Georgie, All Along (18)
I nod. Even though she looks even more of a mess than she did this afternoon, this doesn’t seem like the woman in Nickel’s who couldn’t pay for her shakes. This seems like a woman who has her shit together, and that eases my mind somehow, makes this situation more controllable. It’s been a hard day and I don’t want to sleep in my truck or drive all around trying to find a place to stay. Hank’d probably get diarrhea if I did that, and honestly I don’t think I could take another thing going wrong.
She moves the notebook away from her chest, flipping through it. I’m not trying to look, but what I see even from a quick glance is more like that bright bathrobe than it is like her telling me her schedule and asking about mine. That thing looks like a teenager wrote in it, pink and purple ink everywhere.
She comes to a blank page and pauses, tearing off a crooked strip before moving past me toward a drawer and yanking it open. Oh man, talk about mess. That’s more than a junk drawer; that’s a landfill drawer. Georgie doesn’t seem to notice, though; she takes out a pen and makes an attempt to scribble onto the scrap paper. Pens one and two are both out of ink, and instead of tossing them she puts them back in the drawer, which I’m pretty sure makes my right eye twitch. Finally she lands on one and scrawls her phone number on it. Before she passes it to me she frowns and adds her name above it.
As if I could forget who this number belongs to, after all this.
She hands it over. “Text me tomorrow and we’ll figure it out. I’ll talk to my friend about staying at her place.”
I nod down at it, then look back up at her. She’s got the notebook clutched to her chest again, as if it’s real precious. I’m trying to think if Paul ever told me she was a writer or something, but then I shake my head free of that thought. What am I trying to do, make conversation with this woman? I don’t make conversation. I keep my head down. Anyway, I’ve got to feed Hank and get him settled, and then say good night to this day, exactly as planned.
For a second, I think she might be waiting for me to ask about it, but the moment passes and I can’t quite decide if I’m relieved.
“I’ll go pick up my things,” she says, gesturing over her shoulder toward the living room.
“Sure. I’ll get some stuff from the truck. Feed Hank.”
She smiles down at my dog, whose tail thumps against the floor in excited reciprocation. I get that stomach flip again. I guess I’ll cook up some of those eggs I bought before I turn in, try to be quiet about it.
“Okay. Well, good night then, Levi.”
I don’t know why that makes me react the way it does. A simple, “Well, good night then, Levi,” as though I’m just a nice guy and there’s no problem at all here. It’s more than the hungry stomach flip; it’s a flush all through me. I don’t recognize it, don’t know what it’s about. I’m almost scared by it, the boyish thrill I get from her easy, generous acceptance of me.
So when she turns to go, I stop her by clearing my throat. She turns around, and I hold out the can of wasp spray to her.
I nod as she takes it, and head back out the door.
Chapter 5
Georgie
“You slept in the same house as him? As Levi Fanning?”
Bel levers herself up from the position she’s only just gotten comfortable in, atop a person-size, U-shaped pillow that she has on her side of her and Harry’s king-size bed, and that she has informed me is her soul mate, damn the wedding vows. I showed up an hour ago, right at the tail end of Bel’s half day of meetings, and she was rubbing at her hip and grimacing, complaining that Herman Miller is no match for pregnancy-induced sciatica. I’d forced her into her bedroom and dragged in two boxes from the junk room, positioning myself on the floor so she could see me hold up items for inspection. So far, what I have learned is that Harry’s junk boxes contain a lot of old T-shirts, and I hope he’s not sentimental about them, because Bel has told me to donate almost every single one. Then again, since I’ve never seen Harry wear a T-shirt, probably she’s right.
I’m ashamed to say it, but the sciatica and the surplus of T-shirts have been a worthy distraction, since I showed up ready to stall. I knew telling Bel about my current living situation would prompt exactly this reaction, and I know what’s coming is a renewed argument about me moving over here for a while. I may have promised Levi that I’d look into it, but now I’m not sure I want to. Even aside from the awkwardness of sharing a space with him—the way I bolted from the bathroom to my parents’ bedroom last night, not wanting him to see me with a towel wrapped around my head!—I still think I’d be more comfortable there than I would here. Sure, there’s the junk room, but the otherwise pristine sorted-ness of this house continues to mock me. Plus, Bel has a pretty sizable hickey on her collarbone, evidence that Herman Miller might not be the only man to blame for the sciatica. I’m happy for her, but jeez.
“Why do you keep saying his name that way?” I say, holding up another T-shirt.
She ignores it. “Why don’t you?”
I sigh and lower my hands, accordioning the T-shirt into my lap. I know, basically, what she means. I realized it as soon as he’d said his name, through the panes of glass that separated us, that he was Evan’s older brother—a light switch flipped on in my head, and I remembered every low-spoken story I’d ever heard about him. Levi Fanning was the black sheep of a family that otherwise never put a collective foot wrong. By the time I’d started high school, he was long gone, but rumors about him persisted. Kids said he’d shoplifted, stolen cars; they said he’d punched the teeth out of Sammy Hayward’s mouth over a sideways look. They said he’d dropped out of high school after being stoned for the whole of his junior year. They said he sold drugs in Richmond, that he ran with a crowd that was into even worse.