Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Georgie
Icome back to consciousness slowly, grasping at a dream I’m already losing the thread of but not the cozy, cared for feeling I haven’t felt in longer than I can remember. But it isn’t cloaked in sorrow the way dreams about Mama are, which tells me that this dream was about someone else.
I know exactly who, and I don’t want to wake up.
Except I have a truck to open!
I sit up so fast, the room tilts.
“Whoa,” says a voice.
I blink. Once, twice. The apartment revolves around me—all books, mugs, and mementos—and then my brain catches on the angle of the light coming through the window …
It is nowhere near four thirty AM.
“Oh no,” I whisper, dread creeping over me. Marlowe’s going to be furious. “Oh no.”
“What’s the matter?”
It’s that voice again. Logan’s voice. I look up and my lips part in surprise.
He’s in the armchair across from me with The Horse and His Boy open in his lap, still in yesterday’s clothes, his blond hair wild and bushy.
The best part is the look on his face, like me waking up is the best thing that’s happened to him all day.
Which would do all sorts of things to my heart if not for—
“The truck,” I say.
“Is fine,” he says. “Your friends are on top of it.”
“Friends?” I look out the window, trying to process the time and who he could be talking about. “Alma? It’s her day off.”
“Alma doesn’t care. She and Olivia are on the truck right now.”
“But there’s so much that goes into it! And it was my idea, my responsibility!”
Logan puts a hand on my cheek, and some of the worry drains out of me.
“We found your notebook in your bag with all the instructions they needed. You keep very good notes, by the way. They’re fine.”
“You found my notebook?” I swallow the heat spreading up from my chest. They probably never thought to flip to the back of the notebook, right?
The part where I jot down dreams I would never share out loud?
Sketches and plans for changing and expanding and things my mama never talked about, let alone dreamed about, so how dare I?
His blue eyes search my face. “Yeah. Was that okay?”
“Of course. Thank you.” The room isn’t spinning anymore, but my thoughts haven’t settled yet. They’re still circling like liquid in a cup after you pull out the spoon. “What time is it?”
“Nine thirty-two.”
Nine thirty-two? I’ve been asleep for—I do the math and sink deeper into the couch. “Did I dream us drinking hot cocoa and eating pastries last night, or did that really happen?”
“That really happened, but I’m flattered you dream about me.”
My embarrassment won’t let me smile. I put my hands up to my messy topknot and pull out the elastic, letting my hair fall down in a heavy curtain. My scalp seems to sigh. “I slept for fourteen hours.”
“You needed it.”
I push the afghan off my legs, one I don’t remember putting on. My pulse has slowed, but it’s still hard enough that I wonder if he can see it through my neck.
The armchair Logan is sitting on used to be covered in blankets, but now they’re folded neatly in a basket that used to have books in it.
The book towers are still there but they’re stable and have been pushed up against the walls, making it easier to maneuver in the space.
Another thing I’m embarrassed about—never once considering the idea.
“Did you—” I start.
“Eat something first,” he says, unfolding himself from the armchair. He passes by me, putting a hand on my bare shoulder over the sundress’s strap as he passes me into the kitchen. My dress from last night is so wrinkled, I’m sure Marlowe can sense it all the way across town.
The pipes knock, and I turn around to see Logan putting the kettle under the faucet. A moment later, he’s starting the ancient gas stove, which clicks and then flames to life. Then he’s sliding something into the microwave.
And I sit on the couch and watch and breathe.
There’s no line of customers. No espresso machine needing attention. No demands outside of what my body requires, which right now is breathing.
That’s it.
Fine, that and homework, but I already panicked once in front of Logan, and he doesn’t need to see the sequel.
Several minutes later he comes back into the room with a breakfast burrito with chorizo, cheese, egg, and fried potatoes—one of Alma’s, no question.
But there are also avocado slices I know didn’t come from Alma, because she hates avocado, and there’s hot chocolate in my mother’s teal mug, the one with the yellow and coral flowers on the inside. Steam is rising from it.
That’s what he was making in the kettle.
He sets it all on the coffee table in front of me and goes back to the armchair.
“This is my favorite mug,” I say. “My mama used to throw pottery, and she loved making coffee mugs.”
“I see that.” He glances at the wall, where evidence of that love is on full display, though the ones in here are all the rejects.
I wrap both hands around the mug and let the comfort travel through me.
“Logan?”
“Yes, Georgie?”
“Did you sleep in that chair?”
