Georgie, All Along (85)

I give her the abridged version, the protecting-Levi’s-privacy version: the version where I tell her that Levi’s reputation for troublemaking was only ever part of the story, that his reaction to his brother and sister last night at The Bend was less about them and more about the man at the head of their family who never treated Levi right. I tell her that he told me so much, things I can’t tell her now, but things that made me think Levi Fanning is the strongest, most sensitive man I know.

I tell her he said he loves me.

She interrupts my massage by gripping my hand tightly. She looks at me with a weepy-happy smile.

“You don’t even have to tell me if you love him. It’s been all over your face for weeks.”

“I know. But I—”

“Oh my God!” she blurts, squeezing my hand tighter and stopping me from explaining that I haven’t had a chance yet to say it back. “Does that mean you’re going to move here?” she says, her voice high-pitched and desperate. “Like forever?”

“Oh. I mean, we hav—”

“Georgie,” she says, and now the hand squeezing is . . . intense. I spare a glance at her belly, though I have no idea what I’m expecting to see there. “You should. You have to.”

I’m dimly aware of the fact that this conversation—me, moving back here, forever!—would have sounded absurd to me two months ago; I’m also dimly aware of the fact that it doesn’t automatically sound absurd to me now. But I’m way more than dimly aware that the look in Bel’s eyes has nothing to do with me and what she’s asking.

I gently pry her fingers from around the edge of my hand, resituating things so there’s less chance of my bones cracking into pieces. I say, “Bel?”

And she bursts into tears.

Noisy, messy, nose-running tears.

I abandon the chair and sit as best I can on the edge of the bed; I lean over to push the hair from her face and to dab my sleeve against her cheeks. It’s awkward, clumsy, and I realize that’s because I’ve never seen Bel cry this hard, not even when her mom was at her most ill, not even when she passed, not even at the funeral. Not even in those bleak, sad months afterward, when her tears on FaceTime and over the phone were frequent but soft. Streams, not storms.

“I messed up, Georgie,” she finally says, when she can catch her breath.

“You didn’t,” I say immediately. I know it doesn’t make sense, because I don’t know what she’s even talking about. But when your best friend in the world is this upset, you say you didn’t, and you mean it with your whole heart. You mean that they’ve never made a mistake in their whole life that you’re willing to acknowledge.

“I did,” she sobs, dropping her chin to her chest, and I’m soothing her, cooing to her, telling her to take breaths. It can’t be good for her, crying this much when her body is doing what it’s doing. I send a worried look toward those monitors, as if I’ve got any idea what they say.

Eventually, she looks up at me—red-faced, wet-faced, devastated-faced. She takes a big breath and says, “I hate it here.”

I blink, still too shocked to be anything but foolishly literal. “I mean. It’s sterile, sure, but—”

“I hate Darentville. I hate the whole county. I hate my house.”

“What?”

“I hate it; it’s so big and there’s carpet everywhere, and you know what? I don’t even like that gliding chair in the nursery; it makes me nauseated every time I sit in it. I hate that I have a yard and also there’s so much nature out there—”

“Nature?” I say, confused, but I don’t think she hears me.

“And Harry hates it, too, you know. He doesn’t want to say, but he does. He’s bored and he hates working from home, and last night after you guys left someone spilled a bright blue slushy drink on his back and I think a part of him died on the inside.”

Oh no, I think automatically. Harry wears such nice shirts.

I don’t have time to dwell on it, because Bel is absolutely unloading.

“I miss my job. Why did I leave my job? And also, my townhouse; I fucking loved my townhouse, Georgie!”

“I know you did,” I say, still doing shock-blinks, because Bel never says the f-word.

“You have to drive everywhere here. No restaurants serve the food we like. My eyes hurt from looking at the computer all day, and I have to reset my router every two goddamn hours because the Wi-Fi sucks. It’s quiet and terrible and small. Why did I do this, Georgie?”

I’m so stunned I can barely think of anything to say. I cling to the most obvious one, the reason we’re here, the reason Bel said she wanted to change her life. “The . . . the baby?”

She wails.

“Oh no,” I whisper, fully climbing into the bed with her now, hoping I don’t but not really caring whether I disturb the equipment she’s hooked up to. I put an arm around her and draw her close to me. Again, it’s awkward, unwieldy, too small a space for this sort of cuddle, but it’s a necessity. I let her cry and cry.

“I don’t think I can do this,” she says. “Be a mom, I mean. That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to pack the go bag, because I’m not ready. I know I’ve always wanted it, Georgie, but I’m not ready for it yet.”