“No, my mums work non-stop. Trying to save the world from scum and pollution. I had a nanny for a while, but then I was just sort of on my own. I liked my nanny, though. She was good fun and would paint my nails and stuff. My mums hated that.” She chuckles under her breath.
“Mums?” Jax asks, bumping my arm.
“Mums?” I repeat with a grin.
She giggles. “Boys are pathetic.” She shakes her head at our eagerness. “Yes, mums. I have two mums.”
“What do your mums do?” Jax asks.
“They’re both lawyers. They saw a lot of messed-up stuff, a lot of messed-up people. Things they couldn’t fix, even when they wanted to. It was hard for me to have a life, because they saw the worst parts of it.”
“So no road trips with friends, no school-leaver weekend? No summer camps?” Jax asks. “No road trip songs or games? No road trip junk food?”
Where’s he going with this?
He sounds genuinely disgusted, and I can’t stop myself from laughing at his mock distress. As if never having been on a road trip is one of the worst things he’s ever heard. I wonder what he’d make of my life?
“Nope, none of the above. Although I don’t need road trips to have junk food,” she says adamantly.
“That sucks, Elise,” I add.
“Oh, man, no. This is no good,” Jax says in comical disapproval. “Junk food on the road is totally different from junk food at home.” He continues to shake his head and frown. “Nope, this will not do at all.”
I grin from ear to ear when he pulls into the strip lane and takes an exit off the highway. I look back at Elise, who is peering at me, confused.
“What’s he doing?” she asks.
“You’ll see.”
We pull into a petrol station, and Jax and I jump out of the car, leaving Elise blinking through the window at us. We shove each other a little as we strut into the servo. The sliding doors open, and I make my way straight for an iced coffee. I grab two, then put one back.
Then pick it up again.
I hover over the snack bar for too long. Does she eat chocolate? Is she allergic to anything? I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. I want to know! What do I know about Blesk Bellamy? Her brother is a dickhead. She is terrible at puns, but that’s the best part. I know the exact way her voice broke on the bridge of Hero Boy. I know her giggle is something I’d do a lot of embarrassing things to hear over and over.
I put both iced coffees back and stand there like an idiot, staring at them as if they’ll tell me whether she wants them or not…What am I doing here?
Fuck.
Erik is her brother.
She didn’t call me.
She ran from me because…
The sentence won’t finish.
Fuck.
I grab both iced coffees again and head for the counter, shaking my head at myself.
Jax appears with his arms full, packages crunching in his grasp.He dumps them all down and pulls a couple of magazines from the rack, then grabs a CD: The Best of the Beatles.
We pay.
As we climb back into the car, Elise beams at us. Jax leans over the seat and hands her the bags. “Now, I know you don’t eat much meat, right?”
Elise’s head comes up from the bags. She blinks at Jax, then at me. I shrug. “How do you know that?”
