Rainbow Rowell - Landline

Neal.

Milk chocolate hair, pale skin, a red sweater she’d never seen before. A look on his face she’d never seen before. Like he didn’t know her at all.

He stopped.

The kitchen door swung to and fro behind him.

“Neal,” Georgie whispered.

His mouth was open. Lovely mouth, lovely matching lips, lovely dents like handholds for Georgie’s teeth.

His eyebrows were low and stern, and when he closed his jaw, there was a tense pulse in the corners of his cheeks.

“Neal?”

Five seconds passed. Ten. Fifteen.

Neal right there. In jeans and blue socks and a strange sweater.

Was he happy to see her? Did he even know her? Neal?

The door flew open behind him. “Daddy? Grandma says—”

Alice walked into the room, and Georgie felt like someone had just kicked her in the back of the knees.

Alice jumped. Just like kids do in the movies. For joy. “Mommy!” She ran for Georgie.

Georgie’s phone slid out of her hand as she dropped to the floor.

“Mommy!” Alice shouted again, landing in Georgie’s arms. “Are you our Christmas present?”

Georgie held Alice so tight, it probably hurt, and covered the side of the girl’s face with kisses. Georgie didn’t see the kitchen door open again, but she heard Noomi squeal and meow, and then there were two of them in her arms, and Georgie was falling sideways off her knees, trying to hold on.

“Missed you,” she said between kisses, blinded by pink skin and yellow-brown hair. “Missed you so much.”

Alice pulled back, and Georgie tightened her arm around her. But Neal was lifting Alice up and away. “Daddy,” Alice said, “Mommy’s here. Were you surprised?”

Neal nodded and lifted Noomi up, too, setting them both aside. Noomi meowed in protest.

Neal held his hands out to Georgie, and she took them. (So warm in her freezing fingers.) He pulled her to her feet, then let go. He still wasn’t smiling, so she didn’t smile either. She knew she was crying, but tried to ignore it.

“You’re here,” he said without moving his lips.

Georgie nodded.

Neal moved quickly, taking her face in his hands—one on her cold cheek, one under her jaw—and pulling it into is.

She felt relief blow through her like a ghost.

Neal.

Neal, Neal, Neal.

Georgie touched his shoulders, then the back of his hair—still sharp—then the tops of his ears, rubbing them between her fingers and thumbs.

She couldn’t remember the last time they’d kissed like this. Maybe they’d never kissed like this. (Because neither of them had ever almost fallen off a cliff.)

“You’re here,” he said again.

And Georgie nodded, stepping forward just in case he was thinking of pulling away.

She was here.

And it didn’t fix anything. It didn’t change anything.

She still had her job. And the meeting maybe. She still had Seth to sort out—or not. Georgie hadn’t made any real decisions. . . .

But for once she’d made the right choice.

She was here.

With Neal. Whatever that meant from now on.

He kissed her like he knew exactly who she was. He kissed her like he’d been waiting for her for fifteen years.

Alice and Noomi jumped on their parents’ feet and hugged their legs.

There was a dog in there somewhere, and Neal’s mom talking about setting an extra place at the table.

“You’re here,” Neal said, and Georgie held him by the ears so he couldn’t pull away.

She nodded.

Neal parked the Saturn in Georgie’s driveway. He leaned forward and rested his head against the steering wheel. Christ, he was going to fall asleep.

That would make a great Christmas surprise—Georgie knocking on his window later, asking him if he’d move his car.

He bounced his head on the wheel.

Come on, Neal. You can do this. She might say no, but at least you can ask the question.

He tried not to think of the last time he’d asked this question, when he already knew Dawn would say yes, and he already knew he didn’t want her to.

Dawn would’ve said yes if he’d asked her again this week; he could tell by the way she’d been looking at him.

Christ, he could see it. The wedding. The marriage. The rest of his life with Dawn. It would all be so pleasant and predictable, he didn’t even have to live it to know the ending.

He couldn’t predict the next ten minutes with Georgie. Not ever. But especially not today. The next ten minutes . . . She might say no—she’d been begging him to break up with her on the phone all week.

