Seth rolled his eyes. “He thinks I’m an asshole no matter how you make me out.”
She sighed and looked at the ceiling. “God. Seth. This is why we can’t talk about this.”
“What? I’m not saying that he’s an asshole. I’m saying that I know he thinks I am.”
“Neal is not an asshole.”
“I know,” Seth said.
“And I hate that word.”
“I know.”
She wanted to rub her eyes, but she didn’t want to let go of the comforter.
“I mean, he is sort of an asshole . . . ,” Seth said.
“Seth.”
“What? That’s his shtick, isn’t it? You know that’s his shtick. He’s like a Samuel L. Jackson character.”
“I can’t stand Samuel L. Jackson.”
“I know, but you like that whole ‘You wanna mess with me, punk, huh? Do ya?’ thing. You love that.”
“Shut up, you don’t even know Neal.”
“I know him, Georgie. I’ve been sitting one seat away from him my whole fucking life. I secondhand-smoke know him. It’s like we’ve got shared custody of you.”
“No”—Georgie pressed her fingertips into her forehead—“this is why we don’t talk about this. You don’t have any custody.”
“I have some. Weekdays.”
“No. Neal is my husband. He has full custody.”
“Then why isn’t he here trying to figure out what’s wrong with you?”
“Because!” Georgie shouted.
“Because why?”
“Because I fucked up!”
Seth was angry. “Because you didn’t go to Omaha?”
“Most recently because I didn’t go to Omaha. Because I never go to Omaha.”
“You go once a year! You bring me back that Thousand Island dressing I like.”
“I mean, metaphorically. I always choose the show. I always choose work. I’m forever not going to Omaha.”
“Maybe you should ask yourself why not, Georgie.”
“Maybe I should!” she practically shouted.
Seth stared at his lap.
Georgie stared at hers. This wasn’t them—Seth and Georgie never fought. Or rather, they always fought; they bickered and they insulted and they mocked. But they never fought about anything that mattered.
She knew that Seth knew things weren’t great between her and Neal.
Of course Seth knew. He’d been sitting right next to her for twenty years. He’d watched it all go bad—at least that’s how it would look from his perspective—but he never mentioned it.
Because there were rules.
And because some things were sacred. Not Georgie’s life, but work—work was sacred. Seth and Georgie checked their lives at the door, and they worked. And there was something really beautiful about that. Something freeing.
No matter how badly they messed up their lives, the two of them would always have the show, whatever show they were on, and they’d always have each other—they protected that.
They protected work so they’d always have it there, an oasis that ate up their days.
God. God. This was how Georgie had ruined everything.
By being really good at something. By being really good with someone. By retreating into the part of her life that was easiest.
She started crying.
“Hey,” Seth said, reaching out to her.
“Don’t,” Georgie said.
He waited until she was just sniffling. “Did you get to work on the script last night?”
“No.”
“Are you coming in today?”
“I—” She shook her head. “—I don’t know.”
“We can work here, if you want. Change of scenery might do us good.”
“What about Scotty?”
Seth shrugged. “He’s already working from home. He even finished an episode. It’s . . . not bad. It doesn’t sound like us, but it’s not bad. It’s something.”
Work. Georgie should go to work. She was missing Christmas so she could work on the show. If she didn’t work on the show, this whole week would be a waste; Georgie would have destroyed her marriage for nothing. She was about to tell Seth, “Fine, fine, I’ll come in, I’ll work,” when the phone rang.
The landline.
She and Seth both looked at it. It didn’t ring again.
“Come on,” Seth said. “I brought coffee. I don’t know where it ended up—I handed it to your sister to get her out of my way. God, she’s protective, have you been getting death threats?”
Someone thumped down the hall, and the door opened. Heather shoved her head and shoulders through. “It’s for you.” She scowled at Georgie. “It’s Neal.”
Georgie’s heart skipped a beat. (Great. Now she was having heart palpitations.) (Wait. Neal could call the kitchen phone, too? This was out of control.) “Thanks. Hang up when I pick up?”
“You want me to hang up on him?”
“No,” Georgie said, “I’ll get it in here.”
“Can you do that?”
“Are you serious?”
Heather scowled some more. “Sorry I’m not up on your twentieth-century technology.”
“Go to the kitchen, wait until you hear me pick up, then hang up.”
“Just pick up now,” Heather said.
Georgie looked at the phone, just out of reach, and at Seth—and not at her mom’s pajama shorts lying on the floor. “In. A minute,” she said.
“Fine.” Heather watched Georgie closely, like she was trying to crack her game. “I’ll just go talk to Neal while I wait.”
“Don’t talk to him, Heather.”
Heather’s eyes had narrowed to slits. “I’ll just say hi to Neal, ask him about the girls. . . .”
Georgie kicked Seth. “Pick up the phone.”
“What? You want me to talk to Neal?”
“Nobody’s talking to Neal. Pick up the phone—” She kicked him again. “—then hand it to me. And you—” She pointed at Heather. “—are a terrible sister. And a worse person.”
