Georgie, All Along

by Kate Clayborn

Genres: Friendship; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

"Perfect for Emily Henry fans. [This] is the love story that proves you can go home again . . . It's so rich and wonderful." —Julia Quinn on The TODAY Show



"A sweet novel that reminds you going back is sometimes the best path forward . . . and that planning is never as rewarding as doing." —Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author



"Magnetic, witty, and expansive. The world is going to fall hard for this deliciously whimsical and captivating story, and I cannot wait to see it!" —Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis



"Outright perfection!" —Christina Lauren, Kate Clayborn Fanclub Co-Presidents and Authors of The Soulmate Equation



Indie Next Pick, #1 Library Reads Pick, Goodreads Most Anticipated Romances of the Year, Bookish Highly Anticipated Reads, Bookpage Most Highly Anticipated Romance of the Year, Paste Magazine Most Anticipated Romances of the Year, Cosmopolitan UK Best Books of the Month, Bookriot Most Anticipated Books of the Year



The acclaimed author of Love Lettering weaves a wise and witty new novel that echoes with timely questions about love, career, reconciling with the past, and finding your path while knowing your true worth.



Longtime personal assistant Georgie Mulcahy has made a career out of putting others before herself. When an unexpected upheaval sends her away from her hectic job in L.A. and back to her hometown, Georgie must confront an uncomfortable truth: her own wants and needs have always been a disconcertingly blank page.



But then Georgie comes across a forgotten artifact—a "friendfic" diary she wrote as a teenager, filled with possibilities she once imagined. To an overwhelmed Georgie, the diary's simple, small-scale ideas are a lifeline—a guidebook for getting started on a new path.



Georgie's plans hit a snag when she comes face to face with an unexpected roommate—Levi Fanning, onetime town troublemaker and current town hermit. But this quiet, grouchy man is more than just his reputation, and he offers to help Georgie with her quest. As the two make their way through her wishlist, Georgie begins to realize that what she truly wants might not be in the pages of her diary after all, but right by her side—if only they can both find a way to let go of the pasts that hold them back.



Honest and deeply emotional, Georgie, All Along is a smart, tender must-listen for everyone who's ever wondered about the life that got away . . .



"Absolute perfection—this is the book you are looking for. Georgie All Along is a tour de force, beautifully written and full of charming characters, rich emotion, and delicious spice. With it, Kate Clayborn solidifies her place in romance royalty." —Sarah MacLean, New York Times bestselling author



"A modern yet timeless love story." —Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW



"Tender and sexy . . . features strong friendships and will appeal to fans of Emily Henry." —Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW



Contains mature themes.

Release date: January 24, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Well, well, well.

If it isn’t yet another reinvention.

From the sweat-damp bucket seat of my old Prius, I stare in disbelief out my windshield at a storefront I hardly recognize. The last time I came to Nickel’s Market and Deli, the red-orange sign above the door had read “N el’s M et & D i” and the front window had been haphazardly adorned with white posterboard signs, each crookedly hung rectangle bearing a red-markered message about the week’s sales on six-packs or pork rinds or paper towels.

In fact, that isn’t just what it looked like the last time I came here.

That’s what it looked like every time I came here. All throughout my childhood, all throughout my adolescence.

But Nickel’s now is a different story, clearly—its once-dingy brick façade charmingly whitewashed, its new sign artfully vintage-looking and hung perfectly straight above the sparkling-clean front window. Instead of posterboard signs, there’s an Instagram-worthy display of seagrass baskets, each filled with fresh produce and rustic-looking loaves of bread, Mason jars full of jewel-toned preserves and jams.

“What the heck,” I mutter to myself, even though I shouldn’t be surprised. For months, it’s exactly this sort of thing that Bel has been banging on about—the various transformations in our once-unremarkable, slightly shabby hometown of Darentville, Virginia. The shops, the tourism, the redevelopment of land along the river—they’ve all drawn my best friend back here for her own brand of reinvention: city to small town, child-free to mom-to-be, in-the-office workaholic to remote-work part-time consultant.

