She hadn’t talked to Neal for two and a half days.
And they’d never gone this long without talking. Not since they’d met. Well, practically not since they’d met.
It’s not that things were always . . . (What word was she looking for? Hunky-dory? Smooth? Happy?) It’s not that things were always . . . easy between Georgie and Neal.
Sometimes, even when they were talking, they weren’t really talking. Sometimes they were just negotiating each other. Keeping each other posted.
But it had never been like this before. Radio silence.
There’d always been his voice.
Georgie would feel better if she could hear Neal’s voice.
When Seth ran out to get lunch, she holed up in their office to try Neal again. She dialed his cell number and waited, tapping her fingers on her desk.
“Hello?” someone said doubtfully—like the person wasn’t actually sure that this was a phone and that she was indeed answering it. Neal’s mom.
“Margaret? Hey, it’s Georgie.”
“Georgie, hi there. I wasn’t sure if the phone was ringing or if this was an iPod. I thought I might be answering an iPod.”
“I’m glad you risked it. How are you?”
“You know, Naomi was watching TV on this thing earlier. In the same room as a perfectly good television. We’re living in the future, I guess. It’s not even really shaped like a phone, is it? More like a deck of cards . . .”
Margaret was the only person who called Noomi by her given name. It always made Georgie wince—even though Georgie was the one who’d named her.
“I guess you’re right,” Georgie said. “I’ve never thought about it. How are you, Margaret? Sorry I called so late the other night.”
“Georgie, can you hear me?”
“I can hear you fine.”
“Because I don’t know where the microphone is—this phone is so small.”
“It is small, you’re right.”
“Do I hold it up to my ear or my mouth?”
“Um”—Georgie had to think about that, even though she was talking on the same style of phone—“your ear. I guess.”
“My cell phone flips open. It seems more like a real phone.”
“I think your mother has Asperger’s,” Georgie had said to Neal.
“They didn’t get Asperger’s in the ’50s.”
“I’m just saying maybe she’s on the spectrum.”
“She’s just a math teacher.”
“Margaret”—Georgie forced herself to smile, hoping it would make her sound less impatient—“is Neal around?”
“He is. Did you want to talk to him?”
“That would be great. Yes. Thank you.”
“He just took the girls over to Dawn’s. She’s got a cockatiel, you know, and she thought the girls might like to see it.”
“Dawn,” Georgie said.
Dawn, the girl next door. The literal girl next door. Dawn, Neal’s ex-almost-fiancée. (It shouldn’t count if there was never a ring, right? If it was just a summer-vacation verbal agreement?)
God. And country. And fuck.
Why couldn’t Neal have a string of ex-girlfriends? Girls that he’d talked to, girls that he’d dated. Girls he’d used for sex, then felt bad about later . . . Why did he just have to have Dawn?
Dawn always came by Neal’s mom’s house to say hi when Georgie and Neal were in town; she lived next door and took care of her parents.
Dawn had pretty brown eyes and smooth brown hair. She was a nurse. She was divorced. She brought the kids stuffed animals that made it back to California and lived on their beds.
Georgie’s head hurt. Her hair smelled like poisonous cupcakes.
“Amadeus!” Margaret said, like she was remembering something.
“Sorry?” Georgie asked, clearing her throat.
“Amadeus. That’s Dawn’s cockatiel. He’s quite a bird.”
“Maybe you could just tell him that I called.”
Margaret was quiet for a few seconds and then—“Oh, you mean Neal.”
“I do. Yeah.”
“Sure, of course, Georgie. I’ll tell him.”
“Thanks, Margaret. Tell him to call me back anytime.”
“Sure. Oh, wait, before you go—Merry Christmas, Georgie! I hope your new show gets picked up.”
Georgie paused. And remembered that she really did like Neal’s mom. “Thanks, Margaret. Merry Christmas. Hug those girls for me.”
“Georgie, wait, how do I hang up on you?”
