Landline (27 page)

“But it’s not even anything,” Heather said, glancing miserably at the door. “It’s just a chance.”

“The chance to be happy.”

“Or the chance to be heartbroken, like you?”

“The chance to be
alive
. To be . . .
Heather
, forget everything I said before.
It’s worth it
. Do you think I wouldn’t risk everything to bring Neal to that door right now? That’s how it works. You keep risking everything. And you keep hoping you can keep him from walking away.”

“Her.”

“Whoever. Jesus.”

The doorbell rang, and they both turned. After a second, the door opened, and Alison stepped carefully through, pushing her long bangs out of her eyes. “Sorry,” she said. “I thought everybody might still be out back—I think I left my keys on the dryer. . . .”

“I’ll get them,” Georgie said before either of the girls could say anything more. “I’ll be right back.” She squeezed Heather’s arm on the way to the laundry room, then sat down next her mom, pointing out which puppy was hers.

She left Alison’s keys sitting on top of the dryer.

G
eorgie’s mom lent her another pair of velour pants. And a T-shirt that said
PINK
.

Heather lent Alison a DECA T-shirt that hung too wide around the other girl’s neck.

They made a new nest for the dogs next to the Christmas tree, and Georgie’s mom decided that she and Kendrick couldn’t go to San Diego for Christmas and leave the puppies alone. “I guess we’ll keep you company, Georgie.”

Everyone agreed that Alison couldn’t just go back to work, not after
everything
. She spent ten tense minutes on the phone, trying to explain the situation to Angelo.

“Did you get fired?” Heather asked when Alison walked back into the living room.

Alison shrugged. “I’m going back to Berkeley next week, anyway.”

On the bright side, she had three large pizzas in the back of her car, plus an order of lasagna, some very cold fried mushrooms, and a dozen parmesan bread twists.

“God bless us, every one,” Georgie said, cracking open one of the boxes.

Fortunately for Heather, their mom only had eyes for the puppies and didn’t even notice Heather and Alison on the couch, giggling at each other with cheeks full of pizza.

Georgie herself was three giant slices in when the phone rang in the kitchen. The landline.

Heather looked at Georgie, and Georgie dropped her pizza, practically stepping on Porky on her way to the phone.

She got there on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Neal said. “It’s me.”

“Hey,” Georgie said.

Heather was standing behind her. She held out her hand. “Take it in your room,” she said. “I’ll hang it up.”

“Neal?” Georgie said into the phone.

“Yeah?”

“Just a minute, okay? Don’t go anywhere. Are you going anywhere?”

“No.”

Heather was still reaching for the phone; Georgie held the receiver against her chest. “Promise me you won’t talk to him,” she whispered.

Heather put her hand on the receiver and nodded.

“On Alice and Noomi’s lives,” Georgie said.

Heather nodded again.

Georgie let go of the phone and ran down the hall. Her hands were trembling when she picked up the yellow phone. (That never used to happen to her when she was upset; she was probably pre-diabetic.)

“Got it,” she said. She heard the kitchen phone click. “Neal?”

“Still here.”

Georgie sank onto the floor. “Me, too.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Georgie said, “yeah. I’ve just had the weirdest day. Plus, I guess I . . . I didn’t think you were going to call back.”

“I said I would.”

“I know, but . . . you were angry.”

“I—” Neal stopped and started his sentence again. “We ended up staying with my aunt for a while. It was hard to leave. She was really happy to see us, so we stayed for dinner at the nursing home. And that was depressing and kind of gross, so we went to Bonanza on the way home.”

“What’s a Bonanza?”

“It’s like a cafeteria-buffet-steakhouse thing.”

“Is everything in Nebraska named after Westerns?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“I’ll bet your Italian restaurants are named after Sergio Leone movies.”

“What made your day so weird?”

Georgie started laughing. It sounded like a laugh played backwards.

“Georgie?”

“Sorry. It’s just . . .”
What made her day so weird?
“I delivered three puppies and found out that Heather is gay.”

“What? Oh—for a second, there, I thought you were talking about your sister. Your cousin is gay?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Georgie said.

“How did you deliver puppies? Whose puppies?”

“That doesn’t matter either. But I think we’re keeping one.”

“‘We’—you and your mom? Or ‘we,’
we
?”

“We, we, we,” Georgie said. “All the way home.”

“Georgie?”

“Sorry.”

“You delivered puppies?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What
do
you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. I need another second.” Georgie pulled the phone away from her ear and dropped it on the carpet. At some point, she’d started breathing like Heather during the pug emergency. Georgie smoothed her hair back and redid her ponytail, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes.

This is it, Georgie, get back in the game.

No, this wasn’t a game. It was her life. Her ridiculous life.

It doesn’t matter what you say now
, she told herself.
Neal’s going to propose on Christmas. He already did. He said, “We’ll make our own enough.” It’s fate.

Unless . . .

Unless it wasn’t. Maybe Neal had just said that “enough” thing because it was on his mind that day, not because of their phone calls. Had he given Georgie any other clues over the years that these conversations happened? (This would be easier to figure out if Neal were the sort of guy who
ever
gave away clues.)

This was Georgie’s last chance to talk to Neal before he left for California. Her last chance to
make sure
he left—what was she supposed to say?

She took a deep breath,
in
, then pushed it,
out.
Then picked up the phone.

“Neal?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“What? What kind?”

“Like, do you believe that everything is already decided? That we’re destined for it?”

“Are you asking if I’m a Calvinist?”

“Maybe.” Georgie tried again: “Do you think that everything is already
decided
? Already written. Is the future just sitting there waiting for us to get to it?”

