“I really don’t mind,” she said. “Don’t you have a date?”

He nodded slowly. “I do have a date.”

“With the lovely Breanna, I’ve heard.”

“With the lovely Breanna,” Seth said, still nodding; he pursed his lips and twisted them to the side.

“Go on,” she said. “You can owe me.”

Seth narrowed his eyes at Georgie, then at Neal, then seemed to make up his mind. “Okay.” He stood up. “I owe you.”

“Have fun on your date,” she said.

He got as far as the door, then spun around. “You know what? I’ll call Breanna. I can’t just abandon you like this. It’s going to be late, you’ll have to walk to your car by yourself—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Neal said. Georgie looked back at him, surprised to hear his voice. “I’ll be here,” he said. “I’ll make sure she gets to her car.”

Seth stared at Neal. Georgie was pretty sure they’d never made eye contact before; she waited for one or both of them to start on fire.

“What a gentleman,” Seth said.

“It’s nothing,” Neal parried.

“Great,” Georgie said, trying to signal Seth with her eyes—wishing they had a nonverbal sign for Leave me alone with this cute guy, you idiot. “Problem solved. Go ahead, Seth. Go on your date. Get down with your bad self.”

“I guess that’s settled then. . . .” Seth nodded again. “All right. Well. See you tomorrow, Georgie. You still coming over? To my room?”

“Yep. Give me a call when you sweep out the lovely Breanna and all of her underthings.”

“Right,” he said, and finally walked away.

Georgie turned back to Neal, feeling fluttery.

“You have terrible taste in sidekicks,” he said after a moment.

“Writing partner,” she corrected.

“Hmm.”

Neal did walk her to her car that night. And he was a perfect gentleman.

Much to Georgie’s disappointment.

Neal had sounded different, too, last night on the phone.

His voice was a little higher, his thoughts came out looser. Neal with less clench, less control.

He’d sounded like the boy on the other side of the drafting table.

CHAPTER 15

Seth and Scotty both liked to be laughed at.

As long as Georgie laughed at their jokes, they usually wouldn’t notice that she wasn’t contributing to the brainstorming, that she was just writing things they said on the whiteboard and underlining them.

But today wasn’t usually. Seth was still watching Georgie like he was trying to figure out was going on. . . .

Well, he could keep on trying—he was never going to come up with, Magic f**king phone! (Though Georgie was a little worried he’d figure out she wasn’t wearing underwear.)

Seth and Scotty brainstormed.

Georgie brain-hurricaned.

What if it was happening for a reason? What if she was supposed to fix what was wrong between her and Neal? “What’s wrong?” wasn’t such an easy question to answer.

Oh, she could answer it broadly:

A lot.

A lot was wrong between them, even on good days. . . .

(The breakfast-in-bed and coming-home-early days. Days when Neal’s eyes were bright. When the girls made him smile, and he made them laugh. Easy days. Christmas mornings. Coming-home-late days when Neal would catch Georgie at the door and crowd her against the wall.)

Even on good days, Georgie knew that Neal was unhappy.

And that it was her fault.

It wasn’t just that she let him down, and put him off, and continually left him waiting—

It was that she’d tied him to her so tight. Because she wanted him. Because he was perfect for Georgie, even if she wasn’t perfect for him. Because she wanted him more than she wanted him to be happy.

If she loved Neal, if she really loved him . . .

Shouldn’t she want more for him than with me, always with me?

What if Georgie could give Neal the chance to start over? What would he do?

Would he join the Peace Corps? Would he go back to Omaha? Marry Dawn? Marry somebody even better than Dawn?

Would he be happy?

Would he come home from work every night, smiling? Would Dawn or Better-Than-Dawn already have dinner on the table?

Would Neal crawl into bed and pull her close to him, fall asleep with his nose in the hollow of her neck. . . .

Georgie had gotten that far in her imagining—to Neal spooning with his more-suitable-than-Georgie wife—when she imagined Neal’s second-chance kids in this second-chance world. Then she slammed the door shut on all his hypothetical happiness.

If the universe thought Georgie was going to erase her kids from the timeline, it had another f**king thing coming.

She went to the bathroom and cried for a few minutes. (That was one good thing about being the only woman on the writing staff—Georgie almost always had the bathroom to herself.)

Then she spent the next hour mentally throwing the yellow rotary phone down a deep well and filling it in with concrete.

She wasn’t going to touch that thing again.

It wasn’t really a conduit to the past. It wasn’t magic. There was no such thing as magic. (I don’t believe in fairies. Sorry, Peter Pan.) But Georgie still wasn’t going to risk it. She wasn’t a Time Lord, she didn’t want a Time-Turner. She felt weird even praying for things—because it didn’t seem like she should ask God for something that wasn’t already part of the plan.

What if Georgie accidentally erased her marriage with these phone calls? What if she erased her kids? What if she’d already screwed something up—would she even know?

She tried to remind herself that this was all an illusion. That she didn’t have to worry about the dangerous implications, because illusions don’t have implications.

That’s what she tried to remind herself, but she wasn’t sure she believed it.

Illusion.

Delusion. Mirage.

Magic f**king phone.

“Korean tacos again?” Seth asked.

Georgie nodded.

After two months of hanging out in The Spoon’s production room, Georgie was 53 percent sure that Neal liked her.

He put up with her; that seemed to mean something. He never asked her to go away. (Was she really going to put that in the plus column? Not asking her to go away?)

He talked to her. . . .

But only if Georgie talked to him first. If she sat across from him long enough.

Sometimes it seemed like Neal might be flirting with her. Other times, she couldn’t even tell whether he was listening.

She decided to test him.

The next time Neal came down to The Spoon, Georgie said hi, but she stayed at her desk, hoping that he might come to her for once.

He didn’t.

