Chapter Twenty-Four
For hours, Hazel drove. At first, she drove through big, deep, wracking sobs that burned her throat and blurred her vision. She drove through every new chime on her phone. She drove until the rising sun made her squint and realize she was headed southeast, back toward school. She hadn’t decided this, but it made sense. Turning her phone off to quiet the notifications left only the radio for a distraction. Every thirty minutes or so, she had to find another station that wasn’t punched through with static.
The flat West Texas prairie gave way to gradual rises and falls. Two days before Christmas, and yet Hazel didn’t see another car or house or any sign of civilization, only empty crop fields. She’d said she needed space. This was certainly space. A forever road through endless, rough landscape and limitless gray sky. Where waist-high crops might have waved in summer, there was mostly just empty dirt, everything brown and dead. She’d driven herself into the literal middle of nowhere, and she had never felt so achingly, brutally alone.
When Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” started up on the radio, she laughed bitterly.
But a billboard stopped the sound in her throat. It featured a pale blue Victorian house beneath the bold claim that the Roadrunner Inn was the “Crown Jewel of Garrettsville.” She wasn’t on the freeway, had taken a back road without a destination in mind—one of those two-lane farm-to-market ones she’d given Ash shit for a week ago—and somehow, she’d ended up right back here, two miles from where she’d gotten stuck with him.
Was it a sign?
Well, it was a literal sign. But Hazel’s blood sang with something magnetic, some visceral frequency only her body could understand. She took the turn the billboard indicated, and soon, the inn was there in front of her.
It was shabbier in the bright daylight than it had looked when they’d taken refuge inside, far from magical with no snow left on the ground, only muddy puddles where it had melted. But still, the sight of its chipped paint and crooked shingles pulled at her heart. It was proof. Of life. Of something new. A tiny spark of a thing just last week, which had since quietly engulfed her whole life. Ash had already taken on the role of her buffer the night they stayed here, tucking her under his arm against the biting wind. He’d let her lean on him while they watched The Office in bed. Warmed her icy hands in the dark. Murmured in his low, sleepy voice until she’d drifted to sleep.
It hit her all at once. Her infuriating pattern. Her running. She was never running to anything, never running with anyone. Except last night, when Ash had helped her ransack her room at her father’s house, when he’d taken her keys and driven her to his home.
Be with me, she’d said.
I am.
All this running had gotten her what? Not safety. Not happiness. She was as alone and untethered as she’d ever been. As she drew boundaries around every new source of hurt, her world only got smaller. Even if she could stomach resuming her ban on Lockett Prairie, there was still school, still the café. Still this ramshackle, overpriced, weird fucking place in the middle of nowhere, where she’d unknowingly started something that it already hurt to breathe without. And she knew if she ever came back here, it would no longer bring her joy, only regret. That was the whole point of the running. To not have to feel this.
Except she would always know this place was here. And she’d feel the deep ache she felt now, even if she didn’t look at it.
Continuing another mile away from Ash and her father and Lockett Prairie would only keep her trapped in the same terrible pattern. She knew that now. But going back? She couldn’t quite do that, either. And she couldn’t bear to set one foot inside the Roadrunner Inn.
Instead, she paid for a room at the Motel 6. She would go nowhere until she figured out her next step. Whatever that was.
When she turned her phone back on, the answer was right there among the sea of messages and ignored calls from her dad and Ash.
Sylvia: Proof of life, please! How was the fancy party?
Yesterday, she’d wanted to finally tell Sylvia everything about Ash. Now…just thinking of their fight this morning triggered a wave of nausea and cold sweat. But Sylvia was her last person left. She couldn’t bear to lose anyone else.
Hazel: I’m alive.
Sylvia: Proof?
Hazel chose a nondescript corner of the room and framed the shot to cut off her puffy nose and eyes.
Sylvia: What is that wallpaper? Why is the lighting so bad? IS THIS A HOSTAGE SITUATION?
Hazel: You’ve watched too many true crime shows.
Sylvia: HAS THERE BEEN A CRIME??
Hazel: Not that I’m aware of.
Sylvia: HAZEL
Before she could respond, her phone was ringing. No, not just ringing. Sylvia was trying to video call her.
“You’ve been crying,” Sylvia said as soon as they connected. “Don’t you dare try to tell me it’s allergies.”
“Someone was smoking in here,” Hazel argued half-heartedly.
“Where is here? You’re not at your dad’s.”
