Sweet Forty-Two (30 page)

“Why’d she pull away?” Ember joined me on the couch.

“I don’t know. She’s got walls built by walls designed by walls. She wants to do it again, though. So do I ... I think. I just ... if I hadn’t gotten that letter from Rae I might still be making out with Georgia in the bakery.”

Ember laughed so loudly and suddenly that I jumped.

“What?” I asked, incredulously.

“Your honesty when you’re tired is priceless. Anyway ... did Rae’s letter change your feelings about Georgia?”

I shook my head.

“Did they change your feelings about Rae?”

My eyes stung, but I shook my head, again.

“What’d they change?” She put her hand on my knee like she could read my goddamn mind.

“They changed,” I managed through an uneven voice, “how I feel about my healing. I thought I was done with that part. I want to pursue things with Georgia, but I don’t want to cheat her out of a real relationship if I can’t even give her a real person. But ... I feel like Rae’s letter reminded me that I haven’t come to terms with those things undone. You know? Like ... things I can do absolutely
nothing
about. I can’t tell her I love her and have her hear me and smile back and tell me she loves me, too...”

Ember squeezed my knee. “You’re rambling. Slow down. First of all, you are a real person capable of a real relationship. Second of all, I don’t think any of us will ever be
done
healing from Rae’s death ... she’ll kind of flow through our lives like that gooey stuff in a lava lamp, filling in empty spaces, but never creating more emptiness. But I want those little holes, you know? For her to fill. And last of all, it definitely sounds like you need to find a way to tell Rae you love her.”

“Loved ... right? Loved?”

Ember shook her head. “No. You love her. I love her, Bo loves her, we all love her. She’s just not here.”

I nodded, swallowing the jagged edges of
she
’
s not here
one by one.

“So ... what will you do? Just for Rae, just between you and Rae, find your way to say goodbye to her that doesn’t involve a funeral, doesn’t involve hiding in Ireland for three months. Tell her you love her, Regan.” She leaned into my shoulder, her head tilting down and her hair falling down my arm.

I wrapped my arm around her. “You’re smart, you know that?”

“I had stuff I wasn’t able to say to her, too, you know...” Ember didn’t look at me, she kept looking forward.

“Like what?”

She sniffed, but made no move to wipe away the present tear. “Like that her brother and I finally got our heads out of our asses.” Ember chuckled a little at the tear-pinched end of her sentence.

I squeezed her into me as her shoulders shook. “So what’d you do?”

She sat up, finally wiping under her eyes. “Bo and I wrote her letters, then made a bonfire, and burned them, sending the spirit of the letter into the universe.”

I laughed. It was completely inappropriate and poor timing, but I laughed. Then Ember smacked me.

“Don’t be an asshole!” she shrieked playfully.

“I’m sorry. I just ... was that your parents’ idea?”

She laughed and pressed her forehead on my shoulder. “Yes!”

I kissed the top of her forehead. “Did it work?”

She nodded. “We felt a lot better after it.”

I bit another smile away. “Is it okay with you if I ... don’t do that?”

“I hate you,” she growled into my shoulder.

“I know.”

She sat up, cheeks rosy from laughter and tears. “Do
something
, though. I don’t care how looney it might seem to me or Bo or anyone else. Do
something.
”

“First,” I yawned as I stood, “I’m gonna go home and go to bed.”

Once I was at the door, Ember tugged on the back of my shirt.

“Regan?”

“Yeah?” I turned around to find her smiling softly, mostly with her eyes.

“I like what Georgia’s done to your face.”

I pulled my eyebrows together and Ember reached for my cheeks.

“The smiles. The reddish color that rivals your hair. If she does that to you, then she’s okay by me. You don’t need my opinion, and you didn’t ask ... but I want you to know that I see the life in your face again. And I’ll kiss her for it someday.”

I grabbed Ember into a tight hug. “I love you, Em.”

“I love you, too. Now ... go tell Rae the same thing, okay?”

“How?” I asked as I backed away.

She shrugged. “You laughed at my idea,” she teased. “Seriously, though ... you’ll figure it out.”

The truth was, I thought as I drove away, I knew exactly what I had to do.

So, over the next couple of weeks, I started. I started working on my final love letter to Rae. In between recording with The Six, which was only going to last another few weeks, and helping Georgia with the bakery, I worked on my goodbye.

It wasn’t ready yet, and I hadn’t really thought through what I was actually going to do with it when I was done, but the working on it was enough for now.

In the post-kiss atmosphere of Georgia’s still unnamed bakery, I was thankful for her gritty ability to compartmentalize her life. There were no awkward pauses in conversation or bizarre back and forth dances trying to pass by each other as we moved around the kitchen. We seemed to only be seeing each other in the bakery these days, and that was a lack of sleep well worth it.

We were both exhausted from the hours we’d kept over the last two weeks since I started helping her, but according to Georgia, it was working. She’d had business cards made, with just her information on it, since the bakery had no name—a fact I mentioned to her whenever I could—and she would deliver her baked goods to local businesses and set up stands at various farmers’ markets, too. Her phone had been buzzing like crazy with people telling her the things they liked best, placing large orders for private parties, and asking, of course, when she’d be open for business.

“I just need to get people in here on a regular basis, now.” She spoke in the middle of a train of thought I wasn’t riding. She caught on to my confusion. “Sorry ... I was thinking it’s one thing to have people
know
where you are, but you need to get people into the habit of coming to your place, to put it on the maps in their brains and make it part of their daily or weekly routine. Sure, they can place orders and pick them up, but I want people, like,
here
, too.”

I gestured to the large windows that butted up against the booth. “At least you have the location working for you.”