“I’ll hang up on you. That’ll take care of it.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“I’m hanging up now, Margaret. Merry Christmas.”
“That’s funny, right?” Seth asked, then repeated a joke for the fourth time. “Is it funny? Or is it just weird?”
Georgie wasn’t sure. She was having a hard time staying focused.
“I need a break,” Scotty said. “I can’t even see straight.”
“Push through it,” Seth ordered. “This is where the magic happens.”
“This is where I go get frozen yogurt.”
“All you do is eat. You eat, then you start thinking about the next thing you’re going to eat.”
“Eating is the only thing that breaks the monotony,” Scotty said.
Seth’s eyebrows shot up. “This isn’t monotony. This is the fucking dream.”
“It will be,” Scotty said. “When I have some yogurt.”
“Georgie. Tell him. No frozen yogurt until he says something funny.”
Georgie was slouched down in her chair with her feet up on the table and her eyes closed. “Can’t talk. Too much magic happening.”
“Do you want frozen yogurt, Georgie?” Scotty asked from the door.
“No, thanks.”
She heard the door close. Then felt a pen bounce off her shoulder.
“You should take a nap,” Seth said.
“Hmmm.”
“We need a napping couch. Passing Time is going to have a napping couch. Remember the couch at The Spoon? That was a first-rate napping couch.”
Georgie remembered. It was gray velvet and worn smooth on the cushions. If Georgie was sitting on it, Seth would sit down right beside her, even if there was plenty of room. Even if there was no room at all. He liked to rest his head in her lap or on her shoulder. If he didn’t have a girlfriend, she’d let him. (He almost always had a girlfriend.)
Seth was a relentless flirt. Even with Georgie—maybe especially with Georgie.
For the first few months after they met, she found all the attention thrilling. And then—when she realized that Seth flirted with everyone, and that he was usually actively chasing another girl—it was heart-breaking.
And then it was just noise. Like his talking. Like his humming. Georgie liked it, even when she wasn’t paying attention. Sitting on the napping couch, Seth’s head on her shoulder, his wavy cherrywood hair tickling her ear . . .
They were sprawled out on the napping couch the second time Georgie saw Neal. Seth had a girlfriend at the time—leggy, cheekbony, actressy—so he was supporting his own head. Georgie stuck her elbow in his ribs. “There he is again.”
“Ow. Who?”
“The cartoonist,” she said.
“The hobbit?”
“I’m going to go introduce myself.”
“Why?”
“Because we work together,” Georgie said. “It’s what people do.”
“He doesn’t work here. He just turns in his cartoons here.”
“I’m going to introduce myself. And tell him how much I like his work.”
“You’ll wish you hadn’t,” Seth warned. “He’s a scowler. He’s the least friendly hobbit in the Shire.”
“Stop talking Tolkien at me. All I know is ‘Frodo lives.’”
Seth laid his head on her shoulder.
Georgie shrugged him off. “I’m going. To introduce myself.” She got off the couch.
“Fine,” he moped.
“I hope you’re very happy together. Cute little hobbit couple with lots of roly-poly hobbit babies.”
Georgie turned back to him, but didn’t stop walking away. “I’m not hobbity.”
“You’re short, Georgie.” He spread out across the couch. “And round, and pleasant-looking. Deal with it.”
Georgie turned the corner into the production room and stopped. The writers almost never went back to the production room. The artists hung out back here—and the paste-up people on the nights that The Spoon was going to press.
Neal was sitting at a drafting table. He had a penciled comic strip laid out in front of him, and he was opening a bottle of India ink. There was a radio somewhere playing the Foo Fighters.
Georgie thought about going back to the couch.
“Hi,” she said instead.
Neal glanced up at her without lifting his head, then looked back at his comic. “Hi.”
He was wearing a black T-shirt under blue flannel, and his hair was dark and short, almost military-short.
“You’re Neal, right?”