I should be happy seeing this transformed version of Nickel’s—happy for Ernie Nickel, who’s run the place forever, and happy for Bel, who probably loves this version of it. But I’m uneasy, and not only because the very specific strawberry milkshake I’ve stopped to order on a last-minute impulse probably doesn’t even get served here anymore.

No, this uneasiness is bigger, more diffuse—a tide of frustration at being so bowled over by a storefront facelift, a looming doubt about my decision to come back here. My eyes drift to the rearview, and I wince at the backseat evidence of my haphazard departure from LA, my whole life from the last nine years shoved into two suitcases, a duffel bag, and four extra-large black garbage bags.

It’s a mess back there.

It’s a mess in here, I think, pressing my palms to my eyes, gusting out a heavy sigh. Twenty-seven hundred miles on the road and I’m not ruminating any less about what’s happened to my life over the last month, a sort of slow-motion reverse reinvention that’s left me jobless and homeless and entirely without a plan for myself. Every five minutes, I hear a phantom chiming from my phone, the tone I have set specifically for Nadia, as if I’m expecting that any second now, she’ll call to tell me her own sudden, shocking plans for changing her entire life—giving up her hugely successful career, her hugely influential existence in LA, her absolutely indispensable personal assistant—were a total mistake.

“This will be so good for you, Georgie,” she’d said to me, as the movers had packed up the last of her things. “You’ll finally be able to do all the things you want to do.”

I’d smiled and nodded and made a checkmark next to the primary bedroom entry on the moving list, and tried desperately to ignore the terrifying blankness in my head at that phrase: all the things you want to do.

I reach for my phone, too late remembering that I’ve already made more than a dozen pledges over the course of this cross-country drive to check it less, to stop treating it like it still needs to be superglued to my hand.

There’s only one message, and it’s from Bel: a string of emojis that represent her excitement over my imminent arrival. Exploding celebration cone, heart-eyes face, those two Playboy-bunny looking ladies standing in some kind of weird formation, a bunch of pink sparkle hearts. It’s not the sort of frantic can you do this immediately? type of text that’s dominated my life over the last few years, but still, it’s a good reminder. If there’s one thing that’s cut through the terrifying blankness problem, it’s the prospect of spending time with Bel.

I want that, at least.

I take a deep breath, gathering my resolve. Get in, get Bel’s favorite milkshake, get over to her new house, and start helping her with whatever she needs. You’re good at that, I tell myself, unhooking my seat belt. You’re used to that.

Before I get out, I drop my phone into the center console, removing the temptation and recommitting to this new plan, the only one that’s made even a hair of sense since Nadia rode off into the sunset of her reinvention-slash-retirement. I think of Bel on the phone last month, begging me to come, and it’s the motivation I need to finally shove open my door and unfold my tired, tense body from the driver’s seat.

Of course, my settled resolve lasts only until I catch sight of my reflection in that sparkling-clean front window, at which point I remember what I put on this morning in the last lousy hotel room of this trip: a threadbare white tank top that I’m pretty sure I spilled coffee on somewhere back in Tennessee and a pair of ankle-length linen overalls that very much have the appearance of having been pulled from a garbage bag.

I do not look like a grown woman who’s managed to make a functional life for herself.

I look like the nineteen-year-old screw-up who left this town nearly a decade ago.

I check over my shoulder, relieved that the small parking lot is empty except for a lone, ancient pickup truck that looks as likely to be abandoned as it does to be waiting for the return of a Nickel’s customer. Maybe it’ll be some random teenager working in there today, someone I don’t know and who doesn’t know me. Maybe this will be as quick and easy as I need it to be—a win for all the losses I’ve been hit with over the last few weeks.

But almost as soon as I hear the old, familiar bells tinkle above the door, I know quick and easy isn’t in the cards, because even though my first sight of the inside of Nickel’s shows everything new—new layout, new lighting, new shelves, new products—my second sight is of something familiar: Ernie Nickel wheeling himself into view, his salt-and-pepper mustache a bit thicker and his hair a bit thinner, his smile warm and inviting and full of recognition.