“I cleared it with Alma first,” he says. “And don’t worry: She only texted a half dozen times to make sure you were breathing.”
“That sounds right.” I take a sip. “She pretends she’s an action hero, but she’s actually a big softie.”
“Action hero?”
“She learned how to speak English from ’80s action movies. I’m not kidding.”
“I knew it!” He laughs and pulls out his phone. “Sorry, I have to tell Lucas. That was our honest-to-goodness working theory all last year.”
“All last year?”
He shoots off a text and then looks up, his face suddenly red.
“Uh, yeah, Lucas’s girlfriend, Scottie, is a coffee-holic, and we came every day when we were in town to get her a new cup of coffee.
Lucas was trying to win her over and guess her order, and Alma was usually the one working the outside counter. ”
A rush of understanding hits me—understanding overwhelmed by profound cosmic regret.
All last year.
All season long—
“That was you guys?”
He looks up from texting his brother. “Sorry?”
I can’t explain why my throat tightens or my chest feels ragged.
Can’t figure out why I’m almost crying. “Logan, Alma took those orders, but I made those drinks. Not just whipped them up. I created them. I must have made up twenty new drinks for Lucas. To Bean or Not To Bean. The Could’ve Bean.
The Should’ve Bean! Alma told me Lucas’s story, and I”—why are tears springing to my eyes?
—“I made them. You were at the window with Alma while I was inside behind the counter.”
Logan’s eyes are looking glossy, which makes me feel at least fifty percent less crazy.
“You were the one she was speaking to in Spanish,” he says, breathing too hard for someone just sitting.
But I get it. I feel it. He lets out a tortured laugh that’s anything but funny. “How did you know what to make her?”
“It was the story,” I tell him weakly, so much regret gnawing at the edges of my heart.
“Whatever Lucas was telling Alma, she passed along to me, and whatever she reported—smirks or eyebrow twitches or Scottie even talking to him longer one day than the next, it all told a story of a woman who didn’t know what she wanted. ”
He gives another mirthless laugh. “She didn’t know what she wanted.
Turns out she likes everything but she drinks ‘vibes.’” He pauses, and we’re both staring.
The yearning on his face tugs on my aching heart.
“Georgie, how did we miss each other?” His voice cracks, but he doesn’t clear it. “How did you never know it was me?”
“How would we know each other until we knew each other?” I whisper, not even sure it makes sense.
But he nods like I’ve spoken wisdom for the ages. “What would you call this drink? If you were to give this … whatever the opposite of serendipity is a name. What would you call it?”
I don’t know why my whole chest feels like a throbbing cavity, sending pulses of pain through me with each heartbeat. He’s here! Why do I feel like I’m halfway mourning?
His question hovers between us, and because it’s what I do, flavors start presenting themselves to me—the bitterness of dark chocolate rounded out with a splash of vanilla and cinnamon, but with a kick of cayenne pepper that leaves a lingering ache long after the last sip is gone.
“The Would’ve Bean.”
He hangs his head, scratching his hair. “Yeah. I can taste it already.” He sniffs. “I would’ve asked you out the first time I saw you.”
“No you wouldn’t,” I say, forcing a smile.
“No, I wouldn’t. I’d have been terrified you’d turn me down. But I would’ve worked up the nerve eventually. At least by the sixth or eighth time.”
“I would have told you I heard you were reading in the bullpen.”
“I would have asked you what you thought about that.”
“I would have told you I had a crush on you before I ever met you.”
“I would have told you I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about you from the moment we first talked.”
“Over a coffee order?”
“Over The Chronicles of Narnia. When you were holding the book in Spring Training and flashing those dimples like you knew I couldn’t resist them.”
“I didn’t know.” I smile. “But I do now.” I smile bigger, unable to help it.
He puts a fist to his chest. “Geez. You have no idea what those do to me.”
I take a sip of my hot cocoa and smile, the sweetness sending a pang to my jaw that rivals knowing we had a year and a half of almosts.
“Georgie,” he says, his dry humor gone now, and I know what’s coming and don’t want to hear it.
“I know,” I say.
“I leave for Chicago on Thursday.”
The pain is even worse now. “I know.”
Everything is still around us, but outside, a car honks at another car and the sound of people talking barely reaches up to my windows, just the rhythm of their conversation without any actual words.
“One of the pitchers is going on the injured list, and then I’m—then that’s it. That’s the call.” He pauses, but I’m staring at my mug. “I have to pack today. After I leave here. The team is sending a mover for my stuff in a couple of hours.”