Landline(78)

She’d laughed at him. “You want me to wear your underwear?”

“I don’t know.” Neal blushed. “I didn’t know what you’d want.”

It was a Sunday afternoon; Neal’s roommates were at work. Georgie came back from the shower, wearing his T-shirt and the boxers—those were too small, too—and Neal pretended not to notice.

Then he’d laughed and pinned her to his mattress.

It was so rare to make Neal laugh. . . .

Georgie used to tease him about being a waste of dimples. “Your face is like an O. Henry story. The world’s sweetest dimples and the boy who never laughs.”

“I laugh.”

“When? When you’re alone?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Every night when I’m sure everyone is asleep, I sit on my bed and laugh maniacally.”

“You never laugh at me.”

“You want me to laugh at you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m a comedy writer. I want everyone to laugh at me.”

“I guess I’m not much of a laugher.”

“Or maybe you just don’t think I’m funny.”

“You’re very funny, Georgie. Ask anybody.”

She pinched his ribs. “Not funny enough to make you laugh.”

“I never feel like laughing when things are funny,” he said. “I just think to myself, ‘Now, that’s funny.’”

“My life is like an O. Henry story,” Georgie said, “the funniest girl in the world and the boy who never laughs.”

“‘The funniest girl in the world,’ huh? I’m laughing on the inside right now.”

Neal’s dimples dimpled even when he was just thinking about smiling. And his blue eyes shone.

They’d kept having this conversation over the years, but it had gotten a lot less playful.

“I know you don’t watch our show,” Georgie would say.

“You wouldn’t watch your show if it wasn’t your show,” Neal would answer. While he was folding laundry. Or slicing avocados.

“Yeah, but it is my show. And you’re my husband.”

“The last time I watched it, you said I was being smug.”

“You were being smug. You were acting like it was beneath you.”

“Because it is beneath me. Christ, Georgie, it’s beneath you.”

It didn’t matter that he was right. . . .

Anyway.

The first time she’d borrowed that T-shirt, Neal had laughed and pinned her to his bed.

Because he didn’t laugh when he thought something was funny—he laughed when he was happy.





CHAPTER 29


Everyone was gone now. Her mom had left the TV on in the living room, so the pugs could listen to Christmas carols.

Georgie sat at the kitchen table and stared at the Touch Tone Trimline phone mounted on the wall.

Neal wouldn’t call now, from the past. She didn’t really want him to.

She just didn’t want this to be over.

Georgie wasn’t ready to lose Neal yet. Even to her past self. She wasn’t ready to let him go.

(Somebody had given Georgie a magic phone, and all she’d wanted to do with it was stay up late talking to her old boyfriend. If they’d given her a proper time machine, she probably would have used it to cuddle with him. Let somebody else kill Hitler.)

Maybe the Neal she’d talked to all week was on his way to California, maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was a figment of her imagination—but that Neal still felt like he was within reach. Georgie still believed she could make things right with him.

Her Neal . . .

Her Neal didn’t answer anymore when she called.

Her Neal had stopped trying to get through to her.

And maybe that meant that he wasn’t hers. Not really.

Neal.

Georgie stood up and walked over to the phone, running her hand down the cool bow of it before lifting it off the cradle. The buttons lit up, and she carefully pressed in Neal’s cell number. . . .

The call immediately went to voice mail.

Georgie got ready to leave a message—though she wasn’t sure what to say—but she didn’t get a beep. “We’re sorry,” said one voice. “This mailbox is . . . full,” said another. The call disconnected and Georgie heard a dial tone.

She crumpled against the wall, still holding on to the receiver.

Did it even matter whether Neal was on his way to her in 1998—if he didn’t come back to her now? What good was it to win him in the past, just to lose him in the future?

In a few days, Neal would bring the girls home to California. She’d meet them at the airport. What would he and Georgie have to say to each after ten days of silence?

They were frozen in place when Neal left last week. Now they were frozen through.

The dial tone switched to the off-the-hook signal. Georgie let go of the receiver, and it bounced lazily on the spiral cord.

Is this how Neal had felt? Last night? (In 1998.) When Georgie left the phone off the hook? He’d already been so upset, he already sounded so scared—it must have driven him crazy when he couldn’t get through to her. How many times had he tried?

Georgie had always thought it must have been a powerful romantic urge that made Neal drive all night to get to her on Christmas morning. But maybe he got in the car because he couldn’t get through to her. Maybe he just needed to see her and know that they were okay. . . .