Chapter Thirty-One
I lie in a canvas hammock strung between two Sitka spruces at the edge of the beach.
I’m surrounded by shrubs with waxy, dark green leaves and clusters of dark purple berries.
The tide is low and the surf is mellow. I watch a mother and her small daughter walk to the water with a pint-sized surfboard.
The girl can’t be more than four, but she stomps into the ocean like she’s returning home.
She lies on the board on her belly, and her mom holds on to the tail, giving her a push when a wave comes.
She’s on her feet in seconds, gently gliding into the sand, her mother whooping happily and running toward her.
For a moment, I’m a kid again, pedaling my bike for the first time, my mom running down Old Stone Road behind me, her laughter rising on the wind.
I smile and pluck a dark purple berry from the shrub, examining it.
But then I feel his gaze. I turn my head, and George is walking toward me. He’s all ready for our hike, dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, and boots. Our eyes meet, and my heart stops.
“It’s a salal berry,” he says, nodding to the fruit in my palm. “They’re edible.”
I pop it into my mouth. It bursts between my teeth, its taste similar to a blackberry or a Concord grape. I wonder what I could make with them. The plants are everywhere, and it wouldn’t be hard to collect enough to cook with.
“I’ve never tried one. Is it any good?” he asks. Instead of answering, I pluck another from its stem and hold out my hand.
George steps closer. His fingers brush my hand as he takes the berry from me and slips it between his lips.
“I think they could be good for jam,” I tell him, aware that this is the most we’ve spoken today. I watch George fill his palm with berries and toss all but one in his mouth. He gives me the last one.
“How’s the homework going?” he asks.
When we got back to the resort after surfing, George sent me outside like a disobedient child to work on the list of things I like about myself. Of all of his activities, this is my least favorite. By far.
I hand him the piece of paper, and he broods at it. “You’ve got one item on here, Frankie.”
Good cook.
“I know.”
“And a bunch of stuff that you’ve scribbled over.”
“It was harder than I expected,” I tell him. “Every time I thought of something I value about myself, I could see the flip side, like how being passionate can also make me headstrong. Stubborn. Argumentative. I’m independent, but I’m also set in my ways. I’m competitive, and I—”
George cuts me off. “Frankie. Jesus.”
I’ve spent so much time during the past two months berating myself for my failings, attempting to make sense of why Nate dumped me. It’s easy to slip back into those thought patterns.
George holds the sheet up to his glasses, trying to read one of the things I’ve scratched out. “I didn’t realize your ego had taken this much of a flogging,” he says, sounding softer than he has all day.
“You try being dumped the day before your wedding and see how cocky you feel.”
He stares at the ocean, then crouches down, untying his laces.
“What are you doing?”
He doesn’t reply until he’s kicked off his boots.
“Move over.” George climbs into the hammock, and it takes us a minute to get comfortable, although we’re touching from shoulder to knee. “Don’t overthink it,” he says.
For a moment, I think he’s talking about the physical contact before I realize he means the list.
“I thought the point of this exercise was to think.”
He slants his head, meeting my eyes. His glasses are smudged, but I don’t automatically reach to clean them.
“Think, yes. But don’t second-guess yourself. Like you said, you’re competitive. I like that about you. You’re driven and full of fire. You don’t give up when you care about something.”
He takes my pen and writes it down. “Your turn.”
I scrunch my nose.
“Just give me three things, Frankie.”
“Would you want to do this?”
“God, no. But this is part of The Plan, and the fact that you’re struggling might be a sign that your self-esteem needs recalibrating.”
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Great.”
“If you do, too.”
He sighs. “You’re impossible.” On the other side of the page, he writes his name followed by Tenacious, Good with words, and Excellent hair.
“The hair doesn’t count,” I say.
“I grew it myself.”
Then he writes, Usually right, but not afraid to admit when wrong. He flashes me a roguish grin.
“Come on,” he says. “Your turn. Give me three adjectives off the top of your head.”
George hangs an arm over the side of the hammock and begins pushing the ground so we rock side to side.
I stare into the forest canopy. “I like to think I’m creative.”
“You definitely are.”
“I’m loyal, I show up for people, and I have good follow-through. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it.”
He writes it all down, and I exhale.
“Was that really so hard?”
“Yes, actually. That was excruciating.”
“I have another idea,” he says. “Something you might find more enjoyable.”
“A bikini wax?”
George ignores my comment. “Tell me the things about Nate that bothered you—all the stuff that drove you nuts.”
One of the articles George saved suggested making a list of all the things you disliked about your ex. It seems a little petty—not that I’m above being petty.
“You’re very good at being hard on yourself, and you’re not afraid of calling out someone for being a jerk. But you don’t speak badly of Nate.”
“He’s a really decent person.”
“He broke up with his fiancée in a letter. I’d say he’s a coward.”
“You would say that.” Not that he’s wrong.
“I’m not going to pretend to have liked the guy, but there’s no way you thought he was perfect. First of all, he can’t dance for shit.”
“That’s not fair. No one dances as well as we do.”
“True. But Nate moved like he had five feet and didn’t know where to put any of them. As if you didn’t notice.”
“That’s unkind,” I say, trying not to smile.