“Georgie Mulcahy, as I live and breathe,” he says, and I feel pretty good about that greeting until he adds a gentle, knowing chuckle. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

I silently curse my overalls, even as I stuff my hands into the deep, comforting pockets.

“Hi, Ernie,” I say, stepping up to the counter and trying an old tack, familiar from my years of being a topic of conversation around here.

Deflection.

“I sure can’t say the same for this place.” I paste on a smile, trying to affect the confidence of a person who totally planned to appear in public exactly like this. I am suddenly extremely aware of the size of my hair, which is no doubt humongous from the wind I’ve been letting blow through it all day. “It looks great in here.”

Thank God, Ernie—always a talker—takes the bait.

“Well now,” he says, his smile growing wider as he maneuvers to the low-slung counter. “I’ve got all them tourists to thank for it! Them and the retirees. You wouldn’t believe the money they’ve brought around. I sure gotta stock and serve different things.”

He gestures to a chalk-lettered menu above him, full up with a list of soups and sandwiches that bear names with no resemblance to the “tomato” or “turkey and swiss” items I remember as favorites. I squint up at the Beverages section, stalling on a listing for a kale smoothie that makes me wonder if I hallucinated my whole entire road trip. Nadia loved a kale smoothie.

“Do you still make milkshakes?” I blurt, because it is not my job anymore to know what Nadia loves.

Ernie scoffs in mock offense. “Now you know I do.”

I’m so relieved that I order two strawberry milkshakes, even though I’ve always preferred chocolate.

Ernie’s in it now, a full-on thesis about how well Darentville’s doing, property values on the rise and even a mention in a Washington Post article about up-and-coming destinations along the Chesapeake Bay. He tells me we’re well on our way to being as good as Iverley, the town right to the southwest of us that’s got more waterfront and so has always had more wealth. I can’t say I’m in the mood for more talk of transformation, but at least this way, Ernie’s not going to focus on my apparent lack of one.

But then the bells over the door ring out again, and as soon as I hear the voice accompanying them—a sing-songy, drawling, “Hey, Ernie!”—I know my reprieve is over.

“That must be Georgie Mulcahy,” the voice calls, and I take a breath through my nose. What I wouldn’t give not to be wearing a trash-bag outfit at this moment.

I send a nervous smile toward Ernie and turn to face the music.

In the form of my ninth-grade music teacher.

“I knew it,” Deanna Michaels says, laughing. “I sure did see the back of you enough!”

Behind me, I can hear Ernie swallow a laugh, and I concentrate on controlling the heat in my cheeks. I laugh, too, all unbothered self-effacement, but my brain is doing a highlight reel of every time Mrs. Michaels sent me out of her classroom. Tardiness, talking too much, the time I made up a new set of lyrics to “The Circle of Life” and taught them to the rest of the alto section.

“Hi, Mrs. Michaels,” I say, definitely trying not to dwell on those lyrics. “Nice to see you again.”

“Well, I had no idea you were coming into town,” she says, clasping her hands in front of her chest, a move so familiar it gives me flashbacks to standing on the risers in her classroom. “I ran into your mother last month, and she didn’t mention a word about you visiting!”

“I didn’t know I would be visiting last month,” I say, but even as it comes out of my mouth I realize I’ve made a mistake, giving her the kind of information she can make use of.

Her eyes light in a way I recognize—the part-pitying, part-indulgent look that so many of my teachers gave me once I no longer had them in actual class—and she laughs lightly. “That’s so like you, Georgie. You always were a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type!”

It’s a little unfair, this accusation; it isn’t as if I decided to come yesterday or something. And also, my current pants are not even technically pants. But Mrs. Michaels isn’t entirely wrong. I was impulsive, flighty back when she knew me, and I haven’t really changed. It’s just that I’ve put flying by the seat of my pants to good use. I’ve pretty much made a living off of it.

But now I don’t have that living anymore.

“You know me,” I say.

“Now, Georgie,” Ernie says, something gentle in his voice, “tell us about that fancy job you’ve got! Your daddy says you went to the Oscars last year.”

