“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?”
“Today.”
“That didn’t sound very confident.”
“You’re talking to me as if I’m a child,” she snapped. “You’re only a couple years older than I am.”
He risked a quick glance at her. Her lips were pursed, and her face was set in the same scowl he remembered from breakfast at the diner. God, that had only been a little over twenty-four hours ago. Had he really only known Selina for such a short amount of time? If he let his mind go blank, he could still remember what she felt like in his arms, as if she had been there before and should be there again. He also remembered that her expression at the diner hadn’t been a bad mood so much as it had been physical and emotional exhaustion. One uncomfortable night’s sleep in the back of a car wasn’t going to change that. He had more empathy than this; he just had to use it.
He took a deep breath and put his hand on her knee. “What would Babe tell you to do?”
That won him another look from her, this time with her brows lifted up to her hairline. “Have you called your parents to tell them where you are and that you picked up a stranger to take with you on your little vacation?”
He could feel the hammer hit the nail with that one, though he said, “Those situations are completely different.”
“How?”
“Well . . .” His mind raced over all the differences, put them in order of importance, numbered them, and weighed which ones he should explain first. Then he stopped himself from lecturing. She was right. Not that their situations were different, but that his parents would want to know that he wasn’t driving alone. And they would be very interested to know he’d picked up a girl.
“You’re right. I should call my parents. A bargain, then. When we stop for dinner, I’ll call my parents and you call yours. Deal?”
She sighed. “Can I think about it?”