Georgie, All Along (101)

“Doesn’t seem you get a say.”

“Yeah, well. That’s okay, because I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve one.”

I don’t deserve anything.

“You mind turning around?”

Of course I mind. Because I’m about four seconds from a full-on cry out here, and I don’t want to do it in front of Evan, who said I’m the strongest guy he knows.

But at the same time, it took a lot of strength for him to come out here and tell me about how weak he feels. The least I can do is show him he’s not alone.

I turn to face him, and yeah. He’s not alone, because I can see it in his eyes—the same strained, vacant look I’ve seen in my own every time I’ve brushed my teeth or washed my face over the last couple of days.

This is how it looks to be without someone you love.

“I’d like to get to know you again, Lee. And Liv would, too, even if it causes trouble with Dad. If you don’t want to give us that, I get it, because I’m sure it’ll be a mess.”

This cleaned-up version of Levi Fanning, I hear Georgie say, sharp and scornful. Not running from her mess. Proud of it.

Evan doesn’t stop, not even to let me respond.

“But there’s one thing I can give you other than my apology, and it’s a piece of advice.”

I manage a nod.

“If you’re letting Dad get in the way of what you have with Georgie, don’t. I told Hannah for years that I worked the way I did at the inn because it’s what I wanted, but the truth is, how can I ever know if I meant it? I was doing what Dad expected of me. Leaving her on her own here, not supporting her the way I should have. Not listening to her when she said she wasn’t happy.”

It isn’t like that, I almost say, but I stop myself, hearing Georgie again. You’ve been trying to prove him right or wrong about you for years.

So I guess it is sort of like that.

“I don’t know what happened with you and Georgie,” Evan says. “Maybe it’s not anything you can fix. But—” he pauses, and lowers his head, his mouth turning down as his chin quavers.

It’s pretty much the strongest thing I ever saw. I take a step closer to him, wait while he gathers himself.

“That stuff I heard Dad say to you that night—I know it’s not even the half of it. I know he said that kind of thing to you all the time. And I bet it’s pretty hard not to let that get in your way sometimes.”

I nod again, unable to speak. I’m busy borrowing some of his strength for myself, letting my own tears gather. Letting them come out. I watch one drip onto the dock beneath me.

“I don’t think you’re poison, Lee. Not to me and not to our sister, and I bet not to Georgie, either. I wanted to tell you that, in case you were thinking any different.”

All these years since that night, and it’s the one thing I’ve never been able to tell anyone about what my dad said to me. Not Carlos, not that therapist I went to, not even Georgie. I’d told them he sent me away for good, threatened me and my siblings if I ever came back. But for some reason I didn’t ever want to think about, I’ve never told anyone the part about me being poison.

Hearing my brother say it now—hearing my brother say the opposite of it now—it hits me fully, how hard I took it.

How much I’ve carried it.

How much I’ve believed it.

All the efforts I’ve made to keep myself sturdy, stable, routine. This cleaned-up version of Levi Fanning. So much of it was good—healthy and smart and necessary at the time when I first rebuilt my life, when I was desperate to simply keep my head above water.

But maybe some of it wasn’t, eventually. Maybe some of it, I was just trying to keep myself contained. Keep the poison from spreading. To Ev and Liv, to the people I work alongside, to the few folks in this town who didn’t write me off.

To Georgie.

I’m pretty sure I . . . yeah. I sniffle.

“I was,” I say, not hiding the way my voice is all wet and choked. “I was pretty much thinking that.”

Evan moves to put a hand around my shoulder, and I don’t know how, but it feels perfectly natural. Like we’ve done it a hundred times, fitting together the way I think siblings should.

It feels like an antidote.

“I get it,” he says, an echo of my own words.

We stand together that way for a long time, Ev’s arm around me and Hank coming to lie at our feet, probably wondering how come he keeps getting drops of water on his back when it’s not even raining.

I go back to thinking, but it’s different this time: I think about how I got hurt and how I hurt Georgie, but that doesn’t mean I’m poison. That only means I could use some help, and it isn’t as if I haven’t needed help before.

I’ve just never needed it for this. For making my life bigger instead of smaller, for expanding it in the way I deserve to—making it more than a job and a house and the best dog in the world. Making it friends and maybe even some family. Some fun.

I need help for loving someone the way I want to love Georgie. The way she deserves to be loved, forever.

And it’s a good thing my little brother’s here right now, because I’m pretty sure the help I need is going to have to start with him.





Chapter 23