He didn’t look up again. “Right.”
“I’m Georgie.”
“Are you?”
“Sorry?”
“Are you really?” he asked.
“Um, yes?”
He nodded. “I thought it was a pen name. Georgie McCool. Sounds like a pen name.”
“You know my name?”
Neal finally looked up at her. With round blue eyes and practically his whole head. “Your photo’s in The Spoon,” he said.
“Oh.” Georgie wasn’t usually smooth with guys—but she was usually smoother than this. “Right. So are you. I mean, your comic strip. I came back to talk to you about your comic.”
Neal was focused on his page again. He was holding an old-fashioned pen; it looked like a fountain pen with a long nib. “Is there a problem?”
“No,” she said. “I just . . . like it. I was going to tell you how much I like it.”
“Are you still going to?”
“I . . .”
His eyes met hers after a second, and she thought she might see a smile there.
She smiled back. “Yeah. I really like it. I think it’s the funniest thing in the magazine.”
She was almost sure Neal was smiling now. But it was just a twitch in his lips.
“I don’t know,” he said. “People seem to like the horoscopes. . . .”
Georgie wrote the horoscopes. (In character, sort of. It was hard to explain.) Neal knew she wrote the horoscopes. He knew her name. His hands were small, and they moved with complete surety across the paper, leaving a thick, straight line.
“I didn’t know you used real ink,” she said.
He nodded.
“Can I watch?”
He nodded again.
CHAPTER 7
Georgie’s mother had spectacular cleavage. Tan, freckled, ten miles deep.
“Genetics,” her mom said when she caught Georgie looking.
Heather shoved a bowl of green beans into Georgie’s arm. “Were you just staring at Mom’s breasts?”
“I think so,” Georgie said. “I’m really tired—and she’s kinda begging for it in that shirt.”
“Oh, sure,” Heather said. “Blame the victim.”
“Not in front of Kendrick,” their mom said. “You’re making him blush.”
Kendrick smiled down at his spaghetti and shook his head.
Her mom had caught Georgie on her cell phone that afternoon while she was waiting for Neal to call. “Let me make you dinner. I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t,” Georgie had said. “Don’t worry.” But she’d still agreed to come by after work.
Her mom made spaghetti with homemade meatballs, and pineapple upside-down cake for dessert. And they’d all waited for Georgie to get there before they started eating, so she didn’t feel like she could excuse herself right away to call Neal. (It was almost seven thirty already, nine thirty in Omaha.)
Georgie had tried Neal’s cell phone twice on the way here. Her calls went straight to voice mail again—which didn’t necessarily mean he was still hanging out with Dawn, but also didn’t prove that he wasn’t.
(It was stupid to worry about Dawn. Neal was a teenager when he was with Dawn.)
(But weren’t people constantly leaving their spouses the moment their prom dates friended them on Facebook?)
(Plus Dawn never got old. In any sense of the word. It was always good to see her, and she always looked good. The last time Georgie’d seen Dawn, at Neal’s dad’s funeral, she looked like she’d never been removed from the package.)
“Did you talk to the girls today?” her mom asked.
“I talked to them yesterday.”
“How are they taking everything?”
“Fine.” Georgie choked down half a meatball. “There’s not actually anything to take, you know.”
“Kids are perceptive, Georgie. They’re like dogs”—she offered a meatball from her own fork to the pug heaped in her lap—“they know when their people are unhappy.”
“I think you may just have reverse-anthropomorphized your own grandchildren.”
Her mom waved her empty fork dismissively. “You know what I mean.”
Heather leaned into Georgie and sighed. “Sometimes I feel like her daughter. And sometimes I feel like the dog with the least ribbons.”
Heather was eating spaghetti, too, but out of a restaurant to-go box. Georgie decided not to ask. She glanced up at the clock—seven forty-five.
“You know, I promised I’d call Neal before it gets too late.” She’d promised his voice mail, anyway. “I’m just going to use the phone in my room, if that’s okay.”
