Or you can move a card from a Free Cell onto a Tableau pile if the card is one lower and in a different color than the Tableau pile's top card. You could move a red 5 from a Free Cell onto a Tableau pile where the current top card was a black 6. You can move a Tableau card onto the Foundations.
- Growly FreeCell 2.2 for Mac can be downloaded from our software library for free. Commonly, this program's installer has the following filename: freecell110.dmg. The software is included in Games. The size of the latest downloadable installer is 2.8 MB.
- Is a simple, easy to play FreeCell solitaire card game with large beautiful cards. Contains 8 FreeCell type games, including: FreeCell itself Sea Towers Eight Off, Penguin Bakers Game Spidercells Stalactites Two Cells.
Paul Alfille changed Baker's Game by making cards build according to alternate colors, thus creating FreeCell. He implemented the first computerized version of it for the PLATO educational computer system in 1978. The game became popular mainly due to Jim Horne, who learned the game from the PLATO system and implemented the game as a full graphical version for Windows. This was eventually bundled along with several releases of Windows.
- Shuffle, then deal the 52 cards face up in 8 columns with each card visible but only the end card of each column fully exposed. Four columns will have 7 cards, the others only 6.
- Apart from the columns, there are four single card free cells and four suit piles (foundations). The objective is to get all the cards into the foundations.
- Single exposed cards may be moved:
- Column to column, placing the card on a card of the next rank and different colour suit. (E.G. Place a red 3 on a black 4.) (Aces are low.). Empty columns may be filled with any suit or rank.
- Column to FreeCell, any exposed card as long as there is an empty cell.
- FreeCell to Column, as column to column.
- Column to suit home pile. Next card in order, starting with the Ace, ending with the King. Each suit is completely independent.
- FreeCell to suit home pile. As column to suit home pile.
Margot awoke a few hours later. An early morning breeze slipped in through the screen, scented with dew and the jasmine bushes beneath the window. Finally, when sleep obviously held no intention of returning, she flung back the covers and walked down the hall, past the quiet of Carrie’s closed door and down the stairs. Not really heading anywhere, but simply restless and needing to move about.
he stood in the quiet of her foyer; the cool of her slate floor seeped into her bare feet. She remained still and listened to her house. Her refrigerator switched on with a hum-click, and the bright green of the clock on her microwave cast a slick sheen across the white porcelain tiles on her counter. A car drove past her house slowly, its tires hissing on the pavement. She couldn’t recall ever wandering through her home this early—or late, however one looked at it. The stillness of her house held an unfamiliarness to it, as if it shifted into another personality at night; rather, it felt hushed and paused, as if its spirit hid itself from her behind her furniture and decorations.
She went to her office, thinking she might check her email, or perhaps play FreeCell to quiet her head and coax sleep back into her. She stepped on a piece of paper and looked down; it was an envelope. She picked it up, flipped it over and saw it was one of Geoff’s quick drawings she kept, a sketch of a pair of her old sandals. She probably cast them aside by the back door and their tumbled position caught his eye, perhaps while he was on the phone, then left the little drawing forgotten on the counter where she found it later. She thought, suddenly, of the box of keepsakes up in the attic; she hadn’t looked at them since she moved from England back to the States, and she felt an urge to go through them—a desire she didn’t remember having before.
Margot placed the envelope on her desk, returned upstairs and pulled down the trap door that hid the stairs into her attic.
She climbed them and yanked on the ball-chain cord to turn on the string of bare bulbs, then stood in the light made yellow from dust, and tried to remember where the box was. She found it after a few minutes of searching, in a back corner, under boxes of crystal glasses and linen she inherited from her grandmother.
Using a loose nail she pulled from a rafter, Margot slit open the tape and folded back the flaps. The first thing on top was a denim jacket. On the back “Red Line” was embroidered in scarlet and silver thread, and over the left breast was their logo. There was a tear in one elbow; she snagged it on a hook in a barn one afternoon when she and Isabeau went horseback riding. She put it aside, reached in, pulled out a handful of photo envelopes and opened one.
The pictures were in a random order of times and people, as if she mixed up several rolls of film. She flipped through them quickly, wanting to see them and not.
