Page 83 of The Fall Classic

“It feels like a boulder’s crushing my chest,” I told my dad. “I can’t go on like this.”

“Then don’t,” he said, his arm around me. “If this grief is a boulder, stand on it, instead. Let her memory lift you up, not press you down.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

Dad sat beside me, letting tears stream down his face to match mine. “Neither do I. But none of us will figure it out alone.”

We talked for hours that day, and when I was finally in a good enough place, we dropped the bags off at the donation center together.

And at least in Bruce Fischer’s mind, it was better to move forward with a living memory than to put it all in the back of a closet and call it love.

Looking around Georgie’s apartment, I know exactly what this is.

It’s the mess of someone holding on too tightly to things because someone she loved once held them, too.

She’s so desperate to stay connected to her mom, she can’t let go of anything for fear it will sever their connection.

I don’t know what any of us would have done without my dad. He’s physically the most imposing man I’ve ever known, which is saying a lot, considering I’ve been surrounded by athletes my whole life.

But emotionally? Mentally? He’s a freaking giant.

Where is Georgie’s dad in all this? Where was he to hold her up and carry her when she couldn’t continue? Why is she the keeper of memories in the family instead of him? Why is she getting crushed alone by her grief without anyone to share the burden or, better yet, help her move forward in spite of it?

If her dad won’t do this, maybe I can.

You? You’re still stuck at that same spot every week during your brainspotting, right at seven o’clock. You act like you’re all self-actualized when you’re holding on to Georgie right now. You’re making her the next thing you cling too hard to.

I thought I’d already worked through this particular anxiety, but here it is, rearing its ugly head again, because that’s what anxiety does.

Did Liesel cling to Coop or did she fall for him? Did Lucas hang on too tight to Scottie or simply prove that she could never lose him?

Where’s the line between holding someone and holding on?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Georgie

Icome back to consciousness slowly, grasping at a dream I’m already losing the thread of but not the cozy, cared for feeling I haven’t felt in longer than I can remember. But it isn’t cloaked in sorrow the way dreams about Mama are, which tells me that this dream was about someone else.

I know exactly who, and I don’t want to wake up.

Except I have a truck to open!

I sit up so fast, the room tilts.

“Whoa,” says a voice.

I blink. Once, twice. The apartment revolves around me—all books, mugs, and mementos—and then my brain catches on the angle of the light coming through the window …

It is nowhere near four thirty AM.

“Oh no,” I whisper, dread creeping over me. Marlowe’s going to be furious. “Oh no.”

“What’s the matter?”

It’s that voice again. Logan’s voice. I look up and my lips part in surprise. He’s in the armchair across from me with The Horse and His Boy open in his lap, still in yesterday’s clothes, his blond hair wild and bushy. The best part is the look on his face, like me waking up is the best thing that’s happened to him all day.

Which would do all sorts of things to my heart if not for⁠—