You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(74)

She nodded, but he could tell that she didn’t really believe him.

The heat from the engine had melted all the snow that had accumulated on the hood of the car, and water was now dripping down the windshield. He turned on the wipers to clear his view, then shifted the car into drive and eased his foot off the brake. The tires caught traction pretty easily and were able to inch forward until they were on the road, which had already been salted. Apparently they’d both slept through the salt trucks, and if they’d kept sleeping much longer, they probably would have been woken up by the Idaho Highway Patrol knocking on the window.

As soon as he was comfortable with the car on the road and as certain as he could be that they weren’t going to slide off into the ditch—or off a cliff—Marc took his hand off the wheel and put his palm on Selina’s leg. He wanted to feel that she was there, solid and breathing next to him, especially because he wasn’t sure what else in his life was constant. She may not be here forever, but she was here now. And now was what he needed.

She stared at the touch but didn’t push his hand off the way he had worried she would. To his surprise, after initially tensing, the muscles under his hand relaxed.

“I’m glad that you’re impressed with me and my work,” he said. “It’s an easy thing to be impressed by, I guess. But I’m impressed by you, too. You’re working, and going to school, and have a shitty home life, and you don’t trust that you’ll be able to sleep safely. Yet you’re still getting good grades, making money, and pushing on.”

She placed a hand on top of his and gave him a gentle squeeze.

“Big, splashy things like selling a product for millions of dollars in your twenties is what makes the news,” he continued. “But pushing forward in life while everything seems to be against you is the kind of grit that makes the world function. And if no one’s told you lately, I think you’re great.”

When he glanced at her face, he noticed dampness in her eyes. “No one’s told me that in a long time. Thank you.”





Chapter Six





“Have you called your mom yet?” Marc asked Selina about two hours into their drive.

“No,” she said, keeping her eyes forward.

“Didn’t you say you were going to as soon as we hit the road?” He hadn’t mentioned it last night because she’d fallen asleep almost immediately on the drive. And she had obviously needed it. But no matter Selina’s relationship with Gary, her mom probably needed a phone call as much as Selina had needed the sleep.

“I know. I wanted to,” Selina answered, though she made no move to reach for her phone.

“So why don’t you?”

She shrugged like a moody child.

The SUV rolled along the highway, between hills of snow with dead grass poking out of the white depths, occasionally meandering through places with rock faces on either side where it had been cheaper to cut through the rock than it had been to build the road around them.

Just as Marc was giving up on Selina answering, she spoke in a small voice. “What if she didn’t notice I was gone?”

Everything in the world seemed to slow down as he considered what it would be like to wonder that about your mother. Then he saw that he had lessened the pressure of his foot on the gas and they had actually slowed down. He hit the pedal a little harder, getting them back up to speed. Then, trying to concentrate on driving at least as much as he was concentrating on listening to Selina, he asked, “Why wouldn’t she notice you were gone?”

“She didn’t call me last night. She’s never called me any of the times I didn’t go home because I knew Gary would be there.” Her voice was still small, but anger rasped at the edges.

She was trying to see if her mom noticed and cared about her. That was understandable, if heartbreaking. “Are you going to just wait for her to call you?”

Selina shrugged, looking out the window. He couldn’t see what her eyes were focused on, but the view out the passenger window was no different than the view out his window. As far as he could tell, she was staring out into space. “It would be nice if she called me once.”

He paused a beat before saying anything else. “I have a pretty good relationship with my parents, I guess,” he told her. “We have a better relationship than most of my friends do with their parents, at least. But I know I can’t expect out of them what I’m not willing to do myself.”

“Thank you, Dear Abby,” she said.

He frowned. “Sarcasm is not attractive.”

She turned away from the window long enough to give him a scornful look. “You just said that you have a better relationship with your parents than most of your friends do. When you’ve met Gary at his worst, then you can lecture me about how I should reach out to my mother.”

He opened his mouth to argue his point, then stopped himself so that he could process what she’d said. Maturity and taking a step back had served him well in the past. They would serve him well again.

“You’re right. Your home life sounds miserable. And I’m amazed that you are as put together as you are. I shouldn’t judge.”

“Thank you,” she said, turning back to stare out the window.

“But you did say that you would call her.” He struggled to make his tone nonjudgmental and supportive, even though disappointment surged through his body. Granted, he didn’t know Selina that well, but she hadn’t seemed like a coward. “So when do you plan to do that?”