Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Logan
I’m at the booth for all of twenty seconds when Georgie appears from the back in a white sundress with her hair up and a searching expression on her face.
Instead of going right to our booth, her eyes are at the back of the dining room, though, and when she sees that it’s empty, she exhales.
Her eyes find mine a moment later, and she’s all smiles and dimples.
That smile is going to be a problem for me.
I stand up from the booth ready to hug her when I notice something.
“You’re wearing sandals,” I say, stopping her in her tracks before I can even get a hug.
Stupid Logan!
“I am. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, of course. I’m being dumb. I just haven’t seen you in anything other than Converse.”
She laughs, and I put an arm around her, wishing I had the nerve to kiss her cheek. “My dress Chucks were in the wash,” she teases.
I chuckle, and she gives me a dreamy blink and grin, and man, I will not survive this night if telling her my news makes her lose that smile.
I swallow. “Shall we?”
“Lead the way.”
I get the door for her, spotting Alma behind the counter with a young woman with long bangs and short, dark wavy hair with blonde streaks in it. The two are looking at me.
“Should I be concerned about Alma and her friend?”
Georgie looks behind us as she walks through the door, and she sniffs a laugh. “Alma, definitely. I don’t know about the new girl, Olivia. She was really nice in the interview.”
“You interviewed her?”
“No, I met her earlier,” she says. “I didn’t realize they already hired her, but Alma knows how to get what she wants.”
We step out into the early evening, the humidity pricking my forehead and the back of my neck. “So where to?” she asks.
“How do you feel about The Black Oyster?”
Georgie slows before we’ve reached my truck and gives me an apologetic look. “I’ve always wanted to try it, but you have to have reservations.”
“I got them a week ago,” I say, our hands brushing as we walk. I don’t grab for hers, though, and I kick myself.
“You made reservations a week ago?” she asks. “How did you know?”
“I made reservations at every place in town the moment I asked you out, just in case.”
She’s ducking her face when we reach my truck, but I can see the blush she’s trying to hide.
“Well, The Black Oyster sounds great.” I open the door for her and take her hand to help her up.
Her hand is surprisingly cool in mine, and for a second, it steals my breath, and I have a hard time letting go.
Too hard a time.
It’s not that I’ll miss the feeling of her hand in mine, either. Not only, at least.
There’s something else there.
Something that feels like brainspotting, like my vision locking right at seven o’clock—
Shut it down. You’re not here for trauma work right now.
I climb in the truck on my side and see Georgie, still rosy-cheeked and smiling.
I’m here for her.
***
Ten minutes later, we’re pulling into the parking lot, where string lights are strung between live oaks above a deck that overlooks the water.
Mason jar candles rest in the middle of each table, and the server hands us paper menus as soon as we’re seated on the patio, where the sounds of the river below add an ambiance no music can compete with.
The server brings us our drinks, and I order immediately.
“I’ll have the same,” Georgie says, though I’m not sure she heard my order at all. Something tells me she wasn’t kidding about not eating today. She’s paler than she was last week, and her slow blinks make it look like her eyelashes must weigh a pound each.
We both give the server our menus, and then I reach a hand six inches across the table to grab Georgie’s.
“Sorry, is that okay?” I ask, my thumb pressing softly into her palm, my hand wrapped around her thinner one.
She adjusts her hand so she can get a better hold on mine, making my chest grow warm. “Yeah, it is.”
“How are you holding up with all these back-to-back ten hour days? And school at night?”
“You know what they say: I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” I say, holding her hand tighter. “Georgie, you need to take care of yourself.”
“Things are going to get better,” she says like she’s trying to convince herself. “Olivia is going to help on the truck.”
“Good. I don’t like the idea of you wearing yourself out like this.”
Her smile is tired, her dimples almost nonexistent. “I know. But you’re one to talk. I know for a fact you were texting past curfew all week.”
I smile and take a drink. “That’s different.”
“It really isn’t,” she chastises, giving me another sleepy blink. “How does it feel to be home? Or back, at least?”
“Really good,” I say. The candle between us throws warm, unsteady light across her face, catching the shadows under her eyes that her makeup didn’t quite cover and a bump on her forehead I didn’t notice before. I almost ask about the bump, but I decide to let it go. She’ll only tell me she’s fine.
“I watched the highlights. You played so well, Logan.”
“Thanks. It felt good. Different.”
“What was different?”
