Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Georgie
Saying goodbye to Logan makes me feel like someone has slapped a sepia filter on the world that makes everything dusty and muted and …
Sad.
I want to shake the world and say, “You knew summer was coming to an end and leaves were going to change and fall off, and you let yourself believe it would never end, and this is what you get for it!”
But something in me protests, insisting that it wasn’t supposed to skip seasons like this, going all the way from a verdant summer to a bitter, colorless winter.
Now I’m sitting with Logan on his tailgate in the Sugar Maple Farms factory lot while Olivia takes care of the handful of customers who’ve lined up on their break, and I’m wondering how I ever go back to my regular life after knowing that something like a life with Logan was ever even possible.
Everything in me hurts as his hand finds mine in the space between us.
“I have to leave in a minute,” he says, his voice husky.
Mine is strangled. “I know.”
“I don’t want to.”
I nod, not trusting myself to open my mouth. I’ll probably do something silly like say I don’t want him to go either.
He laces his fingers slowly through mine, and with his other hand, he traces the shape of my fingers. In spite of knowing better, I let him.
My chest and throat burn. My nose and eyes sting.
“Georgie.”
“Please don’t,” I say, staring at our clasped hands, feeling the rightness of the fit. “If you say something sweet right now, I’m going to cry, and I don’t want to cry.”
He laughs, but it’s wet, too, and when I look up at him, his eyes are doing exactly what mine are.
“Fine. No sweet things.”
“Just—” I look back down at our hands, because his piercing eyes will see right through me. “Just go and come back. Okay?”
“I’m coming back,” he says, making a promise I’ve heard my dad break a thousand times.
“Okay,” I say.
He leans down like he’s going to kiss me, and I close my eyes like I’m going to let him, even though I told him he doesn’t get a kiss unless and until he comes back.
My wretched heart cannot be trusted when it comes to Logan.
I feel his breath on my lips, and I brace myself for a kind of happiness I’ve never known …
Then I feel his hand slide across the skin of my neck, his thumb resting in front of my ear, and he tips my face to the side and presses a kiss softly, tenderly onto my cheek.
He holds the kiss, breathing hard against me, and then he gives me two more gentle, quick kisses beneath my ear.
A cool wind picks up out of nowhere and makes me shiver.
Logan rests his forehead against mine for a long moment, neither of us moving, both of us breathing the same small patch of unexpectedly cool September air.
“I have to go,” he whispers. “I’m going to miss you, Georgie. I don’t know how to care about baseball when I could be here, with you.”
“Don’t say that,” I plead. “You don’t have to give baseball your soul, but it’s more than a game to you and your family. It matters.”
“You matter.”
The swelling in my throat has made it hard to swallow. “Good. Then you know where to find me when the season’s over.”
He nods. Stands. Pulls me down from the truck and wraps his arms around me so long, and so tight, I honestly don’t know how he’s going to make his flight, and part of me hopes they kick him off the team because of it, but the rest of me hates myself for even thinking something so selfish.
If I really care about Logan, then I want what’s best for him.
This—him leaving, him playing—is what’s best for him.
He kisses the top of my head while I Do. Not. Cry.
And then he’s letting go, getting in his car—
Going.
Going.
Gone.
***
It’s well past three—closing time—when I walk back over to the truck. Olivia’s already broken down most of it, which I would normally feel bad about, but I’m too numb to be helpful, and so I stand there and watch her move with a brisk, businesslike energy while she finishes.
“What else do you have going on tonight?” she asks, not looking up from the cash drawer.
“My father is coming back into town to have dinner with me and my stepfamily for his monthly visit,” I say emotionlessly.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I think Marlowe sees it as her opportunity to try to convince my dad that we’re one big happy family and definitely worth sticking around for this time.”
She zips the cash bag shut, and for a moment, she doesn’t say anything. Her hands keep moving, but they’re slow.
“I could come over,” she says. “Help you get ready. I don’t—” She stops herself and then starts again, but there’s something underneath her voice that almost sounds desperate. “I don’t have anywhere to be tonight.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I say automatically. “I’m fine. You don’t need to watch me try on six different outfits and debate which lipstick will annoy Marlowe the least.”
She looks at me askance. “You care more about not upsetting Marlowe than trying to impress your dad?”
“One of them has the capacity for real love and the other doesn’t. Not that she directs any of it toward me.” I shake my head, feeling hot and stupid about my oversharing. “Sorry. I’m not my best right now.”
