“You don’t celebrate what?” she asked.
“Drop it,” I said sternly.
“I just don’t understand,” she said.
“And I don’t expect you to. Just like I won’t understand you. We’ve only got a road trip. We can’t possibly dissect one another in that short amount of time.”
“I wish we could,” she said, mumbling.
“Why?”
But then, she fell silent again. I was curious as to her answer. I wanted to know why she wanted to dissect me. Why she cared so much about knowing who I was. To her, I was just some workaholic with a stick up my ass who wanted to ruin the holidays. Why did someone who cared so much for them want to get to know someone like myself?
Every time I talked with this woman, she simply became more and more of a mystery.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid if you don’t want it to—”
“I said drop it,” she said.
Her tone was harsh, and I clamped my mouth shut. She folded her arms back across her chest and went back to staring out the window. I had pulled her back into reality and got her talking with me, but the moment I tripped that secretive little wire, she pulled right back out of it. O Holy Night was starting to play on the radio, and I expected her to start singing, to fill my car with the noise of a dying cow while she tried to get the notes right.
But still, there was nothing.
Reaching over, I cut off the radio and listened to the silence. It was a little less tense than it was before, but it was still rough. I turned my sights back to the road and kicked up the speed a little, trying to get her home a fast as I could.
Then I rolled up behind the snow plows clearing the highway, and I groaned.
Someone somewhere was determined to make me miserable, and it was working.
Chapter 18
Abby
I saw the sign for Minnesota and silently cheered to myself. I figured cheering out loud would make the Scrooge’s head pop through the ceiling, and nobody wanted that to happen. Apparently, I was supposed to stroke his fragile ego and let him know it was okay to be angry for the rest of his life, and that wasn’t going to happen. With all the stress and tension he carried in his life, he would croak by the time he was forty.
I hoped he had his estate settled.
I didn’t get it. I just couldn’t understand how someone could hate all of the snow and the romance of being cooped up with a stranger. He’d opened up to me for just a moment, and it was like I was seeing another person. A vulnerable side to him that was open to just about anything to make him smile. That man would’ve enjoyed the holidays. That man would’ve enjoyed the snow and a twinkling Christmas tree. The holidays didn’t have to be extravagant and loud in order to be enjoyed.
But the man with the stick up his ass was determined not to enjoy them.
I was honestly glad that he turned off the radio. I wasn’t in the mood to sing Christmas carols in the car, although he probably would’ve shut me down if I’d started. Even though he thought the trip was slow-going, I thought it was fabulous. It was my first time riding in a luxury vehicle like this, and I was taking in every single aspect of it. I wanted to remember the good parts of this trip. The way he laughed at the vending machine. The way his body breathed warm life into mine. The way his eyes twinkled for just a moment when he was talking about his perfect Christmas.
Those were the parts I wanted to remember.
Not the ones like these. The ones where he was hellbent on fighting and twisting every aspect of my personality to fit his agenda. Not moments like this, where he was ticked off that I was telling him a truth about his personality he seemed unwilling to accept. He was quick to call me naive and immature, but at least I understood the reality of my scenario without allowing it to drown me in the process.
If he only knew.
Slowly, however, I started to feel guilty for the way I was speaking with him and now, about the fact that we simply weren’t. Maybe that was the point. Maybe he was upset that he finally gave me what I’d been asking him for, and in return, I only gave him little snippets. Maybe in his world, a courtesy was returned for a courtesy received. Well, that might’ve been how it worked with the rich, but with us poor people, that wasn’t how it worked. You were kind and courteous because the only other option was to be lonely and bitter, like he was. Where I came from and how I was raised, you didn’t give courtesy to receive it. You gave it because it was the right thing to do. You gave it because you never know who you’re going to come across who’s going to need that courtesy in order to lift their spirits.
Just another selfish aspect of an angry man.
And why the hell was I starting to feel bad? I’ve got shit in my life going on, and here was this pompous windbag, making me feel like I wasn’t trying. Like I wasn’t doing my best to try and make this trip bearable. I was the one having to counteract his scrooge-like tendencies. I was the one having to fill the silence of the vehicle so neither of us would get bored. And he was making it seem like I was just some stupid little teenage girl who didn’t know how to move on from
