You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(80)
It wasn’t only his reputation at stake, though. He wanted the work.
The straw slid out of her mouth, leaving a ring of red lipstick behind. “But you’ve talked to Curtis about it, right? Maybe he’s already working on it.”
“If he is, he hasn’t told me.” And it was Marc’s idea. He wanted to work on it.
Even in his head, he could hear that he sounded like a child denied a favorite toy. Maybe he was being possessive and should let go of Terry, but would it kill Curtis to respond?
She shrugged. “But you sold it to the biggest technology company in the world. They have an entire campus of people dedicated to stuff like this. I read online that their meter maids are robots. They’ll figure your idea out, especially if you’ve shared the basics. And your friend took a job there, right? So he knows the project as well as you do. It sounds like they have all the reasons in the world to implement your idea, and you can go on enjoying your vacation.”
Yeah, but that didn’t mean his friend should give him the cold shoulder. He should at least give him the courtesy of a real e-mail. None of this brush-off shit.
What Selina was saying made sense, but it didn’t change the basic facts of the situation. This was his project and he wanted to fix it.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
The waitress set plates of food in front of them. Suspiciously, Marc picked up the bun on his burger and looked at his dinner. Everything seemed fine, and the fries looked perfectly cooked. He picked a couple up and shoved them in his mouth, the hot, salty oil dripping down his throat, coating and softening some of his irritation.
Man, he was hungry. He should make sure to buy more snacks for the drive tomorrow.
“You’re right,” Selina said, her sharp tone catching his attention and popping his head up. She hadn’t touched her food yet, and her arms were crossed over her chest. “I don’t understand. But what I don’t understand is why you haven’t tossed your phones out of the window so you can enjoy your vacation. Do you know how many people would love to be in your shoes right now? Money in the bank. Bills paid off. No boss to report to. An empty road and a good time ahead of you.”
“Well, I’m not totally the man of leisure with no commitments. I’ve got you to worry about. God, and maybe I’m worried too much about my job that was, but you’ve got no plan. Nothing. That’s why you’re here.”
This time it was Selina who sucked in a breath. He shouldn’t have implied she was a burden and a commitment, especially since he wanted her on this trip.
No. He needed her on this trip.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, but the words didn’t magically work their way back into his mouth and down his throat. Taking back words as cutting as that wasn’t as easy as deleting bad code, and its effects could be just as malicious.
“I’m sorry,” he said, desperate to stem the damage he’d done. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Didn’t you?”
God, the way her voice sank inside her, almost turning her inside out, nearly broke his heart. It had seemed like the farther away from her hometown they’d gotten, the bigger Selina had gotten, like suddenly she was willing to throw a couple of elbows if she needed to get people out of her way. And in a split second, he’d managed to shrink her back inside herself.
He felt like a heel. A heel with dog shit on it. And cat shit, for good measure.
Her shrug was barely noticeable. “You’re paying for my dinner, and you paid for the hotel room, but I hope you don’t think you have to take care of me.” She said the last words with a shudder, and he didn’t blame her for it.
“I thought we were two people helping each other out,” she went on. “Me keeping you company and you making it so that I have enough money for a security deposit on a place when we get to Salt Lake. Wasn’t that the deal??” Her brows were raised, matching the new higher octave of her voice. “Maybe looking for a job and seeing about community college doesn’t seem like a plan to you, but it is to me.”
“It is a plan,” he offered. “And I’m not angry at you.” He reached his arms out across the table, palms up, but she didn’t offer hers in return.
He kept them there, his fingers jutting up into the sky, lost and alone without her fingers intertwined in his. “What I said before, about you being a better story of hard work and courage than me was true. I meant every word.”
She gave that f*cking nearly invisible shrug again. The one he wished she would replace with words, even if it meant she’d be yelling at him. “I guess.”
His belief that he was mature enough not to blurt out stupid shit was clearly wrong. He’d hurt Selina. That was worse than Curtis and company not responding to his e-mails. He needed a couple of beers so he could forget how annoyed he was with everyone for not following his sensible plans, and how annoyed he was with himself for letting them get to him enough that he took it out on Selina.
Or maybe more than a six-pack, he needed a walk. To stretch his legs and his mind and stop being cooped up in the car. He’d feel better once he got to the resort. Until then, though, he’d need to apologize to Selina more sincerely. When he’d calmed down, that was.
The waitress refilled his water and he and Selina finished their dinner in a chilly silence that he couldn’t wait to get out of. At least once they were in their hotel room, he could turn on the television and drown out the boom of her hurt and the echo of the words that he’d said to her, which was now running through his mind on repeat.