Georgie, All Along (60)
“I saw my sister on my way in. She mentioned your parents are back in town?”
I nod, gathering more plates. “Yeah, it’s been a while since we’ve all been together. Nice to be in the same house again.”
“I feel that way, too, staying with Liv.” I catch sight of his hand curling around one of the chair backs again. “Most of the time. Some days, I think I’m going backwards. After everything with . . . well, you know.”
I pause in my plate gathering, look up at him. He looks young, or maybe it’s that he looks, for the first time in my memory, a little lost. I realize that he’s trying to commiserate. Him, divorced and living with his sister, me back from LA and living, however temporarily, with my parents. He aims another of those charming smiles at me, this one self-deprecating.
But I can see that it’s masking something honest, something sad. Even though I don’t harbor any bit of that old crush I had on him, I still don’t want to leave him hanging.
“I’m sure it’s only for a little while,” I say, thinking of him all those years ago, larger than life and self-assured, and still always so nice to everyone. There’s a reason Bel called him a hometown hero.
“I watched you play football, Evan Fanning. You never stayed down all that long.”
He looks at me like I’ve healed something in him. His face softens and his eyes brighten, his smile transforming into something more authentic.
“That’s true,” he says quietly. Gratefully.
I catch Remy looking flustered over by the bar. “I’d better get back to it. Thanks again.”
“Anytime.” I’ve been single long enough to catch the tone in it, to know it’s not a neutral, obligatory anytime.
It’s a suggestion.
But I pretend I don’t hear it that way. I nod my head as though I’m saying goodbye to my boss, my boss and that’s it, and then I hustle over to Remy and hide out in end-of-shift tasks for another hour. The whole time, I’m jittery and unsettled. It somehow feels like a failure, to have lived through a moment—two moments, if I count that weird double date—that my younger self wanted with an almost pathological desperation, and to experience nothing but longing for something—someone—else entirely.
When I finally clock out, it’s habit to check my phone, not necessity. But there’s probably at least a few things there—that sweating, concerned-face emoji from Bel, maybe, or one of my mom’s accidental voice notes. At this point I wouldn’t turn my nose up at more donkey pictures from Nadia. At least I’d know someone was thinking of me.
But if there is any of that, I don’t notice, because the only message I seem to be able to see at the moment is one from Levi.
An address followed by a blunt invitation, as clumsy as Evan’s was smooth.
Come over, it reads.
Chapter 14
Levi
I’m guessing she won’t come.
I’m out on my dock, Hank snoring softly at my side, trying to calm my mind by taking in the view. I missed it, this specific spot, even though the Mulcahy property is pretty—big and heavily treed, with sunlight that plays all day through the leaves. It doesn’t have the river, though, and that’s what I like best: the quiet lapping, the briny breeze, the occasional splash from a fish or a diving bird.
When Carlos first told me he wanted to sell me this place, I could hardly believe I’d gotten so lucky—getting to take over a property that had been, at the lowest time of my life, a refuge. In the last year, it’s sometimes felt less stroke of luck and more neverending project, but when I get to come out here on the dock I rebuilt myself last fall, I know it’s all been worth it. It’s taken a lot of work, making this slice of land my own, but it’s meant I get to live the way I’ve always wanted.
Quietly, privately, and on my own terms.
Growing up, I didn’t get much of that—first in my parents’ house, where almost every rule was one I didn’t understand or didn’t want to follow. After that, at the school my dad sent me to, where I had no privacy and not a second of peace at any point in all the miserable days and nights I spent there. When I finally left that place, I could only swing a shitty two-bedroom apartment in Richmond that I shared with three other guys. Even when I eventually moved back here, living at first in the trailer Carlos used to keep on the property, I couldn’t shake the sense that I was never truly alone.
It’s no real surprise, then, that I can count on one hand the number of people who aren’t contractors who’ve come out here since I’ve owned the place. Carlos, of course, who visited six months ago and heaped praise on me for the improvements I’d already made. Laz and Micah, who’d helped me reshingle the small roof in exchange for beer and pizza. Hedi, but only one time, and only to see the river and take some samples from the bank.
So part of me can’t believe I did it, sending Georgie my address, telling her to come over. I know it was clunky, doing it in a text message. But I also know that after the way I left her two nights ago, I owe her an explanation, a real explanation, and I’ve spent all this time preparing to give it. I took a half day yesterday and all day today, and I’ve spent the time cleaning and carefully putting my house back together, keeping busy while I’d practiced what I’d say to her. Hank’s heard it enough times that I’m pretty sure I gave him depression, or else he was more attached to that metal rooster than I thought.