Georgie kicked Seth one more time. He stood and picked up the receiver—holding it in the air for a few seconds, pinching the handle like it was a bomb—then tossed it to Georgie.
Heather waited in the doorway. Hang it up, Georgie mouthed. Now.
She held the phone up to her ear and waited for the click. She could hear voices at Neal’s house—his parents. She could hear Neal breathing.
Heather rattled the phone onto the hook in the kitchen.
“Hello?” Georgie said.
“Hey,” Neal answered.
Georgie felt her face get all soft; she looked down so Seth wouldn’t notice. “Hey. Can I call you back?” She hoped this was the right Neal. (She didn’t mean the right Neal, she meant the young one.)
“I know I wasn’t supposed to call,” he said, “but it was getting late, and I thought—I don’t know what I thought, that I wanted to talk to you, I guess.”
This was the right Neal. “It’s okay,” she said, “but can I call you back?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’ll call you right back.”
“Good morning, Georgie.”
Georgie looked at the clock. “It’s almost two there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Neal said. “But . . . not there, right? I called now because I didn’t want to miss telling you good morning.”
“Oh.” She felt her face go globby. “Good morning.”
“A-ha!” Seth said.
Georgie looked up at him, stricken.
He leaned against the closet, pleased with himself. “You’re not wearing pants.”
“Is that Seth?” Neal asked.
Georgie closed her eyes. “Yeah.”
She could hear Neal’s defenses coming up—and falling down, like Iron Man’s armor snicking into place. She could hear it from across the country and fifteen years away.
Neal’s voice was central air: “Did he j
ust say that you weren’t wearing pants?”
“He’s being an idiot.”
“Yeah. Well. You’re calling me back, right? When you’re done with Seth? Is that what’s happening?”
“Yeah,” Georgie said. “That’s what’s happening.”
“Right.” He exhaled roughly into the phone. “Talk to you soon.”
He hung up.
Georgie threw the receiver at Seth, hard. But not hard enough—the cord caught and coiled back in on itself, falling to the floor. For a second, she was worried that she’d broken it. (Could she just plug in a new phone? Apparently the brown Trimline was magic, too, so she could always call Neal from the kitchen.)
“It’s not enough for you to ruin my marriage now,” she seethed, “is it? You have to ruin it everywhere at once.”
Seth eyebrows jumped up—he looked like she had hit him with the phone. He looked like he wanted to shout, “Rules, rules, rules!”
“Ruin your marriage . . . ,” he said.
Georgie let out a breath and shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She kept shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . . Why did you open your mouth?”
“You think I’m ruining your marriage?”
“No. Seth. I don’t. I think I’m ruining my marriage. You’re just an accessory.”
“I’m not an accessory—I’m your best friend.”
“I know.”
“I’m always going to be your best friend.”
“I know.”
“Even if this—”
“Don’t,” she said.
He fell back against the closet, kicking it gently, then resting his foot against it like he was modeling orange chinos. (He was wearing orange chinos.) Then he folded his arms. “What does that even mean,” Seth asked, “‘everywhere at once’?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. I’m just tired.”
“And scared,” he said quietly.
She looked down at the comforter. “And scared.”
“And talking to me about it is clearly a catastrophic idea. . . .”
She pulled her lips into her mouth and bit them, nodding.
“So let’s not talk about it, Georgie. Let’s just write.”
Georgie looked up at him. Seth was being as sincere as he knew how—his face was so open, she practically didn’t recognize it.
“It’s the only thing I can fix for you,” he said.
Her eyes dropped to the phone. “I have to call Neal back.”
“Fine. You call Neal back. Then get dressed. I’ll track down our coffee and find a place to set up. . . . And then you’ll come out when you’re ready—and I won’t mention that you sleep pantsless, but I’ll always know from now on, Georgie, always—and we will write ourselves a script. We’ll go Amy Sherman-Palladino on its ass.”
“I love Amy Sherman-Palladino.”
“I know,” he said, crunching his eyebrows at her meaningfully. “I’m your best friend.”
“I know.”
“I’m going out to the kitchen now.”
“Seth . . .”
“And you’ll be out in a minute.”
“Seth, I can’t right now. I have to call Neal back.”
His head fell back against the closet. “I can wait.”
“I don’t want you to wait.”
“Georgie.”
“Seth. I have to fix what I can.”
“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
“Go to work,” she said. “Write.”
“And you’ll come in to the office later?”
“Probably.”
“But you’ll definitely come in tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
He bounced his head gently against the fiberboard. “Fine. Just . . . fine.” He kicked off the door. “Four days,” he groaned. “We have four days to make this happen.”
“I know.”
“All right . . . but if it turns out you can’t actively pick up the pieces of your marriage today, you may as well come write with me.”
“Stop talking about my marriage. For all time.”
Seth stopped at the door and grinned back at her. “Well, come on—you’re gonna see me to the door, right?”
Georgie folded her arms in the comforter. “Let Heather kick you out. It’ll cheer her up.”
“I always thought Heather liked me,” he muttered, letting the door swing closed behind him.
