Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Logan
This is her book.
Even if I hadn’t seen a red paperback in the back pocket of her shorts on the camera, I would know this book with a hundred different dog-eared pages is hers. She’s written in the margins of almost every poem in the book, and there are notes scribbled all over both pages of “The Road Not Taken.”
It’s practically a cliché for someone to love that poem, but Georgiana isn’t any other someone. Three different colors of ink have been used to underline passages and scribble out her cramped thoughts.
This isn’t a high school student reading the poem at commencement. This is someone who’s internalized it in different ways at different times. Someone who’s etched this poem into her heart.
I hear the chime of the door and whip around, and that’s when I see her—long blonde hair, huge brown eyes, her mouth forming an O.
Is she thinking what I’m thinking?
“It’s you,” I say.
“That’s my book,” she says at the same time.
So. Not the same thing, then.
Cool.
Cool cool cool.
“Uh, yeah, sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t sure, so …” I trail off.
“You weren’t sure if it was my book or if it was yours?” she asks, cocking her head like she really wants to know if I think I may have left my 2002 reprint edition of Robert Frost’s poems on this very same table earlier.
My face flames. “I didn’t mean that.”
Her lips turn into a half smile. “I figured, but I didn’t want to assume.” She pauses.
I pause.
She sticks her hands in the back pocket of her cutoff shorts, which, with her high-top Converse, make her legs seem longer than should be possible for her height.
She’s probably my sister’s height—five-six—not tall enough to look so willowy.
And she’s too tanned to look so ethereal, but that’s exactly what she is: willowy and ethereal. Bookish and beautiful.
I’ve lost my ability to think, let alone speak.
Honestly. The constant buzz of anxiety that swarms in my head at all times has just gone … silent.
Unfortunately, it looks like my anxiety might be intertwined with my intelligence, because I’m standing here speechless, like an idiot who ran all the way from the stadium in his jersey and cleats, blurted “It’s you,” and then stood there like a dummy.
What a great second impression.
“I’m not sure if you remember me,” I say, “but I’m Logan Fischer.
I play for the Mudflaps, the local baseball team.
But I’m on the extended roster for the Chicago Firebirds, too.
The Major League Baseball team? We met in Phoenix because of that, in fact, during Spring Training.
At a, uh, Firebirds fan event. I’m not saying you’re a fan, but you were with your niece, Lulabelle, and she said she was a fan.
Um, I’m sorry I’m rambling. I really thought you were going to interrupt me long before now. Feel free to put me out of my misery.”
She smiles, and her cheeks go rosy. “I do remember you. I try not to interrupt people, though. It didn’t occur to me that you’d want me to. Sorry.”
“I really want you to. Anytime. Maybe all the time.”
Her laugh is like birdsong and her accent as sweet as peaches and cream. “I’ll do my best.”
“I’m not sure your best will be good enough,” I say, scratching the back of my head, and she laughs again. “I can ramble pretty hard.”
She stands like she’s waiting for me to say something else, but unfortunately, I already used up my one-and-only line when I first saw her, so I’m tapped out. But because I really can ramble, I open my mouth and hope for the best.
“So.” I look around. “Do you know when this place closes?”
Her head tips back maybe an inch. “Oh, yes. At ten. Did you want something? Sorry, that was silly. Of course you wanted something. It looks like you ran here after the game.”
“I did.”
A voice clears from across the shop, and I realize there’s someone else here: Alma, the older woman who took order after order for Lucas and me over the last year when my brother was trying to figure out the right drink for his now-girlfriend, Scottie.
When I got back into town at the beginning of the season, I asked Alma right away about Georgiana.
All she told me was that she’s a regular and always sits in the same booth—the one we’re standing at now.
I assumed Alma was a big fat liar up until tonight.
“Did you run all this way for a vanilla protein cozy?” Alma asks. It’s the only drink I’ve ever ordered.
My cheeks are red hot, but hopefully they’ll think it’s from exertion. “Actually, could you make it iced?”
Alma blinks. “It’s steamed milk. You’re asking me to put ice in it after I steam it? Or should I froth some cold milk?”
Shriveling up and dying wouldn’t be the worst thing right now. “The cold milk will work,” I say. “Georgiana, did you want something?”
“You remember my name?” Georgiana asks.
I could laugh. She honestly has no idea why I’m here.
“I remember,” I say. And as if I need a reason, I add, “It’s Mr. Darcy’s sister’s name.”
