Landline(28)
Georgie took a deep breath. “How was your trip?”
“Good,” he said. “I did it in twenty-seven hours.”
“Idiot.”
“And I saw a double rainbow.”
“Miraculous.”
“And when I got here, my mom had made all my favorite Christmas cookies.”
“Lucky.”
“I wish you were here, Georgie—it snowed for you.”
This wasn’t happening. This was a hallucination. Or a schizophrenic episode. Or . . . a dream.
Georgie slumped back against her headboard and brought the tightly coiled telephone cord up to her mouth, biting on the rubbery plastic.
She closed her eyes and kept playing along.
CHAPTER 12
“I can’t believe you drove straight through.”
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“You drove for twenty-seven hours. I think that’s illegal.”
“For truckers.”
“For a reason.”
“It wasn’t so bad. I started dropping off a bit in Utah, but I stopped the car and walked around.”
“You could have died. Right there. In Utah.”
“You make it sound like that’s worse than regular dying.”
“Promise me you’ll never do that again.”
“I promise never to almost die in Utah. I’ll be extra careful from now on around Mormons.”
“Tell me more about the aliens.”
“Tell me more about the drive.”
“Tell me more about your parents.”
“Tell me more about Omaha.”
Georgie just wanted to hear his voice, she didn’t want it to stop. She didn’t want Neal to stop.
There were moments when it started to rise up on her, what was happening. What she had access to, real or not. Neal. 1998. The immensity of it—the improbability—kept creeping up the back of Georgie’s skull like dizziness, and she kept shaking it off.
It was like getting him back. Her Neal. (Her old Neal.) He was right there, and she could ask him anything that she wanted.
“Tell me more about the mountains,” Georgie said, because she wasn’t really sure what to ask. Because “tell me where I went wrong” might break the spell.
And because what she wanted more than anything else was just to keep listening.
“I went to see Saving Private Ryan without you.”
“Good.”
“And my dad and I are going to see Life Is Beautiful.”
“Good. You should also rent Schindler’s List without me.”
“We’ve been through this,” he said. “You need to watch Schindler’s List. Every human being needs to watch Schindler’s List.”
Georgie still hadn’t. “You know I can’t do anything with Nazis.”
“But you like Hogan’s Heroes. . . .”
“That’s where I draw the line.”
“The Nazi line?”
“Yes.”
“At Colonel Klink.”
“Obviously.”
She wasn’t crying anymore. Neal wasn’t growling.
She was burrowed under the comforter, holding the phone lightly against her ear.
He was still there. . . .
“So Christmas with the Pool Man, huh?”
“God,” Georgie said. “I forgot I called him that.”
“How could you forget? You’ve been calling him that for six months.”
“Kendrick’s not so bad.”
“He doesn’t seem bad—he seems nice. Do you really think they’ll get married soon?”
“Yeah. Probably.” Imminently.
“When did you get so Zen about this?”
“What do you mean?”
“The last time we talked about it, you went on a whole rant about how weird it is. About how you and your mom are now drawing from the same dating pool.”
Oh. Right. Georgie laughed. “And you said, ‘No, your mom’s dating pool is literally a pool.’ . . . God. I remember that.”
Neal kept going: “And then you said that if your mom proceeds at her current pattern and rate, your next stepdad must currently be in the sixth grade. That was funny.”
“You thought that was funny?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“You didn’t laugh.”
“You know I don’t laugh, sunshine.”
Georgie rolled over and switched the phone to the other side of her head, curling up again under the comforter. “I still can’t believe my mom was checking out twenty-something guys at forty. That she was looking at college guys and thinking, ‘Yep. Fair game. Totally doable.’ I don’t think I ever appreciated how disturbing that was until just now.” That would be like Georgie hooking up with Scotty. Or with one of Heather’s friends—her pizza boy. “Guys in their early twenties are babies,” she said. “They don’t even have all their facial hair yet. They’re literally not done with puberty.”
“Hey, now.”
“Oh. Sorry. Not you.”
“Right. Not me. Unlike many of my peers, I’m plenty mature enough to date your mom.”