did it even matter whether Neal was on his way to her in 1998—if he didn’t come back to her now? What good was it to win him in the past, just to lose him in the future?
In a few days, Neal would bring the girls home to California. She’d meet them at the airport. What would he and Georgie have to say to each after ten days of silence?
They were frozen in place when Neal left last week. Now they were frozen through.
The dial tone switched to the off-the-hook signal. Georgie let go of the receiver, and it bounced lazily on the spiral cord.
Is this how Neal had felt? Last night? (In 1998.) When Georgie left the phone off the hook? He’d already been so upset, he already sounded so scared—it must have driven him crazy when he couldn’t get through to her. How many times had he tried?
Georgie had always thought it must have been a powerful romantic urge that made Neal drive all night to get to her on Christmas morning. But maybe he got in the car because he couldn’t get through to her. Maybe he just needed to see her and know that they were okay. . . .
Georgie stood up in slow motion.
Neal. King of the grand gesture. Neal who crossed the desert and found his way through the mountains to reach her.
Neal.
Georgie’s key fob was on the counter, where Heather had left it. She grabbed it.
What else did she need? Driver’s license, credit card, phone—all in the car. She could sneak out the garage door and leave the house locked up. She checked on the puppies on her way out.
Georgie could do this.
There was nothing else left for her to do.
CHAPTER 30
Georgie ducked under the garage door as it was closing.
“You shouldn’t do that,” someone said. “It’s dangerous.”
She turned—Seth was sitting on the front steps.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Just trying to figure out what to say to you when I knock on the door. I’m expecting you to be out of your mind. Possibly high. Definitely dressed like a lunatic. I might not say anything at all; I might just knock you unconscious—I’ll need something heavy, I was thinking about that old yellow phone of yours—and drag you back to the office.”
Georgie took a few steps toward him. He was wearing dark, sharply cuffed jeans and pointy oxfords, with a green cardigan that Bing Crosby could have worn to sing “White Christmas.”
She looked up into his eyes. He looked awful.
“I don’t suppose you were just heading in to work,” he said.
She shook her head.
“Or that you’ve been writing.”
She watched him.
“I haven’t been writing,” Seth said—then laughed. It was a real laugh, even though it sounded painful. He shoved his hands in his hip pockets and looked out at the lawn. “That’s not true, actually. . . . I’ve been writing you a lot of e-mails. ‘Hey, Georgie, what’s up?’ ‘Hey, Georgie, is this funny?’ ‘Hey, Georgie, I can’t do this by myself. I’ve never even tried before, and now I know that I can’t, and it’s terrible.’” He looked over at her. “Hey. Geo
rgie.”
“Hey,” she said.
They held each other’s eyes, like they were holding on to something hot. Seth was the first to look away.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He didn’t answer.
She took another step forward. “We can reschedule the meeting. Maher Jafari likes us.”
“I’m not sure we can,” he said. “I’m not sure it matters.”
“It matters.”
He jerked his head back to her. “Then when should we reschedule it, Georgie? Have you penciled in next week to stop losing your mind? How’s January look for Neal? Think he might find some time to cut you some slack?”
“Seth, don’t . . .”
He stood up from the stairs and walked toward her. “Don’t what? Talk about Neal? Should I just pretend everything’s okay? Like you do?”
“You don’t understand.”
He raised his hands, frustrated. “Who understands better than me? I’ve been there since the beginning. Right there.”
“I can’t talk about this now. I have to go.” She turned away, but Seth grabbed her arm and held it.
His voice was soft. “Wait.”
Georgie stopped and looked back at him.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “You asked me if I would try to change anything if I could go back to the past. And I told you that I would—and I would—but I didn’t tell you . . .” He let out a loud breath. “Georgie, maybe it’s not supposed to be like this, you know?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“I always think about that Halloween. When Neal was such a dick to you? And you asked me to take you home, and I did. And I—I left you there alone. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe I was supposed to stay.”
“No. Seth . . .”
“Maybe we’re not supposed to be this way, Georgie.”
“No.”
“How do you know?” He squeezed her arm. “You’re not happy. I’m not happy.”
“You usually seem happy.”
“Maybe compared to you.”
“No,” she said. “You seem genuinely happy.”
“You only see me when I’m with you.”
Georgie inhaled faintly, then gently pulled her arm away.
“I . . .” Seth drew his hands back into his pockets. “This is the only relationship I’ve ever been able to make work. This one. I love you, Georgie.”
The words pushed her eyes closed.
She opened them. “But you’re not in love with me.”
Seth laughed again, just as painfully. “It’s been so long since that was an option, I don’t even know anymore. . . . I know it kills me to see you like this.”
His collar was caught in his sweater. She reached up and smoothed it out.
“It kills me,” she said, “to see you like this.”
They were standing close, face-to-face, looking in each other’s eyes. In all the times they’d stood next to each other, Georgie was pretty sure they’d never stood exactly here.
“That’s what I’d change,” Seth said. “If I could go back.”
“We can’t go back,” she whispered.
“I love you,” he said.
She nodded.
He leaned closer. “I need to hear you say it.”
Georgie didn’t look away; she thought it through, and finally said, “I love you, too, Seth, but—”
“Stop,” he said. “Just . . . stop. I know.” His shoulders relaxed, and he shifted his weight at an angle away from her. It was enough to make their posture ordinary again.
They were both quiet.
“So—” Seth looked down the driveway. “—where are you headed?”
“Omaha,” she said.
