I've always known George Maddox as a coworker. Precise. Controlled. Efficient in a way that occasionally makes me wantto slide something slightly out of alignment on his desk just to see what happens.
But this version of him who laminated a chore tracker at eight years old and got punched in the mouth at twelve defending his sister. This version is doing something to my understanding of him that I'm not sure I have a category for yet.
Margaret announces she needs crackers and disappears, and Eleanor follows to help, and suddenly George and I are alone at the table with the album still open between us.
I look at the photo of twelve-year-old George with his split lip and think about the wordloyal, and feel it settle somewhere in my chest like it's decided to stay.
"She exaggerates," George says, without looking at me.
"She really doesn't," I say.
He glances over. Neither of us has anything to add to that. I drop my eyes first and straighten a stack of brochures that does not need straightening, mostly to give my hands something to do.
***
The evening winds down and coats are gathered slowly, promises made about vendor calls, and Eleanor hugging me like the sister she has always wanted.
In the driveway, George offers me a ride before I've even reached for my phone.
I get into the passenger seat. The car is quiet and warm and smells faintly of cedar and something underneath it, clean and specific, and I tell myself very firmly to be normal about all of this.
We drive two full blocks before either of us speaks.
"She's been waiting years to show someone that album," George says.
"I'm glad she did," I say, and it comes out meaning more than I intended it to.
He doesn't respond, but his thumb moves once against the steering wheel, and I watch it happen from the corner of my eye.
"Can I ask you something?" I say, watching streetlights slide across the dashboard.
"You're going to regardless," he says.
"Why a paper spreadsheet?"
A pause. "She was seven. She didn't have a laptop."
I turn toward the window so he won't see that I'm smiling like an absolute idiot.
"Fake dating is harder than I thought it would be," I say eventually, to the glass. "It's much easier doing the matching."
"You prefer being the variable controlling the system," he says, completely dry.
I laugh. It's too loud, in the confined space, but it bubbles out of me anyway. George glances over with a pleased expression.
He pulls up to my building and puts the car in park. Neither of us moves immediately. The streetlight comes through the windshield at an angle that is genuinely unfair to the line of his jaw, and I am very aware of the small, warm space between us.
"Goodnight, Tessa," he says.
My name in his voice does something to my heartbeat that I choose not to examine right now.
I say goodnight. I get out. I walk to my door and wait until I hear him pull away before I let myself stop moving.
I stand in my hallway with my coat still on.
A crush is manageable. A crush is noticing someone's hands or the way they take their coffee, and it passes, it always passes, you just wait it out.
But what I felt watching him tonight went beyond that. The quiet loyalty of him, the way he showed up for his sister without ceremony or credit, the way a laminated chore chart in hischildhood somehow tells you everything about a person. That wasn't a crush.
That was something else entirely. Something that had apparently been assembling itself in the background for longer than I'd been paying attention.
I hang up my coat very carefully and let the thought finish forming.
I think I might already be in love with George Maddox.
