“What made your day so weird?”

Georgie started laughing. It sounded like a laugh played backwards.

“Georgie?”

“Sorry. It’s just . . .” What made her day so weird? “I delivered three puppies and found out that Heather is gay.”

“What? Oh—for a second, there, I thought you were talking about your sister. Your cousin is gay?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Georgie said.

“How did you deliver puppies? Whose puppies?”

“That doesn’t matter either. But I think we’re keeping one.”

“‘We’—you and your mom? Or ‘we,’ we?”

“We, we, we,” Georgie said. “All the way home.”

“Georgie?”

“Sorry.”

“You delivered puppies?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. I need another second.” Georgie pulled the phone away from her ear and dropped it on the carpet. At some point, she’d started breathing like Heather during the pug emergency. Georgie smoothed her hair back and redid her ponytail, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes.

This is it, Georgie, get back in the game.

No, this wasn’t a game. It was her life. Her ridiculous life.

It doesn’t matter what you say now, she told herself. Neal’s going to propose on Christmas. He already did. He said, “We’ll make our own enough.” It’s fate.

Unless . . .

Unless it wasn’t. Maybe Neal had just said that “enough” thing because it was on his mind that day, not because of their phone calls. Had he given Georgie any other clues over the years that these conversations happened? (This would be easier to figure out if Neal were the sort of guy who ever gave away clues.)

This was Georgie’s last chance to talk to Neal before he left for California. Her last chance to make sure he left—what was she supposed to say?

She took a deep breath, in, then pushed it, out. Then picked up the phone.

“Neal?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“What? What kind?”

“Like, do you believe that everything is already decided? That we’re destined for it?”

“Are you asking if I’m a Calvinist?”

“Maybe.” Georgie tried again: “Do you think that everything is already decided? Already written. Is the future just sitting there waiting for us to get to it?”

“I don’t believe in destiny,” he said, “if that’s what you mean. Or predestination.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no accountability in it. I mean, if everything is already set in stone, why try? I prefer to think that we’re choosing in every moment what happens next. That we choose our own paths—Georgie, why is this important?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded far away from herself in the receiver.

“Hey . . . Georgie.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

“Just now?”

“No,” he said. “Today. All day.”

“Oh. It’s okay.”

Neal huffed. Frustrated. “I hate that you thought I wouldn’t call—I hate that everything is so tentative between us right now. When did everything get so tentative?”

“I think when you left for Omaha without me.”

“I just came home for Christmas.”

Georgie’s voice was barely there when she reached for it. “That’s not true.”

She could hear Neal clenching his jaw. “All right,” he said. “You’re right.”

Georgie was quiet.

Neal was quiet, too.

“I didn’t break up with you,” he said finally. “You know that, right?”

“I know,” she said. “But we’re still broken.”

Neal growled. “Then we’ll fix it.”

“How?”

“When did you get so hopeless, Georgie? The last time we talked, everything was fine.”

“No, the last time we talked you were pissed with me about Seth.” She rested her tongue between her teeth and thought about biting all the way through.

“Because you were putting him first again.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. “He just showed up. He woke me up.”

“He just showed up in your bedroom.”

“Yes.”

Neal growled again. “I hate that. I hate that so much, Georgie.”

“I know, Neal.”

“That’s all you can offer me? You know?”

“I can tell you I’ll never invite him into my bedroom,” she said. “But sometimes he just shows up. You said you didn’t want me to choose between you.”

“And you said you would choose me.”

“I would,” she said. “I do.”

Neal huffed.

Georgie waited.

“Why are we fighting?” he asked. “Are you punishing me because I didn’t call you today?”

“No.”

“Then why are we fighting?”

Why were they fighting? They shouldn’t be fighting. Georgie was supposed to be wooing him, making him forgive her, making him love her—letting it all happen.

“Because,” she sputtered. “Because I want to!”

“What?”

“I just want to get everything out. I want every horrible thing on the table. I want to fight about it all now, so we never have to again!” She was shouting.

Neal was seething. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

“I can’t do it!” she said. “I can’t keep fighting with you about the same things over and over again. I can’t keep not fighting about the same things over and over again. I can’t go another day, pretending you’re not pissed with me, pretending everything’s fine, talking in that stupid cheerful voice I use when I know you’re just quietly hating me.”

“Georgie.” Neal sounded surprised. And hurt. “I never hate you.”

“You do. You will. You hate what I do to your life, and that’s the same as hating me—that’s just as bad. If you hate your own life because of me, that’s worse.”

“Jesus. I don’t hate my life.”

“You will.”

“Is that a threat?”

She forced down a sob. “No. It’s a promise.”

“What the—” Neal stopped. He never swore in front of her, she wasn’t sure if he ever swore, period. “—what’s wrong with you tonight?”

“I just want to get it over with.”

“What? Us?”

