Page 20 of Lift Me Up

“I think you know me better than most people, actually. You got to know a lot more than I usually share on a first date,” I pick the final knot free, and Georgie pulls her hand out of the spaghetti pile of yarn in front of her. “There,”

She flexes her fingers, and I resist the urge to take it in my hand to hold. She looks up at me with her unreadable expression. I wonder what she sees when she looks at me. Am I what she imagined when we talked in the dark elevator? Am I disappointing? Did she think of me at all after? Did I consume her every thought like she did mine? Did she take up yarning? Whatever it is you do with yarn?

“You look like your mind is racing,” She remarks.

I smile, “I don’t have a good poker face. The trait runs in my family.”

“I can see that.” She picks at the label of a nearby ball of yarn.

“So, is that all your cart?”

She looks behind her to the cart I’ve pointed out, “Oh, yeah, that’s me. I have a bit of a problem.”

“I think there are far worse afflictions than yarn.”

“You’re not wrong.” She chuckles, huffing air at a piece of her hair that’s fallen from her bun.

I instinctively reach across the table to her, and gently push the piece out of her vision. I can hear her intake of breath, her eyes cross to stare at my hand, then flutter closed. She swallows.

“So—”

“I—”

We both start and stop, and then we try again. By the third time, we’re fighting off giggles. She’s beaming at me, and my heart thumps hard.

“You go first,” I tell her.

She nods, then distracts herself by twisting a broken piece of yarn between her fingers. “So, you’re going to think I am crazy,”

“I doubt that, but go ahead.”

“I can't help but feel like this… is some twist of fate. Like, you risked your job—lost your job because you were trying to comfort me, a stranger⁠—”

“If it makes you feel better, I actually quit.”

“No, it really doesn’t. I have thought about y—getting in contact for weeks, and when I tried to call you back in the elevator, that Val person told me they canned you. I felt sick. I didn’t know how else to tell you what I wanted to say.”

“Tell me now. Pretend you’re calling me. Come on,” I encourage her and hold up my hand to make a fake phone.

“I can’t,” She whines playfully, embarrassed.

I sigh dramatically, “I wait by the phone every day just wishing that Georgie would call to tell me she loves me⁠—”

She splutters, “It’s not⁠—”

“I’m kidding,” I tease. “Close your eyes…”

She sighs this time, slowly raising her fake hand phone up to her ear, letting her eyes slip closed. Those impossibly long eyelashes fan across her blushing cheekbones.

“Hello,” she says softly.

“It’s me; tell me something good. Whatever you want to say,”

Her voice shakes, face pinched, “Um, I wanted to say… thank you? For everything. I didn’t feel like I got to do that properly, and like, I don’t think I would have been okay if you hadn’t been there for me.”

“You’re welcome. I would hope someone would do the same for me...” I open my eyes to look at her. She twirls a nervous finger in the one stray piece of hair near her ear. “Was there anything else?”

She presses her lips together, then speaks, “Was I crazy? To think that we got along, like, really well? Or was I just hallucinating at that moment?”