Georgie didn’t wait for Seth to leave the house, she didn’t wait for her head or eyes to clear—she didn’t stop to process the fact that Neal had called her, twice now, which meant her magic phone worked both ways, which might mean . . . Who knows what that might mean? It’s a magic phone. It’s not like it has rules.
She dialed Neal’s number so fast, she hit a wrong number and had to start all over.
His dad answered. Just to flip Georgie the fuck out again.
“Hi, Paul—Mr. Grafton, it’s Georgie. Is, um, is Neal there?”
“You can call me Paul,” he said.
“Paul,” Georgie said, and she felt like crying again.
“You caught us just in time,” he said. “Here’s Neal.”
A shuffling noise then—“Hello?”
“Hi,” Georgie said.
“Hi,” Neal said. Coolly. But maybe not angrily. It was always so hard to tell with him. “Seth give you a break?”
“He left.”
“Oh.”
“Are you leaving?” she asked. “Your dad said—”
“Yeah. We’re going to see my grandma’s sister. She’s in a nursing home.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“It really isn’t. She’s in a nursing home, and she’ll be alone on Christmas. It’s pretty much the very least we can do.”
“Oh,” Georgie said.
“Sorry. I just . . . hate nursing homes. My great aunt doesn’t have kids of her own, so we—”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry.” Neal huffed. “I thought you were sleeping.”
“When?”
“When I called.”
“I was sleeping,” she said.
“You were with Seth.”
“He’d just woken me up.”
“You were supposed to call me when you woke up.”
“I was going to call you.”
“Eventually,” he said.
“Neal. You promised you’d never be jealous of Seth.”
“I’m not jealous of Seth. I’m angry with you.”
“Oh.”
“I have to go,” he said. “I’ll call you when I get back.”
Don’t call me, Georgie almost answered. “Okay. I’ll be here.”
“Okay.”
She wasn’t going to say “I love you” now just to see if he’d say it back. “I’ll be here,” she said again.
“Okay.” He hung up.
CHAPTER 20
Neal hung up.
Because it was that easy for him.
For a second, Georgie wished he knew—who she really was, when she really was, everything. Neal wouldn’t just hang up on her like that if he knew he was hanging up on the future. You don’t hang up a magic phone.
Georgie wandered out to the kitchen, hungry.
Heather was standing at the front door, talking to someone. Georgie spotted the pizza delivery car through the picture window and wondered if it would be rude to interrupt and take the pizza from them, or if, without the pizza, their little flirtation would collapse in on itself.
She started the coffeemaker and rooted through the fridge, not finding anything.
After a few more minutes, Heather walked into the kitchen, smiling.
“Where’s the pizza?” Georgie asked. “I’m starving.”
“Oh. I didn’t order a pizza.”
“But the pizza boy was here.”
Heather stepped past Georgie and leaned into the fridge. “It was a wrong pizza.”
“There’s no such thing as a wrong pizza,”
Georgie said. “All pizzas are right from conception.”
“It was the wrong address,” Heather said. “Probably just a mix-up because we order from them so often.”
“Heather, I’m serious, there’s no such thing as a wrong pizza. That boy wanted to talk to you.”
Heather just shook her head and opened the vegetable drawer.
“How long has this been going on?” Georgie asked.
“Nothing’s going on.”
“How long have you been ordering pizzas for sport, not sustenance?”
“How long has Seth been your wake-up service?”
Georgie pushed the fridge door closed—Heather had to jerk back to get out of the way. “Out of line,” Georgie said.
Heather looked like she wanted to say something else, something worse, but pressed her lips closed and folded her arms.
Georgie decided to walk away. She stopped at the edge of the kitchen. “I’m going to take a shower. Come get me if Neal calls.”
Heather ignored her.
“Please?” Georgie said.
“Fine,” Heather agreed, not even bothering to turn her head.
Georgie checked the yellow phone before she got into the shower, just to make sure there was a dial tone and that the ringer was turned up. (As if somebody might have snuck in and messed with it.)
Once, in junior high, she’d been so worried about missing a call from a boy, she’d dragged the phone into the bathroom with her every time she had to go. (He never did call.) (Which didn’t discourage Georgie even a little bit.)
She stood under the shower until the water ran cold, then stole some more of her mom’s yoga pants and a sweatshirt with a pug on it, and walked out to the laundry room.
When Georgie was growing up, the washing machine and dryer sat out against the garage with a little plastic canopy over them. But Kendrick had built her mom a laundry room onto the back of the house, with a tile floor and a sorting table. Georgie’d still be able to hear the kitchen phone out here, if it rang.
She opened the washing machine and dropped in her jeans and T-shirt and bra. . . .
It was a very depressing bra.
It’d been pink once, sometime between Alice and Noomi, but now it was a grayish beige, and one of the underwires kept sneaking out through a rip between Georgie’s breasts. Sometimes the wire crept almost all the way out and sprung like a hook from the neck of her shirt; sometimes it bent the other way and poked her. You’d think that would prompt Georgie to buy some new bras, but instead she just pushed the wire back as soon as no one was looking, then forgot about it until the next time that bra came up in her rotation.
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