“You’ve read Pride and Prejudice?”
I chuckle. “I like books.”
“I remember,” she says. “Narnia, right?”
“Anything C.S. Lewis,” I say. “Or Lee Child. Or, I don’t know, Mary Higgins Clark. I don’t need it to have a starred review by some literary journal. If the story is good, I’m happy.”
“Me too!” she says, dropping to the booth. I sit down across from her. “Do you know your top ten books you’d take on a desert island?”
“Can I bring my Kindle?”
“No,” she says. “And no compilations, either.”
I look pointedly at her collection of Frost poems. “Really?”
She grips it to her chest. “Good point. In that case, yes to collected works. But if you say Shakespeare, I’ll know you’re lying.”
“You’ll know nothing of the sort,” I shoot back, although she’s right. “But why do you say that?”
“Because if Shakespeare had been on your list, you would have name-dropped him with C.S. Lewis. People love dropping Shakespeare to establish their literary credentials.”
I laugh. “Wow. I didn’t peg you for being quite so judgmental.”
Her face burns a deep red. “I’m not trying to be judgmental. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. It was funny.”
“I would bring Shakespeare,” she says in an apologetic tone. “I really wasn’t trying to sound so judgmental. I talk books with people a lot.”
“Oh, do you work at the library? Or a bookstore?”
Her face is still tomato red, and she looks around. Before she can open her mouth, Alma is standing in front of us, putting a frothy protein-boosted drink in front of me and what smells like a Mexican hot chocolate in front of Georgiana, although I didn’t remember her ordering.
I glance up at Alma.
“I know all my favorite customers’ drinks,” the older woman says, and I narrow my eyes at her.
If Georgiana is one of her favorite customers, why couldn’t Alma give me more than a shrug any of the dozens of times I’ve come in looking for her? No indication of when she comes in, where she’s been, nothing. She played unofficial matchmaker to Lucas and Scottie all last year, for Pete’s sake.
Just another way I pale in comparison to my brother.
“Is that all I am?” Georgiana’s teasing Alma, and I look between the two of them. “Our families have been close for a long time,” she tells me. “Alma’s my godmother.”
“She’s everyone’s godmother but mine,” I mutter into my vanilla milk. But Alma must hear it, because she snorts.
“On the house,” she says before leaving us.
Georgiana and I both look at each other. Then at our drinks. Then at each other again. We’re like something out of a Disney movie, like Lady and the Tramp. I wish I’d ordered spaghetti.
Not that I’m thinking of kissing her already. I’m not a total creep.
“So, what were you saying?” I ask.
“Ten books you’d take with you on a desert island. And assume that your scriptures of choice are already there.”
“That was thoughtful of whoever stranded me on the island,” I say.
She grins, and her dimples flash beneath her rich brown eyes. I’ve been around blue eyes my whole life, and I’ve always loved them. But Georgiana’s irises have rings to them, like a tree, and every other eye color seems boring by comparison.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not going to give me a straight answer on these books?” she asks.
I pull myself together. “Oh, I’m never giving you an answer. Imagine you were a parent with a thousand kids and could only bring ten of them with you. That’s how crazy your question sounds.”
“You mean easy.”
“Easy? In what universe would picking your kids be easy?”
“I’d pick the ones who’d be the most resourceful but who also had the least to lose. Being stranded on an island is dangerous.”
I take a drink, hiding my smile as the cool, creamy sweetness hits my mouth. “You’re surprisingly pragmatic.”
“Surprisingly?” she asks with a laugh. “I can’t be sure, but that sounds almost judgmental.”
“Touché.” We both take a drink. “So you’ve clearly given this some thought. What would you take?”
“I have no idea,” she says. “Anyone who could pick that easily has to be an alien.”
I cough a laugh, almost choking on my drink. “Well, at least you have Shakespeare.”
“But only so I can establish my literary credentials,” she assures me. “Not because King Lear always makes me sob like a baby.”
“Is now too early to admit I only read it in eighth grade when I was in my ‘I need to read all of Shakespeare so people think I’m smart’ phase?”
She giggles into her hot chocolate. “It’s too late, actually. You should have led with that.”
“Then maybe you should tell me your interpretation of ‘The Road Not Taken’ so we can even the score.”
Her eyes widen. “Whoa, you’re that sure you’re not gonna like my interpretation?”
“Not a hundred percent, but I have a feeling.”
She purses her lips, her hands wrapped around her mug of hot chocolate.