“But you haven’t finished eating,” her mom protested.
Georgie was already halfway down the hall. “I’ll be back!”
Her heart was beating hard when she got to her room. Was she that out of shape? Or just that nervous?
She curled her fingers behind the hooks of the yellow phone and sat on the bed, pulling it into her lap and waiting to catch her breath.
Please answer, she thought, picturing Neal’s somber blue eyes and his stern jaw. Picturing his strong pale face. Please. I just really need to hear your voice right now.
She started dialing his cell, then hung up and tried the landline—maybe Margaret was a better bet to pick up; their parents’ generation still felt morally obligated to answer phones.
Georgie listened to it ring, trying to hold down the butterflies in her stomach. Trying to crush them, actually, into butterfly bits and pieces.
“Hello?”
Neal. Finally.
Neal, Neal, Neal.
The butterflies burst back to life and started fluttering up Georgie’s throat. She swallowed. “Hey.”
“Georgie.” He said it like he was confirming something. Gently confirming.
“Hey,” she repeated.
“I didn’t think you’d call again.”
“I told your mom I would. I told you the last time we talked—why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t think you’d call then either.”
“I love you,” she blurted out.
“What?”
“The last time we—you hung up before I could tell you that I love you.”
“So you called to say you love me?”
“I . . .” Georgie felt so confused. “I called to make sure you got in okay. To see how you are. To see how the girls are.”
Neal laughed. Not in a good way. It was the sound effect his defenses made when they snapped into place. “The girls,” he said. “The girls are fine. Are you talking about Dawn? Because I haven’t seen her.”
“What? Your mom said you were over there today.”
“When did you talk to my mom?”
“Today. She said Dawn was showing you her cockatiel. Amadeus.”
“Dawn’s cockatiel is named Falco.”
Georgie tucked in her chin, defensivel
y. “Sorry. I’m not an expert on Dawn’s cockatiels.”
“Neither am I.”
She shook her head and took her glasses off, holding her palm against her eye. “Neal. Look. I’m sorry. This isn’t why I called.”
“Right. You called to tell me that you love me.”
“Yeah. Actually. Yes, I did. I love you.”
“Well, I love you, too. That isn’t the problem, Georgie.” His voice was almost a whisper.
Georgie whispered, too: “Neal. I didn’t know you were this upset. You should have told me you were this upset before you left. I wouldn’t have let you go—I would have come with.”
He laughed again, and this time it was even worse. “I should have told you?” he hissed. “I did tell you. I said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ I said ‘I love you, but I’m not sure it’s enough, I’m not sure it will ever be enough.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to live like this, Georgie’—remember?”
Georgie was speechless. She did remember. But . . .
“Just a second,” Neal said quietly. “I don’t want to have this conversation in front of my parents. . . .” What he said next was muffled: “Dad, can you hang this up when I get upstairs?”
“Sure, tell your Georgie girl I said hi.”
“You can tell her yourself. She’s right there.”
“Georgie?” someone said into the phone. Someone who was not Neal’s dad. Who couldn’t be.
“Mr. Grafton?”
“We’re sorry you couldn’t come for Christmas this year. We made it snow for you and everything.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Georgie said—she must have said it, she heard herself say it.
“Well, maybe next year,” he said. He who was not, who could not be, Neal’s dad—who was dead. Who died in a train yard three years ago.
There was a click, then the hollow sound of another phone on the line. “I’ve got it, Dad, thanks.”
“See ya, Georgie girl,” Neal’s dad said. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” she said. Autonomically.
There was another click.
Georgie sat completely still.
“Georgie?”
“Neal?”
“Are you okay—are you crying?”
She was crying. “I . . . I’m really tired. I haven’t been sleeping, and Neal, oh my God, I just imagined the strangest thing. I imagined your dad telling me Merry Christmas. Isn’t that—”
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