“No,” she cried. “Maybe. I want to say every terrible true thing. I don’t want to trick you into coming back to me, Neal. I don’t want to tell you it’s all going to be okay when I know it isn’t.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“It’s not going to be okay. If you come back. If you forgive me or whatever it is you need to do. If you tell yourself that you’ll just get used to it. To Seth and L.A. and my job . . . You’re wrong. You’ll never get used to it. And you’ll blame me. You’ll hate me for keeping you here.”

Neal’s voice was cold. “Stop telling me that I hate you. Stop using that word.”

“It’s your word,” she said, “not mine.”

“Why are you being like this?”

“Because I don’t want to trick you.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because part of me does want to trick you. Part of me wants to say whatever I have to say to make sure you’ll still want me. I want to tell you that it’ll be different—better. That I’ll be more sensitive, that I’ll compromise more. But I won’t be, Neal, I know I won’t be. And I don’t want to trick you. Nothing is ever going to change.”

Neal was quiet.

Georgie imagined him standing on the other side of the kitchen, their kitchen, staring into the sink. Lying next to her in bed, facing the wall. Driving away from her without looking back.

“Everything is going to change,” Neal said before she was ready for it. “Whether we want it to or not. Are you—Georgie, are you saying you don’t want to be better to me?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Because I want to be better to you. I promise to be better to you.”

“I can’t promise you that I’ll change,” she said. Georgie couldn’t make promises that her twenty-two-year-old self wouldn’t keep.

“You mean you don’t want to.”

“No,” she said, “I—”

“You can’t even promise me that you’ll try? From this moment onward? Just try to think about my feelings more?”

Georgie coiled the yellow cord around her fingers until her fingertips went white. “From this moment onward?”

“Yeah.”

She couldn’t make promises for her twenty-two-year-old self. But what about for this version of herself? The one that was on the phone with him. The one that was still refusing to let him go.

“I . . . I think I can promise that.”

“I’m not asking you to promise me that everything will be perfect,” Neal said. “Just promise me that you’ll try. That you’ll think about how it feels for me when Seth is in your bedroom. That you’ll think about how long you’re leaving me waiting when you’re at work. Or how I might be feeling when I’m stuck at a stranger’s party all night. I know I’ve been a jerk, Georgie—I’m going to try not to be. Will you try with me?”

“From this moment onward?”

“Yeah.”

From this moment onward, from this moment onward. She grabbed on to the idea and held tight. “Okay,” she said. “I promise.”

“Okay. Me, too.”

“I’ll be better to you, Neal.” She steadied herself against the bed. “I won’t take you for granted.”

“You don’t take me for granted.”

“Yes,” she said, “I do.”

“You just get caught up—”

“I take for granted that you’ll be there when I’m done doing whatever it is I’m doing. I take for granted that you’ll love me no matter what.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Neal, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “I want you to take that for granted. I will love you no matter what.”

Georgie felt herself sliding out of control again. “Don’t say that. Take it back.”

“No.”

“Take it back.”

“You’re crazy,” he said. “No.”

“If you say that, it’s like you’re telling me that all the insensitive things I do are okay. It’s like you’re just handing me ‘no matter what.’ You’re pre-pardoning me.”

“That’s what love is, Georgie. Accidental damage protection.”

“No, Neal. I don’t deserve that. And it isn’t even true. Because if I had that, already, you wouldn’t have left.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. The s in “sorry” slurred, like his mouth was pressed against the phone. “I won’t leave again.”

“You will,” she said. “And it’ll be my fault.”

“Jesus, Georgie. You’re all over the place. I can’t talk to you if you’re going to be like this.”

“Well, I’m going to be like this. I’m going to be worse than this.”

“I’m getting off the phone,” he said.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then we’re starting over.”

“No!”

“Yes. We’re starting this whole conversation over.” He still wasn’t shouting, but his voice was building like something that was about to blow.

“I don’t want to,” she panted. “It doesn’t work. Everything bad and everything good has already happened.”

“I’m going to hang up now, Georgie. And we’re both going to take some deep breaths. And when I call back, we’re starting over.”

“No.”

He did it then.

Neal hung up.

Georgie tried to take a deep breath—it caught in her throat like a millstone.

She dropped the receiver on the hook and wandered out into the hall, to Heather’s bathroom. Georgie hardly recognized her own face in the mirror. She looked pale and witless, a ghost who’d just seen a ghost. She rinsed her face with cold water and sobbed tearlessly into her hands.

So this was how Georgie talked her husband into proposing to her. By practically begging him not to. By finally freaking the f**k out.

Neal would be freaking out, too, if he was the one with a magic phone. . . .

Neal did have a magic phone, and he didn’t even realize it.

God, why had she said all those horrible things? Georgie looked in the mirror again. At the woman Neal had ended up with.

She’d said them because they were true.

Georgie went back to the bedroom and looked down at the yellow phone.

She picked up the receiver and listened for the dial tone, then dropped it on the floor and climbed into bed.

That noise the phone makes when you leave it off the hook? It stops after a while.