But all she’d done was convince him that he couldn’t.

Even fifteen hundred miles away, even on the phone, Georgie was more alive than anything else in his life.

He felt his cheeks warm, just thinking about seeing her again. That’s what Georgie did to him. She pulled the blood to the surface of his skin. She acted on him. Tidally. She made him feel like things were happening. Like life was happening—and even if he was miserable sometimes, he wasn’t going to sleep through it.

He ran his hand over his pocket. The ring was still there.

It had been there since he left the nursing home; his great-aunt had pressed it into Neal’s hands—“I don’t need this anymore. I never really needed it, but Harold liked to see it on my finger.” It was a family ring, she said. It should stay in the family.

Neal made up his mind as soon as he saw it.

The future was going to happen, even if he wasn’t ready for it. Even if he was never ready for it.

At least he could make sure he was with the right person.

Wasn’t that the point of life? To find someone to share it with?

And if you got that part right, how far wrong could you go? If you were standing next to the person you loved more than everything else, wasn’t everything else just scenery?

Neal unbuckled his seat belt.

“It doesn’t look real.”

“What does it look like?”

“Like a Very Special Christmas Episode.”

“Hmmm . . .” Neal’s mouth was warm on the back of her neck. “A two-parter,” he said. “With some sort of Christmas Carol gimmick.”

“Exactly,” Georgie said. “Or It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Neal’s mouth was warm and wet. “Are you cold, George Bailey?”

“No,” she said.

“You’re shivering.”

“M’not cold.”

He held her tighter anyway.

“It just falls like this?” she asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Even when no one’s watching?”

“I think so, but I guess I can’t prove it.”

“I can’t believe I almost missed this.”

“But you didn’t miss it,” he said.

“I almost did. . . .”

“Don’t. We’ve already been through it.”

“We haven’t,” she said. “Not really.”

“We’ve been through it enough.”

“But, Neal I—I just really missed you.”

“Okay, but you can stop now. I’m right here. Stop missing me.”

“Okay.”

The snow kept falling. In slow motion.

“I missed you, too,” Neal said. “I missed you telling me.”

“Telling you what?”

“Everything. What you’re thinking. What you’re worried about. What you want for dinner.”

“You missed me saying that I feel like Thimpu chicken again?”

“I didn’t miss you saying that—I just missed you saying, you know?”

“Maybe,” she said.

“Tell me something now, Georgie.”

“What?”

“Tell me what I missed,” he said, then squeezed her: “Are you sure you’re not cold?”

“No.”

“You’re still shivering.”

“I . . .” She turned her head, so she could see his face. “Petunia had her puppies.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, my mom wasn’t home, so I helped deliver them.”

“Jesus, really?”

“Yeah. And . . . my sister’s gay.”

“Heather?”

“I only have one sister. Maybe she’s not gay, but she definitely has a girlfriend.”

“Huh . . .” Neal narrowed his eyes, then shook his head.

“What?”

“I . . . for a second, just—nothing, déjà vu or something.”

Georgie turned completely in his arms, and took his face in her hands. There were snowflakes on his cheeks and nose and eyelashes. She wiped them away. “Neal . . .”

He wrapped his arms tight around her waist again. “Don’t, Georgie. We’ve been through it. Enough. For now.”

“It’s just—one more thing.”

“Okay, one more thing.”

“I’m going to be better.”

“We both are.”

“I’m going to try harder.”

“I believe you.”

She held his face still and sank her eyes into his as deeply as she could. She tried to pour fire into them. “From this day forward, Neal.”

Neal lowered his eyebrows, tenderly, like he was untangling something that might fall apart in his hands.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Georgie leaned in and stopped him. She couldn’t help herself, his lips were right there. Neal’s lips were always right there—that’s one reason it was so frustrating when she felt like she wasn’t allowed to kiss him.

She kissed him now. He spread his fingers out against her ribs and let her push his head back.

When Georgie jerked away, he made a noise like it hurt. “Come on, Georgie. No more ‘one more thing’s.’”

“No, I just remembered—I have to call my mom.”

“You do?”