“Actually, I—”

“Ernie,” chuckles Mrs. Michaels, “you know better than to believe anything Paul Mulcahy says!”

“I did go,” I say, and for the first time I’ve let an edge of annoyance slip into my tone. It’s good-natured, I know, this teasing about my dad’s legendary tall tales and exaggerations, but it’s always chafed me, enough that I’m willing to exaggerate a little myself. I hadn’t actually gone, but I had worked that day, had done a flurry of complicated errands for Nadia, including delivering things to the hotel room where she was getting ready. Then I’d ridden with her in the limo over to the Dolby so she could practice the speech she didn’t ultimately get to give.

So technically, I had gone. Sort of.

Mrs. Michaels raises her eyebrows, and I feel a fleeting moment of satisfaction. But there are limits to my own capacity for stretching the truth, and in a moment of absurd overcorrec-tion, I say, “I’m in between jobs at the moment, though.”

An awkward silence falls, and then Ernie—blessed, heroic Ernie—turns on the blender. I use the time to tally up things that there’s no point in saying. My boss decided to change her life. She said it’s time to think about changing my own. I could pick up the phone and have a job exactly like my old one tomorrow, if I wanted it, except the problem is I don’t know if I do.

I don’t know if I want anything.

The blender quiets. Is my face the color of a strawberry milkshake? Probably. Mrs. Michaels’s eyes have gone more in the direction of pitying. She smiles kindly and says, “Well, a good idea to move back home! It’s very expensive out there in Los Angeles, as I understand it!”

“Oh, I haven’t moved home,” I say, but I think I might’ve swallowed those last two words a bit, imagining Mrs. Michaels walking past my garbage-bag-stuffed Prius out there. Embarrassingly, I have an extremely late-breaking realization: I have, functionally, moved home, since I don’t have any solid plans beyond these couple of months I’ve promised to spend with—

“Bel,” I blurt, because if there was ever a way to get Mrs. Michaels’s attention deflected from me, it was by drawing it to my best friend. “I’m here to spend time with Bel.”

It works like a charm.

“Oh, Annabel,” she says with the kind of reverence reserved for a straight-A, perfectly behaved, always-on-time student. “Everyone is thrilled she’s moved back. And with that lovely husband of hers! Have you met him?”

I want to roll my eyes, but refrain. It’s a subtle dig, but a dig nonetheless. Bel and I were always unlikely best friends in the eyes of teachers.

“I was her maid of honor,” I say.

This clearly is more impressive than (only sort of) going to the Oscars, judging by Mrs. Michaels’s expression. I smile, maybe a tad smug, thinking of the dream of a bridal shower I threw for Bel three years ago, exploiting every connection, every favor I was owed to make it luxurious. A destination weekend in Palm Springs with a bank of hotel rooms, beautiful catering, gift baskets, and spa treatments. Bel says her friends still talk about it.

Take that, trash bags! I’m thinking, but the truth is, this fleeting, polite exchange with my former teacher has only served to bring back that parking lot doubt. I want to be with Bel, sure. But I don’t want to be in this fancy new Nickel’s, looking a mess. I don’t want to be in this town, where people know me as a flake, a failure.

Where I spent a lot of years with the same sense of blank confusion about my future as I have right now.

That smug smile I’m wearing wavers, and before it can wobble completely off, I turn back to Ernie, who’s moved over to a sleek iPad that rings my neurotic better check your phone internal alarm. I try to refocus on the milkshakes and on the reason I came all this way—Bel and her new home, Bel and the baby that’s coming soon. That isn’t a blank, at least.

“It’s $8.42 for the shakes,” Ernie says, and my smile firms up at the price increase. Counting out change at the counter like Bel and I used to do probably doesn’t cut it for the kids in Darentville these days. Well, good for Ernie. And good for me, too, not to need to shake out quarters anym—

Shit, shit, shit.

I pat uselessly at my pockets—God, why do overalls have so many pockets!—and sense the self-satisfied stare of Mrs. Michaels behind me.

Typical Georgie, I can practically hear her thinking.

