“Meow,” Georgie said. “Infinity times infinity. I love you so much, it hurts.”
Noomi’s face fell. “It hurts?”
“She doesn’t mean it literally,” Alice said. “Right, Mom? Not literally?”
“No. Well. Sometimes.”
Neal stepped forward. “Okay. Time to catch a plane.”
Georgie stole half a dozen more kisses while she buckled the girls into their car seats, then stood by the side of the van with her arms folded nervously across her chest.
Neal stepped up to her and looked over her shoulder, like he was thinking. “We land at five,” he said, “Central time. So it’ll be around three here. . . . I’ll call you when we get to my mom’s.”
Georgie nodded, but he still wasn’t looking at her.
“Be safe,” she said.
He checked his watch. “We’ll be fine—don’t worry about us. Just do what you have to do. Rock your meeting.” And then he was hugging her, sort of, an arm around her shoulder, his mouth bumping against hers. By the time he said, “Love you,” he was already pulling away.
Georgie wanted to catch him by the shoulders.
She wanted to hug him until her feet left the ground.
She wanted to tuck her head into his neck and feel his arms a little too hard around her ribs.
“Love you,” she said. She wasn’t sure if he heard her.
“I love you!” she shouted at the girls, knocking on the backseat window and kissing it because she knew it made them laugh; the back windows of their Prius were covered in kiss smears.
They were waving at her like crazy. Georgie stepped away from the van, waving with both hands. Neal was in the front seat talking to the driver.
She thought he might have looked back at her once, before the van turned the corner—her hands froze in the air.
And then they were gone.
CHAPTER 3
“Do you need some help?”
Georgie blinked.
Seth was standing beside her. Tapping the top of her head with a folder. Jeff German wanted an episode rewritten before the writers all left for the holidays—and it was mostly Georgie’s job to finish it. (Because she didn’t trust anyone else to help.) (Which was her own issue. And not something she should be irritated about.)
The whole afternoon had been a blur of noise and food and Christmas carols. For some reason—well, for alcoholic reasons—everyone had decided to sing Christmas songs from two to three thirty. Then somebody, maybe Scotty, had tried to slide a shrimp tray under her office door. Now it was six, and quiet, and Georgie was finally making progress on the script change.
“No,” she told Seth. “I’ve got it.”
“You sure?”
She didn’t look up from her screen. “Yep.”
He settled against the desk, her side of the desk, next to her keyboard. “So . . .”
“So what?”
“So,” he said, “they went to Omaha.”
Georgie shook her head, even though the answer was yes. “It made sense. We already had the plane tickets, and I’m going to be working all week anyway.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Seth nudged her arm with his leg. Georgie looked up. “What’re you gonna do on Christmas?”
“I’ll go to my mom’s.” It was only sort of a lie. She could still go. Even if her mom wasn’t home.
“You could come to my mom’s.”
“I would,” Georgie said. “If I didn’t have my own.”
“Maybe I’ll go to your mom’s, too.” Seth grinned. “She loves me.”
“That’s not much of a character reference.”
“You know, she called here three times this morning before you got in. She thinks you let your phone die on purpose. To avoid her.”
Georgie turned back to her screen. “I should.”
Seth stood up and slung his leather messenger bag over his shoulder. It was going to take Georgie another hour to rewrite this scene. Maybe she should just start over. . . .
“Hey. Georgie.”
She kept typing. “Yeah.”
“Georgie.”
She looked up one more time. He was standing at the door, studying her. “We’re so close,” he said. “It’s finally happening.”
Georgie nodded and tried to smile. It was another weak effort.
“Tomorrow,” Seth said, then thumped the doorframe with his palm and walked away.
Georgie was on her way home when her sister called.
“We ate without you,” Heather said.
“What?”
“It’s nine o’clock. We were hungry.”
Right. Dinner. “That’s okay,” Georgie said. “Tell Mom I’ll call tomorrow.”
“She still wants you to come over tonight. She says your marriage is over, and you need our support.”
Georgie wanted to close her eyes, but she was driving. “My marriage isn’t over, Heather, and I don’t need your support.”
“So Neal didn’t leave you and take the kids to Nebraska?”
“He took them to see their grandmother,” Georgie said. “It’s not like he’s fighting me for custody.”
“Neal would totally get custody, don’t you think?”
He totally would, Georgie thought.
“You should come over,” Heather said. “Mom made tuna mac.”
“Did she put peas in it?”
“Nope.”
Georgie thought about her empty house in Calabasas. And the empty suitcase sitting next to the closet. Her empty bed.
“Fine,” she said.
“Do you have an iPhone charger?” Georgie dropped her keys and her phone on the kitchen counter. She never carried a purse anymore; she kept her driver’s license and a credit card out in the car, shoved in the glove compartment.
“I would if you bought me an iPhone.” Heather was leaning on the counter, eating tuna mac out of a glass storage container.
“I thought you already ate,” Georgie said.
“Don’t talk to me like that. You’ll give me an eating disorder.”
Georgie rolled her eyes. “Nobody in our family gets eating disorders. Stop eating my dinner.”
Heather took another giant bite, then handed Georgie the container.
Heather was eighteen, a change-of-life baby—meaning, Georgie’s mom had decided to change her life by sleeping with the chiropractor she worked for, and accidentally got pregnant at thirty-nine. Her mom and the chiropractor were married just long enough for Heather to be born.
Georgie was already in college by then, so she and Heather only lived in the same house for a year or two. Sometimes Georgie felt more like Heather’s aunt than her big sister.
They looked enough alike to be twins.
Heather had Georgie’s wavy, browny-blond hair. And Georgie’s washed-out blue eyes. And she was built like Georgie was in high school, like a squashed hourglass. Though Heather was a little taller than Georgie. . . .
That was lucky for her. Maybe someday, when Heather got pregnant, the babies wouldn’t beat out her waist like a Caribbean steel drum. “It’s those C-sections,” Georgie’s mom would say. As if Georgie had chosen to have two C-sections, as if she’d ordered them off the menu out of sheer laziness. “I had you girls the natural way, and my body bounced right back.”
“Why are you staring at my stomach?” Heather asked.
“Still trying to give you an eating disorder,” Georgie said.
“Georgie!” Her mom walked into the room, holding a small but very pregnant pug up to her chest. Georgie’s stepdad, Kendrick—a tall African-American guy, still in his dusty construction clothes—wasn’t far behind. “I didn’t hear you come in,” her mom said.
“I just got here.”