“I wasn’t crying wolf.” He scooted his chair closer to hers. “I was crying hobbit.”
“What if I did this to you when you were on the make?”
“Oh God, Georgie, take it back. You can’t be on the make with the cartoon hobbit.”
“I never pass judgment on any of your girlfriends.”
“Because they’re all nice and gorgeous. Uniformly. God, they should wear uniforms, isn’t that a delicious idea?”
“The point is—I get to do this, Seth. I get to talk to guys. Do you want me to spend the rest of my life alone?”
“No. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then back off.”
He leaned forward, resting an elbow on her armrest. “Are you lonely, Georgie? Do you have needs?”
“I said back off.”
“Because you could tell me about your needs,” he said. “I think our friendship is ready for that.”
“I hate you.”
“Where ‘hate’ equals ‘love’ and also ‘can’t live without.’”
“I’m ignoring you now.”
“Wait, I really do need your help with this.” He turned his computer monitor toward her and pointed. “Is this funny? It’s a Snoopy/Snoop Dogg thing, and every time Charlie Brown tries to feed him, he’s like, ‘Thanks, Chizzuck.’ . . .”
The next time Seth tried to interrupt her while she was talking to Neal, Georgie really did ignore him. She sent him away with an “I’m sure it can wait.”
That made Neal look almost all the way up from his comic strip. He raised an eyebrow, and the side of his lips curved up into a closed-mouth smile.
Neal had nice lips.
Maybe everybody had nice lips, and you only really noticed it when you stared at their mouths all the time.
Georgie stared at Neal’s mouth all the time.
It was easy to stare at Neal because he was always looking down at his comic; there was no danger of getting caught. And it was easy to stare at Neal because Neal was easy to stare at.
Maybe not breathtaking. Not the way Seth could be when he was all dressed up and posing and he’d just run his fingers through his hair.
Neal didn’t take Georgie’s breath away. Maybe the opposite. But that was okay—that was really good, actually, to be near someone who filled your lungs with air.
Georgie just liked to look at Neal. She liked his dark-but-not-very-dark hair. She liked his pale skin. Neal was so pale, even on his cheeks and the backs of his short, broad hands. Georgie wasn’t sure how anyone could stay that pale, walking around campus all day. Maybe Neal carried a parasol. Anyway, it made his lips seem really pink, in comparison.
Neal’s lips were first-rate—small and neat and symmetrical. Horizontally symmetrical, the top lip almost exactly the same thickness as the bottom. There were even matching dents, one just above his top lip and one just below his bottom lip. A permanent, 20 percent pucker.
Of course Georgie thought about kissing him.
Probably everybody thought about kissing Neal, once they’d gotten a good look at him. That was probably why he was so loath to make eye contact with anyone—crowd control.
Neal was drawing something now in the margin of his comic strip. A girl. Glasses, heart-shaped face . . . hair coiling in every direction. Then he drew a thought bubble: “I can’t stay back here all day. Comedy needs me!”
Georgie worried she was blushing. “Am I bothering you?”
Neal shook his head. “This can’t be exciting for you.”
“It’s not exciting, it’s . . . mesmerizing. It’s like watching somebody do magic.”
“I’m drawing a hedgehog wearing a monocle.”
“It’s like you can make anything you want come out of your hands,” she said. “That’s magic.”
“Maybe if it were an actual hedgehog coming out of my hand.”
“I’m sorry.” She sat up in her chair. “I’ll let you work.”
“I can work with you here.” He didn’t look up.
“But—”
“I can even work if you talk.”
Georgie settled back in the chair, hesitantly. “Okay.”
Neal added another thought bubble to her caricature: “Now what am I supposed to say?!?!”
Then he drew a thought bubble coming out of the bottom of the page, pointing back at himself: “Anything you want, Georgie McCool.”
And then a smaller thought bubble: “If that is your real name . . .”
Georgie knew she was blushing. She watched his hand go back to the comic, then cleared her throat. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
That got a smile out of Neal, a real smile, with both sides of his mouth. “Nebraska,” he said.
“Is that like Kansas?”
“It’s more like Kansas than other things, I guess. Do you know a lot about Kansas?”
“I’ve watched The Wizard of Oz many, many times.”
“Well then,” he said, “Nebraska’s like Kansas. But in color.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Mesmerizing you.”
“You came to California to mesmerize me?”
“I should have,” he said. “That beats the real reason.”
“Which is . . .”
“I came to California to study oceanography.”
“That sounds like a perfectly good reason,” she said.
“Well”—he flicked his pen in short strokes around the hedgehog’s face—“as it turns out, I don’t actually like the ocean.”
Georgie laughed. Neal’s eyes were laughing with her. “I’d never seen it before I got here,” he said, glancing quickly up at her. “I thought it seemed cool.”
“It’s not cool?”
“It’s really wet,” he said. “And also outside.”
Georgie kept laughing. Neal kept inking.
“Sunburn . . . ,” he said, “seasick . . .”
“So now what are you studying?”
“I am definitely still studying oceanography,” he said, nodding at his drawing. “I am definitely here on an oceanography scholarship, still studying oceanography.”
“But that’s terrible. You can’t study oceanography if you don’t like the ocean.”
“I may as well.” He almost smiled again. “I don’t like anything else either.”
Georgie laughed.
Neal added another thought bubble to the bottom of the page: “Almost anything.”
“You can’t leave yet.” Seth stood in the doorway with his arms crossed.
“Seth, it’s seven o’clock.” Nine in Omaha. Or maybe 1998 in Omaha.
“Right,” he said, “and you didn’t get here until one, and you’ve been practically useless all day.”
“A, that isn’t true,” Georgie argued. “And B, if I’m being useless, I may as well go home.”
“No,” he pleaded, “stay. Maybe you’re about to come out of it.”
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “And possibly still hungover. And you know what? You’ve also been useless for the last three hours—what’s your excuse?”
“I’m useless when you’re useless, Georgie”—Seth swept one hand up helplessly—“that’s a long-established fact.”
She unplugged her phone. “Then maybe we’ll both be in better shape tomorrow.”
“You can talk to me about this,” he said, his voice low and losing all pretense. “Whatever’s going on with you today. This week.”
Georgie looked up at him. At his brown eyes and still-not-even-a-little-bit-gray hair. Never removed from the package.
He was her best friend.
“No,” she said. “I can’t.”