Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
Tessa
Eleanor's text arrives like a small grenade: emergency double date tonight. I read it once, then twice, then a third time, as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less alarming.
They don't.
I'm still staring at my phone when I notice George, across the top of my laptop screen, doing the same. He reads it, exhales quietly through his nose, and types back we'll be there before I've even processed the question.
"Can you make it tonight?" he asks, not quite looking at me.
I swallow. "Yes."
The restaurant is the kind of place that has cloth napkins but doesn't make you feel bad about ordering fries.
Eleanor's taste exactly. Warm lighting, the smell of garlic and good bread, the low hum of a Friday night crowd that has nowhere better to be.
I feel overdressed and underprepared, which is about right.
Eleanor is already seated when we arrive, her phone face-up on the table like a command center and a seating chart printout folded into her jacket pocket with the grim purposefulness of a concealed weapon.
Daniel spots us first and stands to shake George's hand, then pulls me into a hug that says, clearly and without words, thank you for coming, please help me.
George holds out my chair before I reach it. He does it quietly, and sits down quickly, like he couldn't help pulling out my chair, but hoped I wouldn't read into it.
***
"Mother is out of control," Eleanor announces, before the water glasses are even filled. "I thought I was going to be the bridezilla. Turns out mother of the bride is a completely different species."
Daniel briefly covers his eyes with one hand.
George leans forward and starts asking questions and Eleanor looks at him like he's thrown her a life ring in open water. I reach across the table and squeeze her wrist. She squeezes back.
For approximately four minutes, we are a perfectly coordinated machine. George dismantling crises. Me running emotional triage. Daniel providing comic relief at exactly the right intervals. Eleanor catastrophizing at a volume that remains, just barely, socially acceptable.
George catches my eye during one of Eleanor's longer tangents, and his expression says we've got this. Just that. Easy and certain, like we've done this a hundred times.
We have, actually. Or something close to it. And the familiarity of it does something warm and deeply inconvenient to my chest.
***
"You two make relationships look so easy," Eleanor sighs, setting her fork down with the gravity of an official announcement.
Daniel laughs. "Don't use them as a benchmark, El. That's how we lose."
I smile at exactly the right speed. It takes everything I have.
George takes a long sip of water.
Under the table, my fingers find the edge of my napkin and twist it once, then let go.
Mercifully, the conversation pivots to Daniel's aunt and her last-minute plus-one demand, and I welcome the new topic.
***
I watch George answer Daniel's questions about the construction firm and notice, without meaning to, that he hasn't leaned toward me once tonight.
He usually does. Some small gravitational tilt I've gotten used to without realizing it, the kind that made me feel like the center of a room without anyone having to say so.
The bread basket arrives and he passes it to Eleanor first, which is correct and considerate and somehow, stupidly, still disappointing.
"So how is it, working with your girlfriend?" Daniel asks, pointing at George with a breadstick like a man making an important point.
I let George answer.
He talks about how easy it is. I look at him and try to press something real into my expression, try to summon the memory of how it felt when he kissed me, to let that feeling reach my eyes.
I glance at George.
He's watching the wine in his glass do nothing.
***
My phone buzzes in my lap. It's Callie, asking how the double date with Mr. Billionaire is going. I type back surviving because it's the only honest word I have.
"I'm really glad George found someone like you," Eleanor says then, and her face is so open and unguarded that flinching would be criminal.
Found. The word hooks on something inside me and won't let go. Like I was something stumbled upon. Like I was accidental.
"She was impossible to miss," George says.
The table laughs, and I take a sip of water and make a firm decision not to examine that sentence too closely.
Under the table, his knee shifts briefly against mine (probably accidental, probably nothing) and I go completely still.
He doesn't move away.
Eleanor asks if we've talked about moving in together, and the question detonates quietly in the center of the table, producing no smoke, no visible damage, nothing you could point to.
"We're taking things at our own pace," George says. Light and easy, a line so practiced it lands without a ripple.
Daniel raises his glass. "The correct answer."
The moment dissolves.
I watch George's hand around his wine glass. The line of his knuckle, the particular way he holds things, like he's made a small decision about each one. Then I look away.
***
George suggests wrapping up early, citing Eleanor's to-do list, and his voice is kind and logical and completely impenetrable. Eleanor accepts this without suspicion because Eleanor is mentally rearranging table assignments, and I have never been more grateful for Eleanor's seating charts.
Outside, the night air is cool and smells like rain that hasn't arrived yet. Eleanor hugs me so hard my shoulder bag slides off, whispering I don't know what I'd do without you two into my hair.
Daniel claps George on the shoulder and says same time next crisis, and George laughs.
The engaged couple rounds the corner first, Eleanor already typing, Daniel two steps behind with his hand at the small of her back, easy as breathing.
George and I walk toward the parking structure, and the silence between us has edges.
***
He asks about work. I answer correctly. We are two professionals discussing logistics at nine o'clock on a Friday night, and the competence of it is somehow the loneliest thing I've felt all evening.
Baxter comes up (something small about a grooming appointment) and I am genuinely, pathetically grateful to the dog.
I notice we are walking further apart than usual. A few extra inches of sidewalk between us. I wonder if he notices too.
We reach my car first.
I pull out my keys and he stops walking, the way you stop when you're not certain a conversation is finished. The silence stretches for a beat too long.
"Tessa," he says.
And then nothing. Just my name, hanging in the cool night air, going nowhere.
"Goodnight, George," I say, because it's easier than waiting to find out what comes after it.
He nods once. I get in the car.
***
I sit for a moment before starting the engine, watching him in the rearview mirror. His hands are in his pockets, and he is growing smaller as he moves toward his own car.
Of course, I think.
The thought is quiet and certain in a way that frightens me a little. This was always a temporary arrangement. George Maddox exists in a world with better options, and the longer this goes on, the more clearly he seems to be remembering that.
I had almost believed, for a few months, that I belonged in his life.
Tonight reminded me that some stories were never mine to keep.