But at the last photo she stopped. It was of Geoff and her, taken at Pier 39 in San Francisco by another tourist. The sun was bright, and made the colors and the sky seem as if a child penned them in with Magic Markers. She was seated on a bench by the double-decker carousel; Geoff was behind her, leaning down so his chin was on her head, and his arms were wrapped tightly around her. She held his arms, hugging him back and leaning into him. She was tan, Geoff sunburned—she could clearly see the salmon pink of his nose and cheekbones. They were both grinning; a young couple in love and having fun.
Geoff wore a white t-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes. His hair shone almost platinum in the sunlight; hers was plaited into a braid that hung over her shoulder. She was squinting from the sun and had on the tank top she bought at Alcatraz the day before, denim shorts and brown sandals; her hooded Oregon State sweatshirt was tied around her waist.
We look so ordinary, Margot thought.
Then, with a suddenness that made her breath catch, she remembered that day. One she forgot over the years, precisely put away like so much else. Through some fluke of luck, they wandered through the tourist-clogged area without having any one bother them for a single photo or autograph once. There wasn’t even a glance of recognition from anyone.
Margot drew her finger over the picture. Where are those two people? she wondered. What happened to them? Are they still there on the Pier, eating cotton candy and caramel corn, browsing through the shops, eating freshly-caught, freshly-steamed clams for their lunch?
She turned the picture over and saw she wrote July 12, 1989 on the back. The same trip they went to Washington D.C. (Geoff wanted to take her to the Lincoln Memorial ever since their first date and he talked about seeing it), and Kauai where they spent a little over two weeks at her family’s beach house. Then, to break up the long flight back to London, they flew to San Francisco for a week. From there they rented a convertible and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to L.A. to visit Disneyland, then back up again; from there they to New Orleans for another week, and then home to England. She and Geoff set their own pace; by the time they got home, they were gone for nearly two months. It wasn’t much later Geoff and the rest of the band began recording Thin. The first round of it, at least, when she embraced and enjoyed its presence.
And then, six months later, on a late, slushy night in Philadelphia, everything changed.
She set the photo aside and pulled out the rest of the memorabilia, piece by piece. Magazine and newspaper clippings about Red Line; tour programs and backstage passes; out-of-print EPs and singles; a t-shirt signed by the band. And then, on the bottom, she found the Rolling Stone cover; she had it laminated the summer after she bought it.
It shocked her, to see Seth, Angus and Barry grinning up at her, cocky and confident, Geoff looking so damnably sexy and too handsome for his own good. A sensation of both having fully forgotten the exactness of the picture—but also remembering it with precise perfection. And they looked so extraordinarily young. This was how she always pictured them, despite seeing their photographs over the years and watching the changes, having known them intimately for so long. And she could still see it—the dare Geoff seemed to make with the bright spark in his eye: There’s more here. It’s there if you look.
But what is it I’m supposed to find now, Geoff? I knew once, but I don’t any longer.
She looked at it a moment more, then set it on her lap. The last thing she pulled out was a brochure from the inn where she and Geoff stayed on their first date. Margot opened it and glanced at the shiny pages decorated with pictures of the inn taken from different angles, the little town where it was located, the coastline near the village. She ran her finger over the picture showing the front of the inn on a sunny day nearly identical to the one when she and Geoff were there.
She smiled as she remembered how she spent the Monday and Tuesday following the party convincing herself she was kindly forgotten by both Geoff and Barry—despite Isabeau’s amused and continued doubt. Expecting anything else was farfetched and foolish, as far as she thought, but it fell on Isabeau’s deaf ears. She kept picturing the woman who stepped between Geoff and her, and knew that someone like that was far more likely to leave a lasting impression than she would for follow-up interest. Not that she hoped for that, anyway.
At least, not really.
Then, Wednesday evening, as she arrived home from a hard run after work, the phone began to ring as she unlocked the door to the flat. The front door was at the bottom of a short flight of stairs she needed to climb to get to the main floor; she dashed up as fast as she could and answered the phone in the kitchen with a breathless, “Hello?”
“Hi, Margie.”
Margie? she thought. Nobody called her “Margie”.
And then she froze as she recognized the voice.
“It’s Geoff.”
He sounded as breezy-crisp as if the call were expected, as if they spoke several times before and were friends. And as if it hadn’t even occurred to him a roommate might answer the phone instead of her. When she didn’t reply, he said, almost sounding uncertain. “Geoff Maddison. We met the other day—?”
