“I don’t know. At first, I was too nervous. I didn’t tell any of my friends the first time I sang in public—outside of church—and I barely got through two songs before I wanted to drop my mic and flee. But there was this one guy who kept eye contact with me the whole time until I forgot about the nervous-about-singing part and just thought about the nervous-over-the-cute-guy part. We ended up talking afterward, and then I saw him the next day, and the next, and I don’t think I’ve gone a day since without talking to him. He’s so it for me, you know?”
“Uh-huh.”
Selena rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that. Sometimes people just know and they don’t want to pretend otherwise. Look at Mom and Dad. They met when they were both freshmen in college, and Mom said she knew she was gonna marry Dad after the first date. Here they are, two kids and twenty-two years of marriage later, and they still go to the movies and make out. I want that too.”
Three kids laterwas what she should have said. I slunk off the bed. “It’s not like they have a perfect marriage.”
“Um, yeah, they kind of do.”
Turning my back to her, I worried my lower lip. “Wasn’t Mom just telling you the other night that they went through some problems?”
“Obviously not big problems. We exist, and they’re still married.”
“Yeah, but what if they just never told us? What if it was so bad they couldn’t? Did she say if they ever thought about splitting up?”
Selena laughed. “And you just accused me of being the dumb one. Of course not.”
“But how would we even know? I’ve never heard them talk about problems early on in their marriage. Maybe that’s because they wanted to keep something from us—something one of them did.”
“What, like maybe Mom held up a liquor store or Dad shot a man just to watch him die?”
“I’m being serious.”
She threw a piece of popcorn at my head. “You’re being dramatic. They had no money when they got married. Dad had to get a second job once Mom got too pregnant with me to keep hers, and they were both in school. So, yeah—I think it was probably hard, especially when Mom moved back home for a while to help take care ofAbuethe first time he got sick, but—”
“Mom moved back home?” My hands curled at my sides. “Dad didn’t go with her?”
“Between work and school, he couldn’t. It was just for a few months. I was barely a year old, so I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter—they had normal problems and they solved them. Together. End of story.” She shook her head at me. “Now are you going to give me the remote or do I have to chuck something harder than popcorn at you?”
I didn’t move beyond letting her reclaim the remote. That had to be it. Mom had taken one-year-old Selena with her to Texas while Dad had stayed here. I didn’t know if they’d fought about her leaving or what, but I did know that Selena was almost exactly a year and nine months older than Brandon.
CHAPTER 22
Ihad more softball tournaments on Saturday, which kept my mind and body distracted during the day, but the evening at home would have been hard if not for Chase. His text was waiting for me as soon as I checked my phone.
Chase: So?
Me: win, Win, WIN!
Chase: You have to let me come see you play one of these days.
Me: What about you, are you winning at work?
Chase: Only had one guy not show up. What does that count as, a tie?
Me: Seriously?
Chase: I was getting ready to fire him anyway.
Me: Did he at least call?
Chase: Hold on, I can’t text while I’m laughing.
Me: I would have been pissed.
Chase: I was.
Me: I would still be pissed.