She tried it again a few days later. Neal nodded when Georgie said hello, but he didn’t stop or walk over.

She told herself to take the hint.

“I notice you seem to be avoiding the hobbit hole,” Seth observed.

“I’m not avoiding,” Georgie said. “I’m working.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “You’re working. I’ve noticed your uncrackable work ethic all those nights you barricaded yourself back in the hobbit hole just as soon as Bilbo showed his face.”

“Are you complaining about my work ethic now?”

“I’m not complaining, Georgie. I’m noticing.”

“Well, stop,” she said.

“Did he break it off? Were you too tall for him?”

“We’re the same height. Actually.”

“Really. That’s adorable. Like salt and pepper shakers.”

Georgie must have looked 53 percent wrecked because Seth let it drop. Later, when they were working on their column, both of them huddled in front of Georgie’s computer, Seth gave her ponytail a solid pull. “You’re too good for him.”

He said it quietly.

Georgie didn’t turn from her screen. “Probably not.”

He pulled her hair again. “Too tall. And too pretty. And too good.”

Georgie swallowed.

“I’m not worried about you,” Seth said. “Someday your prince will come.”

“And you’ll do your best to scare him off.”

“I’m glad that we both understand the terms.” He pulled her hair.

“That hurts, you know.”

“I’m trying to get your mind off the emotional pain.”

“If you do it again, I’m going to slap you.”

He immediately tugged on her ponytail. Gently this time. Georgie let it slide.

Seth always had to force Georgie to go to parties. Once she was there, she was fine. Once she was there, she was usually great—if not the life of the party, certainly one of its most valuable players. People (new people, strangers) made Georgie nervous. And nervous Georgie was much more extroverted than regular Georgie. Nervous Georgie was practically manic.

“It’s like you turn into Robin Williams in nineteen-eighty-two,” Seth told her.

“Oh God, don’t say that, that’s mortifying.”

“What? Nineteen eighty-two Robin Williams was hilarious. Everybody loved nineteen-eighty-two Robin Williams.”

“I don’t want to be Mork at parties.”

“I do,” Seth said. “Mork kills.”

“Cute guys don’t want to go home with Mork,” Georgie groaned.

“I think you’re wrong,” he said, “but I take your point.”

(It hadn’t gotten better over the years; Georgie still got nervous at parties and pitches and big meetings. Seth said their careers would be over if Georgie ever realized she was awesome and stopped freaking out about it.)

Not long after Georgie gave up on Neal, Seth talked her into going to the Spoon Halloween party. Seth was dressed like Steve Martin. He had a white suit, and he’d spray-painted his hair gray, and there was a gag arrow on his head.

Georgie was going as Hot Lips Houlihan from M*A*S*H. Which just meant fatigues, an olive green T-shirt, and dog tags. Plus, she’d blown out her hair. She figured she must look okay because Seth seemed distracted by her breasts.

As soon as they were inside the party, he was distracted by somebody else’s breasts. There were a lot of girls here for a Spoon party; there must be some cross-pollination—maybe somebody’s roommate was a business major.

Georgie grabbed a Zima, then poured it into a cup so she wouldn’t look like she was drinking Zima.

She’d already started nervously chattering at some guy dressed like Maggie Simpson when she saw Neal on the other side of the room. He was leaning against a wall between two clusters of people—watching her.

When Georgie didn’t look away, he raised his bottle of beer not quite to his chest and nodded his head. She squeezed her cup until it dented, then tried to nod back. It was more of a spasm.

Georgie returned her attention to the guy dressed as Maggie Simpson. (Why would a guy dress like Maggie Simpson?) He was trying to guess who she was. “That chick from Tomb Raider?” Georgie looked back at Neal. His head was tilted to the side. Still watching her.

She felt herself blushing and peered down at her drink.

Maybe he’d come over. Maybe Neal would finally walk fifteen steps out of his way to say hello to her. Georgie glanced back at him, just as he was glancing up again from his beer—he wouldn’t even lift his entire head to look at her.

Fuck it.

“Sorry, would you . . . excuse me? I just saw my, um, I’m just—my friend’s over there. Excuse me.” Georgie backed away from Maggie Simpson and squeezed through an extremely pathetic dance circle to get to Neal’s wall. There wasn’t much room between him and the people next to him; he slid over to make room for her.

“Hey,” she said, leaning in sideways.

Neal had his back to the wall, and he was holding his beer with both hands. He didn’t look up. “Hey, Hot Lips.”

Georgie grinned and rolled her eyes. “How’d you know who I was?”

His lips twitched just enough to give him dimples. “I know about your weird preoccupation with ’70s sitcoms.” He took a drink of beer. “I’m surprised you didn’t come as Detective Wojciehowicz.”

“Couldn’t find the right tie,” Georgie said.

Neal nearly smiled.

She glanced down at his clothes. He was dressed like normal—jeans, a black T-shirt—but there was a silvery white pattern creeping up from his sleeves and down from his collar. He must have painted it himself. It looked almost crystalline.

“Give up?” he asked.

She nodded.

“The first frost.” He took another drink.

“It’s lovely,” Georgie said. Someone had just cranked up the music, so she said it again, louder. “It’s lovely.”

Neal shrugged his eyebrows.

“I have to admit I’m surprised to see you here,” she said.

“You shouldn’t be.”

“You don’t seem like Party Guy.”

“I hate parties,” Neal said.

“Me, too,” she agreed.

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Really.”

“Really.”

“I could tell by the way you walked in, and everybody shouted, ‘Georgie!’ and you blew a thousand air kisses, and the stereo started playing ‘Gettin’ Jiggy wit It’ . . .”

“A, you’re exaggerating, and B, just because I’m good at parties doesn’t mean I like them.”

“You prefer things you’re not good at?”