Georgia On My Mind

by Marie Force

She set off on foot toward the waterfront—just to see if he was working and to maybe catch a glimpse of him. Even as she told herself it would be enough, she knew it was a lie.

  On the way, she tried to keep her mind clear of distractions and clutter. It was best that she not think too much about what she was about to do. Skulking around the side of the building, she leaned toward the bar to see who was performing and nearly fell into the water.

  “Damn it,” she muttered as she recovered her footing and stalked through the front door. “I’m allowed to be here just like anyone else. So what if he sees me?”

  “Talking to yourself, Cat?” asked Ernie, the bartender, with a bark of laughter. They had worked together at another club years ago. Guitar music wafted in from the outdoor bar, but because whoever was out there wasn’t singing at the moment, she couldn’t tell if it was Ian.

  “Shut up, Ernie, and get me a beer.”

  “Still grumpy as ever, I see.”

  “Who’s playing?” she asked before she could chicken out.

  “Ian Caldwell.” Ernie turned up his nose. “Too mellow for you and me.”

  “Yeah,” Cat agreed, her heart racing as she reached for the money she had stashed in her pocket.

  “It’s on me.”

  “Thanks, Ernie.” Taking the beer with her, she drew in a deep breath for courage and stepped onto the deck. Feigning surprise at seeing Ian there, she turned in what she considered to be an award-winning performance. However, judging by the smug smile that appeared on his too-handsome-for-words face, he knew right away that she was full of shit.

  Feeling rebellious, she took a seat on one of the barstools, propped her feet on a second stool, and got busy flirting with the bartender—another guy she knew from around town.

  While Cat did her best to ignore him, Ian played Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold.” She didn’t want to be impressed that he handled the harmonica part, too, with one of those around-the-neck contraptions. As he sang about searching for a heart of gold, he stared at her with a blank expression on his face. Not that she was looking, per se. More like she was monitoring him out of a tiny corner of her eye.

  Something that felt an awful lot like shame settled in her gut as she received his message, loud and clear.

  He played another song she hadn’t heard before, about a man who loved a woman who kept disappearing on him. He wasn’t even trying to be subtle! If he thought he was going to rattle her, it wasn’t going to work.

  Yeah, right.

  Who was she kidding? She would be squirming in her seat if she had to withstand this campaign of his for another minute. Finishing her beer, she said good-bye to her friend at the bar and headed inside without so much as a glance at the small stage in the corner.

  Ian called to her, but she didn’t stop. He caught up to her, grabbed her arm, and spun her around.

  “What do you want?” she snapped.

  “I could ask you the same thing. What’re you doing here, Cat? Trying to rub some salt in the wound?”

  She tugged her arm free and realized Ernie was watching them with interest. “This is not the place,” she growled. “And FYI, you suck at subtlety.”

  “Okay to use the office?” Ian asked Ernie over his shoulder.

  “Fine by me, man,” Ernie replied with amusement.

  Ian half walked, half dragged Cat into the office and slammed the door behind him.

  “Stop acting like a Neanderthal,” she huffed as she shook him off.

  “Why are you here?”

  “It’s a public place. I didn’t realize you’d gotten custody of The Landing in our divorce.”

  “Save your crap for someone who can’t see right through it and tell me what the hell you’re doing here!”

  “I have absolutely no idea.” She reached for the door.

  “Don’t you dare leave,” he said in a low angry growl she wouldn’t have thought him capable of. “Don’t come here and do this to me and then walk away again. Don’t you dare.”

  “Do what to you?”

  He stepped toward her.

  She backed up against the door and was reminded of him pressing her against another wall and kissing her senseless. A rush of raw desire stole the breath from her lungs. Maybe if they did that again now, they could forget they were so pissed with each other. Reaching up to him, she brought him down and kissed him.

  When he pressed his body tight against hers and thrust his tongue into her mouth, her heart sang from the simple joy of being close again to him and all the emotions that came with him.

  “Is this what you want, Cat? A quick fuck to relieve the tension? That’s all I’m good for, right?”

  She pushed hard against his chest, but he didn’t budge. “Get away from me, you big stupid jerk!”

  He tightened his arm around her waist. “Yeah, I must be stupid to still want you.”

  “Well, I don’t want you, so you can let go, and I’ll just be on my way.”

  “If you don’t want me and you’re not after a cheap fuck, why are you here?”

  “Stop throwing that word around. It’s beneath you.”

  “You didn’t think so when you were beneath me.”

  “That’s really funny, Ian. Hysterical.” She punched his shoulder. Hard.

  He released her abruptly. “Ow! What the hell was that for?”

  “For making me want you when I don’t want to want you!”

  “I think my head just exploded.”

  “Good, then you’ll be dead, and I won’t have to think about you anymore.”

  A satisfied smile worked its way across his face. “You’ve been thinking about me, huh?”

  “Lose the smile before I smack it off your face.”

  He did as he was told but his eyes continued to dance with amusement.

  “How’s Rosie?”

  The amusement faded. “Don’t go there, Cat. You don’t care about her.”

  “I don’t want her to be sick!”