She scraped her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “Yes, I know.” She winced at how rude it sounded. To her ears, it came out an annoyed snap.
“Did I call at a bad time?” Slight hesitancy again.
“No. I just got home.”
“Oh, good,” he said, grin returning to his voice. “I was going to ring you earlier, but I’ve been busy.”
Earlier? she thought.
“But—how—?” she asked.
“Anne gave me your number.”
“Oh.”
Of course.
“I was wondering if you’d like to drive to the seaside Saturday. It’s supposed to be nice, and I’d like to get out of the city—how about you?”
Blink. Pause. Rewind of thoughts.
“Excuse me?”
“I thought maybe we could spend Saturday at the sea. Come back the next morning.”
That time she managed to squeeze some of the words through her bewilderment—seaside, Saturday. Next morning.
Next morning?
“You mean come back on Sunday?”
“Well,” he said, “it would be kind of late after supper. To drive home.”
“I—suppose it would be.” It sounded like a question.
Surely there’s a place to eat much closer in town? she thought.
“There’s an inn there I like, and they’ve got a really good restaurant, but supper starts kind of late,” he said, making her wonder if she actually said the words out loud. “So that’s why I thought we’d stay the night.” He paused—but only slightly. “Two rooms, of course. Or if Saturday isn’t good, we could go Sunday, maybe. Come back Monday. It’s up to you. We can do anything. I thought it’d be a way to spend the day.” The words tumbled out as if pushed on the last vestiges of breath he had in his lungs.
“I can’t go on Monday,” she said. “I have to work.”
Growly Freecell Card Game
“Oh. Right. So Saturday’s okay?”
And she heard herself say, “Yes, Saturday’s fine.”
He made some sort of pleased-sounding response, but she wasn’t sure, for by then her knees had pooled down somewhere around her ankles, and she could feel her brain trying to catch up with her ears. She vaguely remembered making plans to take the Tube to a stop near his house, where he would pick her up at nine in the morning, allowing them time for the two-and-a-half hour drive and an arrival that would provide them with space to check in, wander around a little, then have lunch.
The conversation ended, and Margot found herself staring at the handset as the buzz of the dead line hummed from the earpiece. Isabeau came in then and got a sudden,concerned look on her face. “Margot—qu’est ce que c’est? What’s wrong?”
Margot hung up the phone and told her who called, what she would be doing that weekend.
Isabeau dropped her backpack on the floor and started to laugh—so hysterically she needed lean her back against the refrigerator and slide down to the floor. “Oh, ma chèrie,” she finally said when she regained her senses. “I knew it!”
Margot shook her head and went into her bedroom, hoping that a long and hot shower would clear the furry feeling from her head. Not because of the fact Geoff was the one who asked her out, but because it was the strangest first date ever proposed to her. Were she expecting his call, she would have assumed it would be perhaps dinner, then maybe drinks afterwards with the two of them or maybe a few friends. The typical kind, in a typical fashion and order.
But, as she would find out, there was nothing typical about her relationship with Geoff—especially not the order in which things unfolded.
For the next two days she motioned fuzzily through work and life, still not quite able to clearly digest the how the phone call came about. Her ride on the train seemed far too quick at first—and then, for no apparent reason, the train stopped and sat for an unknown delay. Anxiousness began clicking into her as nine came and went, and she began worrying Geoff was perhaps thinking she stood him up. She emerged from the Underground almost twenty minutes late, worried he already left. She realized, as she sat inside the stopped train, nerves growing more worried, she didn’t know what kind of car Geoff drove, and therefore had no way to see if he was still there.
But there he was, waiting for her on a bench at the top of the platform, seated with his elbows resting on the back, face turned up to the sun, aviator-style sunglasses reflecting the light; when he saw her in among the other commuters he grinned and stood. He was quite dressed down from what he wore to the party—instead of his red leather jacket, white button-down shirt, dress pants and fancy boots, he now wore jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt that looked like it was cut from a Union Jack, and a denim jacket with the sleeves rolled up to below his elbow; his hair was loose around his shoulders instead of the more styled way he wore it at the party, and she had trouble aligning the Geoff with which she was familiar—the one behind camera lenses and the formality of the party with the regular-looking (but still extraordinarily handsome) man before her. She couldn’t quite realize it was actually (the!) Geoff Maddison standing in front of her and not looking back at her from the Rolling Stone cover. He seemed far more real out in the open than he did at the party.
