No, that wasn’t true.
She still felt terrible about that—but she felt better about life. At least Georgie was probably going to be one of those cool single women, one with an interesting job and a dashing best friend and good hair. She could probably have halfway decent one-night stands if she loosened up her standards.
She felt utterly terrible again as soon as she saw Neal sitting at the bus stop across the street. A bus pulled up. When it drove away, Neal was still sitting there, staring right at her.
He held up his hand and motioned for her to come over.
Georgie folded her arms and frowned.
Neal stood up.
She should just ignore him. Walk straight to her car. Leave him hanging. What was he doing here, anyway?
Neal beckoned her again.
Georgie frowned, looked both ways, then half ran across the street.
She slowed down when she got close to him. “Fancy meeting you here,” she said stupidly.
“Not really,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“You have?”
“Yeah.”
Georgie narrowed her eyes. Neal looked tired. And intent. And surprisingly pink in the daylight.
“I’m trying to figure out if that’s weird,” she said.
“I don’t really care if it is.” He took a step toward her. “I knew you’d be here, and I needed to tell you something.”
“You could have called,” she said.
“Right.” Neal tore off the first page of his notebook and handed it to her. There was a sketch of the cypress tree in front of Seth’s frat house. Also a skunk driving an AMC Gremlin. And then, Neal’s name—Neal G.—and a phone number.
Georgie took the piece of paper with both hands.
“I just needed to tell you—” He swallowed and pushed his bangs out of his face, even though they were too short to be in the way. “—I don’t have a girlfriend anymore.”
Georgie swallowed, too. “You don’t?”
He shook his head.
“That was fast,” she said.
Neal huffed out half a breath and just barely shook his head again. “It really, really wasn’t.”
“Okay . . . ,” Georgie said.
“So.” Neal looked determined. “I wanted you to know. That. And, also, I thought maybe . . . we could try again. Or just try. You know, go out or something. Someday. Now that I . . . don’t have a girlfriend.”
A smile snuck out of Georgie’s mouth. She tried to catch it.
Neal didn’t have a girlfriend.
This may even be a direct result of Georgie herself. And even though she didn’t consider herself a homewrecker—even though she didn’t particularly want to date a guy who kissed other girls, then ran home to break up with his girlfriend—Georgie did want to date Neal. Or maybe she just wanted to rub faces again.
“I’d like that,” she said.
Neal’s head tipped forward—in relief, she thought. He bit his bottom lip and exhaled. “Good.”
“Good,” Georgie repeated.
She took a step away. Past him, actually. Her car was just there, not even half a block up. “Okay,” she said, waving his number awkwardly at him.
He waved back, then pushed his hands into his jeans pockets.
Georgie took a few more steps, then turned around. “Yeah, okay—how about now?”
“What?”
“How about we try again now?”
“Now.”
She started walking back to him. “Yeah, I mean . . . I could pretend that I need to think about this and that I don’t want to rush in to anything. But I’m really not good at all that—I’m much better at rushing in. And it’s not like you just left your wife.”
“We were engaged,” Neal said. Like he was duty-bound to say it.
Georgie stopped. “Oh God, you were?”
“Not recently,” he said, pained. “We were engaged. Then we were just dating. Then we were spending some time apart.”
“What were you last night?”
“Spending some time apart.”
“So, last night, you actually didn’t have a girlfriend.”
Neal winced. “That seemed like a technicality at the time.”
“When did you break up?”
“This morning.”
“You woke up this morning and immediately went to break up with your girlfriend?”
“I called her.”
“No.” Georgie covered one eye. “Don’t tell me you did it over the phone.” She really didn’t want to go out with a guy who might break up with her someday over the phone.
Neal pushed his hair out of his face. “I had to. She’s in Nebraska.”
“Nebraska?”
He nodded, biting his lip again.
“How long have you been together?”
“Had been together,” Neal said. “Since high school.”
“Jesus,” Georgie said. “You broke up with your high-school-sweetheart-slash-fiancée for me?”
“Not my fiancée,” he said. “Anymore. And not just for you.”
Georgie frowned. Now that she wasn’t the reason, she kinda wanted to be.
“We were going to break up anyway,” he said.
She frowned some more.
“I mean,” Neal said, “we’d been talking about trying again. But then I met you. And I figured that if I felt the way I feel about you, maybe that was pretty solid evidence that she and I should break up.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so many words in row,” Georgie said.
“I’m a bit off my game.”
She smiled. A bit. “I throw you off your game?”
“Christ,” he muttered, “yes. Welcome to me staying up all night, then breaking up with my high school girlfriend for you.”
She stepped closer to him. “Not just for me.” Georgie really was terrible at playing hard to get. Or even playing reasonable to get. She had zero game.
“You’re one hundred percent of the reason I did it this morning,” Neal said.
That shouldn’t make Georgie happy. How terrible would it be to be that poor girl in Nebraska—to know that your boyfriend broke up with you first thing in the morning, so he could rush off to be with somebody else? Georgie pictured a blond girl with tearstained cheeks, standing in the middle of a lonely prairie.