“I stopped trying to control everything, I think. I have a tendency to hold too tightly, too long, and I just … didn’t.”
She draws a pattern on the condensation on her glass. “I’m glad it went so well.”
Someone laughs loudly at a table near us, and the river runs in a steady, unrelenting stream below us. I have to tell her. I’ve been holding the knowledge of my call-up since last night, telling myself I needed to tell her in person, and now we’re in person, and I can’t keep avoiding telling her.
“I got the call-up,” I say, not quite smiling, not quite frowning. “I have to be in Chicago Thursday night.”
Her smile looks like it’s splitting her face in two—it’s so big, so raw and beautiful. And the fact that her eyes are watering makes it hurt all the worse. “I knew you would,” she says with so much faith in me, I can’t understand how I ever doubted myself at all. “They are so lucky to get you.”
She sniffs and blinks, like she’s tucking her emotions away, and I want to tell her not to do that with me.
To put those feelings somewhere I can see them.
I open my mouth to say exactly that. And that’s when her hand in mine goes cold again.
Then it goes limp. My eyes fly down and back up to her face.
Just in time to see her eyes flutter and her head tip forward.
I jump out of my chair and dart around the table, catching her with one arm while I flag down a server. “I need something with sugar!” I call, panic almost strangling me. I carefully set her down on the ground so the blood can rush back into her head. “Juice, soda, whatever’s fastest!”
He rushes while I keep a hand on Georgie’s face. Slowly, the blood is returning, and she’s getting some of her color back, but she’s still too pale.
“Hey, stay with me,” I say, rubbing her cheeks. Her eyes slowly open, and she looks dazed.
“What am I doing down here?” she asks.
The server hands me the juice, and I put the straw in her mouth. “This is how all the cool kids eat dinner,” I say, acting calm when my insides are tied into knots. “Can you drink this?”
Her lips purse around the straw. I watch the level of orange juice in the cup, barely breathing until it starts to go down more and more. She drains the whole thing in ten seconds, and when she finishes, she rests her head back on the ground.
“This is attractive,” she mutters, and I chuckle, the tightness in my body releasing a fraction. If she can joke, she’s going to be okay.
“Is she all right?” the server asks behind me, his accent thicker than butter.
“She’ll be fine. She hasn’t eaten much today.”
“Here,” he says, handing me another juice and a piece of bread with butter. I don’t dare give it to her in case she chokes, but I put the straw in Georgie’s mouth and watch her drink it. I check her pulse at her neck. It’s thin and quick, but it’s steady.
“Can you box the food up for me?” I ask the server. “Any food.”
I pull out a few bills for him, and then Georgie tries to push herself to sit.
“Nope,” I tell her, bending down and scooping her up. “I’m your legs now, capisce?”
She shakes with a weak laugh. No comebacks from The Godfather and no protests.
She buries her face in my neck as I carry her past the string lights and dozens of conversations, the server following me out with food boxed up and secured in a bag.
He opens the truck for me so I can place her in the cab, and then we’re off.
She manages to put on her buckle, but then she lowers herself to the bench, her head on my thigh. “I’m gonna take a nap,” she says, wreaking havoc on my heart.
I trace my fingers across the smooth skin of her cheek and around her ear.
“Georgie,” I say, low but loud enough to make sure she can hear me. If she’s awake at all. “How are you feeling? Should we go to the hospital?”
“No,” she murmurs. “Take me home.”
“Where’s home?”
Her breathing changes, growing more shallow, like she’s struggling to get the words out. “Above the shop,” she says.
Before I can say anything else, her breathing’s slow and even again, and I realize she’s asleep.
And she lives above the shop?
Not only was I going to Meant to Bean for months looking for her and missing her every time because she was working in that coffee truck one town over, I was going to her home. Her actual apartment.
The timing of it hits like a medicine ball to my back.
I found her and I’m leaving.
My entire family is in baseball, and now, so are their significant others. Coop plays for the Firebirds and Liesel works for the team. Lucas’s girlfriend doesn’t just work for the team—Scottie’s a player coordinator for Jake Rodgers, a walking train wreck who requires her to travel with the team.
And the girl I want to be with is here, in Mullet Ridge. I spent months stuck in my head because I didn’t trust my own hands. Months and months of floundering and searching, and the moment I saw her again, she unlocked something in me that has me sent up to the big leagues.
I almost wish I could lock it back up.