Landline

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. I’ve always hated guns.”

“I love you,” she said.

“Because I hate guns?”

“Because everything.”

“Because everything.” She could hear Neal almost smiling. She could almost see him, too.

No . . .

Georgie was picturing her Neal. Her almost-forty Neal. Leaner. Sharper. With longer hair and crow’s-feet and a bit of gray in the beard he grew every winter. “What passes for winter,” he’d say. “My children are never going to know what it’s like to come in from the cold and feel the warmth work its way back into their fingers.”

“It sounds like you’re saying they’re never going to get frostbite.”

“I can’t have this conversation with someone who’s never built a snowman.”

“Our kids have seen snow.”

“At Disneyland, Georgie. That’s just soap bubbles.”

“They don’t know the difference.”

“What if it was Persephone who kidnapped Hades . . .”

“You’re talking fancy again.”

Her Neal had lost his baby fat, his soft belly and hobbity hint of a double chin.

Once Alice was born, Neal took up cycling. He went everywhere by bicycle now, hauling a bright yellow trailer. Hauling two little girls, bags of groceries, stuffed animals, stacks of library books . . .

Working motherhood had made Georgie shapeless and limp, and perpetually tired-looking. She never got enough sleep anymore. And she’d never gotten her waist back—or gotten around to buying new clothes for this new (not so new anymore, really) reality. Georgie hadn’t even resized her wedding ring after it got too tight to wear during her last pregnancy. It sat in a china saucer on their dresser.

While Neal had come into focus over the years—clean-jawed, clear-eyed—Georgie had lost her own reflection in the mirror.

Sometimes, when she had a day off, they’d walk to the park, the four of them, and Georgie would see how the na

“Georgie? Am I losing you?”

“No.” She pressed the phone to her ear. “I’m here.”

“Do we have a bad co

This person on the other end of the line was Neal as he was. Before he was quite hers. When he was still circling the possibility of Georgie. This Neal was harsher. Paler. Had a shorter temper. But this Neal hadn’t given up on her yet. This Neal still looked at Georgie like she was something brand-new and supernatural. He was still surprised by her, delighted with her.

Even now, as frustrated as he was.

Even now, ten states away and half done with her, this Neal still thought she was better than he deserved. More than he’d ever expected life would give him.

“I love you,” she said.

“Georgie, are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Her voice broke. “I love you.”

“Sunshine.” Neal sounded soft, concerned. “I love you, too.”

“But not enough,” she said, “is that what you’re thinking?”

“What? No. That’s not what I’m thinking.”

“It’s what you’ve been thinking,” she said. “It’s what you thought from California to Colorado.”

“That’s not fair. . . .”

“What if you were right, Neal?”

“Georgie, please don’t cry.”

“It’s what you said, and you said that you meant it. And nothing’s changed, has it? Why aren’t we talking about this? Why are we pretending that everything’s fine? It’s not fine. You’re in Nebraska, and I’m here, and it’s Christmas, and we’re supposed to be together. You love me. But maybe it isn’t enough. That’s what you’re thinking.”

“No.” Neal cleared his throat and said it again: “No. Maybe I was thinking that. From California to Colorado. But then . . . I got tired. Literally tired—dangerously tired, and there was the thing with the aliens. And then sunrise. And the rainbows. I told you about the rainbows, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But I don’t understand the significance.”

“There is no significance. I just got tired. Tired of being angry. Tired of thinking about dead ends, and everything that isn’t or might not be enough.”

“So not breaking up with me seemed like a better idea after you’d been awake for twenty-four hours?”

“Don’t.”

“What if you were right? What if it isn’t enough?”

He sighed. “Lately I’ve been thinking that it’s impossible to know.”

“To know what?” she pushed.

“Whether it’s enough. How does anyone ever know whether love is enough? It’s an idiotic question. Like, if you fall in love, if you’re that lucky, who are you to even ask whether it’s enough to make you happy?”

“But it happens all the time,” she said. “Love isn’t always enough.”

“When?” Neal demanded. “When is that true?”

All Georgie could think of was the end of Casablanca, and Mado

“Nobody’s lives just fit together,” Neal said. “Fitting together is something you work at. It’s something you make happen—because you love each other.”

“But . . .” Georgie stopped herself. She didn’t want to talk Neal out of this, even if he was wrong. Even if she was the only one who knew how wrong he was.

He sounded exasperated. “I’m not saying that everything will magically work out if people love each other enough. . . .”

If we love each other enough, Georgie heard.

“I’m just saying,” he went on, “maybe there’s no such thing as enough.”

Georgie was quiet. She wiped her eyes with Neal’s T-shirt.

“Georgie? Do you think I’m wrong?”

“No,” she said. “I think—oh God, I know—that I love you. I love you so much. Too much. I feel like it’s going to spin me off my axis.”

Neal was quiet for a second. “That’s good,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“God. Yeah.”

“Do you want to get off the phone now?”

He huffed a laugh into the receiver. “No.”

But maybe he did. Neal was always good about talking to her on the phone, but he wasn’t a fifteen-year-old girl.

“Not even a little bit,” he said. “Do you?”

“No.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting ready for bed. Can I call you back?”

“No,” she said, too quickly. Then lied, “I don’t want to wake up my mom.”

“Okay. Then you call me. Give me twenty minutes. I want to take a quick shower.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I’ll try to pick up on the first ring.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” He blew a quick kiss into the phone, and Georgie laughed, because Neal seemed like the last guy on earth who would kiss into a phone. But he wasn’t.

“Bye,” she said, waiting for the click.

CHAPTER 18

Georgie decided to take a shower, too. Her mom said she could borrow some pajamas. All her mom’s pajamas came in sets—matching tops and bottoms, or peignoirs with flirty, useless robes.

“Just give me a T-shirt!” Georgie was standing in her mom’s bathroom in a towel, shouting through the door.

“I don’t have any sleeping T-shirts. Do you want one of Kendrick’s?”

“Gross. No.”

“Then you’ll just have to deal.” Her mom opened the door and threw something in. Georgie unfolded a pair of aqua-colored pajama shorts—polyester satin, with cream-colored bows and a matching, low-cut lace-trimmed top. She groaned.

“Have you been talking to Neal all this time?” her mom asked.

“Yeah,” Georgie said, wishing she had clean underwear. Not willing to borrow any.

“How is he?”

“Good.” She realized she was smiling. “Really good.”

“How’re the girls?”

“Fine.”

“Are you working things through?”

“There’s nothing to work through,” Georgie said. Yes, she thought. I think so. She peeked out of the bathroom. “Where’s Kendrick?”