Georgie, All Along (105)
I missed him so much.
He clears his throat. “And my brother and sister,” he says, his voice rough. “They came over and helped with the lights.”
I tip my head back, looking into his eyes. In them I see all the emotion he attaches to this—all the meaning behind his brother and sister being here.
“How many stages were there?”
He quirks his mouth, a self-deprecating smile. “Kind of a lot,” he says, and I know he’s not talking about corsages and tuxedos and twinkle lights. I know he’s talking about his siblings. About that moment he walked into The Shoreline.
“I’ll tell you about all of them,” he says. “But I wanted to tell you some other things first.”
“Okay,” I whisper, but he doesn’t start right away. Instead he pulls me closer, and for a few seconds he simply moves with me, his beard tangled in my hair, his soft shirt against my cheek. It’s exactly what I wanted for myself that night at The Bend, but better.
That’s always how it is with Levi: what I want, but better.
“Georgie,” he finally says, low and quiet, and then he leans back to look down at me, to adjust the way he’s holding me. He puts one of his warm palms against the side of my neck, and I slide both of my arms around his waist.
“This night,” he says, then he pauses and clears his throat. “This . . . uh . . .”
He pauses again, a sheepish look on his face that makes me tighten my arms around him.
“Prom?” I prompt, a gentle tease in my voice.
He offers another of those devastating self-deprecations with his mouth and nods before speaking again.
“I want you to know, I didn’t do it because of what I saw in your journal about Evan—”
“I know,” I blurt, a knee-jerk reaction, an unthinking desperation to put distance between this and that: hearts for a’s, the wrong guy at what would have surely been the worst prom. But Levi’s palm against the side of my neck must have been strategic, because it lets him easily stroke his thumb across my chin, pressing the pad of it softly against my bottom lip, a pleading request.
“Wait?” he asks, and I nod, grateful for his intervention. After all, I don’t really want distance between this and that. I want it all—the notebook, the mess, me, as part of the story of how I got here.
Of how we got here.
And Levi—what Levi says next tells me he wants it, too.
“I did it because that notebook—you letting me go back to the things in that notebook with you—that changed my life, Georgie. You were right about what you said. About me and my dad.”
I think of it again, that careful Hello at the entrance to the restaurant. I tip my head down and press a kiss to his chest before looking back up at him, mostly to stop myself from blurting out a dozen other things—you were amazing in there; he looked like he swallowed a frog; I think the new hostess is in love with you.
“And you were right about how I’ve been living. Trying to prove something to him. Trying to never put a foot wrong. Living my life small and stable and real contained, and still telling myself that all the good things I have were things I didn’t deserve anyway.”
Down the dock, Hank barks excitedly at the splash of a fish in the river, and Levi and I both smile.
“I saw you that day in Nickel’s Market needing money for a couple of milkshakes and right away, my life got a little bigger. More complicated. And then being with you at your parents’ place, doing your notebook with you—even bigger. Even more complicated. Chaotic and fun. The kind of trouble I wish I would’ve been getting into all along.”
I make a face of mock offense, even though my voice is watery with emotion. “Levi Fanning,” I say softly. “Are you calling me trouble?”
He lowers his mouth to kiss me, slow and perfect. When he lifts his head, his face is serious, his eyes on mine.
“I’m calling you the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says.
I squeeze him again, so tight it makes my arms ache, so tight he makes a noise. Ooomf. My heart is so big and bursting with feeling that I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from interrupting him.
“I’m sorry for what I said to you that night. I’m sorry I tried to make this thing between us small and stable. As contained as I’ve been trying to make myself all these years. That was my fear and my past talking. The wrong kind of going back.”
He moves again, brings his other hand up so he can cup my face in his palms. His breath smells like peppermint candy, like the nervous prom date I never had. I’m crying again.
“The truth is, Georgie, the way I love you—that’s the sort of love I don’t ever want to contain. That night, I asked you what you wanted, but I need you to know that I love you no matter what the answer is, no matter if you’ve got no answer at all. I’ll love you if you want to go back to LA, or if you want to go somewhere else. I’ll love you if you decide you want a whole new job or if you want to set on doing whatever gets you enough money to get by, if you want to make marks out there or you don’t. I’ll love you if you want to get married tomorrow or you never want to get married at all, if you want kids or you don’t. I’ll love you if you want to leave your stuff all over the place, wherever you’re living. I just hope I’m living there with you.”