Georgie, All Along (83)

It’s because you didn’t say it back yet, my brain supplies hopefully in answer, and I’m desperate to listen: It’s true that I didn’t say it back, true that I’d gone along with what had struck me as Levi’s pretty intense need for both of us to say nothing at all. And it’s true that it’s only a yet—that there’s no question about whether I love him back. I plan to tell him a hundred times, a thousand times, infinite times, even though I think he already knows.

But my brain has nothing on that blank space. I picture it—a small but bright white void, surrounded by its own imaginary wall, miles and miles high. Impenetrable.

So maybe it’s only fitting that the next thing I think about is my not-imaginary list.

The notebook.

The fic.

I sit up in bed, shoving a wild tangle of hair out of my eyes, huffing out a sigh of frustration at myself, gusty enough to disturb Hank from his post-breakfast, post-morning walk slumber. He lifts his head and cocks it to the side as he gazes at me, and even though he’s probably thinking about food or Levi or whatever he’s been sniffing at beneath the old gum tree in the front yard for the last week and a half, I can’t help but take his curious stare as some kind of question: What’s that sigh all about?

And the thing is—it’s a good question, actually, even if Hank isn’t actually asking it. What’s frustrating about waking up and not having every single problem solved by a man being in love with me, by my being in love with him? If anything, I probably ought to be happy about that trying-to-click feeling sticking around this morning; I probably ought to take it as another sign of all the progress I’ve made. I’m not the same Georgie who showed up here a month and a half ago, lost without a boss to tell her what to do, desperate to find something to fill all my time so I wouldn’t have to think about my future. Instead, I’m the Georgie who’s been working on it; I’m the Georgie who knows that building a wall around Levi’s heart and making a list of grievances on his behalf won’t be enough to make me whole.

I’m the Georgie who knows I still have stuff to figure out, and who knows deep down I’m getting closer.

I make my way out of bed, standing on tired legs and crossing the room to stroke my palm across Hank’s smooth, flat head in apology. “Sorry about that, little submarine,” I croon, using one of the many nonsensical nicknames I have come up with for him over the last several weeks. He lightly thwacks his tail against the floor in contented greeting before lowering his chin onto his paws and falling back into a snuffling sleep.

On the chair in the corner, there’s a messy pile of my things—some of my clothes from last night, my robe, my purse, the work shirt I wear for spa shifts, a wrinkled canvas tote bag I bought last time I was at Nickel’s. I find what I’m looking for beneath it all, its worn cover more worn now, its softened cardboard cover a familiar texture beneath my palm.

I take it back to the bed, propping up pillows and pulling the covers back over my lap, settling myself in. Levi’s dim-display nightstand clock—bright lights and phones in the bedroom are bad for his sleep hygiene, I learned a few weeks ago—tells me it’s only a few minutes after eight, so it’s hours before I have to show up at The Shoreline and act normal, even after everything I know now. I’m suddenly grateful for the time, for the privacy—for the filled-up feeling this fic still holds for me. Somehow, I still think the answer is in here.

I want it to be in here.

It’s not strange, given how much he features in this thing, that the first page I happen to open to is one with the wrong brother’s name all over it: my fictional prom date, the one who I pictured bringing me a corsage of pale-pink roses, a perfect match to the ball gown-style dress I imagined wearing; the one who would be driving the same car as—wow, this is terrible—Edward Cullen in the first Twilight movie.

Any other morning, I’d probably laugh at myself—all these heart a’s, God—but this morning, my instinct is to cringe at the sight of it. It isn’t that I’ve made Evan the villain of the story Levi told me—that honor still rests with Levi’s dad, and also that guy Danny. If anything, with a few hours of distance, I have almost as much empathy for Evan and Olivia as I do for Levi. I’m sure they’ve each endured their own share of pain over what happened that night, and probably a bunch of nights before it and since.

Instead, it’s that all my girlish imaginings—corsages, cars from Twilight, Evan draping his tuxedo jacket over my bare shoulders—are comically shallow after these weeks with Levi, after last night with Levi. I can see, between the lines, what I wanted from that prom date—to feel special, to fit in, to be adored—but none of it, of course, translates anymore. None of it feels like someone eating your weird cooking or buying you cans of spray paint; none of it feels like someone showing up to a crowded bar and watching you dance with your pregnant best friend and a pink-haired drunk lady. None of it—

Hank and I both startle at the shrill ring of my phone in the other room, cutting through our cozy silence. I think, fleetingly, of ignoring it—yet another sign of my progress since coming back here, wedded to my phone as I once was—but since I mostly keep it on “Do Not Disturb” these days, it’s only those contacts I have marked as “Favorites” whose calls come through with noise. I get out of bed again, smiling with the memory of adding Levi to that list only a few weeks ago. If it’s him, I decide, I won’t stop myself from blurting I love you right when I answer.