Georgie, All Along (82)
She gets out of the truck.
For a second, I’m not sure whether she wants me to follow her. I’ve had a lot of experience with people being mad at me, but I’m not real sure I’ve ever experienced someone being mad on behalf of me, and I think that’s what Georgie is.
It’s got to be one of the best things I ever felt.
She’s stomping across the yard, past her Prius and out toward the dock, and maybe she wants a minute to herself or something—I can kind of see she’s still gesturing at the air, keeping on with her yelling even if no one’s hearing her—but she’s got to know I won’t let her go out there on her own when it’s dark. Probably she doesn’t want me to remember that clumsy splash off Buzzard’s Neck, but I do, and we don’t need a nighttime repeat.
“Pascal Fanning,” she’s muttering, when I get closer, when I’m only a few steps behind her, and it hits me all at once, the full force of what I feel for her—one of those big, pounding waves again, right here on the calm shore of the river where I’ve spent the most settled years of my life.
“Georgie,” I say, because it’s too big to stay quiet about. Too big to wait for her to work off her anger.
She huffs and turns around. “What!”
Well, I guess she’s still mad at me, too. And maybe that means I shouldn’t say this next thing, not right this second, but I’m too far gone with it now. I’m pretty sure I’ve been too far gone with it for a while.
“I love you. I’m in love with you.”
“What,” she says again, quieter now.
“I’ll tell you every ugly thing about me if you want to know it. I’ll tell you that I saw you out there with my brother and sister tonight and felt like I was going back to when I was twenty-two years old again, looking at the better versions of me, the ones who always acted right, always fit in. I’ll tell you that I saw my brother touch you and all I could think was that I was about to lose you, same as I lost a whole lot of things I loved back when I was young. I messed up, acting how I did, and I know it. But I’m good at fixing things, Georgie, and I’ll fix this. I’ll do whatever you want.”
So you’ll stay, I want to add. So you’ll fit here with me forever. My head echoes with the crashing crest of that wave—every idea I have for keeping Georgie and me together bubbling and foaming in the aftermath.
But I force myself to ignore it. I can hardly believe everything I’ve already said. Probably bad enough I chose this moment to tell her I love her; I don’t want to make it worse by bringing up her future when I know she’s still figuring it out.
She’s quiet long enough that the back of my neck heats in embarrassment. I shove my hands in my pockets and lower my head, staring down at the straight, sturdy planks beneath my feet.
Until she steps toward me, the toes of her shoes inches from mine.
“You love me?” she asks, almost a whisper.
I look up, meet her eyes. Even in the dark, I can see they’re big and brimming wet and beautiful, and I hope that’s because she’s been hit with the same wave as me.
But I don’t need her to say it. Not now, not like this.
I lift my hands and cup her soft cheeks in my rough palms, and I say to her the last two words I’ve got in me tonight. Two words I’ve said to her before, and this time I don’t mind at all if they sound like a vow.
Because that’s how I mean them.
“I do.”
Chapter 19
Georgie
Levi Fanning loves me.
It’s the first thing I think when I wake up the next morning—my eyes still heavy with sleep, my limbs still pleasantly achy, my heart still full to bursting. Even though I vaguely remember the soft kiss Levi pressed against the top of my head a couple of hours ago before he left for work, it’s instinct to roll over and scoot myself closer to his side of the bed, wanting to get close to him—to whatever warmth he left behind. I press my nose into his pillow and inhale the scent of his shampoo and his detergent and him.
He loves me.
For long minutes, in the dozing in between my consciousness, I let it sink into me again, flashes of last night coming back: Levi sliding the silky fabric of my top over my head, running his rough fingertips lightly over my shoulders, down my arms; Levi walking me backward toward the bed, his mouth never leaving mine, his manner soft and slow and determined. It’d been perfectly quiet between us—not the heavy, tense silence of the ride back from The Bend, but something weightless and easy, something healing. I lift a hand and settle two of my fingers in the hollow above my collarbone, stroking the spot where I swear I felt a tear slide across my skin last night, when Levi pressed his face against my neck after he came.
I’d held him against me, my own eyes welling in desperate affection for him, for all he’d been through when he’d been young and on his own. I’d felt fierce and overwhelmed and protective, like I wanted to build a wall around him and his broken heart, like I’d wanted to find Pascal Fanning and give him a list of all the ways he’d failed his son. I don’t know how long I stayed awake after Levi had fallen almost immediately into a leaden, unmoving sleep, but it must’ve been hours.
Building my imaginary wall, making my imaginary list.
As I come more fully awake, though, I realize my middle-of-the-night fierceness is now living alongside something else—there’s that pressure again, that trying-to-click feeling, a now-narrower sliver of blank space that still won’t fill, no matter how happy Levi made me last night, no matter how perfectly we’d come together, no matter how protective I’d felt.