Georgie, All Along (52)
“Hey.”
“Hi,” she says, tentative, and I wonder if in spite of all those freewheeling texts she’s been sending me, she’s been wondering about all this, too. She looks past me toward the planter boxes. “Doing a project?”
“Yeah. They’re rotted all to hell.”
She shrugs, as if it’s expected, and I guess it is. Even in the days we spent around each other last week I got the sense that Georgie’s kind of an improviser when it comes to her living situation. Before I fixed it last night, the toaster in the kitchen wouldn’t work unless you held the lever down for the whole time your bread was in there, and she never seemed to mind at all. She’d stand there with her finger on the tab and talk to Hank. She’s used to her mom and dad’s way of doing things; she’s like them herself. Flexible, welcoming. Fun.
Of course that’s when I notice the uniform, though, which is pretty much the opposite of fun. She’s got The Shoreline shirt tucked into slim-cut, cropped black pants, and since Georgie Mulcahy doesn’t strike me as the tucked-in type, I hate the way it looks. I don’t realize the way my eyes are roaming over her until I get to her bare feet, and she wiggles her toes self-consciously.
“I took them off in the car,” she says. “I forgot what it felt like, to be on my feet for that long.”
She looks at me cautiously, as if she’s testing me. Seeing whether she’s stepped on a mine by bringing up where she’s been.
But those bare feet have sunk into me. Maybe she couldn’t step on anything with those.
“How was it?” I ask, as if this job is the one she goes to every day. As if I’m the one who welcomes her home from it.
She shrugs. “Busy. Kind of fun, in that way restaurants can be. Tiring.”
I nod again, looking down at where Hank’s sat on one of her feet. “You must want to sleep.”
She doesn’t say anything, not until I raise my eyes to hers again.
“I don’t,” she finally says, giving me boat-eyes, and my heart’s saying Mine, same as it did then. She turns back to her car, bending down to fish something out of the passenger seat. I try not to look at her ass, but it’s right there. That uniform isn’t so bad.
When she comes up, she’s holding a brown paper bag, weighted down, and she’s blowing a wayward strand of hair out of her eyes. If that’s takeout from The Shoreline, she’s got to know I don’t want it.
I must have a look on my face, because her own transforms, her eyes taking on a wary cast.
“I thought you wanted to do this,” she says, a note of disappointment in her voice. “My list?”
I realize then that I don’t ever want to disappoint this woman. I’ll eat that food even if my father himself cooked it.
“I do.” Probably it sounds too heavy for the occasion, like I’m making a different sort of vow to her. “I didn’t figure—with all the time since Saturday—”
“I still want to,” she blurts. “The list, and . . . to, you know, go back.”
“All right.” I’m not sure if it’s the heart part of me that’s saying Mine right now, but I didn’t miss the way she mentioned her list first. I can wait to go back, if she wants. I’ve waited since Saturday, after all. “What’re we doing tonight then?”
She gives me that smile again, and I’m helpless against it.
“Well, Levi,” she says, hoisting the bag. “It’s got to do with this here hard cider.”
*
IT TAKES some negotiating.
In the first place, when she tells me this list item requires a horror film, I’ve got to tell her that zombies cannot be on the agenda, because I’m afraid of zombie shit and I’m man enough to admit it. She laughs and agrees to no zombies but says in exchange I can’t ever close my eyes during the movie she does end up picking, no matter what, and that’s because the point is to experience the whole thing.
After that we negotiate over the snacks, because Georgie tells me she hasn’t eaten since lunch, and that’s why she picked up a gigantic box of Junior Mints when she bought the hard cider. No matter what Georgie says, I can’t agree that a box of candy counts as a meal, so while she gets a quick shower to wash off her shift, I heat up the leftovers from my dinner, then I sit with her while she eats them, her mouth half-full most of the time as she tells me about how much better Annabel is, about how they did three craft projects for the nursery and cleaned out the photo library in Annabel’s phone. I pretty much pay attention to all of it, but also, she came out of the bathroom with that robe on again, loosely tied over a pair of sweat shorts and another one of those tank tops that’s been sent to murder me. I probably miss a few things.
And I’m sure I miss more than a few things once the movie gets started, including a good number of people getting murdered by things other than tank tops. After all my fussing over the last few days about this, I’m surprised by how easy it is—how I’m comfortable on this too-small couch, even if I’ve got to prop a leg up on the coffee table; how I don’t mind the taste of this overly sweet hard cider I’ve managed only a half bottle of; how I like to hear Georgie’s periodic squeaks and gasps of surprise when something on-screen scares her. She’s got herself smooshed all the way on the other side of the couch, her knees pulled tight to her chest, and every once in a while I’ll catch her breaking the rule she set for me—squeezing her eyes closed up tight before opening them again, sending me a guilty, exasperated look. I ask her twice if she wants to quit, but she only shakes her head and takes another sip of her cider.