Landline(59)

“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 grinned back at her. “Well, come on—you’re gonna see me to the door, right?”

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 f*ck 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.”