But when a throat clears in a low rumble behind me, it obviously hasn’t come from Mrs. Michaels.

I lower my head and let my eyes slide shut. Two witnesses to my humiliation is bad enough; does there have to be a third involved? Am I going to turn around and find someone else who recognizes me, another person eager for a light, no-harm-meant laugh at my expense?

“Ernie,” I say quietly, raising my eyes again. “I left my card out in the car. I’ll just run—”

The throat clears again, and this time, I look over my shoulder to find a stranger watching me from beneath the brim of a weathered, olive-green ball cap that’s pulled low over his eyes.

I narrow my own at him, at the way he’s standing there with impatience clear in every line of his long, lean body, at the way he holds his dark-bearded jaw tight. If it weren’t for how obviously irritated he looks, I might feel a kinship with him, since his clothes are in worse condition than my own—work boots and faded jeans that are both pretty well caked in dried mud, a T-shirt with a wide, dark stain along one side. Even Mrs. Michaels looks to be keeping her distance, but she’s clearly still interested in what’s coming next.

I face Ernie again, though something is tugging at my memory about the man behind me. Is he a stranger, or—

“Do you need to borrow some money, Georgie?” Mrs. Michaels chirps, her voice the kind of sweet that sets my teeth on edge.

“I have the money in the car,” I say, only to Ernie. “It’ll only take a second.”

A basket thunks onto the counter beside me.

“I’ll get it,” says the stranger, his voice pitched low. So low that I’m certain he’s also trying to shut out Mrs. Michaels.

I can’t bear to look over at him yet. Instead, I focus on his basket, full of staples—milk, eggs, a bag of rolled oats, a bunch of underripe bananas, one of those loaves of fancy bread.

“I have the money,” I repeat, my voice barely above a whisper. “I only need to—”

I break off when I notice his fingers curling tighter around his basket, his knuckles briefly going white, the muscles along his tanned forearm flexing.

“Ernie,” he says tightly, not acknowledging me in the least. “I’m in a hurry. Put her stuff on mine.”

I try to ignore his nice forearm so I can focus on his not-nice manners, in spite of the fact that he’s offering to pay my bill. But when I finally look over at him, I find that his face—even in profile, even half-covered by the brim of his hat—is as distracting as that flexing forearm. The line of his thick beard is cut close along his square, set jaw, the slope of his nose is sharp, the fan of his dark eyelashes is lush enough to cast a small shadow on his cheeks.

“Sure thing,” says Ernie, which at least snaps me out of my fixation on the most attractive, most irrelevant details about this entire situation.

“Ernie, wait,” I try again, but he only gives me a small shake of his head, as if he’s trying to warn me off any further challenge to this man’s I’ll-pay-for-it demands. Behind me, Mrs. Michaels has either gone mute or finally slinked off somewhere into the store, but I don’t want to look either way.

“Pardon,” the stranger mutters, reaching an arm past me and pushing his card into the reader. When he pulls it out, the edge of his hand grazes briefly across the front of my ridiculous overalls, and he grumbles out an irritated apology. I’m warm all over with embarrassment, with hyperawareness of how foolish, how flaky I must look.

“You’re all set, Georgie,” says Ernie, his smile soft and kind and forgiving.

I grab hastily at the milkshakes he’s pushed toward me on the counter, try to focus on the weight of them in my hands instead of the whirring in my head. It suddenly feels so important, so telling that I’ve botched this. Not even a full week without my job and I’m a puppet with its strings cut. If my phone isn’t pinging all day with to-dos, I’m lost, irresponsible. A blank, a mess.

“I’ll pay you back,” I say to the man beside me, pitching my voice louder this time. Whether Mrs. Michaels hears me doesn’t seem to matter quite as much, though, when the stranger is determined to pretend he hasn’t. He’s unloading the contents of his basket as if he’s trying to make up for the time he lost in having to say the fifteen words he’s spoken over the course of the last minute and a half.

“I’ll get cash and leave it with Ernie,” I add, determined now, like paying back this random man is my best shot at reversing the course of this homecoming.

