He finishes the movie, but barely. He skips the wrap party, spends the next four days on the couch watching back-to-back reruns of Castle on Charlie’s expansive cable package. He was supposed to fly back to New York this week, but opening up his laptop and booking the ticket feels fucking impossible. Everything feels impossible all of a sudden, doing the dishes piled in the sink or washing the dirty clothes draped over the furniture. Cooking food that isn’t jelly toast. He feels bad—he’s a guest here, technically, it’s Charlie’s house even if Charlie is in Paris or Jakarta—but not bad enough to do anything about it. He runs out of paper towels. He runs out of steam.
Charlie calls and he sends it to voice mail. Georgia calls, and he doesn’t pick up. He remembers this feeling, he thinks, from the days after Hamlet. How easy it is not to take a shower. How easy it is to just . . . sink.
Lilly doesn’t text, not that he’s expecting her to. Will doesn’t text her, either.
It’s been a little over a week when the bell rings, an insane Baroque chime that lasts roughly forty seconds and rattles his teeth in his head. God, Will hates this house so much. He thinks it’s probably a delivery person—Georgia keeps on sending things from Amazon, like she’s worried he’s still sitting standing in Target unable to make any decisions—but when he finally opens the door Will is stunned to see his sister herself, a duffel in one hand and a massive shopping bag from Zabar’s in the other.
“LA is terrible,” she announces. “It took me forty-five minutes in an Uber just to get out of LAX.”
“It’s a nightmare,” Will agrees reflexively, then blinks. “What are you doing here?”
Georgia shrugs. “I missed you,” she says lightly, bustling past him in the direction of the kitchen. “And then Caro said you were acting like a total psycho when she saw you, so. Figured I’d come and do a wellness check.”
“And you didn’t think maybe a heads-up would have been appropriate?”
“I like to preserve the element of surprise,” she says, then stops short, taking in the state of the house: the blinds shut tight and the gunk caked to the counters, the unwashed funk hanging grossly in the air. “Oh, Will,” she says softly, and she sounds so disappointed. It makes Will feel about two inches tall.
“Not now, okay?” he mutters, taking the Zabar’s bag from her hand and setting it on the island. “I can’t deal with your judgment on top of everything else.”
Georgia frowns. “My judgment?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t, actually.”
Will sighs. They don’t have this kind of relationship, where they fly across the country unannounced to solve each other’s problems. Where they fake their way through with rugelach and good cheer. All at once, he’s furious: At Georgia for coming all the way out here in the first place. At Nick for being an unrelentingly predatory prick. At himself most of all. Fuck, it’s like none of his clothes have fit properly since he got to California. It’s like his life hasn’t fit properly in months. “Can you spare me the guilt trip, please? You show up here with no warning, you expect me to drop everything—”
“I flew out here because you tried to kill yourself, you absolute dipshit!” Georgia drops her duffel onto the floor with a thump. “What part of that don’t you get?”
Will blinks at her, feeling—there is no other word for this—gobsmacked. “I—”
But Georgia is just getting started. “Quite seriously, Will, what in the actual hell is wrong with you that makes you like this?” she demands, pacing across the dusty hardwood. “You’re the only family I have, do you get that? You’re it. Do you have any idea what it was like, to walk into your apartment and find you lying there in the bathroom? Do you have any idea how afraid I was? How afraid I was coming here today? Have you ever even stopped to think about it?”
“Of course I have,” Will protests.
“I don’t believe you.” Georgia shakes her head. “Look,” she says, “I know that whatever you’re going through isn’t about me, and that I’m supposed to be gentle with you and give you a wide berth and act however you feel is the right way, but honestly, fuck that. You think I just love buying you shit off Amazon? Patronizing some billionaire’s conglomerate marketplace, exploiting low wage workers and destabilizing the entire American economy? Of course not!” She huffs a breath. “I send you that stuff because I don’t know how to take care of you or have a relationship with you! Because you won’t let me.”
Will looks at her for one helpless moment, totally at a loss for what to say. “There was a woman,” he confesses finally. “And I fucked it up.”
Georgia laughs at that, a sharp surprised cackle that doesn’t sound anything like her normal laugh. Then, all at once, she starts to cry.
Will gapes. He hasn’t seen his sister cry in the better part of two decades and the sight of it cracks something open inside him, leaking in his chest like a broken egg. “It’s okay,” he says, lifting his hands in her direction, wanting so badly to reach out and touch her. Not entirely sure how. “It’s not a big deal, really. We weren’t seeing each other very long.”
Georgia looks at him like he’s too stupid to breathe air. “I’m not crying about your breakup, Will!”
“Oh.” Oh. Will processes that for a moment. It would sound insane to say he didn’t know she cared about the rest of it—of course he knew she cared about the rest of it, she’s his sister; but still, it’s like the full force of what happened isn’t hitting him until now. The full force of what he almost did. She was so young when their parents died, Will thinks suddenly. Both of them were so, so young. “Georgia,” he tries—completely unsure how to follow it up, but wanting to. “Georgia.”
Georgia sighs and sits down at the island, wiping her face with one palm. “There’s smoked salmon in the Zabar’s bag,” she informs him. “It needs to go in the fridge.”