Alice jumped. Just like kids do in the movies. For joy. “Mommy!” She ran for Georgie.
Georgie’s phone slid out of her hand as she dropped to the floor.
“Mommy!” Alice shouted again, landing in Georgie’s arms. “Are you our Christmas present?”
Georgie held Alice so tight, it probably hurt, and covered the side of the girl’s face with kisses. Georgie didn’t see the kitchen door open again, but she heard Noomi squeal and meow, and then there were two of them in her arms, and Georgie was falling sideways off her knees, trying to hold on.
“Missed you,” she said between kisses, blinded by pink skin and yellow-brown hair. “Missed you so much.”
Alice pulled back, and Georgie tightened her arm around her. But Neal was lifting Alice up and away. “Daddy,” Alice said, “Mommy’s here. Were you surprised?”
Neal nodded and lifted Noomi up, too, setting them both aside. Noomi meowed in protest.
Neal held his hands out to Georgie, and she took them. (So warm in her freezing fingers.) He pulled her to her feet, then let go. He still wasn’t smiling, so she didn’t smile either. She knew she was crying, but tried to ignore it.
“You’re here,” he said without moving his lips.
Georgie nodded.
Neal moved quickly, taking her face in his hands—one on her cold cheek, one under her jaw—and pulling it into is.
She felt relief blow through her like a ghost.
Neal.
Neal, Neal, Neal.
Georgie touched his shoulders, then the back of his hair—still sharp—then the tops of his ears, rubbing them between her fingers and thumbs.
She couldn’t remember the last time they’d kissed like this. Maybe they’d never kissed like this. (Because neither of them had ever almost fallen off a cliff.)
“You’re here,” he said again.
And Georgie nodded, stepping forward just in case he was thinking of pulling away.
She was here.
And it didn’t fix anything. It didn’t change anything.
She still had her job. And the meeting maybe. She still had Seth to sort out—or not. Georgie hadn’t made any real decisions. . . .
But for once she’d made the right choice.
She was here.
With Neal. Whatever that meant from now on.
He kissed her like he knew exactly who she was. He kissed her like he’d been waiting for her for fifteen years.
Alice and Noomi jumped on their parents’ feet and hugged their legs.
There was a dog in there somewhere, and Neal’s mom talking about setting an extra place at the table.
“You’re here,” Neal said, and Georgie held him by the ears so he couldn’t pull away.
She nodded.
BEFORE
Neal parked the Saturn in Georgie’s driveway. He leaned forward and rested his head against the steering wheel. Christ, he was going to fall asleep.
That would make a great Christmas surprise—Georgie knocking on his window later, asking him if he’d move his car.
He bounced his head on the wheel.
Come on, Neal. You can do this. She might say no, but at least you can ask the question.
He tried not to think of the last time he’d asked this question, when he already knew Dawn would say yes, and he already knew he didn’t want her to.
Dawn would’ve said yes if he’d asked her again this week; he could tell by the way she’d been looking at him.
Christ, he could see it. The wedding. The marriage. The rest of his life with Dawn. It would all be so pleasant and predictable, he didn’t even have to live it to know the ending.
He couldn’t predict the next ten minutes with Georgie. Not ever. But especially not today. The next ten minutes . . . She might say no—she’d been begging him to break up with her on the phone all week.
But all she’d done was convince him that he couldn’t.
Even fifteen hundred miles away, even on the phone, Georgie was more alive than anything else in his life.
He felt his cheeks warm, just thinking about seeing her again. That’s what Georgie did to him. She pulled the blood to the surface of his skin. She acted on him. Tidally. She made him feel like things were happening. Like life was happening—and even if he was miserable sometimes, he wasn’t going to sleep through it.
He ran his hand over his pocket. The ring was still there.
It had been there since he left the nursing home; his great-aunt had pressed it into Neal’s hands—“I don’t need this anymore. I never really needed it, but Harold liked to see it on my finger.” It was a family ring, she said. It should stay in the family.
Neal made up his mind as soon as he saw it.
The future was going to happen, even if he wasn’t ready for it. Even if he was never ready for it.
At least he could make sure he was with the right person.
Wasn’t that the point of life? To find someone to share it with?
And if you got that part right, how far wrong could you go? If you were standing next to the person you loved more than everything else, wasn’t everything else just scenery?
Neal unbuckled his seat belt.
AFTER
“It doesn’t look real.”
“What does it look like?”
“Like a Very Special Christmas Episode.”
“Hmmm . . .” Neal’s mouth was warm on the back of her neck. “A two-parter,” he said. “With some sort of Christmas Carol gimmick.”
“Exactly,” Georgie said. “Or It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Neal’s mouth was warm and wet. “Are you cold, George Bailey?”
“No,” she said.
“You’re shivering.”
“M’not cold.”
He held her tighter anyway.
“It just falls like this?” she asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Even when no one’s watching?”