  “She’s fine. Thanks for asking. Next?”

  “I was wrong to come here.” Filled with regret, she shook her head. “I wanted to see you. I won’t deny that. But I was right the other day when I said there’s no point.”

  “Because I have a daughter. I know. My bad luck.”

  “You don’t think that, so don’t say it.”

  “Leave her out of it. She’s off limits.”

  “She may as well be standing right here between us, and we both know it! Why pretend otherwise?”

  His normally genial blue eyes turned icy. “This conversation is over. I have to get back to work. I have a daughter to support.”

  “I know you do! Stop throwing her in my face!”

  “You’re about to cross a line with me, Cat. A great big line that no one gets to cross.”

  “You’re not being fair.”

  “I’m not,” he drawled, rolling his eyes. “Right. I have a daughter who, by her very existence, automatically disqualifies me from your life, and I’m the one not being fair? You haven’t even bothered to get to know her, and you’ve already decided she’s not worth your time.”

  “I already know everything I fucking need to know about her!”

  Blanching, he took a step back from her. “Don’t use that word when you’re talking about my child.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, mortified, running her fingers through her short hair. “That came out all wrong.”

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You don’t know her because you don’t want to know her. You’ve made that crystal clear from day one.”

  “But you don’t know why,” she said in a small voice.

  After a pregnant pause, he said, “I’m not going to pull it out of you, Cat. If you want to tell me, fine, but make it quick. I’m working here.”

  Cat looked at him, trying to decide if he was worth tearing off the Band-Aid she’d worn on her soul for so long she almost didn’t remember life without it. Again, who did she think she was kidding? He was so wor
th it. If they couldn’t be together, he needed to know why. She owed him that much.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “No. Wait.” She bit down hard on her lip, took a deep breath, and vowed to get through this without tears. “I never knew my father. For most of my life, it was just me and my mother. She was always a little nutty, but in a fun way, you know?”

  His sullen shrug told her he was still pissed. “I guess.”

  “I was eight when she married my stepfather. Chuck was an okay guy, not about to set the world on fire with ambition or anything, but he was nice enough. My mother wasn’t getting any younger, so they had two kids in two years, Marina and Dylan. Two babies right on top of each other put a lot of strain on them and their marriage. They had these loud screaming fights, and then he would take off, sometimes for days on end, leaving us to deal with the kids. A lot of times she left me alone with them, even when I was as young as ten.”

  “That’s a lot of responsibility for a kid,” he said, his posture losing some of its rigidity as he listened to her.

  “It was, but I loved them. I’d waited forever for siblings. They were never a burden to me. Anyway, my mother and Chuck finally got divorced when I was in eighth grade. She started dating again right away, and I did a lot of babysitting. I spent far more time with them than either of their parents did. I got them off the bus, made sure they did their homework, made their dinner, gave them baths, read them stories.”

  “Cat,” he said, his eyes soft with sympathy she didn’t want from him.

  “Wait.” She held up a hand to stop him from coming toward her. If she didn’t get this out now, she’d never work up the courage again. “As I got closer to finishing high school, I noticed my mother was spending even less time at home. In the meantime, I was plotting my escape despite how worried I was about what would happen to Marina and Dylan after I was gone. I knew they were worried, too, but we never talked about it until I got accepted to the Berklee College of Music in Boston.”

  Ian released a low whistle. “What do you play?”

  “Used to play,” she clarified. “The piano. I taught myself on an electric keyboard I worked a year to pay for, and I got really good.”

  “You must’ve been amazing to get into that school. No one gets in there.”

  “In the end, it didn’t matter. The night before my graduation, I came home to find my mother packing. I asked her where she was going, and she said she couldn’t be a single mother again. She’d already done it with me and wasn’t going to do it again. ‘What are we supposed to do?’ I asked her. ‘What you’ve always done, Cat,’ she said. ‘You’re more their mother than I ever was.’

  “She walked out the door that night, and I’ve never spoken to her again even though she still lives here in Newport. She saw the kids a couple of times early on, but after a while I decided it was more upsetting for them to see her than not to, so I put a stop to it. She never uttered a word of protest and just disappeared from our lives.”

  “What about their father?”

  “He helped out some financially, but I raised those kids all by myself. I gave up the chance to go to Berklee, but it was worth it, Ian. I’m so proud of them. Marina’s a sophomore at Providence College, and Dylan’s leaving next week for Syracuse—both of them on academic scholarships. Somehow, between the three of us, we managed to pull it off.”

  “I’m awestruck, Cat. I’m struggling through it at thirty-six with more help than I know what to do with, and you raised two kids, alone, when you were half my age.”

  She shrugged off his praise. “I just wanted you to know it’s not personal, my thing with Rosie.”

  “I understand that now.”

  “Remember when I told you I’d just gotten out of a relationship?”

  “The big hairy deal?”

  “That’s the one. We dated for four years and broke up because he wanted to get married and have kids. He moved in with Dylan and me last year. When Dyl got his own place this summer, I snapped up the chance to move in with Georgie. I couldn’t very well stay where I was after saying no to his proposal.”

