Landline

Georgie looked. She watched. And nothing stirred in her stomach. She didn’t take any special thrill in being here, being the one Seth wanted to see when he was done with the lovely whomever.

Neal had cured her of Seth.

Now what would cure her of Neal?

And why was she only attracted to guys who were sleeping with somebody else? If Georgie were a wild animal, she’d be a genetic dead end.

Seth fell onto the bed and turned on the TV. Animaniacs. Georgie threw him his bagel.

“So,” he said, unwrapping it, “feeling any better this morning?”

She put her feet up on his desk and watched the show. “I’m fine.”

When the episode was over, Georgie turned to the computer and opened a file. Aside from their column, and Georgie’s horoscopes, and their duties as managing editors—they also wrote a regular movie-review parody for The Spoon, “Your Mom Reviews . . .” It ran with a photo of Seth’s mom. This week, they were doing Trainspotting.

Seth was still watching cartoons.

“He has a girlfriend,” Georgie said.

Seth’s face jerked toward her; his eyebrows lowered. “This whole time?”

“Apparently.”

He turned off the TV and was up off the bed, pulling another chair next to Georgie and sitting on it backwards. “Fuck him,” he said, elbowing her. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t meant to be.”

“Since when do you believe in ‘meant to be’?”

“Since fucking ever, Georgie, pay attention. I’m a romantic.”

“Just ask the parade of Saturday-morning girls.”

“Parades are romantic. Who doesn’t love a parade?”

They worked on the movie review until it was time for Seth to go to work (to his other job, at the J.Crew factory store). He tried extra hard to make Georgie laugh; and when he leaned on her shoulder while she typed, she mostly let him.

By the time she walked out of the frat house, she felt better about Neal and his inevitable girlfriend. . . .

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?”