“This is not about being kind. This is about acknowledging that your ex was imperfect. And I’ll keep going if you don’t start talking.”
He writes down No sideburns.
“Are all your criticisms superficial?”
“I’m just working from the outside in.”
“You only met him a handful of times.”
“It was enough,” George says. “Should I continue?”
He presses the pen to the paper.
“He was a bit rigid,” I say slowly. “He was used to living on his own, sort of set in his routine.”
George has stopped writing. He’s just listening to me.
“He wouldn’t miss a morning at the gym unless I begged him to stay in bed with me.”
Sometimes I wondered if Nate liked the begging, but he never came out and said it. Sex was one area where he wasn’t an open book. And when he had a particularly strong orgasm, he let loose a gladiatorial shout of victory.
I take the page and write down simply The sound.
“Care to explain that one?” George asks.
“Probably best not to.” I chew on my lip, thinking. “Nate didn’t like any of my things. Most of it wasn’t worth keeping when I moved into his place, but I did bring that old lamp from my grandparents’ house.”
“The one with the tassels?”
“Yeah. And my plates.”
I’d been collecting vintage china since I was a teenager. Whenever I brought a piece home, I felt like I’d rescued it. Nothing matched, but I liked it that way. It was a little family of orphan dishes, and I gave them a forever home.
“I brought a few other things, but Nate said none of it made sense in his place.”
“What a dick.”
“He wasn’t really being a dick. He was just stating the obvious. He already had stuff, and he didn’t like mine. I think if I’d said I wanted to keep everything, he would have been fine with it. I guess I just wanted him to like it on his own, you know?”
It was the first time I had doubts about whether I was making a mistake. What if it didn’t end with plates? What if all the things that made me me were stamped out so slowly I didn’t even notice? But I shook myself out of it. Moving in with someone meant compromise.
“You chose each one of those plates,” George says. “They’re more than plates, and that lamp is wrapped up in your childhood. They’re part of you. You’ll have another apartment, and you can make it yours again, bring back all of your Frankie bits and bobs.”
“I got rid of everything.”
For a moment George looks sick, and I think maybe I wasn’t nuts for caring so much about my things. But then he rallies. “When I’m back from Mexico, we’ll go hunting. We’ll find old plates and frilly lamps and the old-fashioned crystal glasses you like.”
“Okay,” I say, my throat tight. I don’t want to dwell on the fact that we only have three days left together. “Why didn’t you like him?” I ask quietly.
“Honestly?”
“Yeah. Please.”
George swallows. “Despite what I said at Christmas, he wasn’t that bad, but it all happened so fast. One day you were dating and then you were engaged. I didn’t want you to make a decision you couldn’t reverse.”
“Marriage is actually fairly reversible.”
“If you had married him, you would have done everything in your power to make sure it worked. I know you, Frankie. You’re a Jo March, through and through. You would have lived and died for him.”
He’s referencing one of Christian Bale’s lines from the movie, and I know he’s right. I don’t like to fail, and while I don’t see divorce as a failure in general, I’d likely hold myself to a different standard.
“Maybe,” I murmur.
“Absolutely,” George says. “I can’t believe you’d ever question whether you were a good partner. I’ve always felt like I won the lottery having you as a friend.”
“Really?”
Lines form between his brows. “You’d do anything for the people who are important to you. Moving next door to you remains the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Now my nose tingles and I look away.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, but the word comes out choked.
“You can tell me anything. Please don’t shut me out.” George’s voice is calm. Soothing. I shift so that I lie facing him, and he does the same.
“I feel like you left me behind. You’ve been traveling overseas nonstop for the past three years. Then you pulled away after our fight at Christmas. George, I really didn’t know if you were going to come to the wedding.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know I was a shitty friend to you. I felt blindsided by your engagement. I was angry that I found out the way I did. But if I could take back the way I behaved, I would.”
“You wouldn’t have told me I was making a mistake?”
His mouth slants. “No, I’d still tell you that. But I’d do it very differently.”
We watch each other for a moment, and I realize that my pulse is fluttering like hummingbird wings. Something is shifting between us.
“It’s not just the last six months,” I say. “Things have felt off for a few years.” Ever since he came back from covering the fires. I thought he’d spend more time in Toronto after that, but he journeyed farther and farther away. “Did I do something wrong?”
He shakes his head. “You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s all me. I’ve been trying to figure some things out, and I needed to do that on my own.” He pauses, his jaw flexing. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, or make you feel like you don’t matter. Nobody matters more to me than you and Mimi.”
My lungs are two balloons beneath my ribs, and I’m not sure my chest will be able to contain them. As I stare into George’s eyes, at that electric blue ring around his pupils, it hits me.
He watches me, his forehead furrowing. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” I say. But I’m not, because my whole world just exploded.
My heart is a dangerous, treacherous thing. Feelings I thought I’d dismissed long ago are now pushing at the seams of me, threatening to split apart my entire being.
“Should we go for that hike?” George asks.
I look at my best friend, my pulse racing. “Okay.”
His eyes narrow. “You sure you’re good?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “Just not quite myself right now.”
“Maybe a walk will help?”
“Maybe,” I murmur.
But I know there’s no helping me. Because I think I have feelings for George, and only peril can lie ahead.