Landline

“Hey,” she said.

They held each other’s eyes, like they were holding on to something hot. Seth was the first to look away.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He didn’t answer.

She took another step forward. “We can reschedule the meeting. Maher Jafari likes us.”

“I’m not sure we can,” he said. “I’m not sure it matters.”

“It matters.”

He jerked his head back to her. “Then when should we reschedule it, Georgie? Have you penciled in next week to stop losing your mind? How’s January look for Neal? Think he might find some time to cut you some slack?”

“Seth, don’t . . .”

He stood up from the stairs and walked toward her. “Don’t what? Talk about Neal? Should I just pretend everything’s okay? Like you do?”

“You don’t understand.”

He raised his hands, frustrated. “Who understands better than me? I’ve been there since the begi

“I can’t talk about this now. I have to go.” She turned away, but Seth grabbed her arm and held it.

His voice was soft. “Wait.”

Georgie stopped and looked back at him.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “You asked me if I would try to change anything if I could go back to the past. And I told you that I would—and I would—but I didn’t tell you . . .” He let out a loud breath. “Georgie, maybe it’s not supposed to be like this, you know?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“I always think about that Halloween. When Neal was such a dick to you? And you asked me to take you home, and I did. And I—I left you there alone. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe I was supposed to stay.”

“No. Seth . . .”

“Maybe we’re not supposed to be this way, Georgie.”

“No.”

“How do you know?” He squeezed her arm. “You’re not happy. I’m not happy.”

“You usually seem happy.”

“Maybe compared to you.”

“No,” she said. “You seem genuinely happy.”

“You only see me when I’m with you.”

Georgie inhaled faintly, then gently pulled her arm away.

“I . . .” Seth drew his hands back into his pockets. “This is the only relationship I’ve ever been able to make work. This one. I love you, Georgie.”

The words pushed her eyes closed.

She opened them. “But you’re not in love with me.”

Seth laughed again, just as painfully. “It’s been so long since that was an option, I don’t even know anymore. . . . I know it kills me to see you like this.”

His collar was caught in his sweater. She reached up and smoothed it out.

“It kills me,” she said, “to see you like this.”

They were standing close, face-to-face, looking in each other’s eyes. In all the times they’d stood next to each other, Georgie was pretty sure they’d never stood exactly here.

“That’s what I’d change,” Seth said. “If I could go back.”

“We can’t go back,” she whispered.

“I love you,” he said.

She nodded.

He leaned closer. “I need to hear you say it.”

Georgie didn’t look away; she thought it through, and finally said, “I love you, too, Seth, but—”

“Stop,” he said. “Just . . . stop. I know.” His shoulders relaxed, and he shifted his weight at an angle away from her. It was enough to make their posture ordinary again.

They were both quiet.

“So—” Seth looked down the driveway. “—where are you headed?”

“Omaha,” she said.

“Omaha,” he repeated. “You’re forever going to Omaha. . . .” He reached out, quickly, and pulled the top of her head against his lips. Then he was moving away, striding gracefully toward his car. “Don’t forget my salad dressing.”

CHAPTER 31

Georgie had never driven herself to the airport.

She’d only flown by herself once, when she was eleven, to visit her dad in Michigan. It hadn’t gone well, and she hadn’t gone back. And then her dad died when she was in high school, and when her mom asked if Georgie wanted to go the funeral, she said no.

“You didn’t go?” Neal was shocked when she’d told him. You could tell he was shocked because he raised his left eyebrow two millimeters. (Neal’s face was like a flower blooming—you’d need time-lapse photography to really see it in action. But Georgie’d become such a student of his face, she could read most of the twitches.)

“I didn’t know him,” Georgie said. They were sitting on the foldout couch in Neal’s parents’ basement. It was the second or third Christmas after they were married, and they’d come to stay for almost a week.

His mom put them in the basement, with the foldout, even though there was a double bed up in Neal’s old bedroom. “She doesn’t want us to disturb the sanctity of your bedroom,” Georgie teased. His parents hadn’t touched Neal’s room since he left for college. All his high school wrestling clippings and team photos were still taped to the wall. There were still clothes in the closet.

“It’s like when you go to Disneyland,” Georgie would say, “and they show you a replica of Walt’s office, exactly as he left it.”

“Would you prefer dog photos?”

“To weird sweaty photos of you in a nineteenth-century bathing costume?”

“It’s called a singlet.”

“It’s incredibly disturbing.”

Neal’s mom kept all their family photo albums in the basement. The week Georgie and Neal stayed there, she hauled out the whole stack. “If you’re ever President of the United States,” Georgie said, a large floral-patterned album spread over her lap, “historians will thank your mom for taking such good notes.”

“Only child,” he said. “She wanted to get all the memories she could out of me.”

Neal had been a solid, stolid child. Round and wide-eyed as a toddler. Looking frankly at the camera on his fifth birthday. More hobbity than ever during grade school—with his T-shirt tucked over his tummy into his maroon Toughskins, and his shaggy ’70s hair. By middle school, he’d started standing with his feet planted and his shoulders slightly forward. Not daring you to knock him down—he wasn’t that kind of short guy. Just looking like someone who couldn’t be knocked down. By high school, he was broad and steely. An immovable object.

Georgie sat on the couch looking through the albums, and Neal sat next to her, idly playing with her hair; he’d seen all these pictures before.

She stopped at a photo of Neal and Dawn dressed up for some high school dance. Jesus, they really were right out of a John Cougar Mellen-camp video.

“Yeah,” he said, “but still . . .”

“Still, what?” Georgie smoothed the plastic over the photo.

“He was your dad.”

She looked away from high school Neal, up at the Neal sitting next to her. Neal at twenty-five. Softer than in high school. With less tension around his eyes. Looking like he’d probably kiss her in a minute, when he was done making whatever point he was making.

“What?” Georgie asked.

“I just don’t understand how you could skip your father’s funeral.”

“He didn’t feel like my father,” she said.

Neal waited for her to elaborate.

“He was only married to my mom for ten minutes—I don’t even remember living with him, and he moved to Michigan when I was four.”

“Didn’t you miss him?”

“I didn’t know what I was missing.”

“But didn’t you miss something? Like even the idea of him?”

Georgie shrugged. “I guess not. I never felt incomplete or anything, if that’s what you’re asking. I think fathers must be kind of optional.”

“That is a fundamentally wrong statement.”

“Oh, you know what I mean.” Georgie went back to the photo album. There were dozens of photos from Neal’s graduation day. He looked pained in these—like, after eighteen years, he’d finally lost patience with his mom’s photo-vigilance. His dad was in nearly every photo, too, looking much more tolerant.

“I really don’t know what you mean,” Neal said.