“I know the feeling,” she says, her lips pulling to the side. “Georgie, I know you don’t need me to get ready, but helping you deal with your family trauma sounds a lot better than going home to an empty apartment to think about mine.”
I sniff. “Well, when you put it that way, I’d love the help. Thanks, Olivia.”
Something loosens in her shoulders and she smiles. “Call me Liv.”
***
My dad chose the earlier dinner time—six at The Black Oyster, the same restaurant Logan and I were at only a few nights ago.
“So is that a good thing that he chose the earlier time?” Liv asks as she gives me one last fit check before we both leave my apartment.
She straightens a strap on my blue linen dress.
We’re about the same height—five-six—and I’m positive we could exchange clothes, but I’m equally positive she could beat me in a foot race with her legs tied together.
I lock up, and we walk downstairs to the parking lot.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing,” I tell her. “He probably had a conversation with some hospital CEO about how nothing matters more than family, and now he thinks he’s the living embodiment of that because he spends between two and eight days a month with his wife.”
Liv looks me over when we reach our run-down cars. “Well, hello, ma’am. I like seeing this side of you.”
“My dad has that effect on me,” I tell her, but she’s heard this already. She’s been hearing some version of it for the last two hours. I’ve tried to get her to open up, too, but she’s insisted this is my turn to trauma dump. She said she’ll take her turn later, but I’m worried she won’t.
Liv uses the key to unlock her beater car. “Don’t let them dictate your story.”
I click the key fob to unlock my Sentra. “I’ll do my best. Thanks for the help, Liv. I needed this.”
She smiles at me, her bangs parting just enough that I can see her eyes. “Me too.”
Twenty minutes later, the hostess at The Black Oyster is walking me past the patio where Logan and I almost ate the other night.
I spare one glance for our table, where the string lights are already glowing against the dusk and where a different couple is sitting, and I look away before his absence can sting any worse.
The hostess takes me to the table with its crisp white tablecloth, where everyone is already seated, even though I’m not late.
Lulabelle is coloring on a paper placemat with a maze, word search, and a unicorn, and she waves at me and points to the chair next to her.
That will leave one chair between my dad and me.
Perfect.
“So glad you were able to join us,” Marlowe says, rubbing my dad’s shoulder territorially.
You can have him, I think.
“Thanks,” I say. My dad jumps up to give me a long hug that I barely feel.
Then he backs up and holds my shoulders, his brown eyes taking me in like he’s really, truly missed me. “Hi, sweet pea. How are you?”
My dad’s voice sounds like rolling hills and the open road.
“Fine, Dad. You?”
“Oh, you know me,” he says, returning to his seat.
I sit next to Lulabelle, letting the space between us stand as the most obvious symbol in the world.
“Always busy. Yesterday after a four-hour surgery, I got a call that another rep left his car running with a trunk full of spinal trays worth a hundred K, and they got stolen. I had to rush to the hospital with mine,” he says, and launches into the story of how he saved the day with a patient on the operating table.
Marlowe, Nicolette, and Mark are riveted.
“Aunt Georgie, look,” Lulabelle says, and I gladly turn from the story. “I made the unicorn’s horn black.”
“Very emo,” I say.
“No way! It’s not emo. It’s pretty.”
“Who said emo can’t be pretty?”
“Uh, everyone?” she says.
Soon, my dad’s on to another story and another, not for a moment considering asking someone a question or assuming someone else might have something to say, and he’s handsome and charismatic enough that everyone lets him get away with it.
That’s the power of being such an adept salesman that you can sell people a story that makes them feel like they were in the room with him.
Poor Marlowe is eating up every word.
“But that’s enough about saving lives. Tell me how the shop is,” he says, and I make the mistake of looking up. Unfortunately, that means his eyes stop on mine instead of Marlowe’s.
So I look to her, instead, eyebrows up in curiosity. Something flickers across her face like a shadow. “We’re still trending in the right direction and paying off the loan,” she says.
“I’ll say.” Dad gives her a kiss, and the way she glows makes me look away. “I saw a payoff amount for the truck when I stopped by the house earlier. Marlowe, you’re a miracle worker. You should come with me to Columbia next week. You can help me wine and dine Veritas Med Supply. We’ll have fun.”
Marlowe’s fork pauses halfway to her mouth.
“Are you sure?” she asks. “The shop—”