He took a step back, so Georgie stepped out onto the front porch. She wanted to grab him. (It was probably safe to grab him—Neal probably hadn’t come to her house on Christmas morning just to break up with her extra hard, right? He wouldn’t have come back just to tell her he was leaving?)
Neal’s eyes were thin, and his face was tight. He looked like she was still hurting him. “Georgie,” he said.
Georgie started crying instantly. From zero to eleven. “Neal.”
Neal shook his head, and she jerked forward to hug him. Even if he had come just to make sure she knew they were really over, Georgie was going to get one more desperate embrace out of this.
His arms came around her shoulders, and he held her so tight, they rocked back and forth. “Georgie,” Neal said, then started pulling away.
She didn’t let him.
“Georgie,” he said, “wait.”
“No.”
“Yes. Wait. I need to do something.”
She still didn’t let go; Neal had to unwind her arms and take a step back.
As soon as he was away, he dropped to one knee. Georgie thought maybe he was going to apologize, that he was falling at her feet. “No,” she said, “you don’t have to.”
“Shhh. Just let me do this.”
“Neal . . .”
“Georgie, please.”
She folded her arms and looked miserable. She didn’t want him to say he was sorry. That would take them right back into the heart of their sorry situation.
“Georgie,” he said. “I love you. I love you more than I hate everything else. We’ll make our own enough—will you marry me?”
Georgie stopped, in the middle of fastening a bra behind her back, and turned to face herself in the dressing room mirror.
Oh . . .
CHAPTER 22
Christmas.
On one knee.
Looking straight through her.
“We’ll make our own enough,” he’d said.
Last night on the telephone, Georgie had asked Neal if love was enough.
And fifteen years ago, he’d answered her.
Was that . . . could it just be a coincidence?
Or did it mean . . .
That it had already happened.
That this—all of this, the phone calls, the fighting, the four-hour conversations—had already happened. For Neal. Fifteen years ago.
What if Georgie wasn’t disrupting the timeline with these phone calls—what if this was the timeline? What if it had been the timeline all along?
“We’ll make our own enough,” Neal had said that day at her door.
Georgie remembered him saying it, remembered that it sounded nice—but all she was focused on at the time was the ring in his hand.
Could it be that Neal was referring to a conversation he’d thought she was a part of?
“What if it isn’t enough?” Georgie asked him last night.
“We’ll make our own enough,” he promised her in 1998. “Will you marry me?”
CHAPTER 23
“Oh.”
Georgie gaped at herself in the mirror. “Oh my God,” she gasped.
“It can’t be that bad,” Heather said from outside the fitting room. “You’re not even forty.”
“No, I . . .” Georgie walked out of the mauve cubicle, pulling her mother’s pug sweatshirt down over her head. “I need to go home now.”
“I thought Neal was calling you at our house.”
“Right, I need to go there. Now.”
The attendant met them just outside the room. “Did any of those work out?”
“This one’s fine,” Georgie said. She reached under her shirt and snapped the tags off the bra, handing them to the salesperson. “I’ll take this one.” She started walking toward the cash register.
Neal had never told Georgie why he changed his mind—why he forgave her, why he came back to California and proposed. And Georgie had never asked. She hadn’t wanted to give him an opportunity to reconsider. . . .
But maybe this was why. Maybe she was why. Now.
“I’m sorry,” the salesperson said. “I can’t let you wear that out. Store policy.”
Georgie stared at her. She was a thin, white woman, a little younger than Georgie, with taupe-colored lipstick. She’d kept trying to come into the dressing room with Georgie to make sure the bras were fitting correctly. “But I’m buying it,” Georgie said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Store policy.”
“Fine,” Georgie said, “I need to go—I’ll just take it off and do all this some other day.”
“But you already removed the tags. You have to purchase it.”
“Right.” Georgie nodded. “Fine.”
She reached up behind her to unclasp the bra, then after a few seconds of maneuvering, pulled it out one of her sleeves and dropped it on the counter.
“Ring it up twice,” Heather said. “She’ll take two.”
The salesperson went to get another bra.
“You are such a badass,” Heather said, grinning at her. “Have I mentioned that I want to be you when I grow up?”
“I don’t have time for this. We need to leave. Now.”
“But we were going to the Apple Store. Georgie, please. I want an iPad, I’ve already named it.”
“You can order it online. We need to leave.”
“Seriously? You’re really buying me an iPad? Can I also order a pony?”
When Neal left California that Christmas, he and Georgie were as good as broken up, and when he came back, he wanted to marry her. And in between, in between . . .
Maybe this. Maybe her.
Maybe this week, these phone calls—everything—had already happened. Somehow, sometime . . .
And Georgie just had to make sure that it happened again.
“Georgie? Hey.”
Heather shoved the bag of bras into Georgie’s chest. Georgie caught them.
“Sorry to interrupt your aneurysm,” Heather said, “but you said that time was of the essence here.”
“Right,” Georgie said, “right.” She followed Heather to the car, then handed her the key fob. “You drive.”
“Why?” Heather asked.
“I need to think.”
Georgie climbed into the passenger seat and tapped her dead phone against her chin. She didn’t even bother plugging it in.
CHAPTER 24
Georgie set the yellow rotary phone in front of her on the bed and stared at it. She resisted the urge to check the dial tone, just in case Neal called at that exact second.