“Hey,” he said and pulled off his sunglasses.
Glad to see he was smiling and cheerful, she said, (in more of a rush than she meant), “I’m sorry I’m late—the train stopped and they never said why and I didn’t have any way to let you know.”
Geoff shrugged. “No worries. I thought maybe you missed a train or something, got delayed somehow.” He shrugged again. “It happens.” Geoff tucked his sunglasses into the front pocket of his jacket and grinned. “Besides. You don’t seem the type to stand a bloke up. I wasn’t worried.”
She smiled, relieved he wasn’t upset. “I’m glad.”
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
Geoff held out his hand. “Here—I’ll take that.”
She looked at him quizzically a moment—and then realized he meant her duffel bag. She was about to protest, but he slipped it from her hand, and then, his hand gently pressed against the small of her back, led her to his car—a black convertible Corvette. He dropped her bag on top of his (a rather worn-looking brown leather book bag with an AC/DC patch on he flap) in the space behind the seats, then opened the passenger door for her (it took her a moment to realize it was on the right, with the driver’s side on the left, and that the car wasn’t converted to British standards). Just before he closed the door he cautioned her. When he got in, she noticed a fresh shaving cut on his jawbone near his right ear. She found herself wanting to reach out and touch it, but bit the urge back.
As they drove out of the city, top down, the sun and wind blew much of her nervousness away as he asked questions she found easier and easier to answer. She felt self-conscious talking only about herself, but he didn’t seem to care. Where had she grown up? How long had she been in England? What made her decide to move there? What had she read at university?
Well, lots of stuff, she thought.
“Pardon?”
He glanced at her as he slowed for one of the boxy little British cars she always thought of as clownmobiles. She half-believed the owners stuck a giant key into what was supposedly the gas tank and wound the car up every night.
“Yes—mainly. I forget what you Americans call it.”
“My major?”
“Yeah.”
They popped around the little car and slipped neatly back in front of it; the Corvette’s engine sounded affectionate and growly.
“English.”
He looked at her, amusement glinting in his eyes. “You speak it quite well. For it not being your first language.”
She laughed. “No—literature. Medieval Lit, mostly.”
“You aren’t going to start talking like Beowulf, are you?”
“No. Never did get a handle on that Old English stuff. I had to read the Middle English works phonetically to grasp what they were saying.”
“The spelling’s better, though.”
“True. But at least we Americans have simplified things even more by taking out all those damn useless U’s you Brits are so fond of.”
He looked at her, eyebrow raised, not understanding.
“It’s ‘fav-OH-rite’ not ‘fav-OO-rite.”
He laughed. “Keeps us unique.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
Geoff gave her a long, appreciative look.
And that time she didn’t feel quite so self-conscious and scrutinized.
“Well,” he said. “After all, we did invent the bloody language, so we have first rights to naming and spelling things however we please.”
She smiled. “I suppose that’s true. I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
He took her to a quaint Mother Goose-like village, and they wandered in and out of shops, along the beach, talking and laughing easily. He was stopped a few times by polite fans who also studied her quickly as they spoke to him, as if trying to see if she were someone they should know. The sensation was strange.
They ate their picnic lunch of sandwiches and iced tea as they sat in the sand, backs against a large piece of driftwood, and watched the waves curl into the beach. Geoff sat on her right, causing her to bump arms with him, given she was right-handed, he left. When she spoke, even when answering a simple question or making a funny remark, Geoff leaned forward as she talked, which made her feel as if he were truly interested in what she had to say. By two or three that afternoon, she felt completely comfortable with him—though, occasionally, a bit of disbelief opened in her it was really him walking and laughing next to her.
As a late afternoon snack, they went to an ice cream shop and shared a banana split. By then, Geoff’s practiced, habitual aura of “rock star” was faded. He started to talk less and less as if her interest only was what she might read in a magazine, as if at first he didn’t want to realize she was genuinely interested in what didn’t involve his image.