She shrugged and tilted her head side-to-side like she was half disagreeing. “The vista works, right? But ... this is a back street in a largely residential neighborhood. There’s a boutique on the north side of the street, but this part of the road looks like a long driveway. There’s not a ton of foot traffic ... almost none, really. And very little through traffic.”

“Okay,” I sighed, putting my hands on my hips, “time to get some traffic, then.”

She looked up, biting her lip. “How?”

I wandered into the dining area and took a few laps around the space, willing an idea to come to me. I looked back at Georgia, who was watching me closely through the large cut-out in the wall. It was as open a kitchen as the space would allow without completely removing a weight-bearing wall. It was a fantastic space. Warm, open...

“Classes!” I shouted with a loud clap of my hand.

A clearly exhausted Georgia felt the volume all the way to her bones, it seemed. She jumped half a foot back. “What the fuck is wrong with you!”

“Sorry,” I exaggerated a whisper, “classes.”

She flipped me off, and whispered back, “Explain.”

“You could offer baking classes here. For one, people love to say they’re taking classes of something that sounds fancy. That’s just how people are. Throw the gluten-free angle into it and you’ve got something. People want to learn how to bake G-F stuff whether they need to, or not. And, if they do
need
to, you’ll be doing them a huge favor. You could charge per class or per session ... like ... I don’t know, you could either have a course, so people could learn to make cookies, cupcakes, breads, whatever all in a week, or you could have
cookie week...
”

I trailed off as Georgia walked into the dining area to meet me toe-to-toe. My tattered six-year-old Converses against her ancient combat boots whose scuff marks were colored in with black permanent marker.

“What? Too much?”

“No,” she blinked like her lashes were the fluttering wings of that rocking horse fly, “it’s fucking brilliant!” A rare wide smile crinkled her eyes as she leaped from her spot on the floor and wrapped her legs around my waist.

Instantly it reminded me of the day I’d met her and she’d greeted CJ that way. It seemed like forever ago, but I know that there was no way back then that I was thinking I’d be in his position someday. The recipient of Georgia’s full-body experience hug. I crossed my arms under the full curve of her hips and circled us around once before setting her down.

“Jesus, Regan, seriously!” She squeezed me one more time before running into the kitchen and returning with a calendar and a notebook. “That’s brilliant. I had so many people this week saying,
Oh I wish I could bake like this.
I could teach them, and they might do it a few times to impress people or when they’re feeling down, but we know they’ll still buy from the bakery. People know how to cook but still order out, you know what I’m sayin’?”

For the first time since I’d known her, Georgia’s Eastern Massachusetts
screw-you
accent slipped from her mouth.

“Yeah, I know whatchyou’re sayin’,” I echoed the accent back as I sat across from her.

She blushed deeply, looking up at me through noticeably tired eyes. “It’s like that when I’m tired. Fuck off.”

“How has everything been, just, in general?” I watched her hands produce a fascinatingly flowy cursive penmanship as she marked boxes on her calendar and made lists of ideas for classes.

“I can do an introductory class to start. Offer those on the next two Saturdays and Sundays and then schedule the grand opening for, like, three weeks from now?” She looked up hopefully, but frowned when she saw me studying her. “What?”

I gave a half smile. “I asked how things were going, you know, with life. I only see you in here these days ... just checking in.”

She sat back in the booth. “Things...” She looked around, just with her eyes, not turning her head. They seemed to glass over a bit.

“Hey...” I reached across the table and held out my hand. “Would it help if I went first?”

Georgia placed her always-warm hand in mine, and I took a deep breath as I wrapped my fingers around them. “I’m working on a final goodbye to Rae.”

“What kind of goodbye?”

“An answer to her letter.”

Georgia looked confused. “Did she ... ask you something?”

“Haven’t you read it?” I tilted my head to the side.

“No.”

“But when...” I trailed off, trying to recall why I’d assumed she’d read it.

She pulled her hand from mine and ran it through her hair. She had thick roots growing in. The only reason I thought anything about it was because CJ said her hair used to be dark, and I’d spent an inordinate amount of time imagining her with dark hair.

“The night Bo and Ember were here, they sat with you and read it, remember? It was clearly a very ... personal moment. I wasn’t going to intrude.”

I reached into my back pocket, where I’d been keeping the card since I first read it. “Read it.”

“It’s okay, Regan, I don’t ... need to.” She shook her hands and head at the same time.

“
I
need you to, Georgia.” I slid the card across the table, eyeing the already wrinkling and fading edges.

“Why do you
need
me to?” She didn’t reach for the letter.

“You’ve been really open and honest with me, Georgia, and ... you were there for me, really
there
when I read the thing. I figured you should know where I’m coming from.” I tapped the envelope. “This is where I’m coming from.”

Her look took on the pallor of guilt as she swaddled the letter after taking it from the envelope. She looked at me once before opening it. I nodded, reassuring her. She paled further as she read. Her eyes brightened at what I assumed were the cute and funny parts Rae had written. Then, it was like I was watching a flashback of myself when I came to the
I love you
portion of the event ... Georgia’s hand went to her mouth and she dropped the card, looking at me.

“I’m so, so sorry.” She kept her hand hovering over her lips and she fled our booth, exiting the bakery door and taking deep breaths in the fresh air of the quiet Sunday morning.

Carefully, I slid the card back into its envelope, tucked it in my back pocket, savoring the limited time it would reside there, and followed Georgia outside.

“She loved you,” Georgia started as the door closed behind me. “She loved you, and never really said it, and you loved her and never said it, then she died and no one said it and, holy
fuck,
Regan.” She paced in circles.

“I—”

“And she
died
,” Georgia repeated, and as if she were just learning of Rae’s death for the first time, she started to cry.