Georgie, All Along (44)

“It is a good life,” I say, and I mean it. It isn’t only that it suits me, that it’s quiet and clean and calm and stable. It’s that I’m determined to keep it that way. Every year that goes by, I’m doing something: I’m being the Levi Fanning no one in four counties ever thought I could be. The Levi Fanning my father never thought I could be.

“I said,” she insists, rolling her eyes. “But you know, life is long, if you’re lucky. When I finished my postdoc, I applied for jobs all over the country. And you know what? I could see myself at every place I got an interview.”

I nudge absently at the flask. This is how she was in class; she’d start off with some anecdote or quote before winding around—a long way around, if I’m being honest—to the important bit. It was fucking stressful taking notes in her lectures.

“As it turned out, I only got the one offer, and that was lucky, given the state of things. When I first started, I was still always thinking of those other places that didn’t pick me. I never thought I’d settle in Virginia, of all places.”

I frown across the table at her. I don’t see what’s so “of all places” about Virginia. Not to be biased, but she could’ve ended up somewhere worse.

“And now look at me!” She spreads her arms, gesturing to the lab all around her. Expansive, I think, because Georgie’s moved into my psyche. “I’ve been here twenty-two years!”

“You wish you weren’t?” I’m still in the metaphorical frantic note-taking stage of this whole situation; I’ve got no idea where she’s going with this.

“No, I’m thrilled! What a good job I have. What nice people I’ve met. But also, it’s a job. I like to travel, too, and to try new things. On my last sabbatical I took a trapeze class in New York City! It was wonderful. And then it was wonderful to come back to work, too, you know?”

Not really. Which means she wants me to think about it.

“She’s not a trapeze,” I say after a few seconds, annoyed.

She snorts. “Yes, I know that, Levi. But I’m only saying, having a nice woman in town for a few weeks isn’t going to mess up your life. Have some fun. Do something different.”

I swallow, pretending like those phrases—Have some fun. Do something different.—aren’t a little terrifying to me. I don’t have a good track record picking fun, or different. I’ve got a good track record at picking trouble when fun and different are in the mix, and that’s why I keep it simple. My dog, my work, my house. No trouble there.

But Georgie’s not trouble. Not a trapeze, not trouble, and also, not fuss, either. She’s a person. A nice person who I’m attracted to, a person I pushed away all because I got overwhelmed by how strong I feel for her already, and how those feelings don’t seem suited to steady and simple.

Hedi and I are quiet, though I suspect her quiet is the kind where she’s waiting for someone in the class to raise their hand. She stands and goes to the fridge, rearranging the samples she’s got in there. Back when I took Hedi’s class—it’d been a whim, an uncharacteristic break from the accounting and management courses Carlos had recommended I take—she’d sometimes ask me whether I’d want to keep going, whether I’d want to work in a lab someday. I’d brush her off, always telling her the same thing. I’d enjoyed what I’d learned, but more school wasn’t for me: It was too inside, too far off the water. Maybe it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I think about Georgie again, and the part of me she appeals to. It’s the outside part of me, I think. The part that wants to breathe fresh air. The part that wants the movement and noise of nature. When I think of it that way, all I want is to go back to last night, that moment when she stepped into me and gave me a taste of her soft, full lips.

All I want is to hold all her fresh, noisy movement against me. All I want is to taste it, even if it’s not simple.

“I better head out,” I say, and Hedi smiles at me as if I’ve put up my hand to participate in the discussion. “Thanks,” I add, sheepishly.

She shrugs, as though she doesn’t know what I’m thanking her for. “See you in a couple weeks,” she says, and I know her well enough to know she means I better have sorted myself by then.

*

THE DRIVE BACK to Darentville is beautiful—pinks and purples streaking the sky, the air taking a rare break from brutal humidity. Hank’s alternating between sticking his snout into the narrow strip of open window on the passenger side and giving me an impatient look for not opening it more, but I can’t be letting his ear flap out there in the wind. I get a sense of how he feels, though—excited and frustrated, equal measure.

I give him another inch.

I tap my thumb against the steering wheel, wondering whether Georgie’ll be home when I get there. Would it be too repetitive to make dinner again, to light that candle and invite her to sit with me on the back porch? Would it be too much to hope that I could redo the whole night, get another chance to do the end of it differently?

By the time I pull up to the Mulcahys’, I’ve done a fair bit of this kind of thinking—thirty percent about what I ought to cook for her and probably seventy percent about what might happen after. I’ve even done a good deal of thinking about how I might get her to wear that robe again.