Landline

“Georgie? Did I lose you?”

“No,” she said. Jesus. She could not tell Neal. “I’m here.”

“Tell me about your day.”

Well, first I unplugged my magic phone, then I got into my electric car. . . .

“I worked with Seth on Passing Time,” Georgie said—because it was the only true thing that seemed safe to say.

She immediately wished she could take it back. Mentioning Seth was like flipping Neal’s off switch; that was as true back then as it was now. (All right, so maybe she couldn’t talk to Neal about everything.)

“Ah,” he said, his voice noticeably cooler.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I . . .” He cleared his throat. She could hear him consciously letting the a

“Thanks.”

“Then I ate them.”

“Bastard.”

He laughed a breath. “And then . . . I met that guy my dad wanted me to meet, the guy with the railroad police.”

It took a second for that to click. Neal’s dad’s friend, railroad police. Right. There was a job Neal had thought about—never seriously—back in Omaha. “I still think you’re making that up,” she said.

“I’m not making it up.”

“Railroad detectives. It sounds like an hour-long drama on CBS.”

“It sounds really interesting,” Neal said. “Like all the best parts of police work, the thinking and the problem-solving, but not having to walk a beat or answer 9-1-1 calls.”

“This week on Railroad Detectives,” Georgie teased, “the team discovers a cache of sleepy hoboes. . . .”

“Something like that.”

“Is the railroad looking for oceanographers?”

“No. Thank God. Mike—my dad’s friend—said it didn’t matter what my degree was in, that any background in the sciences would help.”

“Oh,” Georgie said. “That’s great.” She tried really hard to mean it.

“It was good,” he said. “Then I came home, ran into Dawn, and ended up getting ice cream with her.”

Jesus, Neal’s whole day had been a life-without-Georgie dress rehearsal. “Dawn,” she said. “That’s . . . great. I bet Dawn thinks you should become a railroad detective.”

“And you don’t?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What are you saying?” He sounded cool again.

“Nothing. I’m sorry. Just . . . Dawn.”

“Are you jealous of Dawn?”

“We’ve talked about this,” Georgie said.

“No, we haven’t,” Neal disagreed.

He was right; in 1998, they hadn’t.

“You’re not actually jealous of Dawn,” he said.

“Of course I am. She was your fiancée.”

“Only sort of. And I broke up with her for you.”

“You can’t have a sort-of fiancée, Neal.”

“You know I never even meant to propose to her. . . .”

“That makes it worse.”

“Georgie. You ca

She smiled. But kept arguing. “I can be jealous of anyone who got to you first. If I went down to the malt shop and shared a milk shake with my ex-boyfriend-slash-sort-of fiancé, you’d be jealous.”

“Right,” Neal snorted. “But I’m not supposed to be jealous when you spend every day with Seth.”

“Seth isn’t my ex-boyfriend.”

“God, no, he’s worse.”

Rules, Georgie wanted to shout. Rules, rules, rules! Weren’t all their rules already unspoken by 1998? “You can’t compare Seth to Dawn,” she said. “I was never sleeping with Seth.”

There was a loud click, someone picking up another phone. Georgie filled with panic, like she was in junior high and on the phone past curfew—she almost hung up.

“Georgie?” Her mom sounded tentative. Who knows when she’d last picked up the landline.

“Yes, Mom? Did you need to use the phone?”

“No . . . I was just wondering if you wanted some puppy chow.”

“Thanks. Still no.”

“Is that Neal?”

“It is,” Neal said. “Hi, Liz.”

Georgie winced. Her mom used to insist that Neal call her “Liz.” And then, after he and Georgie got engaged, she’d insisted on “Mom”—which initially made him really uncomfortable.

“I feel like I’m cheating on my own mom,” he’d said.

“Just try not calling her anything at all,” Georgie advised him. “I got mad at her once, when I was fourteen, and I didn’t call her ‘Mom’ for a year.”

“Oh, honey,” Georgie’s mom cooed into the phone. “It’s still ‘Mom.’ We’re still family. Georgie was supposed to tell you that. None of this affects our feelings for you.”

Georgie could tell that Neal was speechless.

“Okay, Mom,” Georgie said, “thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Thanks, Liz,” Neal said.

Her mom sighed. “Now, Neal, you tell your mother I said hello—”

Oh God, oh God, oh God. In 1998, Georgie’s mom and Margaret hadn’t even met yet.

“Mom,” Georgie cut her off. “Neal and I were talking about something really important, and I just really need you to hang up now.”

“Oh, of course. Neal, honey—”

“Now, Mom. I’m begging you.” If this went on much longer, Georgie would regress all the way back to toddlerhood.

Her mom sighed. “All right, I can take a hint. Good-bye, Neal. It was so good to hear your voice.”

If she even mentioned the girls, Georgie would start screaming. She would. She’d figure out how to explain it later. “Good-bye, Mom.”

Her mom sighed into the receiver right until the second she hung it up.

Georgie wasn’t sure how to recover.

“So,” Neal said, “I guess your mom thinks we broke up.”

She took a second to feel utterly relieved by his train of thought, then said, “I thought we did, too, up until a few days ago.”

“But not now?”

“No,” Georgie said, “not now.”

“No matter what happens,” he said, “I’m never calling your mom ‘Mom.’ It’s too weird.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ll cover for you.”

Neal started a sentence, then stopped. Then started again. “Georgie, I—well, I wasn’t ever sleeping with Dawn.”

“But—” Georgie stopped. “Yes, you were. You were engaged.”

“I never slept with her.” Neal’s voice dropped. “She wanted to wait until marriage. Her first boyfriend was a monster, so she reclaimed her virginity.”

“She reclaimed her virginity?”

“Leave it, Georgie. She can do whatever she wants with her virginity.”

“Right,” Georgie said, nodding her head. “Right . . . It doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, actually. Maybe I’ll reclaim mine before you come back. In the name of Queen Elizabeth.”

Neal sounded like he might have laughed.

“Because she was the virgin queen,” Georgie said.

“I got it.”

Georgie was quiet. Neal had never slept with Dawn. She’d always assumed he’d had lots of fabulous young sex with Dawn. Freshly scrubbed Heartland-teenager sex. “Suckin’ on a chili dog outside the Tastee Freeze,” et cetera.

Did that mean he’d never had sex with anyone but Georgie?

She thought of their first time. At Neal’s apartment, in the middle of the night. Laughing and fumbling with the condom—and Georgie wanting to get past this first time together, so they could get to just being together, whatever that might mean.

Was that Neal’s first time ever?

That’s exactly the sort of thing he wouldn’t tell her. Neal didn’t like to talk about sex. And he didn’t like to talk about before. Before they were together, before Georgie. (He didn’t like to talk about yesterday.)

She thought of Neal. Practically a teenager, pale as paper. All concentration and broken concentration, laughing through clenched teeth and touching her like she was made of glass.

Neal.

“You can’t be jealous of Seth,” Georgie offered quietly.

“Really,” he huffed.