She learned his favorite authors were William Faulkner and Tom Clancy, that he liked reading about World War II, the American Civil War—and American history in general; that he was excited about finding an old, rare Billie Holiday recording in a record shop in Birmingham the previous week; that he recently bought a cookbook to learn how to make things that didn’t always involve his microwave or boiling water.
And he told her his “mum” was fine. “She’s coming home Monday.”
She smiled. “I’m glad.”
“Me too. I meant to tell you earlier, but I forgot.”
She felt some of her embarrassment return, but she saw he spoke honestly, and wasn’t teasing her as she first thought.
He smiled and tapped his finger below his bottom lip.
She looked at him, confused.
“You have chocolate sauce on your chin.”
“Oh,” she said, her embarrassment deepening a little. “Thanks.”
She dipped her paper napkin in her water and wiped her chin, but Geoff smiled and shook his head. “Here—let me.”
She handed it to him, and he gently held her face with one hand while he wiped the chocolate away with the other. She felt like a middle schooler as her stomach butterflied, then settled in a small, warm puddle in her lower abdomen. She blushed when he smiled caught her eye for a moment. “Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome. Unless you were saving it for later.”
“No. I generally reserve the front of my shirt for that sort of thing.”
He looked at her a moment, and then slyness slipped into his smile and eyes. “Well,” he said. “Chins are good, too.”
“Yes,” she said, and scooped another bite of ice cream onto her spoon. “Because then it’s a problem that can be licked.” She looked up and made direct eye contact with him—quite surprised with her sudden self-assuredness.
His grin deepened and he held her gaze. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
A new comfort settled between them, but she still found herself watching him with a strange feeling in her head and stomach as they walked along the beach again. Geoff kicked at a stone and told her that earlier in the spring he visited Washington D.C. and went to the Lincoln Memorial. “It was amazing,” he said. He shook his head to get the bangs out of his eyes—only to have the wind blow them back. “I wish I could have met him. But at the same time, it’s like, I don’t know—he’s there and you have when you’re standing in front that statue.” He brushed his hair out of his face. “Have you ever been there?”
“Once. When I was little. I don’t remember much about it.”
“You should go again. I tried to get Tina to go with me, but she thought it was stupid since he didn’t have anything to do with ‘our’ history. Whatever that means.”
“Tina?”
He glanced at her quickly. “She’s this girl I’ve been—was—seeing.” He looked at her, quite directly. “But I’m not anymore. We broke up.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t certain how to respond to such a pointed remark. She bent down and picked up a long, thin piece of driftwood, and began to use it as a walking stick. Glancing at him she said, “A woman wakes up to find her husband crouched next to her side of the bed. He has a glass of water in one hand, two aspirin in the other. ‘What’s this for?’ she asked. ‘It’s for your headache,’ he said. ‘But I don’t have a headache,’ she said. ‘Gotcha,’ he replied.”
Geoff looked at her a moment with a grin, then laughed. “Well,” he said. “You and Angus will certainly get along fine.”
At the time, the implication of his comment flew right past her.
He looked up and noticed a multi-colored kite against the sky. “Should’ve brought mine,” he said with a grin and turned back to her. “Best part about a windy day at the sea is flying a kite. Even if it’s raining—don’t you think?”
She nodded. “I have one at home.”
“Here?”
“No. Oregon.”
“Have it sent to you. That way we’ll have it next time.”
“I might do that,” she said, again not truly catching what he meant.
They walked in amiable silence for a moment and she found herself realizing, as she watched him, it was this she kept looking for in the pictures. His humanity. And she felt suddenly, sweetly content—far more than she had all day.
During dinner, he told a funny story involving himself, Barry (it was then she learned Geoff was three years older than Barry; she somehow had their ages switched in her head), three friends, and getting stuck in a basement window of a neighborhood school when he was eleven. They snuck in to go swimming in the school’s indoor pool on a Sunday afternoon, and were startled by the janitor. As Geoff laughed about the story, his eyes caught the light from the candle on the edge of the table and brightened. “We got outside, and that was when I realized I’d left my jeans behind. But the caretaker locked the door we’d used. So we found a window we could wedge open, and when I tried to slip in through it, I got jammed with one arm and my head in the school and my arse poking out through the bushes. We had to send Andrew after my parents, because they were the only ones home. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad that angry. Or my mum.” He grinned and shook his head. “Especially since Barry, um, took advantage of my situation.” Geoff paused, eyes narrow, but filled with humor. “He still won’t tell me what he did with my pants.”