“Are you sad?” she asked him. Sincerely. “Do you need to go home and listen to all your mixed tapes and think about this chapter of your life closing?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I think I just need some sleep.”
“Okay. Just . . .” How was she supposed to avoid kissing Neal when his mouth was right there at mouth-level all the time? She didn’t even have to stand on tiptoe. Georgie took hold of the front of his sweatshirt and leaned in.
She kissed him on the cheek.
“Thank you,” she said before she pulled back again. “For telling me.”
“Call me,” Neal whispered.
“I will.”
“Call me before you think you should.”
“I’ll call you tonight.”
Georgie grinned all the way to her car.
Neal didn’t have a girlfriend.
For, like, the next three hours, at least.
She called him that night. Then she took him to Versailles down on Venice Boulevard for garlic chicken and fried plantains. Neal didn’t know about anything cool in Los Angeles—he spent all his time at his apartment or on campus, or on the water, which he hated.
Which he hated, in practice.
Neal loved the concept of the ocean. He was practically animated once you got him talking about sea life and coral.
Nobody would ever describe Neal as fully animated. Or expressive. His thoughts didn’t play across his face like light on water. Which meant Georgie cataloged every flinch, every flick of his eyes, and tried to figure out what they meant. This seemed like a great way to spend the rest of her life.
Neal wasn’t sure how to sp
end the rest of his life.
He joked about being tragically bad with big decisions. He’d decided to study oceanography because nothing else appealed to him, and then he’d ended up stuck in California for four years. When he and his high school girlfriend—her name was Dawn (Prairie Dawn!)—drifted apart freshman year, Neal’s solution was to propose to her.
“I’m not good at knowing what I want,” he said at the end of the night, at the beginning of the morning. They were sitting on the beach, and Neal was holding Georgie’s hand. “I’m not usually good at wanting things.”
The sand was damp, and there was a cool breeze. Georgie was using it as an excuse to sit too close to him. She was wearing her blue and green plaid skirt and her red Doc Martens boots, and she was pushing her knee into his thigh because the reality of Neal—Neal without a girlfriend, Neal who said he liked her—was too much to leave be.
“Then we’ll get along fine,” she said, “because I’m extra good at wanting things. I want things until I feel sort of sick about them. I want enough for two normal people, at least.”
“Really,” Neal said. That’s what he always said when he didn’t have anything to say and he just wanted her to keep talking. There was a smile that went with it, sort of a mocking smile that would have seemed mean if his eyes weren’t shining.
“Really,” she said.
“What do you want?” he asked.
It would’ve been too easy—and too cheesy—to say “you,” even if it was top-of-mind right at the moment.
“I want to write,” Georgie said. “I want to make people laugh. I want to create a show. And then another show. And then another show. I want to be James L. Brooks.”
“I have no idea who that is.”
“Philistine.”
“He’s a philistine?”
“And I want to write a book of essays. And I want to join The Kids in the Hall.”
“You’ll have to pretend you’re a man,” Neal said.
“And a Canadian,” she agreed.
“And you’ll have to do lots of sketches where you’re in drag as a man, in drag as a woman—it’ll be very confusing.”
“I’m up for it.”
Neal laughed. (Almost. He smiled, and his shoulders and chest twitched.)
“And I want a Crayola Caddy,” Georgie said.
“What’s a Crayola Caddy?”
“It’s this thing they made when we were kids, kind of a lazy Susan with crayons and markers and paints.”
“I think I had one of those.”
Georgie yanked on his hand. “You had a Crayola Caddy?”
“I think so. It was yellow, right? And it came with poster paints? I think it’s still in our basement.”
“I’ve wanted a Crayola Caddy since 1981,” Georgie said. “It’s all I asked Santa Claus for, three years in a row.”
“Why didn’t your parents just buy it for you?”
She rolled her eyes. “My mom thought it was stupid. She bought me crayons and paint instead.”
“Well”—he lowered his eyebrows thoughtfully—“you could probably have mine.”
Georgie punched his chest with their clasped hands. “Shut. Up.” She knew it was stupid, but she was genuinely thrilled about this. “Neal Grafton, you have just made my oldest dream come true.”
Neal held her hand to his heart. His face was neutral, but his eyes were dancing. He whispered: “What else do you want, Georgie?”
“Two kids,” she said. “A boy and a girl. But not until my TV empire is under way.”
His eyes got big. “Christ.”
“Also a house with a big front porch. And a husband who likes to take driving vacations. And a car, obviously, with a roomy backseat.”
“You really are spectacular at this.”
“And I want a Disneyland annual pass. And a chance to work with Bernadette Peters. And I want to be happy. Like, seventy to eighty percent of the time. I want to be actively, thoughtfully happy.”
Neal was rubbing their hands into his blue sweatshirt. It said NORTH HIGH WRESTLING. TAKE ’EM DOWN, VIKES! His jaw was tight, and his blue eyes were almost black.
“And I want to fly over the ocean,” she said.
