Leaving's Not the Only Way to Go by Kay Acker

Author:Kay Acker [Acker, Kay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642471861
Publisher: Bella Books
Published: 2021-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Georgia shambled down the stairs at eight the next morning, hoping she had enough pancake mix for her guest. Lauren was already in the kitchen, fully dressed in the previous night’s clothes, and she smiled like a person who was far too awake.

When Georgia mentioned breakfast, she said, “I’m going to Tracy’s place before church.”

“Church?”

Lauren shrugged. “Not church-church. It’s more like a social event than anything. Unitarian Universalist.”

Right, this had been mentioned before. Georgia tried to look like she remembered what it was.

“What have you got going on today?” Lauren asked. “Besides Kyle’s sister coming.”

“She’ll be here at three she said, which means she might arrive any time after noon. Ben invited me to dinner so I won’t be underfoot while Kelly and Hannah bond. I think he still feels bad about letting Hannah fall off a bike. We’re going to the Green Pepper in Massachusetts.”

“With Ben?”

Now that the sunlight streaming through the window wasn’t hateful, Georgia could admire the way it lit Lauren from behind, an enchanting silhouette. She stepped closer and swung Lauren’s hands in her own.

“Don’t worry,” Georgia teased. “He’s a nice enough guy, but he doesn’t even know the difference between a gambrel roof and a mansard.”

Lauren’s hands stopped in their playful swinging arc. “I don’t know that either.”

“You have other redeeming qualities,” Georgia said, and she kissed her.

The way Lauren’s lips moved against hers was a long-lost pleasure, and Georgia wondered how she hadn’t started kissing her first thing when she saw her, because one night’s sleep seemed as long ago as the eight years that had gone by without a single kiss like this. When Lauren kissed her forehead and stepped back, Georgia knew that from this kiss to the next would be a long wait too.

“I’m still gonna look those words up,” Lauren said.

“I know. It’s one of those qualities I like.”

Lauren kissed her again, and by the time they broke apart, she was running late. Georgia listened to her try and fail to shut the door quietly, and her heart shone like the sunbeams dappling the countertops.

* * *

That afternoon, Georgia clung to her lovely morning with white knuckles while Hannah stomped back and forth across the living room floor. Kelly was late.

“Do you want to play with your cars while you wait?”

Hannah didn’t answer. Her stomping made the little cars roll out of the lines she’d arranged them in earlier, and that made her stomp harder. Georgia tugged at a lock of her own hair. She was trying to think like Kyle, but it was hard when she felt the same way Hannah did. They both needed to calm down before Kelly got here, though, because Kelly wouldn’t be any help.

“Stomp for five more minutes,” she said, “then we need to do something else, okay?”

“Stomp for five more minutes,” Hannah said.

Kelly arrived an hour later, at the same time as Ben. Both of them waited by the door while Georgia and Hannah finished a hand of rummy.

“I’m sorry I was late,” Kelly told Hannah.

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