Georgie, All Along (4)

I face Ernie again, though something is tugging at my memory about the man behind me. Is he a stranger, or— “Do you need to borrow some money, Georgie?” Mrs. Michaels chirps, her voice the kind of sweet that sets my teeth on edge.

“I have the money in the car,” I say, only to Ernie. “It’ll only take a second.”

A basket thunks onto the counter beside me.

“I’ll get it,” says the stranger, his voice pitched low. So low that I’m certain he’s also trying to shut out Mrs. Michaels.

I can’t bear to look over at him yet. Instead, I focus on his basket, full of staples—milk, eggs, a bag of rolled oats, a bunch of underripe bananas, one of those loaves of fancy bread.

“I have the money,” I repeat, my voice barely above a whisper. “I only need to—”

I break off when I notice his fingers curling tighter around his basket, his knuckles briefly going white, the muscles along his tanned forearm flexing.

“Ernie,” he says tightly, not acknowledging me in the least. “I’m in a hurry. Put her stuff on mine.”

I try to ignore his nice forearm so I can focus on his not-nice manners, in spite of the fact that he’s offering to pay my bill. But when I finally look over at him, I find that his face—even in profile, even half-covered by the brim of his hat—is as distracting as that flexing forearm. The line of his thick beard is cut close along his square, set jaw, the slope of his nose is sharp, the fan of his dark eyelashes is lush enough to cast a small shadow on his cheeks.

“Sure thing,” says Ernie, which at least snaps me out of my fixation on the most attractive, most irrelevant details about this entire situation.

“Ernie, wait,” I try again, but he only gives me a small shake of his head, as if he’s trying to warn me off any further challenge to this man’s I’ll-pay-for-it demands. Behind me, Mrs. Michaels has either gone mute or finally slinked off somewhere into the store, but I don’t want to look either way.

“Pardon,” the stranger mutters, reaching an arm past me and pushing his card into the reader. When he pulls it out, the edge of his hand grazes briefly across the front of my ridiculous overalls, and he grumbles out an irritated apology. I’m warm all over with embarrassment, with hyperawareness of how foolish, how flaky I must look.

“You’re all set, Georgie,” says Ernie, his smile soft and kind and forgiving.

I grab hastily at the milkshakes he’s pushed toward me on the counter, try to focus on the weight of them in my hands instead of the whirring in my head. It suddenly feels so important, so telling that I’ve botched this. Not even a full week without my job and I’m a puppet with its strings cut. If my phone isn’t pinging all day with to-dos, I’m lost, irresponsible. A blank, a mess.

“I’ll pay you back,” I say to the man beside me, pitching my voice louder this time. Whether Mrs. Michaels hears me doesn’t seem to matter quite as much, though, when the stranger is determined to pretend he hasn’t. He’s unloading the contents of his basket as if he’s trying to make up for the time he lost in having to say the fifteen words he’s spoken over the course of the last minute and a half.

“I’ll get cash and leave it with Ernie,” I add, determined now, like paying back this random man is my best shot at reversing the course of this homecoming.

“Fine,” he says, in a tone that says he just wants me to stop talking.

Well, fine then. I’m oddly and unexpectedly buoyed by his gruff dismissal. It’s better, somehow, than the schoolroom-flashback spectacle of the last five minutes. It’s no Typical Georgie for this guy; it’s Broke Woman Holding Me Up. That, at least, simplifies things.

“Tomorrow,” I promise Ernie, and the stranger who is still ignoring me, and myself. It feels good to say it, like I’m gathering up some of my puppet strings, or filling up some of that blankness that’s ahead of me. Tomorrow I’ll be helping Bel. Tomorrow I’ll pay back this bill. Tomorrow there’ll be something.

I don’t bother waiting for a reply. I raise my chin and turn to find Mrs. Michaels still there, too pleased by half. I send her what I hope passes for a confident, unbothered smile as I move past her, and I make myself an additional promise.

I am not going to spend the next two months this way—a topic of conversation or a target of well-meaning but rudely executed excuses. And I am not going to avoid that blankness anymore, the same one that chased me for almost the whole last two years I last lived in this town.

I’m going to fill it up; I’m going to figure it out.

What I really want.

Somehow, this time, when I leave Darentville, I’m going to be well and truly different.





Chapter 2


Georgie


Barely a half hour from the time I stepped onto the wide, white front porch of Bel’s brand-new home, I decide it’s a good thing I made that backup promise to myself.

Because honestly?

From the look of things, Bel isn’t going to need that much help from me after all.

We’re in the nearly done nursery, Bel sucking at the dregs of her milkshake and pushing her foot against the plush-carpeted floor to keep her brand new, top-of-the-line glider moving with hypnotic smoothness. She ended the house tour here, most excited to show me the crib she and her husband, Harry, assembled the day before yesterday, and even though I’m impressed by it, it’s not any more impressive to me than everything else in this house—big windows with waterfront views and rooms that somehow seem both incredibly polished and incredibly lived-in, even though Bel and Harry have only been here for about three weeks. I pictured boxes lining the walls, disorganized closets, cabinets and drawers that needed stocking and systematizing. I pictured stuff for me to do.