  Ian looked down at the floor, his shoulders stooped with dejection.

  Cat went to him and reached up to caress his face. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I never meant to. I knew if I stuck my hand in this fire, we were both going to get burned, but I couldn’t seem to resist. I still can’t.”

  “Cat,” he whispered as he crushed his lips down on hers.

  She clung to him, meeting each ardent stroke of his tongue with her own and gasping in surprise when he lifted her off her feet and into his strong arms. The kiss was long and deep and desperate. It went on until Cat couldn’t take another minute of being that close to him while knowing she couldn’t have him. “We can’t keep doing this, Ian,” she said. “It just gets worse every time.”

  He let her slide down the aroused front of him. “I know.”

  They held each other a long time until a knock on the door startled them.

  “Are you guys doing it in there?” Ernie called in a joking tone.

  “No,” Ian replied without releasing her. “Come on in.”

  The door opened. “The boss is looking for you, dude. I told him you had a situation.” His eyes darted from Cat to Ian and back to Ian again. “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah,” Cat said, stepping out of Ian’s embrace. “I was just leaving.”

  “See you around, Cat,” Ernie said as he walked away.

  With a small smile for Ian, she said, “Don’t be a stranger.”

  “Cat.”

  Looking up at him, she took a moment to memorize every precious detail.

  In a soft voice packed with emotion and regret, he said, “Did it ever occur to you that you might have a lot in common with a little girl whose mother abandoned her?” He caressed her cheek with his index finger and kissed her forehead. “Take care, babe.”

  She watched him go, feeling as if he’d ripped her heart right out of her chest and taken it with him.

  Chapter 29

  The lab technician removed the needle from the vein in Georgie’s arm and pressed a gauze pad into the crook of her elbow.

  Georgie looked up at Nathan.

  He offered an encouraging smile.

  “Four to six weeks,” the tech said, reading from the orders her mother’s doctor had faxed over. “It says here he’ll call you if any further treatment is warranted. And you checked the box for mail notification of negative results. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any questions?”

  She had so many questions, her head spun with them. She wanted to ask the tech, what would you do? If the result is positive, would you have your breasts removed? “No. Thank you.”

  With a curt nod, the tech took the vials of blood and left the small room.

  Nathan helped Georgie up. “That wasn’t so bad, huh?”

  “I guess not.” She glanced down at the bandage holding the gauze in place. “Four to six weeks. That’s a long time to wait.”

  “It’ll go by faster than you think.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Slipping an arm around her shoulder, he led her to the clinic’s main door. “We put it out of our minds and live our lives.”

  It sounded like a good plan. Georgie just hoped she could do it.

  Georgie woke up alone early on Friday morning and was sad to realize Nathan had never made it there the night before. Realizing she had grown accustomed to waking up with him, she sat for a long time on the edge of her bed trying to decide when she’d started encouraging what was happening between them. Right around the time you accosted him in the hospital parking lot and invited him to come sleep with you.

  Suddenly, the idea of going back to Atlanta held zero appeal. What if I stayed here? It was the first time she allowed herself to seriously consider the possibility. I could think of something to do here for work, couldn’t I? I mean, it wouldn’t be Davidson’s, but
maybe at one of the department stores in Providence. How about what I owe my employees in Atlanta? They’re counting on me. I have to go back long enough to clean up the mess there. After that, I can do whatever I want.

  Still pondering her options, she showered and headed to the center early. By nine thirty, she had done six months’ worth of filing that cleared the huge pile of paper she had inherited from her mother, paid the bills, balanced the checkbook, and sorted through a stack of correspondence. At the very bottom of the pile, she found a copy of the application for the recycling Dumpster and was reminded of the day she met Nathan. So much had happened since then.

  She picked up the phone and called the city’s public works director.

  “This is Georgie Quinn over at the senior center,” she said when Charlie Foster answered his extension.

  “Nancy’s daughter?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m sorry about your mom. She was a character.”

  “Thank you. The reason for my call is a copy of an application I have here that shows my mother requested a recycling Dumpster almost a year ago, and we still don’t have it.”

  “Well, now, Georgie, these things take time—”

  “Do you know about Styrofoam, Charlie? Do you know that when your grandkids have grandkids, the stuff we use today will still be sitting in the landfill?” Nathan would be so proud. “It doesn’t break down. Ever. We need that Dumpster. I don’t have the staff to clean more than a hundred trays a day. If I’m going to provide a hot lunch for the city’s seniors, I need my Styrofoam trays. Can you see the pickle I’m in?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts, Charlie. I’ve been trucking smelly recycling trash over to the RecCenter for weeks now. I could charge the city to get the stench of liver and onions out of my car. So what do you say? Get a Dumpster over here?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “You are so your mother’s daughter,” he said with a chuckle.

  The statement stopped her heart. “Thank you, Charlie,” she said softly. How could he know there was no higher compliment he could pay her?

  She finished cleaning up the small office and even straightened the pictures on the wall, most of which were of her mother with her constituency throughout the years. Georgie smiled as she righted the one of her mom with the dirty old men from last year’s Christmas party.