Chapter Twenty #2
“It means, ‘I’m saying something to you in Italian.’ ”
I laugh.
“You said you worried that our friendship only exists when we’re together—that I don’t share this stuff with you because I’ve forgotten about you.”
“Okay.”
“I guess I also worry that you’ve outgrown me. That you don’t need me anymore.”
“I need you,” I say immediately.
But if Nate and I had gotten married, George and I wouldn’t have had this chance to reconnect.
We wouldn’t be here, lying on a hammock in a remote nook of the Clayoquot Sound.
And that idea—that we might have kept slipping further and further apart until we were unrecognizable to each other—is a far greater loss than the breakup.
Getting dumped was a knockdown punch, but I’ve picked myself back up.
Losing George would have been a slow erosion—harder to see how we’d been chipped away at, and harder still to recover from.
“Promise for a promise?” George asks, his eyes darting between mine.
“Go on.”
“You said this morning that you want to be us again,” George continues. “But I don’t think it’s possible to have the same relationship we did as kids or when we lived together. We’re thirty now. I wonder if we haven’t figured out how to be George and Frankie as adults yet.”
When we were next-door neighbors, the mailbox and our letters served as intermediaries.
As roommates, we made sure we spent at least two nights a week together, but we also left each other notes on scraps of paper and Post-its.
Sometimes I’d find a yellow square stuck to the bathroom mirror or to my wallet.
Once, I woke to find one on my forehead.
In our twenties, we kept in touch through emails and texts and calls, and we’d see each other over the holidays and when George was in Toronto. But it wasn’t the same.
“You’re probably right,” I say. I haven’t worked out how to be myself as an adult yet, let alone how to preserve our friendship as we evolve.
“I think we need to get comfortable being honest and open with each other again,” George says.
I raise my eyebrows. Opening up isn’t his strong suit. “If you can do it, I can, too.”
“The title of your memoir?”
“Exactly. So tell me about the big stuff,” I say. “Not that protein shakes aren’t newsworthy.”
He takes a deep breath. He opens his mouth, then shuts it again. “This is actually harder than I thought,” he says.
My stomach sinks. “What’s wrong?”
He runs his finger over the hammock netting, dropping his gaze. “I started seeing a therapist.”
“You have a therapist?”
His eyes flick to mine.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so surprised,” I say.
George is the last person I’d imagine in therapy.
He’s extremely private and so together. When he moved out of his dad’s place and back in with Mimi just before we turned fourteen, he had just one appointment with the school guidance counselor and refused to go a second time.
I try again. “How long have you been seeing them?”
“It’s new. We’ve been doing virtual sessions for a couple of months.”
I nod, encouraging him to keep talking.
“My doctor suggested therapy after the wildfires, but I was reluctant.”
“Because spilling your guts to a stranger is almost as painful as waiting in line?”
“That’s what I assumed. But it’s actually been sort of liberating. I went in hoping to work on one issue, but…” He laughs softly. “With my family history, it turns out there’s a lot to dig into. My therapist is having a field day.”
He’s making light of it, but his face has darkened.
“Is it helping?”
“I think so. I’ve always been dealing with this stuff. It was usually a hum in the background, but sometimes it gets loud. It’s worse when I’m stressed or tired.”
“When you say it’s loud…what is it?”
“Basically me, shit-talking myself.”
I blink and George laughs. “You look like I just admitted to identity fraud.”
“No! I’m processing. It’s great, George. I’m proud of you.”
“Yeah?” I can see a hint of apprehension in the tense set of his shoulders.
“Yeah. Mental health is obviously super important, and you recognized that you needed support and you’re getting it.” It’s so George, come to think of it. Nothing stops him.
“You might want to consider talking to someone when you get back.”
I knew it.
“Maybe,” I say. “But I don’t want to be one of those people who starts every second sentence with, ‘My therapist says…’ ”
“My therapist says that’s a very normal concern.”
“Always the comedian.”
“My therapist also says he knows a couple of practitioners who specialize in life transitions like breakups.”
“You talked to your therapist about me?”
He leans closer and lowers his voice conspiratorially. “I talk to my therapist about you nonstop.”
“Ha.”
