Regan told Callum.
Callum told me sometimes.
Nate found out because Nate found out everything.
I pretended not to care.
No one believed me.
Then came Georgia.
I met her in an online community college discussion board, of all humiliating places.
The assignment was about sustainable building materials, and half the class had posted nonsense copied from the first page of the internet. Georgia wrote three paragraphs about reclaimed wood, insulation efficiency, and how her uncle had remodeled his house in Escondido using salvaged beams from an old barn.
I replied because she seemed like the only person in the class who knew what a paragraph was.
She replied back with a joke about men in construction acting like drywall was a personality.
I laughed.
Then we started chatting about assignments.
Then studying.
Then coffee.
Georgia was easy.
That was the best word for her.
Easy smile. Easy laugh. Bright blue eyes. Tan skin. Blonde hair she admitted came from highlights and not God because, according to her, nobody in Southern California should be trusted when they claimed their hair color was natural. She woresundresses to study sessions and brought colored pens in a little zip pouch. She had parents who lived in a tidy middle-class house with a lemon tree out back and a father who grilled on Sundays.
Her mom hugged me the second time I came over.
Actually hugged me.
No fear. No sizing me up. No looking at my bike and deciding what kind of man I was before I opened my mouth.
Georgia’s dad asked about the club once.
I gave him the careful version.
He nodded and said, “Everybody needs people.”
That was it.
No judgment.
No lecture.
No threat.
Clean.
Georgia was clean.
Not pure. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe people didn’t have layers just because they smiled easily. But she had no ghosts standing behind her eyes. No shadow that crossed her face when someone said mother. No past chasing her through parking lots and graveyards. No bloodline turned into gossip. No men like Edge or Tarak or JD circling her life with weapons and guilt.