“I think so, but I guess I can’t prove it.”
“I can’t believe I almost missed this.”
“But you didn’t miss it,” he said.
“I almost did. . . .”
“Don’t. We’ve already been through it.”
“We haven’t,” she said. “Not really.”
“We’ve been through it enough.”
“But, Neal I—I just really missed you.”
“Okay, but you can stop now. I’m right here. Stop missing me.”
“Okay.”
The snow kept falling. In slow motion.
“I missed you, too,” Neal said. “I missed you telling me.”
“Telling you what?”
“Everything. What you’re thinking. What you’re worried about. What you want for dinner.”
“You missed me saying that I feel like Thimpu chicken again?”
“I didn’t miss you saying that—I just missed you saying, you know?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Tell me something now, Georgie.”
“What?”
“Tell me what I missed,” he said, then squeezed her: “Are you sure you’re not cold?”
“No.”
“You’re still shivering.”
“I . . .” She turned her head, so she could see his face. “Petunia had her puppies.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, my mom wasn’t home, so I helped deliver them.”
“Jesus, really?”
“Yeah. And . . . my sister’s gay.”
“Heather?”
“I only have one sister. Maybe she’s not gay, but she definitely has a girlfriend.”
“Huh . . .” Neal narrowed his eyes, then shook his head.
“What?”
“I . . . for a second, just—nothing, déjà vu or something.”
Georgie turned completely in his arms, and took his face in her hands. There were snowflakes on his cheeks and nose and eyelashes. She wiped them away. “Neal . . .”
He wrapped his arms tight around
her waist again. “Don’t, Georgie. We’ve been through it. Enough. For now.”
“It’s just—one more thing.”
“Okay, one more thing.”
“I’m going to be better.”
“We both are.”
“I’m going to try harder.”
“I believe you.”
She held his face still and sank her eyes into his as deeply as she could. She tried to pour fire into them. “From this day forward, Neal.”
Neal lowered his eyebrows, tenderly, like he was untangling something that might fall apart in his hands.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Georgie leaned in and stopped him. She couldn’t help herself, his lips were right there. Neal’s lips were always right there—that’s one reason it was so frustrating when she felt like she wasn’t allowed to kiss him.
She kissed him now. He spread his fingers out against her ribs and let her push his head back.
When Georgie jerked away, he made a noise like it hurt. “Come on, Georgie. No more ‘one more thing’s.’”
“No, I just remembered—I have to call my mom.”
“You do?”
Georgie pushed away from him, but he didn’t let go.
“I have to call her. I never told her I was leaving—I just left, I disappeared.”
“So call her. Where’s your phone?”
“It’s dead. For good.” Georgie reached her hands under Neal’s coat, looking for his pockets. “Where’s your phone?”
He squirmed and dropped his arms. “Inside. Dead. I was letting Alice play Tetris—sorry.”
Georgie turned to go inside, stomping the snow off her borrowed Ugg boots. “It’s okay. I’ll just use the landline.”
“Just borrow my mom’s phone,” he said. “She got rid of the landline.”
Georgie stopped and looked back at him. “She did?”
“Yeah. Years ago. After my dad died.”
“Oh . . .”
Neal pulled his jacket tighter around her. “Come on, let’s go inside. You’re shivering.”
“I’m fine, Neal.”
“Good, let’s go be fine where it’s warm.”
“I just . . .” She reached up and touched his face again. “I almost . . .”
He whispered: “Enough, Georgie. You’re here now. Be here now.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
If I had a magic phone that called into the past, the first person I’d call would be my dear friend Sue Moon. . . .
And I’d tell her everything I didn’t know I needed to tell her until she was gone.
I’d say thank you, mostly. For helping me break out of myself—and for showing me that there’s no true solace in fear. Every time I finish a book, I remember that Sue promised I would.
Thank you to the many people who help me write books:
My editor, Sara Goodman, who always knows what I’m trying to say. And who understands the power of “Leather and Lace.”
And the team at St. Martin’s Press, especially Olga Grlic, Jessica Preeg, Stephanie Davis, and Eileen Rothschild—who are so smart and sharp and compassionate that I kind of wish there was a legal way to make sure they never leave me.
Nicola Barr, who writes the best “I just finished your book” letters.
Lynn Safranek, Bethany Gronberg, Lance Koenig and Margaret Willison, my safe houses.
Christopher Schelling, who knows when to demand some sort of pug emergency.
And Rosey and Laddie, whom I love so much it hurts. Literally.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rainbow Rowell is a newspaper columnist in Omaha, Nebraska, where she lives with her husband and two sons.
Also By Rainbow Rowell
Attachments
Eleanor & Park
Fangirl
Copyright
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Orion Books.
This eBook first published in 2014 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Rainbow Rowell 2014
The moral right of Rainbow Rowell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 5213 2
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