“Oh—that’s why you forgot your jeans? Because Barry hid them?”
“No. I left those behind when the caretaker surprised us and we ran out.”
Margot blinked, confused. “I don’t understand. You said Barry hid them, so how’d he do that if you left them behind?”
Geoff looked at her, eyebrow raised in his own bafflement at her questions. “I didn’t leave my pants behind. I had them on when I left.”
“But—you said—”
And it hit her what he meant, and the true picture of what the story described flashed into her head. “Oh—he took and hid your underwear.”
“Well—yeah.” Geoff looked at her, eyebrow still raised in his own confusion. “It’s not like we had our swimming trunks with us.”
Then it was Geoff’s turn to realize from where her confusion came. He leaned back in his chair and laughed, deep and long. “I forgot—’trousers’ and ‘pants’ mean the same thing for you.”
“Yep.”
Geoff’s grin slid into mock disappointment. “So—that means your idea of a ‘pantsuit’ doesn’t mean you’ll be running around in your knickers?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“Well, a bloke can always hope.”
Margot smiled, and again she found herself thinking, I saw this, too. She felt a warm draw towards him. The same awareness she noticed at lunch, and it grew in strength as the day passed.
His eyes sparked with his laughter and his overall enjoyment of the day, but then a sudden bewilderment brushed across his face. He blinked at her a moment. “You aren’t at all what I expected, Margie,” he said.
“You are,” she replied.
The words fell out of her mouth, completely on their own. He looked at her a moment, and then smiled.
As they walked up the stairs of the inn to their rooms he asked, “So, did you have fun today?”
Remembering the easy laughter of the day, the way she felt at dinner (by then the warm sensation deepened further in her), Margot glanced over her shoulder and said, “Oh. Maybe.”
She felt his finger slip through a belt loop on the back of her jeans. He tugged it twice. “Just a maybe, huh?” Sly and knowing. And she got her first taste of the low, husky laugh and voice that could shoot all her resolve out the window.
She paused at her door, unlocked it and turned to face him. Geoff let his hand slide over her waist and rest on her hip. She felt his hand’s warmth and pressure through her jeans, and it intensified the bright, liquid feeling in her stomach and knees; it was much the same as she felt at the party when he stepped closer to her, and his sudden nearness and the muskiness of his cologne opened a wash of warmth inside of her. But at the same time it was more polished, in a way; deeper. She leaned against the doorframe as she toyed with her key, and met his eyes with a deliberateness she didn’t know was in her. “Well,” she said, “there’s still time for other things. So I can’t really say one way or the other, yet.”
He stepped closer to her, up from the stair on which he stood; they were at eye level, and he now stood about four or five inches above her. He smiled, slipped his finger into a loop on the front of her jeans and used it to pull her closer to him. “Any ideas?”
Growly Freecell Games
Margot pushed at her door to open it a little further, again surprised by her boldness. And yet—she felt wholly comfortable with it. The teasing in Geoff’s expression shifted to a clear, sharp want and hope. But at the same time, she could still see his question to her, asking her if she meant it.
She originally had no intention of sleeping with him that night—or of assuming anything beyond a day with him, after which they would retire to their separate rooms (a conclusion that was never likely, she realized with amusement the next morning). But somewhere during their time together, all that afternoon and evening, something changed inside of her, and she didn’t want to let the moment—the chance—pass.
For her answer, she grabbed him by the front of his denim jacket with both hands and yanked him into her room, laughing as he blinked in wide-eyed surprise. The door barely closed behind them before they pressed into each other, into a hard lock of a kiss, releasing the deep, wet, energy that formed between them all day. Remembering her curiosity at the party, she kissed him in the small hollow behind his ear. His grip around her waist and her neck tightened as he moaned, then whispered her name, low and pressed against her ear.
Hmm, she thought, feeling clever. I thought so.
