Chapter 23 #2
They shared a warm laugh, the kind that woman who are becoming fast friends share.
“And would you hand off the job so easily?” Nadine asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve still got a little lipstick smear on your mouth.”
Georgia slapped her palm over her lips. “Ohmygod,” she mumbled through her fingers.
“Don’t worry. No one but me noticed. Everyone else was starstruck by Jake.”
Didn’t she know it.
“Although Jake seemed a little starstruck by you.”
Georgia let out a soul-deep sigh. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got another bottle of vodka just in case.”
Georgia was in desperate need of advice.
And she knew her friends would say they supported her no matter what, all the while plotting behind her back to get her and Jake together.
Nadine wasn’t swayed by alliances or her own idea of what was best for Georgia.
She was a stranger, yet Georgia knew so much about her family the woman felt like a friend.
“We are bursting with heavy history,” Georgia said. “A lot of it amazing but the important parts are devastating.”
“Dan and I are high school sweethearts. Soulmates. We were just nineteen when we found out we were pregnant and that Ben had spina bifida. We disagreed about carrying on with the pregnancy. It ended our marriage.”
“Oh my God. But you seem so strong and aligned.”
“We are now. We are in more love today than our wedding day. It was just the trauma and tragedy of it all. The death of the future we had planned. We grieved differently and fell out of sync, but the day Ben was born he showed up and he’s shown up every day since. It was just a timing situation.”
Is that all it could be? Timing issues? Wasn’t that the same thing Joy had said?
“You know when you’re trying to shove the last suitcase into an overhead bin, and no matter how you twist it, it just won’t fit?” Georgia took a long swig of cocoa as if it would give her liquid courage. “That’s me and him.”
Nadine tilted her head, studying her like she already knew the ending but was going to let Georgia get there on her own.
“It’s not that we haven’t done the work,” she went on. “We unpacked the baggage, labeled it, alphabetized it, and swore we’d never shove it under the bed again. But…”
“But?” she prompted.
“Our lives don’t fit. They just don’t.” Georgia let out a laugh, though it cracked halfway through.
“He’s got his world. His career that takes him all over the place.
I’ve got mine and it’s in Austin. And sure, there’s overlap.
We both like Thai takeout and reruns of The Great British Bake Off.
But in the ways that actually matter—where we live, what we want, how we see the next ten years—we’re on different maps. ”
Nadine’s eyes softened, but she didn’t rush to contradict.
“I love him,” she admitted quietly, the words tasting both sweet and bitter. “And maybe that’s the cruelest part. Because love’s not the problem. It’s everything else. And if we keep forcing it, we’re just going to break something we can’t fix.”
“You and I both know that there are a lot of things that we really can’t fix,” Nadine said, referring to the inability to stop someone from dying. “But don’t confuse fear with inability.”
Is that what she was doing? What if Nadine was right and their timing could be right this time around. That she could have someone to share the burden with, allowing her to follow her own dreams. Dreams that were bigger than her and Jake’s differences.
“Moooom,” Ben called from the front room. “Where are the cocoas?”
Nadine picked up the vodka bottle. “I think we both need another little splash or two before we walk into a room with ten preteens who have been main-lining soda and gumdrops.”
Nadine wasn’t joking when she warned about the sugar-level intoxication in the family room. One sniff and she nearly fell into diabetic coma.
Nadine went from kid to kid handing out steaming mugs, but when she got to Ben he took a sip and then set the mug down as he swallowed hard—as if he couldn’t get the liquid down.
“You okay?” Nadine asked, concern in her voice.
“It’s awesome,” Ben said reassuringly.
That was all it took to tug her mind straight back to Connor. Watching Ben fight to keep the cocoa down made Georgia’s chest tighten. There was something about the way he tried so hard to smile, even when his body betrayed him.
She could still see her little brother at eleven, parked in his wheelchair at the edge of the track, a blanket tucked over his legs and a mischievous glint in his eyes.
He used to tease her for worrying so much—“I’m not made of glass, G,” he’d say, grinning like he had the whole world figured out from four feet off the ground.
And maybe he did. Connor had a way of making everyone around him feel braver, stronger, like nothing was impossible—even when every doctor said otherwise.
Ben had that same spark. And it was that spark, that stubborn, impossible light, that made her heart twist in ways she wasn’t prepared for.
Needing a moment to collect herself, she took two mugs off the platter and approached Dan, who had Jake backed into a corner and was throwing racing statistics around as if Jake hadn’t lived them.
“Figured you two might want something stronger than hot chocolate with a candy cane stir stick.”
She handed Dan a mug. He swigged it down like it was an energy drink and he’d been pushing for forty-eight hours straight. She looked at the bags under his eyes and realized he probably had.
Jake took his mug, his fingers grazing hers in a purposeful way that made her toes curl under. He sniffed the steam and lifted a brow.
“I told you it was leaded,” she said.
Then he took her mug and sniffed. “Darlin’, if mine is leaded, yours this must be racing fuel.”
“So, how long have you two been together?” Dan asked, and Georgia could hear Nadine snort.
“Oh, we’re just friends,” Georgia said, and at the same time Jake replied, “Ten years.”
“Ten years?” Dan said. “You two will have some little rug rats running around in no time.”
Georgia started to explain that she didn’t want kids when Jake put an arm around her waist and drew her in. “We used to talk about three or four. But after today I’m thinking five. How about you, darlin’?”
And that’s when Georgia realized that you could love someone and still know you’re not supposed to end up in the same story. And this chapter was coming to an end—it had to. But she wanted to pretend, even if for just a moment, that they could last forever.
She wouldn’t get her Christmas wish, but tonight she would get her goodbye.