He swallowed and reached out to touch her face with his free hand. It was cold, and sand fell from it onto Georgie’s neck. “I think I want you,” he said.
Georgie squeezed the hand he was holding to his chest, and used it as an anchor to pull herself closer. “You think . . .”
Neal licked his bottom lip and nodded. “I think . . .” The closer she was, the more he looked away. “I think I just want you,” he said.
“Okay,” Georgie agreed.
Neal looked surprised—he almost laughed. “Okay?”
She nodded, close enough to bump her nose up against his. “Okay. You can have me.”
He pushed his forehead into hers, pulling his chin and mouth back. “Just like that.”
“Yeah.”
“Really,” he said.
“Really,” she promised.
She reached her mouth toward his, and he twisted his head up and away, looking at her. He was breathing hard through his nose. He was still holding her cheek.
Georgie tried to make her face as plain as possible:
Really. You can have me. Because I’m good at wanting things and good at getting what I want, and I can’t think of anything I want more than you. Really, really, really.
Neal nodded. Like he’d just been given an order. Then he let go of Georgie’s hand and pushed her (pinned her) gently (firmly) back into the sand.
He leaned over her, his hands on either side of her shoulders, and shook his head. “Georgie,” he said. Then he kissed her.
That was it, really.
That was when she added Neal to the list of things she wanted and needed and was bound to have someday. That’s when she decided that Neal was the person who was going to drive on those overnight road trips. And Neal was the one who was going to sit next to her at the Emmys.
He kissed her like he was drawing a perfectly straight line.
He kissed her in India ink.
That’s when Georgie decided, during that cocksure kiss, that Neal was what she needed to be happy.
They were all tired.
Seth had finger-combed all the curl out his hair. It was looking less JFK Jr., more Joe Piscopo. “We’re not adding a gay Indian character,” he said. That’s final.”
Scotty leaned over the table. “But Georgie said she wanted to add some diversity.”
“She didn’t say she wanted to add you.”
“Rahul isn’t me. He’s tall, and he doesn’t wear glasses.”
“He’s worse than you,” Seth said. “He’s fantasy-you.”
“Well, all these white guys are just fantasy-yous.”
Seth abused his hair some more. “Fantasy-me would never show up on this show. Fantasy-me was already on Gossip Girl.”
“Georgie,” they both said at once.
“Rahul can stay,” Georgie said. “But this is a misfit comedy; he has to be short and wear glasses.”
“Why would you do that to Rahul?” Scotty folded his arms. “Now he’ll never find love.”
Seth rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Scotty, you’ll find love.”
“One, I’m talking about Rahul. And two, I don’t think you mean that.”
Georgie put her hand on Scotty’s shoulder. “He’ll find love, Scotty. I’ll write him a dreamy boyfriend.”
“You’d do that for me, Georgie?”
“I’ll do it for Rahul.”
“That episode better be fucking hilarious,” Seth said.
Scotty stood up and shoved his laptop in his backpack. “Rahul stays,” he told Seth. “I just made some Indian kid a star.”
Scotty walked out, head high.
Seth was still frowning. “Does this mean we have to go back and write Rahul into the pilot?”
“He can start in the third episode,” Georgie said. “You were just
saying we needed a couple gay characters. You said our 1995 was showing.”
“I know.”
Georgie closed her laptop. “I know we said we’d take home scripts, but I don’t know how much I’m going to get done tonight. . . .”
“Stay,” Seth said. “We’ll get dinner and work on it together.”
“I can’t. I have to call Neal.” It was already eight o’clock in Omaha. Georgie wanted to call him by ten.
Seth studied her for a minute. Like the one thing she wasn’t telling him was the only thing he didn’t know about her.
What would happen if she called Seth tonight from the yellow phone? Would she get the Sig Ep house in 1998? Would one of his Saturday-morning girls answer?
Seth never talked about the Saturday-morning girls now, but Georgie assumed the parade marched on.
“Thanks,” he said. “For pushing through today. I know that something is seriously fucked up with you.”
Georgie unplugged her phone.
“And it’s killing me that you won’t talk about it,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry, Georgie—I want you to be funny.”
CHAPTER 17
By the time Georgie pulled into her mom’s driveway, she was 100 percent sure that if she called Neal tonight from the yellow rotary phone, he’d pick it up in the past.
Or that it would seem that way—that the grand illusion was going to hold.
And she was 1,000 percent sure she was going to call him. Even though that might be dangerous. (If it were real.) (Georgie needed to pick a side—real or not real—and stick with it.)
She had to call. You can’t just ignore a phone that calls into the past. You can’t know it’s there and not call.
Georgie couldn’t, anyway.
Whatever was happening, this was the role she’d been given. Neal wasn’t the one with a magic phone that could call into the future.
(God, maybe she should test that theory, she could ask him to call her back . . . No. No way. What if her mom answered and started talking about Alice and Noomi and divorce? What if Georgie herself answered the phone back in 1998 and said something horrible and immature, and ruined everything? Nineteen-ninety-eight Georgie clearly couldn’t be trusted.)
Heather opened the door to the house before Georgie could knock.