They fell onto the bed, clothes trailed on the floor behind them and began making love in a way that would set the tone of all the following times—rich in touch and heat, wrapped in the taste and need for each other that seemed to come from the marrow of their bones. At one point, Geoff turned on the bedside lamp, and she found the desire in her rising to a level that made her feel connected—to herself, to the moment, and to Geoff—something she never felt before with anyone, not even Alec, with whom she shared a fairly energetic sex life.
She loved watching Geoff in the soft glow of the lamp, the way his face and eyes changed with her touch, hearing their voices mingle. Afterwards, their legs entwined, she lay on her stomach, head on his chest, listening to his breathing and heartbeat slow, to the sound of the distant surf coming through the open window; Geoff slowly caressed her shoulder with his thumb.
Margot rose a little to see his face, feeling supple and gentle as her body tingled from their lovemaking. And then he opened his eyes and looked at her. “I would’ve waited, you know,” he said.
Growly Freecell Solitaire
“For what?”
“You. This.” He slipped his hand to her waist and squeezed it gently.
A statement she didn’t expect.
She smiled and traced his eyebrow with her forefinger. “I couldn’t,” she said, her voice low and soft, and met his gaze.
Geoff looked at her for a long beat of a moment, then smoothed her hair back and tucked it behind her ear. He grinned, and in a rush of laughter, pulled her to him and kissed her. “Well,” he said, voice low in her ear. “I’m glad for that.” Geoff gently massaged her neck.
With her little finger, she traced the still fresh-looking tattoo on the inside of his right forearm. “This is new,” she said. It was his only tattoo.
“Yeah.”
“Any meaning?”
He paused before he spoke “My grandmother. It’s a copy of a cross she always wore.”
“Is she Irish?”
“Yes. Northern. And Protestant. Married a Catholic. My granddad wasn’t. Northern, that is.”
There’s a story, she thought.
“I never knew him, though.”
“Why this?”
“She died last month.”
“I’m sorry, Geoff,” she said, her voice quiet with her embarrassment.
“Cancer,” he said.
“Oh.”
She didn’t know what else to say.
“She—” he stopped.
“Meant a lot to you,” she said when he didn’t continue.
“Yeah.”
That time he wasn’t able to cover the sadness in his voice.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and felt her awkwardness creep more deeply into her. “I didn’t mean to bring up something you didn’t want to talk about.”
“Oh,” he said, and raised his head a little to meet her eyes. He paused the massaging of her neck. “No. It’s okay. It’s still new, I guess.” His caressing nearly lulled her into a doze when he said, “I want to see you again, Margie.”
In a blink, her sleepiness fell away. She hoped he would want to, given the laughter and fun of the day—but at the same time she hadn’t really expected it.
“I mean—like tomorrow.” He paused. “Well—obviously we’ll see each other tomorrow. So I mean like more. Afternoon and evening. Unless you’re already busy.” It came out more as a rushed question than a statement.
She was prepared—and willing—to let him go back to his own life the next day without any mention of seeing each other again. She would have been disappointed, yes, but she would have understood. With everything that surrounded Red Line’s soon-to-be-released album and rehearsals for the upcoming tour, she thought Geoff would consider himself too busy for anything more than a casual date here and there. At least with her.
And so, when he said those words, something inside of her shifted in two different directions; towards a mild disbelief he actually said them, and towards how she felt all day with him—connected and soft. She rose so she could face him, and he continued to keep his hand on her neck. She could see the spark returned to his eyes. But there was a seriousness to it as well.
“No,” she said. “I’m not. All I usually do on Sunday is clean up my room and do laundry.”
Growly Freecell Game
“So nothing terribly important.” He smiled. Almost a grin—but not quite.
She laughed. “No.”
“I could drop you by your flat so you could pick up a few things for later, and then I thought maybe you’d like to go with me to Seth’s house. We’ve got some business to take care of, but that way you could meet him and Jayne, his wife. Angus as well. I’d really like it if you came. I want them to meet you.”
His words came out quick and unplanned, and his grin deepened to almost self-consciousness; the bounce and excitement in his voice made her smile. Quite different from the smooth-cool assuredness she heard on the phone when he called her on Tuesday to ask her on the date—and even from what she heard all day. “I’d like that, Geoff. If you think I wouldn’t be in the way.”
“Why would you be?”
She shrugged. “I guess because they don’t know me.”
“You won’t be in the way. They’ll love you. Trust me.”
