“I’ll come with you. I’ll sleep on the way there and drive back,” I suggest.
“Okay, with what license?” Dean gives a distressed laugh.
“I can at least keep you company and keep you awake.”
“All right. Fine. But we can’t pull over like before.”
“Deal.”
The van is parked in a small lot out behind the theater. We sit in about 10 minutes worth of exit traffic but are able to quickly get on the highway. Dean’s GPS reads an ETA of about 12:02 a.m.
“This girl is going to fucking kill me,” Dean mutters. “If I don’t kill her first.”
“What?” I laugh. “She’s just like you. Getting drunk, getting stranded.”
Dean just grumbles. “She’s seventeen, she shouldn’t be getting drunk. And I wasn’t stranded. I had you.”
“I think every teenager does it at some point. At least she has a good brother to come pick her up.” I tell him, getting comfortable in my seat and plugging my phone into the portable charger.
“I wish she would just call our mother,” He sighs and thinks for a moment. “It’s probably better that she called me.”
“Why would you say that?” I ask.
“Mom can be a bit of a hardass with her.” He trails off, reading a traffic sign. He swallows a gulp of water from the water bottle in the cupholder. “I was born when my Mom was fifteen. I was thirteen when she had Sierra.”
“Wow, that must have been interesting growing up,” I say. I feel for him. I really do.
“Sierra is something like a do-over child. My Mom is raising her completely different from me…she’d probably ground her tillcollege if Sierra called her,” Dean remarks. “I told her to call me if she ever needs me.”
“It’s good that she can trust you like that,” I remind him. “You’re a good brother.”
“I’m a half-assed brother. I pretty much abandoned her for the job in York Falls.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t think that.”
“Oh, she does. She’s made it very clear,” Dean laughs. “She probably only called me as a last resort.”
“At least she called you.”
“I feel like I’m everyone’s last resort,” Dean says solemnly, changing lanes and dropping in speed. Well, that got dark.
“What makes you say that?”
“Eliza only went out with me because our mothers made us. Sierra only called me because she couldn’t call our mother and her friends ditched her. Fuck,” Dean rubs a hand through his hair. “You’re only with me because you needed a van and driver.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “We’re friends.”
“That wasn’t the case when we started.”
“Does it matter how we got here?” I ask. “We’re friends now.”
Dean shakes his head. “I guess you have a point.”
“You only drove me for the money! You can’t dwell on the past like that, or else it’ll consume you forever. I know that well enough,” I remind him.
“Fuck,” Dean mutters again.
“Now you, with the sailor’s mouth,” I laugh.
