Page 145 of The Fall Classic

Georgie

I love you. So much. Saying that doesn’t come easily to me. Just allowing myself to feel it has been hard enough. But I hope I’ll be able to show you someday how deeply I mean it.

Logan

This is more than enough. <))

I’m still thinking about our texts when I get home that afternoon to my apartment, which smells like the cinnamon-orange-clove candle I was burning last night. I drop my bag and the keys to the coffee truck on the table and fall on to the couch. There’s only a single book on it since Logan got me my floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. My new Firebirds hat falls off my head, and I place it on the coffee table in front of me. Then my gaze sweeps over the shelves, where Logan’s Mudflaps hat rests next to so many familiar spines in their haphazard order that could only make sense to me. The way Lucas’s girlfriend drinks coffee—based on vibes—is how I organize my personal library.

A knock sounds on the door, and I call out, “It’s open!”

Liv’s head pops around the door first, followed by the rest of her. She’s wearing a thin sweatshirt that’s fine on the coffee truck but can’t be good enough for the mid-fifties weather today. Like always, her eyes rove around the room beneath her long bangs, stopping on the wall of rejected mugs, piles of half-finished projects, mountains of crocheted blankets, and stacks of pot holders.

“Hey, come in,” I tell her.

“Sorry to bug you. I just forgot to grab the truck keys for tomorrow,” she says, her eyebrows threading together as she looks at my bookshelf. Her eyes stop on the very bottom two rows, which are reserved for all the books Mama loved that I, well, don’t. “Why do you have all of those misshapen mugs in front of all those books?”

Heat creeps up my neck. “Those aren’t my favorite books. Or mugs.”

“Why do you have them?”

“They were my mama’s.”

“So?”

I almost shake my head in confusion. “She passed away. I’ve told you that, right?”

“Yes,” Liv says. “I don’t understand why that means you have to keep them.”

“Because they mattered enough to her that she kept them.”

“So did her toothbrush,” Liv says, walking into the apartment all the way now.

“That’s not the same,” I say.

She crouches in front of the bookshelf. “Of course it is. You don’t like these things or need them. They’re no better to you than her toothbrush.”

Her argument is so blunt, so brutal, so … true. And it’s the truth that makes me feel so defensive.

“But they remind me of her.”

Liv walks over to the bookshelves and crouches down to move the mugs and run her fingers over the spines of my least favorite books. “Are you actually afraid you’ll forget her if you get rid of Madame Bovary?”

“No, but⁠—”

“Do you have a special memory tied to this gray mug with the painted … is this a weasel wearing another weasel as a scarf?”

I squint. “I—I have no idea. And no, not really.”

She picks up another mug along with the book The Picture of Dorian Gray. “Do you have memories associated with either of these?”

“Maybe,” I say.

She stands up and crosses to the huge basket of blankets next to the other huge basket of blankets. I’m glad she doesn’t know about the ones in my closet.

“How many crocheted blankets do you need?”

“Liv—”