“I don’t believe in destiny,” he said, “if that’s what you mean. Or predestination.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no accountability in it. I mean, if everything is already set in stone, why try? I prefer to think that we’re choosing in every moment what happens next. That we choose our own paths—Georgie, why is this important?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded far away from herself in the receiver.

“Hey . . .
Georgie
.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

“Just now?”

“No,” he said. “Today. All day.”

“Oh. It’s okay.”

Neal huffed. Frustrated. “I hate that you thought I wouldn’t call—I hate that everything is so tentative between us right now. When did everything get so tentative?”

“I think when you left for Omaha without me.”

“I just came home for Christmas.”

Georgie’s voice was barely there when she reached for it. “That’s not true.”

She could hear Neal clenching his jaw. “All right,” he said. “You’re right.”

Georgie was quiet.

Neal was quiet, too.

“I didn’t break up with you,” he said finally. “You know that, right?”

“I know,” she said. “But we’re still broken.”

Neal growled. “Then we’ll fix it.”

“How?”

“When did you get so hopeless, Georgie? The last time we talked, everything was fine.”

“No, the last time we talked you were pissed with me about Seth.” She rested her tongue between her teeth and thought about biting all the way through.

“Because you were putting him first again.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. “He just showed up. He woke me up.”

“He just showed up
in your bedroom
.”

“Yes.”

Neal growled again. “I hate that. I hate that so much, Georgie.”

“I know, Neal.”

“That’s all you can offer me? You
know
?”

“I can tell you I’ll never invite him into my bedroom,” she said. “But sometimes he just shows up. You said you didn’t want me to choose between you.”

“And you said you would choose
me
.”

“I would,” she said. “I do.”

Neal huffed.

Georgie waited.

“Why are we fighting?” he asked. “Are you punishing me because I didn’t call you today?”

“No.”

“Then why are we fighting?”

Why were they fighting? They shouldn’t be fighting.
Georgie was supposed to be wooing him, making him forgive her, making him love her—letting it all happen.

“Because,” she sputtered. “Because I want to!”

“What?”

“I just want to get everything out. I want every horrible thing on the table. I want to fight about it all now, so we never have to again!” She was shouting.

Neal was seething. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

“I can’t do it!” she said. “I can’t keep fighting with you about the same things over and over again. I can’t keep
not
fighting about the same things over and over again. I can’t go another day, pretending you’re not pissed with me, pretending everything’s fine, talking in that stupid cheerful voice I use when I know you’re just quietly hating me.”

“Georgie.”
Neal sounded surprised. And hurt. “I never hate you.”

“You do. You will. You hate what I do to your life, and that’s the same as hating me—that’s just as bad. If you hate your own life because of me, that’s worse.”

“Jesus. I don’t hate my life.”

“You will.”

“Is that a threat?”

She forced down a sob. “No. It’s a promise.”

“What the—” Neal stopped. He never swore in front of her, she wasn’t sure if he ever swore, period. “—what’s wrong with you tonight?”

“I just want to get it over with.”

“What? Us?”

“No,”
she cried. “
Maybe
. I want to say every terrible true thing. I don’t want to trick you into coming back to me, Neal. I don’t want to tell you it’s all going to be okay when I know it isn’t.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“It’s
not
going to be okay. If you come back. If you forgive me or whatever it is you need to do. If you tell yourself that you’ll just get used to it. To Seth and L.A. and my job . . . You’re wrong. You’ll
never
get used to it. And you’ll blame me. You’ll hate me for keeping you here.”

Neal’s voice was cold. “Stop telling me that I hate you. Stop using that word.”

“It’s your word,” she said, “not mine.”

“Why are you being like this?”

“Because I don’t want to trick you.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because part of me
does
want to trick you. Part of me wants to say whatever I have to say to make sure you’ll still want me. I want to tell you that it’ll be different—
better
. That I’ll be more sensitive, that I’ll compromise more. But I won’t be, Neal, I know I won’t be. And I don’t want to
trick
you. Nothing is ever going to change.”

Neal was quiet.

Georgie imagined him standing on the other side of the kitchen, their kitchen, staring into the sink. Lying next to her in bed, facing the wall. Driving away from her without looking back.

“
Every
thing is going to change,” Neal said before she was ready for it. “Whether we want it to or not. Are you—Georgie, are you saying you don’t want to be better to me?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Because I want to be better to you. I
promise
to be better to you.”

“I can’t promise you that I’ll change,” she said. Georgie couldn’t make promises that her twenty-two-year-old self wouldn’t keep.

“You mean you don’t want to.”

“No,” she said, “I—”

“You can’t even promise me that you’ll try? From this moment onward? Just
try
to think about my feelings more?”

Georgie coiled the yellow cord around her fingers until her fingertips went white. “From this moment onward?”

“Yeah.”

She couldn’t make promises for her twenty-two-year-old self. But what about for this version of herself? The one that was on the phone with him. The one that was still refusing to let him go.

“I . . . I think I can promise that.”

“I’m not asking you to promise me that everything will be perfect,” Neal said. “Just promise me that you’ll try. That you’ll think about how it feels for me when Seth is in your bedroom. That you’ll think about how long you’re leaving me waiting when you’re at work. Or how I might be feeling when I’m stuck at a stranger’s party all night. I know I’ve been a jerk, Georgie—I’m going to try not to be. Will you try with me?”

“From this moment onward?”

“Yeah.”

From this moment onward, from this moment onward.
She grabbed on to the idea and held tight. “Okay,” she said. “I promise.”

“Okay. Me, too.”

“I’ll be better to you, Neal.” She steadied herself against the bed. “I won’t take you for granted.”

“You
don’t
take me for granted.”

“Yes,” she said, “I do.”

“You just get caught up—”

“I take for granted that you’ll be there when I’m done doing whatever it is I’m doing. I take for granted that you’ll love me no matter what.”