Landline(66)

“No, I . . .” Georgie walked out of the mauve cubicle, pulling her mother’s pug sweatshirt down over her head. “I need to go home now.”

“I thought Neal was calling you at our house.”

“Right, I need to go there. Now.”

The attendant met them just outside the room. “Did any of those work out?”

“This one’s fine,” Georgie said. She reached under her shirt and snapped the tags off the bra, handing them to the salesperson. “I’ll take this one.” She started walking toward the cash register.

Neal had never told Georgie why he changed his mind—why he forgave her, why he came back to California and proposed. And Georgie had never asked. She hadn’t wanted to give him an opportunity to reconsider. . . .

But maybe this was why. Maybe she was why. Now.

“I’m sorry,” the salesperson said. “I can’t let you wear that out. Store policy.”

Georgie stared at her. She was a thin, white woman, a little younger than Georgie, with taupe-colored lipstick. She’d kept trying to come into the dressing room with Georgie to make sure the bras were fitting correctly. “But I’m buying it,” Georgie said.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Store policy.”

“Fine,” Georgie said, “I need to go—I’ll just take it off and do all this some other day.”

“But you already removed the tags. You have to purchase it.”

“Right.” Georgie nodded. “Fine.”

She reached up behind her to unclasp the bra, then after a few seconds of maneuvering, pulled it out one of her sleeves and dropped it on the counter.

“Ring it up twice,” Heather said. “She’ll take two.”

The salesperson went to get another bra.

“You are such a badass,” Heather said, grinning at her. “Have I mentioned that I want to be you when I grow up?”

“I don’t have time for this. We need to leave. Now.”

“But we were going to the Apple Store. Georgie, please. I want an iPad, I’ve already named it.”

“You can order it online. We need to leave.”

“Seriously? You’re really buying me an iPad? Can I also order a pony?”

When Neal left California that Christmas, he and Georgie were as good as broken up, and when he came back, he wanted to marry her. And in between, in between . . .

Maybe this. Maybe her.

Maybe this week, these phone calls—everything—had already happened. Somehow, sometime . . .

And Georgie just had to make sure that it happened again.

“Georgie? Hey.”

Heather shoved the bag of bras into Georgie’s chest. Georgie caught them.

“Sorry to interrupt your aneurysm,” Heather said, “but you said that time was of the essence here.”

“Right,” Georgie said, “right.” She followed Heather to the car, then handed her the key fob. “You drive.”

“Why?” Heather asked.

“I need to think.”

Georgie climbed into the passenger seat and tapped her dead phone against her chin. She didn’t even bother plugging it in.





CHAPTER 24


Georgie set the yellow rotary phone in front of her on the bed and stared at it. She resisted the urge to check the dial tone, just in case Neal called at that exact second.

This changed everything.

Didn’t it?

If Neal had already proposed to her in the past, then Georgie must have already convinced him in the future. It didn’t matter what happened now. What she said. Whether he called her back.

Whatever Georgie did next had already happened. She was walking in her own footsteps—there was nothing she could mess up.

She leaned close to the phone and lifted the receiver to her ear, slamming it down again as soon as she heard a dial tone.

Is that what this whole week was about, preserving the status quo? Maybe she should be grateful for that. . . .

But Georgie had thought—she’d hoped—that this wrinkle in time was offering her a shot at something better.

God, what good is a magic phone, anyway? It isn’t a time machine.

Georgie couldn’t change the past—she could only talk at it. If Georgie had a proper time machine, maybe she could actually fix her marriage. She could go back to the moment that everything started to go bad, and change course.

Except . . .

There hadn’t really been a moment like that.

Things didn’t go bad between Georgie and Neal. Things were always bad—and always good. Their marriage was like a set of scales constantly balancing itself. And then, at some point, when neither of them was paying attention, they’d tipped so far over into bad, they’d settled there. Now only an enormous amount of good would shift them back. An impossible amount of good.

The good that was left between them didn’t carry enough weight. . . .

The kisses that still felt like kisses. The notes Neal stuck to the refrigerator when Georgie got home late. (A sleepy cartoon tortoise with a word bubble telling her there were leftover enchiladas on the bottom shelf.) Shared glances when one of the girls said something silly. The way Neal still put his arm around her when they all went to the movies. (He was probably just more comfortable that way.)