so wrapped up in Dominic back then, everything else is a blur,” Rosie said. “But I do remember him always needing a ride to school. He’d show up on foot some days, on the bus others. Sometimes your mother brought him. Rarely his own parents.”
“He got passed around a lot,” Bethany added. “There was no real . . . stability.”
“Passed around,” Georgie echoed quietly, her pulse slowing along with time, thudding in a morose pattern. “That’s awful.”
You’ve always been my wife’s hall pass. Those remembered words from the night before brought back a whole host of memories. Travis pictured with another woman every day of the week in the newspapers, during those early days of his career. Until he simply wasn’t anymore. Around the same time, he’d started getting passed between teams faster than he could probably decorate his locker.
Passed around.
I’m no one’s entertainment anymore.
Had Travis ever had a stable relationship in his life? Did he know what one looked like?
Had anyone ever made him feel worthy of a lasting one?
She’d always held to the truth that Travis was her soul mate. That was before she knew him, though. Those beliefs were founded on a childhood crush. What she’d begun feeling for Travis since he returned home? That wasn’t in the same league. That had depth and . . . fears attached.
Georgie didn’t hold any illusions that she could be Travis’s one. But she couldn’t deny an odd sense of responsibility to prove to Travis he was worthy of finding and keeping his one. Even if it wasn’t her. When no one else had been up to the task of forcibly removing Travis from his downward spiral, she’d thrown lo mein at his head. Did she have the courage to take one more step?
They might be in a fake relationship. What if she could make it feel real?
Real enough that Travis realized what he was capable of.
“Georgie, are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Georgie tapped her lip. “Um . . . what’s next on your infamous agenda?”
But as Bethany perked up and started to read from her clipboard, Georgie was forming her own.
Chapter Sixteen
Georgie slicked paste onto the final cutout for her zombie birthday party vision board, placing the green slime recipe just below a scene involving dry ice and a strobe light. Hello, next-level birthday party. She could see it now. Kids draped in medical gauze and fake guts walking in slow motion through the backyard, trying to complete the apocalypse scavenger hunt before time ran out. Until now, she’d been entertaining the five and below set, but it occurred to Georgie she was missing out on the older kids. They wouldn’t scare as easily, and zombies never went out of style. She couldn’t wait to put this option on the website.
The doorbell rang and Georgie leaped from her position on the living room floor into a battle stance, a scream lodged in her throat.
So much for the under fives being the scaredy-cats.
Gathering her composure, Georgie made her way to the door and opened it. There was no one on the other side, but whoever had rung the bell had left something behind. Even after she stooped down to pick the object up, it took her a minute to realize what it was.
A trophy had been left on her front porch. It was cheap and garish, with a little plaque on the bottom that read WINNER, TRAVIS FORD DATING CONTEST. Upper lip curled in disgust, she searched her cul-de-sac for whoever had left the unwanted object and spotted no one. With a sniff of indignation, she slammed the front door of her house, entered the kitchen, and shoved the trophy as deep as it would go in the garbage, burying it beneath coffee grounds and eggshells.
When the deed was done, Georgie paced her kitchen. The trophy made her even more determined to show Travis his worth—and she needed to act. Now.
Unplugging her phone from the charger, she meandered her way into the living room, plopping down into a cross-legged position on the floor. Georgie had texted boys before—she wasn’t a total newbie. Having always been the type to get friend-zoned, she’d never phone flirted, though. But if she was going to clue Travis in to his own potential, she’d reasoned it was better to dip in a digital toe, instead of diving right into the deep end.
Georgie rubbed the phone against her lips, trying to conjure the perfect, easy breezy text message. She couldn’t make her ulterior motives obvious, but she wanted