Landline

Seth was a relentless flirt. Even with Georgie—maybe especially with Georgie.

For the first few months after they met, she found all the attention thrilling. And then—when she realized that Seth flirted with everyone, and that he was usually actively chasing another girl—it was heart-breaking.

And then it was just noise. Like his talking. Like his humming. Georgie liked it, even when she wasn’t paying attention. Sitting on the napping couch, Seth’s head on her shoulder, his wavy cherrywood hair tickling her ear . . .

They were sprawled out on the napping couch the second time Georgie saw Neal. Seth had a girlfriend at the time—leggy, cheekbony, actressy—so he was supporting his own head. Georgie stuck her elbow in his ribs. “There he is again.”

“Ow. Who?”

“The cartoonist,” she said.

“The hobbit?”

“I’m going to go introduce myself.”

“Why?”

“Because we work together,” Georgie said. “It’s what people do.”

“He doesn’t work here. He just turns in his cartoons here.”

“I’m going to introduce myself. And tell him how much I like his work.”

“You’ll wish you hadn’t,” Seth warned. “He’s a scowler. He’s the least friendly hobbit in the Shire.”

“Stop talking Tolkien at me. All I know is ‘Frodo lives.’”

Seth laid his head on her shoulder.

Georgie shrugged him off. “I’m going. To introduce myself.” She got off the couch.

“Fine,” he moped. “I hope you’re very happy together. Cute little hobbit couple with lots of roly-poly hobbit babies.”

Georgie turned back to him, but didn’t stop walking away. “I’m not hobbity.”

“You’re short, Georgie.” He spread out across the couch. “And round, and pleasant-looking. Deal with it.”

Georgie turned the corner into the production room and stopped. The writers almost never went back to the production room. The artists hung out back here—and the paste-up people on the nights that The Spoon was going to press.

Neal was sitting at a drafting table. He had a penciled comic strip laid out in front of him, and he was opening a bottle of India ink. There was a radio somewhere playing the Foo Fighters.

Georgie thought about going back to the couch.

“Hi,” she said instead.

Neal glanced up at her without lifting his head, then looked back at his comic. “Hi.”

He was wearing a black T-shirt under blue flannel, and his hair was dark and short, almost military-short.

“You’re Neal, right?”

He didn’t look up again. “Right.”

“I’m Georgie.”

“Are you?”

“Sorry?”

“Are you really?” he asked.

“Um, yes?”

He nodded. “I thought it was a pen name. Georgie McCool. Sounds like a pen name.”

“You know my name?”

Neal finally looked up at her. With round blue eyes and practically his whole head. “Your photo’s in The Spoon,” he said.

“Oh.” Georgie wasn’t usually smooth with guys—but she was usually smoother than this. “Right. So are you. I mean, your comic strip. I came back to talk to you about your comic.”

Neal was focused on his page again. He was holding an old-fashioned pen; it looked like a fountain pen with a long nib. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” she said. “I just . . . like it. I was going to tell you how much I like it.”

“Are you still going to?”

“I . . .”

His eyes met hers after a second, and she thought she might see a smile there.

She smiled back. “Yeah. I really like it. I think it’s the funniest thing in the magazine.”

She was almost sure Neal was smiling now. But it was just a twitch in his lips.

“I don’t know,” he said. “People seem to like the horoscopes. . . .”

Georgie wrote the horoscopes. (In character, sort of. It was hard to explain.) Neal knew she wrote the horoscopes. He knew her name. His hands were small, and they moved with complete surety across the paper, leaving a thick, straight line.

“I didn’t know you used real ink,” she said.

He nodded.

“Can I watch?”

He nodded again.

CHAPTER 7

Georgie’s mother had spectacular cle**age. Tan, freckled, ten miles deep.

“Genetics,” her mom said when she caught Georgie looking.

Heather shoved a bowl of green beans into Georgie’s arm. “Were you just staring at Mom’s br**sts?”

“I think so,” Georgie said. “I’m really tired—and she’s kinda begging for it in that shirt.”

“Oh, sure,” Heather said. “Blame the victim.”

“Not in front of Kendrick,” their mom said. “You’re making him blush.”

Kendrick smiled down at his spaghetti and shook his head.

Her mom had caught Georgie on her cell phone that afternoon while she was waiting for Neal to call. “Let me make you dinner. I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t,” Georgie had said. “Don’t worry.” But she’d still agreed to come by after work.

Her mom made spaghetti with homemade meatballs, and pineapple upside-down cake for dessert. And they’d all waited for Georgie to get there before they started eating, so she didn’t feel like she could excuse herself right away to call Neal. (It was almost seven thirty already, nine thirty in Omaha.)

Georgie had tried Neal’s cell phone twice on the way here. Her calls went straight to voice mail again—which didn’t necessarily mean he was still hanging out with Dawn, but also didn’t prove that he wasn’t.

(It was stupid to worry about Dawn. Neal was a teenager when he was with Dawn.)

(But weren’t people constantly leaving their spouses the moment their prom dates friended them on Facebook?)

(Plus Dawn never got old. In any sense of the word. It was always good to see her, and she always looked good. The last time Georgie’d seen Dawn, at Neal’s dad’s funeral, she looked like she’d never been removed from the package.)

“Did you talk to the girls today?” her mom asked.

“I talked to them yesterday.”

“How are they taking everything?”

“Fine.” Georgie choked down half a meatball. “There’s not actually anything to take, you know.”