“Omaha,” he repeated. “You’re forever going to Omaha. . . .” He reached out, quickly, and pulled the top of her head against his lips. Then he was moving away, striding gracefully toward his car. “Don’t forget my salad dressing.”
CHAPTER 31
Georgie had never driven herself to the airport.
She’d only flown by herself once, when she was eleven, to visit her dad in Michigan. It hadn’t gone well, and she hadn’t gone back. And then her dad died when she was in high school, and when her mom asked if Georgie wanted to go the funeral, she said no.
“You didn’t go?” Neal was shocked when she’d told him. You could tell he was shocked because he raised his left eyebrow two millimeters. (Neal’s face was like a flower blooming—you’d need time-lapse photography to really see it in action. But Georgie’d become such a student of his face, she could read most of the twitches.)
“I didn’t know him,” Georgie said. They were sitting on the foldout couch in Neal’s parents’ basement. It was the second or third Christmas after they were married, and they’d come to stay for almost a week.
His mom put them in the basement, with the foldout, even though there was a double bed up in Neal’s old bedroom. “She doesn’t want us to disturb the sanctity of your bedroom,” Georgie teased. His parents hadn’t touched Neal’s room since he left for college. All his high school wrestling clippings and team photos were still taped to the wall. There were still clothes in the closet.
“It’s like when you go to Disneyland,” Georgie would say, “and they show you a replica of Walt’s office, exactly as he left it.”
“Would you prefer dog photos?”
“To weird sweaty photos of you in a nineteenth-century bathing costume?”
“It’s called a singlet.”
“It’s incredibly disturbing.”
Neal’s mom kept all their family photo albums in the basement. The week Georgie and Neal stayed there, she hauled out the whole stack. “If you’re ever President of the United States,” Georgie said, a large floral-patterned album spread over her lap, “historians will thank your mom for taking such good notes.”
“Only child,” he said. “She wanted to get all the memories she could out of me.”
Neal had been a solid, stolid child. Round and wide-eyed as a toddler. Looking frankly at the camera on his fifth birthday. More hobbity than ever during grade school—with his T-shirt tucked over his tummy into his maroon Toughskins, and his shaggy ’70s hair. By middle school, he’d started standing with his feet planted and his shoulders slightly forward. Not daring you to knock him down—he wasn’t that kind of short guy. Just looking like someone who couldn’t be knocked down. By high school, he was broad and steely. An immovable object.
Georgie sat on the couch looking through the albums, and Neal sat next to her, idly playing with her hair; he’d seen all these pictures before.
She stopped at a photo of Neal and Dawn dressed up for some high school dance. Jesus, they really were right out of a John Cougar Mellen-camp video.
“Yeah,” he said, “but still . . .”
“Still, what?” Georgie smoothed the plastic over the photo.
“He was your dad.”
She looked away from high school Neal, up at the Neal sitting next to her. Neal at twenty-five. Softer than in high school. With less tension around his eyes. Looking like he’d probably kiss her in a minute, when he was done making whatever point he was making.
“What?” Georgie asked.
“I just don’t understand how you could skip your father’s funeral.”
“He didn’t feel like my father,” she said.
Neal waited for her to elaborate.
“He was only married to my mom for ten minutes—I don’t even remember living with him, and he moved to Michigan when I was four.”
“Didn’t you miss him?”
“I didn’t know what I was missing.”
“But didn’t you miss something? Like even the idea of him?”
Georgie shrugged. “I guess not. I never felt incomplete or anything, if that’s what you’re asking. I think fathers must be kind of optional.”
“That is a fundamentally wrong statement.”
“Oh, you know what I mean.” Georgie went
back to the photo album. There were dozens of photos from Neal’s graduation day. He looked pained in these—like, after eighteen years, he’d finally lost patience with his mom’s photo-vigilance. His dad was in nearly every photo, too, looking much more tolerant.
“I really don’t know what you mean,” Neal said.
Georgie turned the page. “Well, they’re nice, if you have one—if you have a good one—but dads aren’t necessary.”
Neal sat up straighter, away from her. “They’re absolutely necessary.”
“They must not be,” she said, turning toward him on the couch. “I didn’t have one.”
Neal’s eyebrows were grim and his mouth was flat. “That doesn’t mean you didn’t need one.”
“But I didn’t need one. I didn’t have one, and I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I am so,” she said. “How am I not fine?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You’re being uncharacteristically irrational,” Georgie said.
“I’m not being irrational. No one else in the world would argue with me about this. Dads aren’t optional. My dad wasn’t optional.”
“Because he was there,” she said. “But if he wasn’t there, your mom would have filled in the gaps. That’s what moms do.”
“Georgie—” He pulled his arm away from her shoulders and hair. “—you’re being warped.”
She hugged the photo album against herself. “How am I being warped? I’m just sitting here being the product of a perfectly well-adjusted single-parent family.”
“Your mom isn’t well adjusted.”
“Well, that’s true. Maybe kids don’t need moms, either.” She was teasing now.
Neal wasn’t. He stood up from the couch, shaking his head some more.
“Neal . . .”
He walked toward the stairs, away from her.
“Why are you getting so mad about this?” she said. “We don’t even have kids.”
He stopped halfway up the stairs. He had to lean down below the ceiling to make eye contact with her. “Because we don’t even have kids, and you already think I’m optional.”
“Not you,” she said, not wanting to admit she was wrong—not really wanting to sort out what she did mean. “Men, in general.”