I nod toward the couch. “It’s a sleeper sofa.”
“Splendid.” She grits her teeth as her eyes continue to take in the room. “Does the door have a lock?”
“Nope.”
“What’s to stop you from sneaking in here while I’m asleep?”
“Self-respect, mostly.”
She throws a glare at me.
Chuckling, I fold my arms and lean against the door frame. “Georgie, this is Willow Cove. You’ll be fine.”
“I’ve never understood your misplaced trust in people.”
I sigh. It’s not that I trust everyone, but I like to see the good in people. Still… “You’re right,” I say slowly. “I should have learned better after I trusted you all those years ago.”
I’m being unfair, and I know it, but Georgie’s unexpected arrival this morning feels like opening old wounds, and I’m too tired to mask the hurt. I’ll be better tomorrow. Hopefully.
“Well,” I say, knocking on the door frame. “Goodnight.”
“Wait, can you give me a ride back to my car? All my stuff is there.”
I probably should, given she drove me here, but my stomach is still trying to eat itself and I haven’t had a proper chance to be annoyed that she’s back. So I shake my head. “But Marlin has a taxi service. I’m sure you can look up the number.”
It takes a second for recognition to set in. “Wait, Marlin Abernathy? Like, the guy who talks to chickens and thinks he can understand them? Does he even have a driver’s license?”
I shrug. “Good question. You should ask him.” And then I head back to the house in case I crack and tell her I’ll give her a ride. It would be the right thing to do, but I can’t bring myself to be gallant tonight. Instead, I eat three more biscuits loaded with gravy and finish doing my much-needed laundry before heading to bed, wondering the whole time whether Georgie will come back or if she’s opted to run away again.
I can’t decide which outcome I want more.
“Rise and shine!”
Georgie jolts awake at my call, tossing blankets and pillows and nearly tumbling off the lumpy sleeper sofa. I shouldn’t take this much pleasure from her disorientation, but I was pleasantly surprised to find her in the pool house this morning, which has put me in a strangely good mood. That, plus a clean pair of shorts and a decent night’s sleep for once, has made today feel like a turning point in the right direction.
“Royal?” Georgie mumbles as she tries to untangle herself from the sheets. She’s clearly still half asleep if she’s back to using my real name. “What time is it?”
I glance out the open door behind me, where the sky is starting to warm from black to blue. “Time for you to get yourself over to the bakery, obviously. I’m assuming you got your car back?”
The pool house is practically overflowing with clothes. I don’t remember her being a disorganized person, but then again I never went to the house her parents rented every summer. She always just appeared on the boardwalk. Maybe this is true Georgie and I dodged a messy bullet.
Groaning, Georgie slowly sits up and runs a hand over her wild curls. “It’s not my bakery yet,” she complains. “I didn’t get to bed until after one.”
“Not my fault.” It’s sort of my fault. If she really used Marlin to get back to the boardwalk, it likely took a lot longer than she planned for. He likes his detours. And then she would have had to bring all her stuff in from her car, and judging by the sheer volume of it all, it probably took a while.
I fold my arms, trying not to acknowledge my growing guilt for not helping her last night. I was sound asleep by nine and slept like a rock all night. “As for the bakery, I plan to spend my morning getting an appointment set up at the courthouse for later today, so I can’t be there.”
That wakes her up. “You want to get married today?”
“The sooner we tie the knot, the sooner I can file for a divorce.” I shrug, though the words taste bitter in my mouth. I’ve always thought of marriage as a one-time thing, not something to take lightly. Uncle Bill never married, but he talked all the time about how it was a special agreement that I should treat with respect.
So much for that.
“Your mama raised you to treat women right,” he used to tell me, “and I won’t let you forget it.”
He’d always liked my mom, from the day she met my dad, and Uncle Bill had been a staple in my life from the beginning. Dad was younger than Bill by several years, but they looked out for each other after my grandparents died, long before I was born. Bill was as much a parent to me as my real parents, rest their souls.
Kingstons have a habit of dying young, something I try not to think about. Dad was thirty when the car accident took him. Mom didn’t reach forty before she got sick. Bill made it to fifty-five, so maybe I’ve got a decent chance if the pattern continues.
Probably not if I keep eating questionable food from the freezer aisle.
Georgie finally rolls herself off the bed, pulling my focus back to her, and tugs her phone free of the charging cord it’s attached to. Then she swears. That’s new. “It’s dead. But I had it plugged in all night!”
“Ah, yeah, I should have mentioned that the outlets only work if the lights are on.”
“Of course.” Her eyes flick back to me, her gaze cold. She looks younger this morning than she did yesterday, probably because her hair is a mess and she’s not wearing any makeup. She looks more like the girl I knew before, the one who couldn’t care less about eyeshadow and contouring and hadn’t yet figured out how to tame her curls. There was always a wildness about her. A sense of adventure and ambition.
I liked that Georgie.
“Are you going to bake some bread, or what?” I ask and force myself to look away. I don’t need reminders of the girl I knew. Just the sight of her disheveled and undone is twisting up my insides. “I’ll warn you, Meg doesn’t like being left on her own, and you can’t afford for her to quit on you.”
And then I leave, heading straight for my truck so I can put some distance between us. I really shouldn’t force Georgie to jump right into the morning baking, but it’s not like I’m all that good at it anyway. Her work ethic will have her joining Meg in half an hour or less, and I meant it when I told her I planned to get us in front of Judge Delgado as soon as possible.
If I don’t, I’m going to chicken out.
It’s too early to call the courthouse, so I drive to the boardwalk. Coop won’t be happy about my early visit, but this feels like the kind of situation a best friend should know about. Sure enough, he’s still sound asleep in his boat house and looks like he doesn’t have a care in the world. That’s not true, but Coop would never admit he’s got his own worries. Still, I need his easygoing nature this morning if I’m going to survive the day.