“Well, then,” she said. “Yes.”
He grinned, clearly quite pleased. He wrapped few of her tangled locks around his finger and tugged them. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
She looked at him, puzzled.
“Whether or not you had fun today.”
“Oh, it was absolutely awful.”
“That so?”
“I’d like a refund, please.” She tugged his earrings.
“Hmm,” Geoff said, almost as a laugh. After a moment, he drew her to him and kissed her, long and warm, until it began again, this time slower and with more exploration. After, they talked and laughed quietly until she fell asleep with her head on his chest, his arms around her. Usually when she slept in someplace—or with someone—new, she had trouble sleeping. But she didn’t that night, and when she awoke, she found herself tucked into the covers and pillows, looking up at an awake and smiling Geoff.
“Hi,” he said, then caressed her cheek.
“Hey.” Her voice sounded sleepy and scratchy. She caressed his arm. “How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough to know you laugh in your sleep.”
“I do?”
“Yep.”
“Oh,” she said and felt her cheeks redden. “I didn’t know I did that.”
“You do. And it’s rather charming.”
Her blush deepened; so did Geoff’s smile.
“That wasn’t what woke you up, was it?”
“I was already awake. What were you dreaming about?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember my dreams often.”
“Hmm,” he said, and moved closer to her. “Maybe we can change that.”
“How so?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“I’m sure you will,” she said, her smile equally coy.
As they checked out a few hours later, she took one of the brochures sitting on the counter as a keepsake.
When you think of that time, when you were together, what do you think of? Carrie’s words returned to Margot, gentle in question and voice.
The things she gave as her answer were true. But they were also the things she allowed herself to think about, what she filtered to the surface of her memories of those years—things she loved about Geoff, but were careful and plastic, like cautiously-formed Shrinky-Dink talismans.
There were other slips of time she thought about, but only when they crept into her thoughts when her mind was unaware and unmindful of where it turned. When she remembered how her heart caught when she heard Geoff come home, happy and expectant, and call her name—even if he was gone a short while; how, at night, she sometimes awakened to his kissing her and she saw the love in his eyes; the way his face would become open and mellow when he laughed. How, even with all the public aspects of her life with him, it still felt like they were tucked into their own corner in the world, anonymous and free. And how, after Philadelphia, he made her feel safe and enclosed within him when the dark and panic slithered into her.
One of those memories, acute with its bittersweetness, flickered across her vision. Geoff was stretched on his side—head in one hand, the other reaching out to caress her cheek—eyes quiet with his smile and the aftermath of their lovemaking. He was naked, and the light from the fire behind him fell across his skin, ambered and tranquil. She didn’t know when the memory was created, what came before it or after; only that it created an ache, a yearning for those moments. She felt their loss and his absence press into her—far more deeply than they had in years.
“Margot?” Carrie’s voice, sleepy and curious, came from behind her, and she jumped. She looked up and saw Carrie standing at the top of the stairs in bare feet and an over-sized Seattle Seahawks t-shirt. “I heard you and wondered what you were doing up here for so long at this hour.”
“I’m sorry, Carrie. I forgot I was above your room.”
Carrie shrugged and stifled a yawn. “It’s okay. What are you doing?” And then she noticed the piles of keepsakes around Margot. “Oh,” she said.
Margot looked at the brochure and laminated cover on her lap, then dropped them, and the other things she pulled out, back into the box—all except for the picture of Geoff and her on Pier 39. She rose and felt coolness brush across her cheeks. She wiped away wetness with the heel of her hand; she wasn’t aware she was crying.
“You and Geoff were good together, Margot. For each other,” Carrie said. “You guys—fit. I don’t think Mark and I ever had that. And I don’t think Ben and I ever will, even with as happy as we are.” She looked at Margot for a moment. “You two used to make me so damn jealous sometimes.”
Margot blinked. “You never told me that.”
Carrie gazed at her, her expression indistinct. After a moment, Carrie closed her eyes and shook her head. She squeezed Margot’s arm. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Carrie turned and climbed down the attic stairs. Margot stood with the photo in her hand and stared at the boxes in her attic, their shadows and edges made sharp by the bare lights dangling above them. After a moment she pulled the chain to turn off the bulbs, then headed down the stairs to close them and return to bed.
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