It’s odd that Alma gave me my drink in a to-go cup and Georgiana’s in a mug.
But then, if she’s here visiting her godmother a lot, maybe it makes sense she’d use a mug.
I have this image in my mind of her sitting here, sipping and reading until her mug is empty, and then she keeps reading until she reaches that point where she tries to take another sip, realizes it’s empty, and then checks the time and races to … wherever she goes when she’s not here.
“I love the poem,” Georgiana is saying. “I think it’s a reminder of how powerful the stories we tell ourselves are.”
I feel my brow tug together. “You don’t think it’s about rugged individualism? Picking the road less traveled?”
“I don’t mind that reading—”
“I hate it,” I blurt. “Sorry.”
Her dimples pop out again. “That’s fair.”
“It’s really not. It’s a valid interpretation.”
She shrugs. “I think it’s about finding peace with our choices. There’ll always be roads we can’t take. We can either choose to regret the one not taken or celebrate the one that was. Why not celebrate it?”
“But what if the other one would have been better?”
“Not knowing is hard, I agree. You can never know what the other road would have brought. You can only look for meaning in the one you took.”
I swirl my drink around in my cup.
“Frost meant it to be cynical,” I say. “He was making fun of his anxious friend for always belaboring pointless decisions like which path to take when they were going on walks together. ‘But as for that, the passing there had worn them really about the same.’”
“I’ve heard that,” she says. “But that doesn’t change my mind.
Wouldn’t we all be happier if we planned to tell ourselves one day that we made the right choice?
‘I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence; I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’”
“So you think it’s a satisfied sigh? Him deciding now that he’ll look back at this moment one day and be satisfied with his choice?”
“I do. Maybe it’s not about being happy with the choice but being at peace knowing you made the best choice you could at the time. Accepting it. The whole poem is hopeful for me.”
“I think it’s the saddest poem in the world,” I say. “He already knows it’s futile to pick. Whatever he chooses, he’ll regret what he didn’t.”
Georgiana studies me. “If he’s going to regret his choice either way, what can he do?”
“Hold on too tight. Wait until the choice gets taken from him, and then regret that, too.”
A frown tugs at her brow. “That sounds hard.”
“Yeah. It does,” I say. “Frost said the choice was arbitrary. And I’m usually all for authorial intent, but he can’t actually know that.”
She cradles her mug between her hands. “No, he can’t.”
I nod. Tap my thumb against the table. Let my brain catch up. “So,” I say. “Who thinks what about the poem again, and does Robert Frost agree with either of us?”
The lights turn off—they must be on a timer—but it’s like a period marking the end of a sentence. The streetlights illuminate us inside the booth well enough that I can see Georgiana’s face at the same time that I hear her breathy chuckle.
“I guess that’s our sign,” I tell her, and she chuckles.
“I guess so.”
“Will you be here tomorrow?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Cool. Me too.”
“You’ll probably be at practice when I’m here, though,” she says as we both stand up.
“What time are you usually here?”
She hesitates, though I’m not sure if she’s regretting committing to being here at all or trying to figure out how to make it work with my schedule.
“Nine?” she says.
“I can make that work.”
It’s hard to tell in the dark, but her eyes look like they’re darting back and forth between mine, almost like they’re asking why?
“We probably need to dissect ‘Mending Wall’ next.”
“Will it be on the test?” she asks.
I laugh too loud, although it probably only feels that way because we’re bathed in darkness. “Can I see you out?”
“I’ll take her,” Alma says from the door, where she’s standing with her keys.
“Yeah, of course,” I say, walking with Georgiana to the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Georgiana.”
“Call me Georgie,” she says.
“Okay. See you tomorrow, Georgie.”
“See you tomorrow, Logan.” She says it like she doesn’t quite believe it, clutching her book to her chest. “Oh, and good game tonight.”
“Thanks. You too.” I groan at the same time as she laughs. “I mean … proverbially, probably. I definitely didn’t say something stupid there.”
“Go home,” Alma tells me, opening the door and practically shoving me out.
I turn back to see Georgie and Alma watching me go, and I’m already halfway home before I remember that I never changed after the game and my keys are still at the stadium. So I double back, hoping they’re already gone when I pass the coffee shop.
They are.
But Georgie’s mug is still on the table where she left it.
I’m not sure what that means, but it feels like a promise.
Her way of saying “I’ll be here.”
Me too, Georgie.