“Fine,” he says, in a tone that says he just wants me to stop talking.

Well, fine then. I’m oddly and unexpectedly buoyed by his gruff dismissal. It’s better, somehow, than the schoolroom-flashback spectacle of the last five minutes. It’s no Typical Georgie for this guy; it’s Broke Woman Holding Me Up. That, at least, simplifies things.

“Tomorrow,” I promise Ernie, and the stranger who is still ignoring me, and myself. It feels good to say it, like I’m gathering up some of my puppet strings, or filling up some of that blankness that’s ahead of me. Tomorrow I’ll be helping Bel. Tomorrow I’ll pay back this bill. Tomorrow there’ll be something.

I don’t bother waiting for a reply. I raise my chin and turn to find Mrs. Michaels still there, too pleased by half. I send her what I hope passes for a confident, unbothered smile as I move past her, and I make myself an additional promise.

I am not going to spend the next two months this way—a topic of conversation or a target of well-meaning but rudely executed excuses. And I am not going to avoid that blankness anymore, the same one that chased me for almost the whole last two years I last lived in this town.

I’m going to fill it up; I’m going to figure it out.

What I really want.

Somehow, this time, when I leave Darentville, I’m going to be well and truly different.

Barely a half hour from the time I stepped onto the wide, white front porch of Bel’s brand-new home, I decide it’s a good thing I made that backup promise to myself.

Because honestly?

From the look of things, Bel isn’t going to need that much help from me after all.

We’re in the nearly done nursery, Bel sucking at the dregs of her milkshake and pushing her foot against the plush-carpeted floor to keep her brand new, top-of-the-line glider moving with hypnotic smoothness. She ended the house tour here, most excited to show me the crib she and her husband, Harry, assembled the day before yesterday, and even though I’m impressed by it, it’s not any more impressive to me than everything else in this house—big windows with waterfront views and rooms that somehow seem both incredibly polished and incredibly lived-in, even though Bel and Harry have only been here for about three weeks. I pictured boxes lining the walls, disorganized closets, cabinets and drawers that needed stocking and systematizing. I pictured stuff for me to do.

Instead, I feel strangely extraneous, and now that we’re done with the tour, the topic of conversation Bel’s landed on—my unemployment—isn’t exactly helping. I wish I hadn’t left my phone downstairs, not that anyone’s calling at the moment.

“I don’t understand how she could up and leave,” Bel says, the hand that’s not holding her milkshake smoothing over her rounded belly. She looks serene and stylish—black cropped pants, black sleeveless top, a pair of delicate gold studs in her ears, her dark blond hair pulled into a low ponytail. When she showed me her home office, already set up with two monitors and a whiteboard calendar on the wall filled with her careful handwriting, she’d told me that she gets dressed for work every day, even in this new setup.

“I read that it’s important to keep routines when you work from home,” she’d said, and I’d gotten strangely stuck on the phrase. I’d worked from home sometimes, I guess—in Nadia’s small guest house, where I’d moved only three months after I started working for her, I’d often made calls and travel arrangements and filtered through thousands of her emails. But I worked in the main house, too. I worked in hotel rooms when we traveled. I worked on sets. I worked standing against the walls of ballrooms and restaurants where events were being held. I worked anywhere, and there wasn’t much of a routine to any of it.

“Bel,” I say from my spot on the floor, my back pressed against the spindles of the recently assembled crib. “You literally left DC less than a month ago.”

She furrows her brow, looking offended. “It’s not the same,” she says, but the thing is, it kind of is. On the face of things, Nadia and Bel don’t have a huge amount in common. Nadia is a famed screenwriter and director, part Nora Ephron and part Nancy Myers; Bel is a quiet but powerful force in the world of US education nonprofits. Nadia is a vortex of chaotic, whirlwind creativity; Bel is a steady, organized problem-solver.

But however different they are, both of them have made big changes. Both of them are all about slowing down, living different lives.

And both of them are doing fine without my assistance.

I blow out a breath, annoyed with myself at dwelling on the comparison. Nadia was your boss, I scold myself. Bel is your best friend.