A gust of wind carries over the water and I shiver. The skin on my arms pebbles. It strikes me how truly alone we are. It’s as if we’re the only two people in the world.
“You’re cold,” George says. “Do you want to go back into the sauna?”
“I’m happy here.”
“One sec, then.” He climbs out of the hammock and returns wearing his glasses and holding a blanket that he spreads over us both.
“What else?” I ask him. We lie facing each other, our heads propped on our hands.
“Big-picture stuff?”
I nod.
“I want to keep writing and traveling. I’d like to write a book one day.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know yet, but I want to do it. Nonfiction, obviously.” To someone else, he might sound arrogant, but I know he’s looking for the next challenge.
“I’m surprised you haven’t written one already. George Saint James, prizewinning journalist, bestselling author…It’s inevitable.”
“And I want to share my life with someone,” he says.
Now that floors me. “As in, one singular someone?”
“You don’t have to look so shocked, Frankie.”
I snap my mouth shut. “It’s just that,” I start, “and don’t take this the wrong way, but there have been a great deal of someones. You’re a bit of a…” I search for an inoffensive way to complete the sentence.
“Careful,” George warns.
“I’ll go with rake.”
“A rake is a person of low moral character.”
“I’m not judging,” I say. “I’ve also had my share of someones. I’m trying to understand. I assumed you…”
Had a lot of sex with a lot of different people.
While I make it a point not to think too hard about George’s sex life, I figured hookups were one way he burned off all of his energy.
It’s not like I don’t have evidence to support my theory.
I once came home early from my shift and found him on our couch with two women who were very annoyed I’d interrupted whatever was about to happen. I’ve heard him have sex.
“I assumed you wanted to be more or less unattached,” I say.
“You’re the one who swore she’d never get married,” he says, his brow quirking. “Multiple times, I might add.”
“I should have stuck to that.”
I used to believe that a serious relationship would tie me down, distract me from what I wanted, the way it did for my mom. I could imagine falling in love and losing myself within another person the way she did—then waking up one day panicked about everything I’d missed out on.
For my mom, it was her chance to return to the ocean, to breathe the salt air that felt like home, and to work to save the North Atlantic right whales she so adored. She ended up hurting the people she loved to reclaim the part of herself she’d given up. I never wanted to do that.
“I, on the other hand,” George says, “am much more old-fashioned.” His eyes hold mine. “I’ve always known there was only one person for me, one person who I’d be grateful to tie my life to.”
It’s an effort to keep my jaw firmly clamped.
“Why now? You’ve shown no interest in committing before.”
“That’s not true,” George says. “Lara and I were together for almost a year.”
Okay, that’s longer than I thought. “You were? As a couple couple?”
“Frankie, I brought her to your dinner party and introduced her as my girlfriend.”
“I’ve always thought you used the term loosely, like as a euphemism.”
“It wasn’t a euphemism. She was, in fact, my girlfriend.”
“But you broke up with her. You always break up with them.” Better to leave first than get left behind.
“You say that like it’s easy. It’s brutal to enter a relationship full of hope and then realize it’s not working, nor was it ever going to work. Breaking up with someone is awful.”
“You can forgive me for not feeling very sympathetic right now.”
“I don’t have any sympathy for Nate,” he says.
“Good.”
I take his glasses off his face and clean them on the blanket.
“How can you stand them like this?” I ask, blowing and then wiping, holding the lenses up to the light, and blowing again. I’m not sure why I feel so agitated.
“I think they’re clean now, Frankie,” George says after watching me repeat the process half a dozen times.
In that wisp of time, I lift my gaze to his and realize that I have looked at George’s eyes hundreds of thousands of times before, but I’ve never really stopped to appreciate how truly astounding the deep blue of his irises really is.
How electric the lighter blue is that rings his pupils.
I see myself reflected in those black orbs, as if floating in a tempestuous ocean.
“Frankie?”
My gaze drops to George’s mouth. I’ve never paid much attention to it, either.
His top lip is almost a flat line. It’s why his smile can seem so acerbic—his grin pulls it even straighter, like it is now.
The bottom one is much fuller, the poutier of the two.
It juts out when he’s thinking. When he’s making his broody face.
I’ve kissed this mouth once, and it was a colossal mistake.