Landline

“It doesn’t mean anything. I’m just tired.”

“And scared,” he said quietly.

She looked down at the comforter. “And scared.”

“And talking to me about it is clearly a catastrophic idea. . . .”

She pulled her lips into her mouth and bit them, nodding.

“So let’s not talk about it, Georgie. Let’s just write.”

Georgie looked up at him. Seth was being as sincere as he knew how—his face was so open, she practically didn’t recognize it.

“It’s the only thing I can fix for you,” he said.

Her eyes dropped to the phone. “I have to call Neal back.”

“Fine. You call Neal back. Then get dressed. I’ll track down our coffee and find a place to set up. . . . And then you’ll come out when you’re ready—and I won’t mention that you sleep pantsless, but I’ll always know from now on, Georgie, always—and we will write ourselves a script. We’ll go Amy Sherman-Palladino on its ass.”

“I love Amy Sherman-Palladino.”

“I know,” he said, crunching his eyebrows at her meaningfully. “I’m your best friend.”

“I know.”

“I’m going out to the kitchen now.”

“Seth . . .”

“And you’ll be out in a minute.”

“Seth, I can’t right now. I have to call Neal back.”

His head fell back against the closet. “I can wait.”

“I don’t want you to wait.”

“Georgie.”

“Seth. I have to fix what I can.”

“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Go to work,” she said. “Write.”

“And you’ll come in to the office later?”

“Probably.”

“But you’ll definitely come in tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

He bounced his head gently against the fiberboard. “Fine. Just . . . fine.” He kicked off the door. “Four days,” he groaned. “We have four days to make this happen.”

“I know.”

“All right . . . but if it turns out you can’t actively pick up the pieces of your marriage today, you may as well come write with me.”

“Stop talking about my marriage. For all time.”

Seth stopped at the door and gri

Georgie folded her arms in the comforter. “Let Heather kick you out. It’ll cheer her up.”

“I always thought Heather liked me,” he muttered, letting the door swing closed behind him.

Georgie didn’t wait for Seth to leave the house, she didn’t wait for her head or eyes to clear—she didn’t stop to process the fact that Neal had called her, twice now, which meant her magic phone worked both ways, which might mean . . . Who knows what that might mean? It’s a magic phone. It’s not like it has rules.

She dialed Neal’s number so fast, she hit a wrong number and had to start all over.

His dad answered. Just to flip Georgie the fuck out again.

“Hi, Paul—Mr. Grafton, it’s Georgie. Is, um, is Neal there?”

“You can call me Paul,” he said.

“Paul,” Georgie said, and she felt like crying again.

“You caught us just in time,” he said. “Here’s Neal.”

A shuffling noise then—“Hello?”

“Hi,” Georgie said.

“Hi,” Neal said. Coolly. But maybe not angrily. It was always so hard to tell with him. “Seth give you a break?”

“He left.”

“Oh.”

“Are you leaving?” she asked. “Your dad said—”

“Yeah. We’re going to see my grandma’s sister. She’s in a nursing home.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“It really isn’t. She’s in a nursing home, and she’ll be alone on Christmas. It’s pretty much the very least we can do.”

“Oh,” Georgie said.

“Sorry. I just . . . hate nursing homes. My great aunt doesn’t have kids of her own, so we—”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry.” Neal huffed. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“When?”

“When I called.”

“I was sleeping,” she said.

“You were with Seth.”

“He’d just woken me up.”

“You were supposed to call me when you woke up.”

“I was going to call you.”

“Eventually,” he said.

“Neal. You promised you’d never be jealous of Seth.”

“I’m not jealous of Seth. I’m angry with you.”

“Oh.”

“I have to go,” he said. “I’ll call you when I get back.”

Don’t call me, Georgie almost answered. “Okay. I’ll be here.”

“Okay.”

She wasn’t going to say “I love you” now just to see if he’d say it back. “I’ll be here,” she said again.

“Okay.” He hung up.

CHAPTER 20

Neal hung up.

Because it was that easy for him.

For a second, Georgie wished he knew—who she really was, when she really was, everything. Neal wouldn’t just hang up on her like that if he knew he was hanging up on the future. You don’t hang up a magic phone.

Georgie wandered out to the kitchen, hungry.

Heather was standing at the front door, talking to someone. Georgie spotted the pizza delivery car through the picture window and wondered if it would be rude to interrupt and take the pizza from them, or if, without the pizza, their little flirtation would collapse in on itself.

She started the coffeemaker and rooted through the fridge, not finding anything.

After a few more minutes, Heather walked into the kitchen, smiling.

“Where’s the pizza?” Georgie asked. “I’m starving.”

“Oh. I didn’t order a pizza.”

“But the pizza boy was here.”

Heather stepped past Georgie and leaned into the fridge. “It was a wrong pizza.”

“There’s no such thing as a wrong pizza,” Georgie said. “All pizzas are right from conception.”

“It was the wrong address,” Heather said. “Probably just a mix-up because we order from them so often.”

“Heather, I’m serious, there’s no such thing as a wrong pizza. That boy wanted to talk to you.”

Heather just shook her head and opened the vegetable drawer.

“How long has this been going on?” Georgie asked.

“Nothing’s going on.”

“How long have you been ordering pizzas for sport, not sustenance?”

“How long has Seth been your wake-up service?”

Georgie pushed the fridge door closed—Heather had to jerk back to get out of the way. “Out of line,” Georgie said.

Heather looked like she wanted to say something else, something worse, but pressed her lips closed and folded her arms.

Georgie decided to walk away. She stopped at the edge of the kitchen. “I’m going to take a shower. Come get me if Neal calls.”

Heather ignored her.

“Please?” Georgie said.

“Fine,” Heather agreed, not even bothering to turn her head.

Georgie checked the yellow phone before she got into the shower, just to make sure there was a dial tone and that the ringer was turned up. (As if somebody might have snuck in and messed with it.)

Once, in junior high, she’d been so worried about missing a call from a boy, she’d dragged the phone into the bathroom with her every time she had to go. (He never did call.) (Which didn’t discourage Georgie even a little bit.)

She stood under the shower until the water ran cold, then stole some more of her mom’s yoga pants and a sweatshirt with a pug on it, and walked out to the laundry room.

When Georgie was growing up, the washing machine and dryer sat out against the garage with a little plastic canopy over them. But Kendrick had built her mom a laundry room onto the back of the house, with a tile floor and a sorting table. Georgie’d still be able to hear the kitchen phone out here, if it rang.

She opened the washing machine and dropped in her jeans and T-shirt and bra. . . .

It was a very depressing bra.

It’d been pink once, sometime between Alice and Noomi, but now it was a grayish beige, and one of the underwires kept sneaking out through a rip between Georgie’s breasts. Sometimes the wire crept almost all the way out and sprung like a hook from the neck of her shirt; sometimes it bent the other way and poked her. You’d think that would prompt Georgie to buy some new bras, but instead she just pushed the wire back as soon as no one was looking, then forgot about it until the next time that bra came up in her rotation.