Georgie, All Along (3)

But now I don’t have that living anymore.

“You know me,” I say.

“Now, Georgie,” Ernie says, something gentle in his voice, “tell us about that fancy job you’ve got! Your daddy says you went to the Oscars last year.”

“Actually, I—”

“Ernie,” chuckles Mrs. Michaels, “you know better than to believe anything Paul Mulcahy says!”

“I did go,” I say, and for the first time I’ve let an edge of annoyance slip into my tone. It’s good-natured, I know, this teasing about my dad’s legendary tall tales and exaggerations, but it’s always chafed me, enough that I’m willing to exaggerate a little myself. I hadn’t actually gone, but I had worked that day, had done a flurry of complicated errands for Nadia, including delivering things to the hotel room where she was getting ready. Then I’d ridden with her in the limo over to the Dolby so she could practice the speech she didn’t ultimately get to give.

So technically, I had gone. Sort of.

Mrs. Michaels raises her eyebrows, and I feel a fleeting moment of satisfaction. But there are limits to my own capacity for stretching the truth, and in a moment of absurd overcorrec-tion, I say, “I’m in between jobs at the moment, though.”

An awkward silence falls, and then Ernie—blessed, heroic Ernie—turns on the blender. I use the time to tally up things that there’s no point in saying. My boss decided to change her life. She said it’s time to think about changing my own. I could pick up the phone and have a job exactly like my old one tomorrow, if I wanted it, except the problem is I don’t know if I do.

I don’t know if I want anything.

The blender quiets. Is my face the color of a strawberry milkshake? Probably. Mrs. Michaels’s eyes have gone more in the direction of pitying. She smiles kindly and says, “Well, a good idea to move back home! It’s very expensive out there in Los Angeles, as I understand it!”

“Oh, I haven’t moved home,” I say, but I think I might’ve swallowed those last two words a bit, imagining Mrs. Michaels walking past my garbage-bag-stuffed Prius out there. Embarrassingly, I have an extremely late-breaking realization: I have, functionally, moved home, since I don’t have any solid plans beyond these couple of months I’ve promised to spend with— “Bel,” I blurt, because if there was ever a way to get Mrs. Michaels’s attention deflected from me, it was by drawing it to my best friend. “I’m here to spend time with Bel.”

It works like a charm.

“Oh, Annabel,” she says with the kind of reverence reserved for a straight-A, perfectly behaved, always-on-time student. “Everyone is thrilled she’s moved back. And with that lovely husband of hers! Have you met him?”

I want to roll my eyes, but refrain. It’s a subtle dig, but a dig nonetheless. Bel and I were always unlikely best friends in the eyes of teachers.

“I was her maid of honor,” I say.

This clearly is more impressive than (only sort of) going to the Oscars, judging by Mrs. Michaels’s expression. I smile, maybe a tad smug, thinking of the dream of a bridal shower I threw for Bel three years ago, exploiting every connection, every favor I was owed to make it luxurious. A destination weekend in Palm Springs with a bank of hotel rooms, beautiful catering, gift baskets, and spa treatments. Bel says her friends still talk about it.

Take that, trash bags! I’m thinking, but the truth is, this fleeting, polite exchange with my former teacher has only served to bring back that parking lot doubt. I want to be with Bel, sure. But I don’t want to be in this fancy new Nickel’s, looking a mess. I don’t want to be in this town, where people know me as a flake, a failure.

Where I spent a lot of years with the same sense of blank confusion about my future as I have right now.

That smug smile I’m wearing wavers, and before it can wobble completely off, I turn back to Ernie, who’s moved over to a sleek iPad that rings my neurotic better check your phone internal alarm. I try to refocus on the milkshakes and on the reason I came all this way—Bel and her new home, Bel and the baby that’s coming soon. That isn’t a blank, at least.

“It’s $8.42 for the shakes,” Ernie says, and my smile firms up at the price increase. Counting out change at the counter like Bel and I used to do probably doesn’t cut it for the kids in Darentville these days. Well, good for Ernie. And good for me, too, not to need to shake out quarters anym— Shit, shit, shit.

I pat uselessly at my pockets—God, why do overalls have so many pockets!—and sense the self-satisfied stare of Mrs. Michaels behind me.

Typical Georgie, I can practically hear her thinking.

But when a throat clears in a low rumble behind me, it obviously hasn’t come from Mrs. Michaels.

I lower my head and let my eyes slide shut. Two witnesses to my humiliation is bad enough; does there have to be a third involved? Am I going to turn around and find someone else who recognizes me, another person eager for a light, no-harm-meant laugh at my expense?

“Ernie,” I say quietly, raising my eyes again. “I left my card out in the car. I’ll just run—”

The throat clears again, and this time, I look over my shoulder to find a stranger watching me from beneath the brim of a weathered, olive-green ball cap that’s pulled low over his eyes.

I narrow my own at him, at the way he’s standing there with impatience clear in every line of his long, lean body, at the way he holds his dark-bearded jaw tight. If it weren’t for how obviously irritated he looks, I might feel a kinship with him, since his clothes are in worse condition than my own—work boots and faded jeans that are both pretty well caked in dried mud, a T-shirt with a wide, dark stain along one side. Even Mrs. Michaels looks to be keeping her distance, but she’s clearly still interested in what’s coming next.