We lie on our stomachs, chins in hands, and as the opening music ofLittle Womenbegins, I look at George’s profile. Everything is better when he’s around.
“I miss doing this together,” I say.
George slants his head toward me. “WatchingLittle Women? We saw it on Christmas Eve.”
“Yeah, but we only get to see each other for short bits of time when you’re not gallivanting around the world.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “I don’t gallivant.”
“I miss being able to just chill. Like when we lived together. I think those might have been four of the happiest years of my life.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We got to do this whenever we wanted, and for some reason we didn’t fight that much as roommates, remember?”
“I remember,” he says, his voice a low rasp.
“Didn’t you love it?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. “I did. I loved pretty much all of it.”
“Don’t you get tired of traveling? Don’t you want to reclaim your condo and hang out withmeall the time?” I give him a toothy grin.
“Sometimes that’s exactly what I want,” he says quietly.
He turns back to the screen.
“I used to hate this scene,” I say when we get to the part where Laurie proposes to Jo and she turns him down. I also used to rewind it so I could watch Christian Bale kiss Winona Ryder umpteen times. “And now I hate it all over again.” The parallels between Nate and Professor Bhaer aren’t cute anymore.
George presses pause. “Do you want to stop watching?”
“No. I’ll be brave. But for the record, Jo should have picked Laurie.”
His gaze sweeps over my face before it returns to the movie. “Yeah,” he says. “She probably should have.”
• • •
My bad dreamsare almost always about George. They started the year of the wildfires. In my sleep, he doesn’t come home safely, and I often wake up crying. The first time this happened when I was with Nate, he wrapped his arms around me until I calmed down. It was a new experience—letting myself cry like that in someone’s arms—and I couldn’t believe how good it felt. How safe. After that night, I never wanted to sleep alone again.
Tonight, George is trapped in a car while flames close in. I wake, gasping for breath. When I reach beside me, the bed is empty. He must be on the couch. I pull a pillow over my face to muffle my sobs.
I don’t hear his footsteps, but the bed dips with George’s weight.
“Frankie?”
George pulls the pillow from my face and brushes the hair out of my eyes. I can only make out the shape of him.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says. “I’m here.”
He lies down and pulls me against his chest. He begins to stroke my hair, something he’s never done before.
“Promise you won’t leave,” I say.
“I promise.”
The last thing I remember is the sound of George humming his lullaby.
Chapter Seventeen
