“You know what happened,” I say, getting annoyed.
“For the sake of argument, pretend I don’t.”
“George,” I bark. “What the fuck?”
“Frankie,” he says. “If you can’t say Nate’s name, if you can’t talk about what you’ve been through, you haven’t moved on.”
“So you need me to say it?” I ask, raising my voice.
He glances at me and says gently, “Can you?”
My fiancé dumped me the day before our wedding in a note he’d hastily written on hotel stationery.
George waits for me to speak, but the words sit heavily on my tongue. It’s too degrading to say them out loud.Ugh.I hate it when he’s right.
“Don’t worry—you’ll get there,” George says. “Here’s how it works: Each day of our trip, we’ll focus on one of the steps to recovery. I’m not going to tell you what they are or what I have planned because I want you to be surprised.”
“I hate surprises.”
“You’ll survive,” he says.
I narrow my eyes. “You’re just worried I’m going to argue with you about your itinerary.”
“Absolutely,” he says.
I know you, I think.
“And what do you get out of all of this?” I ask.
“Aside from spending the week with you?” He looks at me like I’m being willfully obtuse. “I get my best friend back.”
Maybe our priorities aren’t so different after all.
George’s gaze holds mine, a gulp of deep blue sea. I hear my mom’s voice.Sailors could get lost in those eyes.
“And how did you come up with these steps?”
“I did a lot of research. I pulled information from psychology websites and some well-reported articles. Then I interviewed a psychiatrist to make sure I was on the right track. I made some decisions based on who you are and the amount of time we have, and I came up with The Plan.”
I stare at him.
“I printed out a bunch of the material if you want to take a read,” he says.
“I can’t believe you did all that.”
He shrugs. “You’d do the same.”
We share a look, and in it lies a startling truth. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for each other. I’ll go along with George’s plan. Not just because he’s put so much effort into it, and because it could actually help me, but because it might bring us back to the George and Frankie we used to be. When there was only honesty between us. When we knew each other better than we knew ourselves.
“So when do we begin?”
“We’ve already started,” he says. “It’s Day One.”
“Which means?”
“This, my dear Frankie, is your day to wallow.”
“I’ve done plenty of wallowing.”