Still, the blankness yawns in front of me, and I’m desperate to change the subject.

“I saw Mrs. Michaels at Nickel’s,” I say. It’s a sharp turn, and at first I don’t think it’ll work. Bel narrows her eyes at me for a split second, because she knows what I’m doing, deflecting this way. But she decides to give me a reprieve, I guess, because she tosses back her head and laughs.

“Oh my God, of all the people,” she says. “Remember when she gave you detention for teaching us—”

“The new and improved ‘Circle of Life’ lyrics?” I say, smirking. It’s not so bad to be reminded of my foibles in this context, since Bel has never made me feel like a flake. “Yes, it did cross my mind.”

“She was a pedagogical terrorist,” Bel says. “I still think of her when my posture slumps.”

I do the sharp, quick double clap Mrs. Michaels used to do when she caught any of us slouching on the risers, and Bel laughs again before pressing her foot into the floor, stopping the motion of the glider, her eyes bright with excitement.

“Oh my God,” she says, “This reminds me. I have something to show you!”

Is it another already unpacked, beautifully arranged room? I think.

I want to turtle right down into these overalls for the stray, snarky thought. In the twenty years of our friendship, I’ve never had this kind of reaction toward Bel—impatient, resentful, dangerously close to envy. And we’ve been through bigger shifts in our lives than this one, times when the differences between our situations were even more pronounced. The first time I’d driven up to Georgetown to visit her at college, I was splitting my time between my morning shifts as a cashier at the Food Lion and my evening shifts at a diner over in Blue Stone. I’d worried a little, as I made my way through the congestion on I-95, whether it would be strained between us, whether college would have already transformed Bel so completely that we wouldn’t fit the same way we had for all the years of our friendship.

But it hadn’t been like that; it’d been the same perfect fit it always was. A big hug at the curb outside her dorm, squealing happiness over being reunited. We’d taken walks around campus, gone to a house party with loud music and red Solo cups, had a bunk-bed sleepover, stuffed ourselves full of greasy cafeteria breakfast. I’d soaked up the atmosphere of her university experience without a trace of frustration over the knowledge that I’d never have a similar one of my own. And in the years after—after I moved to Richmond to waitress, after I got my first gig as a set assistant, and then as a personal assistant, after I settled into my full-time role with Nadia in LA—Bel and I always fit. Every phone call or FaceTime, every meetup we’d managed over the years of long-distance friendship, we fit.

And I know, deep down, that we still fit now.

“Well, let’s have it,” I say brightly, pushing to my feet and pushing off my attitude. I’m tired, that’s all. Disoriented from all this recent change. Too much time in the car, in my own head, thinking about the blankness. I do want to see whatever she has to show me, even if it does have something to do with Mrs. Michaels’s terrible double clap.

Bel braces a hand on the arm of her glider, giving me a smiling, self-deprecating eye roll at the way she has to heave herself upward a little. When she’s finally standing, she frowns down morosely at her empty milkshake cup, and I hand mine over automatically. The truth is, I only managed to drink about a quarter of it. The fact that I couldn’t pay for it has ruined the taste. It’s become a shame-shake.

I feel an embarrassing echo of that handsome stranger’s hand across the front of my overalls.

Bel takes a big, grateful sip and then says, “Okay, follow me.”

We move down the hallway toward the guest room, which Bel had shown off on the tour with great emphasis, seeing as how she’s still hoping I’ll change my mind about staying at my parents’ place instead of here. I’m about to tell her again that yes, I am still very impressed by the therapeutic mattress, but haven’t changed my mind—especially since Bel has told me on many occasions what pregnancy has done to her sex drive—when she stops in front of a door across the hall from the guest room. If Bel shows me a perfectly arranged linen closet that Mrs. Michaels would quadruple clap in praise for, I’ll probably cry.

“Don’t judge me,” she says, as she sets her hand on the doorknob, squeezing her eyes shut tight as she opens it.

“Haaaaaaa,” I breathe out at the sight that greets me, a small room abso