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Claire and Georgie had silently broken up a month before the lake trip.
It wasn’t dramatic, which had made it worse. Claire had cried for the better part of the month before over the feeling that it was coming, but, when it actually did, her eyes were dry. She told herself that she had dried herself out, that she had cried so much already that her body couldn’t produce anything else. She wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but it was a nice thought. One that made her feel less guilty every time Georgie emerged from her room to piss or get something to eat and her eyes were rimmed in red.
Other times, her first instinct wasn’t guilt at all but a rush of annoyance that Georgie was reacting like she was the one who got broken up with. It wasn’t that clean – Georgie, upset because she had had the rug ripped out from under her and Claire, numb because she had been the one to do it. Claire wasn’t even really sure, in the end, which of them had been the one to pull the trigger. It didn’t matter much that she had felt it coming; one day, she was Georgie’s girlfriend, and the next day she wasn’t much of anything at all. One day, Georgie was her best friend, the person she loved more than anyone in the world, and the next day she was her housemate.
But the lake trip.
It wasn’t like it was just them. It was them, and their friend, and Claire’s younger sister all together in an AirBnB in rural Pennsylvania, money already paid and non-refundable. So it felt silly to cancel. Bad to cancel. Claire had wondered, anyway, if Georgie would. Eat the cost plus that of a plane ticket and flee back to London. She didn’t know if the feeling that erupted in her chest at the thought was longing or dread.
But, when the time came, all five of them were loaded up in the car for the long drive from Orlando to Pennsylvania anyway – Claire, Georgie, their other roommate Nick, and Claire’s sister Sav – with Claire in the driver's seat because it was her car and Georgie in the passenger because Claire’s car made her sick otherwise. Any part that wasn’t awkward was only the efforts of Nick and Sav, playing music and forcing conversation. Claire gripped the steering wheel tight until her hands ached. Georgie, in the seat over, picked at the tears in her jeans and let her dark hair fall over her face, only speaking to periodically argue with Nick over the music choices. Claire, personally, found the endless onslaught of early 2000s emo fairly accurate to the general mood. But Georgie had never exactly been one for sad music. Anything overly emotional, really. Except for with Claire, where all of the walls and her tendency to scrunch her nose up and go ewwww at any emotional vulnerability was replaced by sweetness and softness. She bit her lip, and she tried to drown that thought out. Because, of course, it wasn’t true anymore. Claire always knew that Georgie was crying. But she was never let in.
By the time, fifteen hours later, they arrived in Pennsylvania, all of them were too exhausted for any sort of drama anyway. Claire fell asleep, face down on the bed she was sharing with Sav, and she didn’t even have the energy to think that she was supposed to have been sharing with Georgie.
Most of the rest of the week was slow, too, mercifully. Making smores around the campfire with Nick placed in between them. Georgie and Sav chasing one another around the lake while Claire and Nick sat on the dock and Claire buried her face in a book to keep from having to watch.
It wasn’t until the third day, that they were one on one.
Claire had woken up early and was unable to fall back asleep no matter how much she tossed and turned. She could hear the water lapping against the shore and it made her heart race, even as it felt ridiculous. When she was a kid, their family used to make beach trips. Claire had never loved the ocean. It felt overwhelming and much too big. The lake, as she was finding, was the opposite. A little too claustrophobic.
Finally, Claire forced herself out of bed, careful not to disturb her sister. She pulled on a sweater and shoved her feet – sans socks – into a worn out pair of sneakers before heading outside, a water bottle clutched in hand.
She almost missed that Georgie was already there.
She was sitting on the edge of the dock, one leg hanging down close enough to almost reach the water and the other pulled up against her chest. Georgie had said, weeks ago when they were first planning this trip, that she was going to bring her fishing stuff, see what the hell she could pull out of this lake. So far, Claire hadn’t seen her get them out. On their way in, they had driven past a tiny wooden stand selling fish food. Not, like, bait, but little bags of god knows what that she had seen kids throwing into the water by the shore and then jumping back as what had to be more fish than Claire had ever seen in her life jumped up to eat it. She had thought about grabbing some for Georgie. She hadn’t known if it would be welcome, but maybe this week would be less excruciating if she just fucking did it.
Claire stepped onto the dock and, when the wood creaked, Georgie turned around. Claire braced herself, expecting to see her eyes red and irritated again, the way that they had been for weeks. But they were just brown. “Oh,” Georgie said. “It’s you. Hi.”
“Hi,” Claire said back. One of her shoes rubbed against a blister on the back of her ankle, and she reached to scratch at it. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were out here. Couldn’t sleep.” She took a tentative step forward. “Can I sit? It’s okay if not. I can, like, leave.”
Georgie raised her eyebrow, a familiar old trick. Surely, it hadn’t been that long since Claire had seen her do it, but it made her miss it. Getting to see all of the ways Georgie would twist her face, all of the time. “Where would you go?”
“I don’t know.” Claire sat down anyway, the wood of the desk cool and damp against the back of her legs. “Like, the woods.”
“The woods?” Georgie’s amused laugh was enough to push Claire near the edge of tears. She didn’t cry, of course. She couldn’t. But her throat tightened anyway. “What the fuck would you do in the woods?”
“Wander around.” Claire pulled her shoes off, knowing her legs were long enough to reach the water if she let them hang. The water was cold, too. She imagined the fish – the ones over by the feed stand. She imagined them biting her toes, but she didn’t let herself pull her legs up even as her skin buzzed. Like, if she didn’t move, Georgie wouldn’t process that she was here and wouldn’t clam back up again. “Look at animals. They have bears in Pennsylvania, I think.”
“Bears? You’d wander into the woods and get eaten by a bear?”
Claire bit back a smile at the way the word became twisted in Georgie’s accent. She scoffed instead. “I wouldn’t be eaten! I could totally vibe with the bear. It would sense I’m pure of heart and leave me alone.”
“If you were Nick, you’d be insisting that you could fight the bear,” Georgie pointed out. “The bear probably wouldn’t even be your biggest problem. There could be, like, people out there. Drantis, even. Or you could just get lost and have to live the rest of your life out in the woods here. Wouldn’t that be fucked up?” Her legs swung gently over the water, thigh brushing up ever so slightly against Claire’s. Neither of them moved.
“This is a bad idea,” Claire said after a few seconds of silence. “Us being too close, I mean.”
“I thought it was a bad idea to break up immediately before we went on a trip to the middle of nowhere together, personally.” Georgie’s voice was a little dry, a little tight. Lacking the normal up and down melody she always found her way into. Claire swallowed down the urge to say that that wasn’t her fault. Georgie laughed, just a little. Claire prayed to everything she could fucking think of that she wasn’t going to cry again. “But we did that anyway.” We.
“Well, we’ve always done a lot of stupid shit.” Claire said. She readjusted her hands on the edge of the desk, waterlogged wood pressing harsh against her palms. “Like falling in love while you’re still living in London. Like not knowing how a visa works.”
“Like kissing on your snapchat story.” Georgie’s knee hit Claire’s again, and this time it was definitely intentional. She left it there, cold whereas Claire’s skin was still warm from being inside. She wondered how long Georgie had been out here. That was info that she could probably force out of Nick later – assuming that she had even noticed that Georgie was gone, which on second thought seemed unlikely.
“Kissing on my snapchat story,” Claire repeated softly. Her hand found its way onto Georgie’s thigh, and Georgie’s head found its way onto her shoulder. They had always been quite stupid, when it came to one another. Maybe, if nobody could see through the fog coming off the lake, it didn’t matter anyway.