Georgie, All Along (29)

Plus, the Sott’s Mill entry is one of the few that has absolutely nothing to do with Evan Fanning, which is a good choice under the circumstances, and those circumstances are that his brother, who I can’t stop thinking about, has avoided me for two straight days.

But still . . . it’s not going great.

“This place is so different,” Bel says, as we exit our third store, which looked decent from the outside but turned out to have a lot of painted signs that said things like, ALWAYS KISS ME GOOD NIGHT and I’D RATHER BE AT DISNEY WORLD. No offense to kissing good night or Disney World, but I remember Sott’s Mill having more stuff that I actually wanted.

“I’m so glad you said it,” I say, blowing out a breath. “Weren’t there . . . a lot more shops?”

Bel nods, squinting down the street, which used to be two blocks of occupied, well-maintained storefronts. In the fic, I’d described this street as “fancy,” and it was, at least compared with Darentville’s main shopping street at the time. Now, though, it’s faded, a little sad. It’s as if everything’s been sent through the most depressing Instagram filter, especially if that filter also turned a shop that used to sell a popular brand of brightly colored, busily patterned luggage and purses into an “ammo depot.”

“At least we had good fries?” she says, referring to the lunch we had at a restaurant two blocks back.

Bel’s taking this all in more stride than I am, and I’m guessing that’s because the decline of Sott’s Mill is another harbinger of Darentville’s ascent. Since she’s a new homeowner there, I’m sure it’s affirming. I bet she thinks we would’ve been better off going to the revamped shopping district there, but if she does, she’s not saying, and I’m grateful. Who knows who we would have run in to? Probably another teacher who sent me to the principal’s office.

And also, the fic said here.

I’m trying to stick with the plan, even if, at the moment, I can’t seem to find any trace of the fullness I apparently felt back when I made it.

Instead, it’s blankness again: that sense that I don’t know at all what I want, even if I know I’d rather not be at Disney World.

“What if we try the antiques shop we passed?” Bel says cheerfully, probably because I look like I’m thinking about the Supreme Court again. “Obviously antiques were not our thing when we were thirteen, but who cares, right?”

“Right,” I say, wrangling my sense of purpose. In the fic, the appeal of Sott’s Mill had been the choices it offered us—it had seemed thrilling, grown-up, independent to go someplace and decide for ourselves about things we wanted to buy. Back then, we’d fixated on clothes, both of us having grown up with parents who hadn’t put much stock in keeping up with trends. One whole page of the fic about Sott’s Mill is about the polo-style shirt dress I imagined buying, which now makes me cringe with secondhand embarrassment for my younger self.

But maybe I’m into antiques now? Talk about choices! Choices between old things, but what’s more grown-up than an antique? Not much, I’d bet. Maybe what I want is an apartment decorated with a candlestick from the nineteenth century. I do need to start thinking about my living situation after all this.

I link arms with Bel and we head toward it, Bel chattering happily about those fries we ate.

The unexpectedly cavernous store is lined with long aisles, all packed with furniture and lamps and odds and ends in various states of repair. There’s a fair number of customers wandering through the inventory, and the proprietor greets us cheerfully. She clearly has not received any memo about never mentioning a pregnant person’s body, because she calls Bel “sweetheart” and tells her she looks “ready to pop!” before insisting on ushering her over to an aisle with old cribs and trunks and changing tables. Bel doesn’t seem to mind, and she also doesn’t seem inclined to tell this lady that her nursery is already done.

Been there, Antiques Lady, I think.

I stop in front of a table of old clocks, running my fingers over the curved, tarnished top of one. This would look ugly in any apartment, probably.

I wander down another aisle, my eyes passing over old, dusty picture frames that would probably do a pretty good job at holding a cursed painting of your decaying self. Before long, my mind is back to wandering away from all these things I definitely do not want, and in the relative privacy of the haunted frames aisle, I do exactly the thing I should not be doing, and check my phone.

Surprise: still no word from Levi.

Stop, Georgie, I immediately scold myself, but it’s too late. I’m slipping easily into the same nagging set of thoughts I’ve had in nearly all my moments of solitude over the last two days. It’s a bruise I can’t stop pressing, that conversation with Levi, and the strained quiet of its aftermath. Why had I brought up Evan? Why had I felt, right at the moment we’d finally been having a normal conversation, that I’d needed to apologize for something Levi had probably already forgotten about?

Also, why had I put green beans in that pasta dish?

Strangely, it feels connected: the blurted apology and the beans in a pasta dish. Left to my own devices—when I’m picking up my own puppet strings—I’m like this: impulsive, unthinking. I’d seen those beans and thought, these look good, and I’d wanted to use them, no matter whether they fit with anything else I’d picked up. I’d gotten a few pieces of information about Levi’s professional life and then suddenly brought up something painful from his personal one.