“I called you back!” she cried.
“Right. And pretended like we were strangers. Like nothing happened between us. Ever.”
She heard the pump thump off, but she didn’t care. She could only stare at him blankly.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You know, I just got to thinking that you were right. There is too much between us.”
“No, no, Dean, it’s not true. There isn’t.”
“Tell me,” he said, instead of answering. “Did you ever call your dad?”
“You’re so sure I didn’t?”
The look he gave her was as old as sand.
“Yeah, well, you’re wrong, Dean. I’ve called him three times. The first time we actually talked. I told him I was in town and working for your dad. He hung up on me. He didn’t call me names or ask me any questions, he just hung up on me, because that’s all I mean to him. The second time he was so drunk he didn’t remember we talked, and the third time he thought I was my mom and screamed at me. So tell me, what am I supposed to forgive and forget?”
Man, the pleasures of Christmas Eve just kept giving. All this bitterness and grief was way underground most days of the year, but tonight it all came to the surface, like a miserable crop.
“Trina.” He reached for her, just his hand toward her shoulder, and she flinched away.
Five minutes ago, this was just a night. A cold night with slow gas pumps and work, stretched out ahead of her. And now it was in tatters. Broken and awful, all her monsters running amok.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back right away,” she told him. Wind blew her hair in her face and she shook it back, half of it stuck in her lip gloss. “But I’m tired of being hurt, Dean. And I haven’t figured out how to stop getting hurt.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “But I don’t know how not to.”
She felt like a landmine. And maybe she was. Maybe that’s all she was.
“I have to go.” She couldn’t sit there any longer. So close and impossibly far away. She couldn’t grab hold of her thoughts. She couldn’t line them up. They scattered like marbles every time she tried.
“I didn’t sleep with you that night to get back at my father.”
“I know,” she breathed with what felt like the last air in her lungs.
“I’m sorry, too,” he said. He wasn’t angry. He was sad. And his sadness broke her.
In answer, she did what she did best. She climbed out of his car, walked across the cement, and got into her car and left.
Merry Christmas, Dean, she thought, watching him in her rearview mirror get smaller and smaller. Until he just disappeared.
Dean stood at the gas station, watching Trina’s brake lights until the darkness swallowed them up.
I am an idiot.
I thought I was over her. I really did.
After she left that message as if it hadn’t been the better part of a year since they’d talked, he’d decided his lifelong obsession with Trina Crawford was officially done.
This thing he had with Rachel, it was easy, but it was halfhearted at best. On both their parts. She was getting over a bad breakup. He was getting over one amazing disaster of a night with his former best friend.
And somehow he’d convinced himself the job of giving a shit about Trina was done. Only it wasn’t. One random run-in at a gas station and he was all in again. Like he was twelve, watching her at that big grand piano, waiting for her to give the count to begin “Silent Night”.
Screw this, he thought. He wanted to check in on Roy, make sure the bastard was still alive, and then he’d go and make nice at the family party.
That was the plan. He would stick to it.
He started the truck, put it in gear and pointed it out to Trina’s old house.
It looked about like he expected. The walkway hadn’t been shoveled. Or the porch steps. There weren’t even footprints—nothing but fresh snow. He was surprised that there weren’t coyotes circling around the door. He knocked and rang the buzzer, but after a few minutes of waiting in the cold he just opened the front door, which he knew would be unlocked.
“Roy!” he yelled, and walked right into a wall of smell. Part old socks, part unwashed body. All bad. “Holy—Roy! It’s me, Dean!”
The mud room opened up into a small, dark kitchen, every inch of counter space filled with dirty dishes and open soup cans.
“Good God,” he muttered. The dining room wasn’t much better—the carpet was thick with fuzz and dust. Milton, the old dog, came up and barked once, then sniffed him and limped away.
“Roy!”
The wind howling around the old house was his only answer. And it wasn’t like he believed wind could be anything other than wind. But that was a bad wind.
At the stairs, Dean headed toward the den. It was Roy’s drinking room, and the dirty-sock smell was coming strong from that area.
Please. Please don’t be dead.
He didn’t want to call her with this news. He didn’t want to hurt her anymore.