Landline(43)

A smile snuck out of Georgie’s mouth. She tried to catch it.

Neal didn’t have a girlfriend.

This may even be a direct result of Georgie herself. And even though she didn’t consider herself a homewrecker—even though she didn’t particularly want to date a guy who kissed other girls, then ran home to break up with his girlfriend—Georgie did want to date Neal. Or maybe she just wanted to rub faces again.

“I’d like that,” she said.

Neal’s head tipped forward—in relief, she thought. He bit his bottom lip and exhaled. “Good.”

“Good,” Georgie repeated.

She took a step away. Past him, actually. Her car was just there, not even half a block up. “Okay,” she said, waving his number awkwardly at him.

He waved back, then pushed his hands into his jeans pockets.

Georgie took a few more steps, then turned around. “Yeah, okay—how about now?”

“What?”

“How about we try again now?”

“Now.”

She started walking back to him. “Yeah, I mean . . . I could pretend that I need to think about this and that I don’t want to rush in to anything. But I’m really not good at all that—I’m much better at rushing in. And it’s not like you just left your wife.”

“We were engaged,” Neal said. Like he was duty-bound to say it.

Georgie stopped. “Oh God, you were?”

“Not recently,” he said, pained. “We were engaged. Then we were just dating. Then we were spending some time apart.”

“What were you last night?”

“Spending some time apart.”

“So, last night, you actually didn’t have a girlfriend.”

Neal winced. “That seemed like a technicality at the time.”

“When did you break up?”

“This morning.”

“You woke up this morning and immediately went to break up with your girlfriend?”

“I called her.”

“No.” Georgie covered one eye. “Don’t tell me you did it over the phone.” She really didn’t want to go out with a guy who might break up with her someday over the phone.

Neal pushed his hair out of his face. “I had to. She’s in Nebraska.”

“Nebraska?”

He nodded, biting his lip again.

“How long have you been together?”

“Had been together,” Neal said. “Since high school.”

“Jesus,” Georgie said. “You broke up with your high-school-sweetheart-slash-fiancée for me?”

“Not my fiancée,” he said. “Anymore. And not just for you.”

Georgie frowned. Now that she wasn’t the reason, she kinda wanted to be.

“We were going to break up anyway,” he said.

She frowned some more.

“I mean,” Neal said, “we’d been talking about trying again. But then I met you. And I figured that if I felt the way I feel about you, maybe that was pretty solid evidence that she and I should break up.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so many words in row,” Georgie said.

“I’m a bit off my game.”

She smiled. A bit. “I throw you off your game?”

“Christ,” he muttered, “yes. Welcome to me staying up all night, then breaking up with my high school girlfriend for you.”

She stepped closer to him. “Not just for me.” Georgie really was terrible at playing hard to get. Or even playing reasonable to get. She had zero game.

“You’re one hundred percent of the reason I did it this morning,” Neal said.

That shouldn’t make Georgie happy. How terrible would it be to be that poor girl in Nebraska—to know that your boyfriend broke up with you first thing in the morning, so he could rush off to be with somebody else? Georgie pictured a blond girl with tearstained cheeks, standing in the middle of a lonely prairie.

“Are you sad?” she asked him. Sincerely. “Do you need to go home and listen to all your mixed tapes and think about this chapter of your life closing?”

“Maybe,” he said. “I think I just need some sleep.”

“Okay. Just . . .” How was she supposed to avoid kissing Neal when his mouth was right there at mouth-level all the time? She didn’t even have to stand on tiptoe. Georgie took hold of the front of his sweatshirt and leaned in.

She kissed him on the cheek.

“Thank you,” she said before she pulled back again. “For telling me.”

“Call me,” Neal whispered.

“I will.”

“Call me before you think you should.”

“I’ll call you tonight.”

Georgie grinned all the way to her car.

Neal didn’t have a girlfriend.

For, like, the next three hours, at least.



She called him that night. Then she took him to Versailles down on Venice Boulevard for garlic chicken and fried plantains. Neal didn’t know about anything cool in Los Angeles—he spent all his time at his apartment or on campus, or on the water, which he hated.

Which he hated, in practice.

Neal loved the concept of the ocean. He was practically animated once you got him talking about sea life and coral.