CHAPTER 15
Seth and Scotty both liked to be laughed at.
As long as Georgie laughed at their jokes, they usually wouldn’t notice that she wasn’t contributing to the brainstorming, that she was just writing things they said on the whiteboard and underlining them.
But today wasn’t usually. Seth was still watching Georgie like he was trying to figure out was going on. . . .
Well, he could keep on trying—he was never going to come up with, Magic fucking phone! (Though Georgie was a little worried he’d figure out she wasn’t wearing underwear.) Seth and Scotty brainstormed.
Georgie brain-hurricaned.
What if it was happening for a reason? What if she was supposed to fix what was wrong between her and Neal? “What’s wrong?” wasn’t such an easy question to answer.
Oh, she could answer it broadly:
A lot.
A lot was wrong between them, even on good days. . . .
(The breakfast-in-bed and coming-home-early days. Days when Neal’s eyes were bright. When the girls made him smile, and he made them laugh. Easy days. Christmas mornings. Coming-home-late days when Neal would catch Georgie at the door and crowd her against the wall.) Even on good days, Georgie knew that Neal was unhappy.
And that it was her fault.
It wasn’t just that she let him down, and put him off, and continually left him waiting— It was that she’d tied him to her so tight. Because she wanted him. Because he was perfect for Georgie, even if she wasn’t perfect for him. Because she wanted him more than she wanted him to be happy.
If she loved Neal, if she really loved him . . .
Shouldn’t she want more for him than with me, always with me?
What if Georgie could give Neal the chance to start over? What would he do?
Would he join the Peace Corps? Would he go back to Omaha? Marry Dawn? Marry somebody even better than Dawn?
Would he be happy?
Would he come home from work every night, smiling? Would Dawn or Better-Than-Dawn already have dinner on the table?
Would Neal crawl into bed and pull her close to him, fall asleep with his nose in the hollow of her neck. . . .
Georgie had gotten that far in her imagining—to Neal spooning with his more-suitable-than-Georgie wife—when she imagined Neal’s second-chance kids in this second-chance world. Then she slammed the door shut on all his hypothetical happiness.
If the universe thought Georgie was going to erase her kids from the timeline, it had another fucking thing coming.
She went to the bathroom and cried for a few minutes. (That was one good thing about being the only woman on the writing staff—Georgie almost always had the bathroom to herself.) Then she spent the next hour mentally throwing the yellow rotary phone down a deep well and filling it in with concrete.
She wasn’t going to touch that thing again.
It wasn’t really a conduit to the past. It wasn’t magic. There was no such thing as magic. (I don’t believe in fairies. Sorry, Peter Pan.) But Georgie still wasn’t going to risk it. She wasn’t a Time Lord, she didn’t want a Time-Turner. She felt weird even praying for things—because it didn’t seem like she should ask God for something that wasn’t already part of the plan.
What if Georgie accidentally erased her marriage with these phone calls? What if she erased her kids? What if she’d already screwed something up—would she even know?
She tried to remind herself that this was all an illusion. That she didn’t have to worry about the dangerous implications, because illusions don’t have implications.
That’s what she tried to remind herself, but she wasn’t sure she believed it.
Illusion.
Delusion. Mirage.
Magic fucking phone.
“Korean tacos again?” Seth asked.
Georgie nodded.
After two months of hanging out in The Spoon’s production room, Georgie was 53 percent sure that Neal liked her.
He put up with her; that seemed to mean something. He never asked her to go away. (Was she really going to put that in the plus column? Not asking her to go away?) He talked to her. . . .
But only if Georgie talked to him first. If she sat across from him long enough.
Sometimes it seemed like Neal might be flirting with her. Other times, she couldn’t even tell whether he was listening.
She decided to test him.
The next time Neal came down to The Spoon, Georgie said hi, but she stayed at her desk, hoping that he might come to her for once.
He didn’t.
She tried it again a few days later. Neal nodded when Georgie said hello, but he didn’t stop or walk over.
She told herself to take the hint.
“I notice you seem to be avoiding the hobbit hole,” Seth observed.
“I’m not avoiding,” Georgie said. “I’m working.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “You’re working. I’ve noticed your uncrackable work ethic all those nights you barricaded yourself back in the hobbit hole just as soon as Bilbo showed his face.”
“Are you complaining about my work ethic now?”
“I’m not complaining, Georgie. I’m noticing.”
“Well, stop,” she said.
“Did he break it off? Were you too tall for him?”
“We’re the same height. Actually.”
“Really. That’s adorable. Like salt and pepper shakers.”
Georgie must have looked 53 percent wrecked because Seth let it drop. Later, when they were working on their column, both of them huddled in front of Georgie’s computer, Seth gave her ponytail a solid pull. “You’re too good for him.”
He said it quietly.
Georgie didn’t turn from her screen. “Probably not.”
He pulled her hair again. “Too tall. And too pretty. And too good.”
Georgie swallowed.
“I’m not worried about you,” Seth said. “Someday your prince will come.”
“And you’ll do your best to scare him off.”
“I’m glad that we both understand the terms.” He pulled her hair.
“That hurts, you know.”
“I’m trying to get your mind off the emotional pain.”
“If you do it again, I’m going to slap you.”
He immediately tugged on her ponytail. Gently this time. Georgie let it slide.