It cuts so deep that I’m not even sure if it hurts. I just know that something has happened, and at some point I’m going to have to breathe in a full breath, or get up off this couch, or walk out of this apartment, and only then will I know the extent of the damage.
“Why?”
“Oh. Oh,” she says, when she hears the hurt in my voice, then looks up and sees it in my eyes. “I don’t mean it like that.” She takes a shaky breath, then says half to herself and half to me, “I still can’t even believe I’m talking to you right now. That I’ve been talking to you. And I’m just—putting my foot in it.”
I twist my lips into something close to a smile of my own. “An inherited trait?”
She lets out a breathy laugh. I wonder if this morning feels the same way to her that it does to me—like it happened a million years ago, to people who don’t even really exist anymore.
“What I meant is that when it was just pictures—when it was just Cooper sending things along—I don’t know. You were still ours, to me. This person who existed between us.” She stares into the glass of her coffee table. “But I saw that video and it was—clear that you were your very own person. A vibrant, talented, plucky little person. And that there was so much I was missing out on, the kinds of things Cooper would never be able to tell me. The kinds of things you have to be there to know. And I just … it broke my heart. It was easier to just let it break all the way. Ask him to stop.” She swallows hard. “At least, I thought it would be.”
We both take a breath then, with these uncannily similar rhythms, like we’re both trying to absorb the same weight of something too big to hold. I’m not sure which one of us is supposed to say anything. I’m not sure which one of us is in charge, or if neither of us are.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say. “For—crashing into your life like this. I was looking for you, but I’d stopped.”
Georgie shakes her head. “I think we both know it was going to happen eventually. Even when I told Cooper … I figured no daughter of mine would be able to let this go.”
It doesn’t make me smile, but it does make me happy. The idea that someone can know you without knowing you. That there are some things that were meant to be—and how I know, even without having all the answers yet, that the whole weird journey that led us here was one of them.
“Can I ask you what happened? I’ve always wondered, but my dad doesn’t really seem to know himself.”
Georgie shifts her weight on the couch like she’s getting her bearings, trying to anchor a conversation she never meant to start. It’s been a week of adults being very careful about what they say to me and how, but Georgie, at least, is frank. I can tell before she even opens her mouth that she’s going to tell me the truth, even if it’s not a truth I want to hear.
“When I found out I was pregnant with you, I wasn’t sure who your father was. It was either the ex I was hung up on, or Cooper.” She purses her lips. “I didn’t want you. But I loved you. Before I knew whose you were, or what you were, or … any of it.” She shakes her head a bit. “Maybe it sounds … naive, but. I didn’t have a lot of good in my life back then. I hadn’t done a lot of good. But then there was you, and it just seemed like … you were something good.”
It’s one of those things I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to understand, and she seems to know that even as she explains it to me. I tuck it into some part of myself, knowing I’ll wonder about it later. But the biggest question I have is one I don’t have to ask. She can see it in my eyes. She’s probably been answering it to some imagined version of me for years.
“I couldn’t raise you,” she says. “I wasn’t … I never met my mom. She died when I was born. And my dad was…” She gestures vaguely, like she doesn’t want to get into it. But I don’t miss her slight shudder. “An asshole. Growing up, just about the only good thing in my life was the boy who lived across the hall.”
It dawns on me before she gets there, like some kind of puzzle piece clicking into place. “You mean my dad?”
She nods.
“I was going to put you up for adoption. I didn’t even tell anyone I was pregnant. But I took one look at you and I knew you were his. And I knew he’d take care of you the way I couldn’t. I knew he’d … give you a good life.” She looks at me and this time, her guard is so fully down that I can see past all of it, straight to the part of her that has nothing to do with me—a part that has always been and will always be just hers. “He’s—he was my best friend. The best person I’ve ever known. I was a mess after you were born, but all I can really remember thinking is how lucky we all were that you were his.”
My eyes are brimming with tears. More for their sakes than mine. I don’t have to ask to know that if it weren’t for me, they’d still be best friends. Maybe she’d even still be the one across the hall, instead of Teddy and his parents. It’s all too much to wrap my head around at once.
Georgie knocks me out of it with an unexpected question. “Is he still a big dweeb?”
She asks it quietly, like she’s not sure if she’s allowed.
“The dweebiest,” I assure her.
Her mouth quirks. “Does he still try to translate takeout menus into Elvish?”
I laugh, surprised at the way it punctures right through my tears. “It’s worse. He even does it to fortune cookies.”
Georgie laughs, too, wet and genuine, and for a moment I see it—who she must have been to him, and who he was to her. It’s the way I feel about Teddy. When you know someone inside out, so well that they feel less like another person and more like an extension of yourself. All your battles, all your victories—they’re always shared, always known. Always fought for side by side, whether you’re propping each other up or balancing each other out.
It isn’t hard to imagine them. Georgie with that no-nonsense attitude she must have used to pull my dad out of the little worlds he hides in, my dad’s quiet calm comforting her from the one she wanted to escape. Life can be a scary ride sometimes, both in your head and outside of it, but it always helps to have one person who’s always on your team.
They may have lost that, but it feels fated, in some way. Like the universe pulled my dad and Georgie together, and pulled me and Teddy together to fill the space they left behind.
“I think about you every single day, you know. Both of you.”
I don’t know if I needed to hear this, but it feels good to hear it just the same. I already have my anchors; I already know where I belong. But for the first time it feels less like I’m trying to make myself fit somewhere, and more like I’m making space for someone else. For Georgie, if she still wants to be.
“You’re not gonna hate me for choosing Oliver, are you?”
I smirk, thinking of him running around the city right now like a chicken with his head cut off. “’Course not,” I say, straightening up. “He actually wants to do all your bidding.”
“That’s true.” She blinks at me again, and smiles back at me cautiously. “But you were just so fucking fun to have around.”