Georgie, All Along (100)
“I wasn’t. I wasn’t in a good place. I wasn’t really living.”
“I can see that now. But back then, I . . . I don’t know. I was angry. At Dad, at myself. At you, for being gone. I saw that guy out there with Liv, and I thought, fuck this guy. Fuck everything.”
It’s so much of the mirror feeling now I can hardly stand still. I shift my feet against the boards beneath my feet, hardly believing the way I understand him.
Fuck everything: it’s what I thought back then, all the time.
“I get it,” I manage.
“And I heard what Dad said to you, after.” He shifts now, too, looks toward the water. “I know you thought Liv and I were back inside, but I wasn’t. I heard him tell you to go.”
Heard him call me poison, I’m sure. Heard him tell me to never come back. I don’t know why it should embarrass me, to know Evan heard it, but it does. I make a noise, a grunt of acknowledgment.
“I think what I’m sorry for is that I didn’t come out. That I didn’t try to help you the same way I tried to help Liv.”
That forces a constriction in the back of my throat, a press of wetness at the backs of my eyes. I have to breathe through my nose to contain it all before I can speak again.
“You couldn’t have,” I say, meaning it. Back then, the only thing that could’ve helped me was getting clean. Getting therapy. Getting on with my life.
“Maybe. But I wish I would’ve done it differently. I was weak back then.” He pauses, reaches down and pats his leg, waits until Hank comes over to him so he can rub his ears again. “I’m still pretty weak now.”
“You’re not,” I protest, but he doesn’t let me keep going.
“You’re the strongest person I know, Lee. I know I don’t ever see you, but I keep tabs. You’re strong.”
Too bad about that constriction again. This is pretty much the weakest I ever felt.
“Dad told you to go and you went, but you did it on your own terms. You made your own way. You showed him.”
He offers it as a compliment, but I don’t hear it that way. Not with his words and Georgie’s clattering around in my head together: Evan’s You showed him and Georgie’s You’ve been trying to prove him right or wrong about you for years.
I think I might get sick.
I take a step closer to the edge of the dock, setting a hand on top of one of the pilings. Strong and sturdy, the way I built it, but I don’t know if it could hold me at all.
“You’re still my big brother, Lee,” Evan says quietly from behind me. “I still admire you a lot.”
I lower my head, dangerously close to tears. “Ev—”
“Up until you let Georgie Mulcahy go, that is.”
It flips a switch in me, hearing her name, and I turn to face him again. “What do you know about me and Georgie?”
“Well, after The Bend, I thought I knew you were with her. I gotta admit, I was disappointed to know she was taken.”
“She’s not taken. Don’t talk about her like that, like she’s a thing.”
Something sparks in his eyes, and I recognize that look, too: He’s trying to start trouble.
I just don’t know why yet.
His mouth quirks. “No need to get pressed. She has no interest in me. Believe me, I tried.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You hit on her?”
That casual shrug again, easy breezy. But I can tell he’s walking a line. “Sure, she’s gorgeous. I don’t know how I didn’t notice her in high school.”
“Me neither,” I snap. “You’re a tool.”
“I’m saying,” he says, laughing. “She didn’t have the time of day for me. Anyway, my heart wasn’t in it. I’m still torn up over Hannah. I wanted something easy.”
“Georgie’s not easy,” I growl. “You have any hope of staying dry out here, you better watch—”
His smile’s big now, broad and satisfied.
I answer it with what I hope is a fierce frown.
“I thought you came here to apologize,” I say.
“I did. Now I’m on to the second thing. Telling you how fucking stupid you are.”
“Brother, I already know,” I say, without thinking. Then I slow down enough to realize that if he’s here knowing something’s gone wrong with me and Georgie, it must be because she said something to him. “Is she all right?”
He waits a long time before he answers me, a punishment. It’s not cruel, though. It’s . . . knowing.
“She’s all right,” he says, and something loosens in my chest.
“Not herself at work, though. She doesn’t talk half as much as usual. Barely smiles, or if she does, it’s the kind that looks wrong on her face.”
I turn back toward the water.
“Plus, she told Liv she’s in love with you.”
Man, he’s not laid a hand on me. But I’m getting my ass kicked all the same. He doesn’t let up.
“She also called Dad an asshole for what he did to you. Not to his face, but still. I’m pretty sure she’s going to quit over it, but you know Georgie. She’ll want to wait until we’re not short-staffed.”
“I don’t want her to quit,” I say, more to myself than to him.