Landline(51)

“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 Madonna and Sean Penn. “Just because you love someone,” she said, “that doesn’t mean your lives will fit together.”

“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?”

“In the living room, watching TV.”

Georgie walked out.

“Look at you,” her mom said. “You look so nice. You should let me go shopping with you sometime.”

“I have to call Neal back,” Georgie said. “Thanks, um, for the pajamas. And everything.” She stooped to kiss her mom on the cheek. Georgie tried to do stuff like that more now that she had kids of her own. Alice and Noomi couldn’t get enough of Georgie; they practically crawled on her when she was home. It made Georgie feel physically ill to think of them shying away from her—or bristling when she tried to kiss them. What if they went a whole year without calling her “Mom”?

So Georgie tried to be more affectionate with her own mother. When she could.

As soon as she kissed her mom on the cheek, her mom turned her face to catch Georgie on the lips. Georgie frowned and pulled away. “Why do you always do that?”