She found the receipt for her wedding dress—three hundred dollars, used, from a consignment store.
“I hope whoever wore it first is happy,” Georgie’d said to Neal. “I don’t want leftover bad-marriage mojo.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Neal said. “We’re going to be so happy, we’ll neutralize it.”
He was happy then. During their engagement. She’d never seen him so happy.
As soon as Georgie said yes, as soon as the ring was on her finger—it stopped at the second knuckle of her ring finger, so he slipped it onto her pinkie—Neal jumped up and hugged her. He was smiling so big, his dimples reached theretofore unknown depths.
He held her by the base of her spine and the back of her neck, and kissed her face all over. “Marry me,” he kept saying. “Marry me, Georgie.”
She kept saying yes.
The memory was fuzzy in her head now, which seemed impossible—how could she have let any of those details go? At some point, her brain must have taken the whole scene for granted. She and Neal were so fundamentally married now, it didn’t seem important how they got there.
She remembered that he was happy. She remembered the way he cupped the back of her head and said, “From this moment onward. From every moment onward.”
God—had Neal really said that? Had she really only half-understood her own proposal?
Georgie dug back into the Save Box in earnest. . . .
Her college diploma.
Some stupid chart she’d torn out of Spy magazine.
The last Stop the Sun strip. The one where Neal’s dapper little hedgehog went to heaven.
Ah—there. Polaroids.
Georgie’s mom was the last person on earth to give up her Polaroid camera; she’d always lacked the follow-through to get 35-millimeter film developed.
There were three snapshots in the box from the day Neal proposed—all three taken inside the house, in front of the Christmas tree. Georgie was wearing a baggy T-shirt from her high school improv group that said NOW, GO!—and she looked like she’d spent the whole week crying. (Because she had.) Neal was wearing rumpled flannel and had been driving through the night. But still, they both looked so young and fresh. Skinny Georgie. Chubby Neal.
Only one of the pictures was in focus: Georgie rolling her eyes and holding her hand up to show the too-small ring, and Neal grinning. This might be the only photo ever taken of Neal grinning. This might be the only time he’d ever grinned. When he smiled big like that, his ears stuck out at the top and the bottom, like wrong-facing parentheses.
After these photos were taken, Georgie’s mom had forced pancakes on Neal, and he’d admitted that he’d gone the last two nights without sleep. “I pulled over for a few hours in Nevada, I think.” Georgie dragged him to her room and pushed him onto the bed, taking off his shoes and his belt, and unbuttoning his jeans, so she could rub his hips and his stomach and the small of his back. She burrowed with him under her comforter.
“Marry me,” he kept saying.
“I will,” she kept answering.
“I think I can live without you,” he said, like it was something he’d spent twenty-seven hours thinking about, “but it won’t be any kind of life.”
Georgie laid the Polaroids out on the floor. Three moments in motion. There he was—there he was happy and hopeful. Her Neal. The right one.
“Georgie!” her mom shouted. “Come on!”
She laid the photos out on the floor and waited for them to go black.
CHAPTER 28
Her mom opened the bedroom door without knocking and walked in. “I was coming,” Georgie said.
“Too late,” her mom replied. “We’re driving Heather out to Dr. Wisner’s now.”
Georgie always forgot that Heather had a different last name. They all had different last names. Her mom was Lyons, Heather was Wisner, Georgie was McCool. Georgie’d wanted to be Grafton, but Neal wouldn’t let her. “You don’t come into this world with a name like Georgie McCool and throw it away on the first pretty face.”
“You’re not that pretty.”
“Georgie McCool. Are you kidding me—you’re a Bond girl. You can’t change your name.”
“But I’m going to be your wife.”
“I know. And I don’t need you to change anything.”
“Have you talked to the girls today?” her mom asked.
“Not yet,” Georgie said. “I talked to them yesterday.”
Had she talked to the girls yesterday? Yes. Alice. Something about Star Wars. No . . . that was a voice mail.
Had she talked to them the day before?
“You should just come along with us,” her mom said, “for the ride. The fresh air will do you good.”
“I better stay,” Georgie said. “Neal might call.”
What would it mean if he called now? That he was still in Nebraska? That all bets were off?
“Bring your phone,” her mom said.
Georgie just shook her head.
Her mom settled down onto the floor next to her. She and Georgie were wearing matching lounge pants. Her mom’s were teal, Georgie’s were pink. Her mom reached over Georgie’s lap and picked up one of the Polaroids—a blurry one of Neal looking at Georgie and Georgie looking off camera.
“God, do you remember that?” her mom sighed. “That boy drove halfway across the country in one day; I don’t think he even stopped for coffee. He’s always been king of the grand gesture, hasn’t he?”
Down on one knee. Waiting outside Seth’s frat house. Inking cherry blossoms across her shoulders.
He always had.
Her mom set down the photo and squeezed Georgie’s velveteen knee, shaking it a little. “It’s going to get better,” her mom said. “It’s just like those commercials say. ‘It gets better.’”
“Are you talking about that campaign for gay kids?”
“It doesn’t matter what it’s for. It’s true about everything. I know you feel awful now; you’re right in the thick of it. And it’s probably going to get worse—I don’t know how you’re going to work this out with the girls. But time heals all wounds, Georgie, every single one of them. You just have to get through this. Someday you and Neal will both be happier. You just have to survive, and give it time.”
She started kissing Georgie’s face. Georgie tried not to flinch away. (And failed.) Her mom sighed again and stood up. “There’s French toast for you in the kitchen. And plenty of leftover pizza . . .”
Georgie nodded.
Her mom stopped at the door. “Do you think if I give my ‘it gets better’ speech to your sister, she’ll admit she has a girlfriend?”
Georgie almost laughed. “She doesn’t think you know.”
“I didn’t,” her mom said. “Kendrick kept telling me, ever since she wore that suit to Homecoming, but I told him it was perfectly normal for a busty girl to want to de-emphasize her curves. Look at you—you’re not gay.”
“Right . . . ,” Georgie said.
“But if she’s going to hold a girl’s hand on my couch—even a really handsome girl—well, I’m not blind.”
“Alison seems nice.”
“It’s fine with me,” her mom said. “The women in our family have terrible luck with men, anyway.”