Hazel slumped into a surprisingly hard, upholstered chair. “It’s a motel.”
“What are you doing crying in a motel?”
“Is Dave with you?” Hazel asked, stalling. She squinted at the bit of background she could see behind Sylvia. It hit her that she hadn’t yet seen Sylvia’s new place, not even in proofs of life. Sylvia was always the person demanding evidence of Hazel’s continued existence, not the other way around.
“Dave’s out picking a kitten for my Christmas gift. He thinks it’s a secret.”
Hazel laughed despite the heavy gloom pressing in on her. “How do you—”
“When is everybody going to realize that I know and see all? You can’t get anything past me. Speaking of which, I’ve been extremely patient with you sending me crumbs of details, but now I have to know what the hell is going on out there.”
“I don’t even know where to start, Syl.”
“I’d get excited about you being in a motel right now if I thought you and some hottie hooked up, but since you’re alone and you’ve been crying, I’m guessing things went a different way.”
“Something like that,” Hazel squawked, her throat tight.
Sylvia let silence pulse between them, her face on the screen somehow both patient and unyielding. Of course Sylvia knew the secret to getting around Hazel’s evasions and deflections—even Hazel couldn’t dodge from nothing.
But that was the point. She didn’t want to dodge anymore.
“I yelled at my dad, flipped a table, snuck out a bathroom window, slept with Ash Campbell, broke up with Ash Campbell, left town, and now I’m here at this Motel 6 in Garrettsville because I can’t bring myself go back, but I can’t go to my place, either. I’ll have to spend Christmas here. And maybe live here forever.”
Sylvia’s eyebrows rose slowly, eyes round. “Wait.” She opened her mouth, struggled to find words. “Wait.”
“I’m waiting. I literally have nowhere else to go.”
Sylvia’s face filled the screen as she scrutinized Hazel. “Asher, the asshole chair thief from the café? I thought we hated him.”
“It’s just Ash, actually.” Hazel smiled sadly. “And he’s not just from the café. We went to high school together. I gave him a ride home. You actually met him once, that first party freshman year.”
“And you slept together? Wait. Oh my God. Hazel.” Sylvia’s screen bounced as she changed positions on her couch. A million late-night conversations rushed back to Hazel. Sylvia, tucking her legs under her, buzzing with whatever juicy gossip she had to share. She would slap the back of the couch or Hazel’s thigh with each new detail.
“Okay,” Sylvia said. “God, I have missed a lot. This is why you have to stop going AWOL.”
Hazel rolled her eyes, but the gesture was half-assed since tears brimmed behind her lower lashes.
“Was the sex good?”
“Does it matter? We broke up.”
Sylvia’s eyebrows shot up.
Hazel backtracked. “If you could even call it a breakup. We were barely…” She swallowed thickly. She didn’t want to downplay this week with Ash any more than she wanted to admit it was already over.
“I’m having to do a lot of guesswork here. You can at least tell me if the sex was good.”
“Even at the expense of my feelings?”
“The fact that you have feelings about him is why I need all the details.”
Hazel groaned and tipped her face up to the ceiling, resting her head against the chairback. “The sex was…”
Unbelievable? So good it had maybe broken something in her and put it back together all at once? How is it like this? Ash had asked, the very same sentiment on the tip of her own tongue.
“It was good, Syl. But I think it was a mistake. And even if it wasn’t, I fucked it all up.” She hoped to sound distanced from the pain of this morning, but instead, her voice shook, and her ever-present tears ran from the outer corners of her eyes into her hair.
“Oh, babe.”
Hazel set her phone on the dresser, screen pointing up to the ceiling. Sylvia didn’t demand to be turned back at her while Hazel covered her face and sobbed.
When she calmed down to sniffles and lifted the phone again, Sylvia said, “You’re not spending Christmas at a Motel 6. You do have somewhere else to go. Here with me.”
“I can’t crash your first Adult Christmas with Dave.” Instead of staying with her parents, like she and Hazel had always done, Sylvia’s plan was to stay at her apartment with Dave for “sexy time” tomorrow night before they went over to see her family Christmas morning.
“Oh, shut up. That’s the flimsiest excuse I’ve ever heard.”
Hazel started to protest, but Sylvia cut her off.
“Seriously, Hazel. I know you think it’s been some huge favor for me to share my family with you these last few years, but don’t you get that we’re sisters? I never had one, and now I do, and it’s amazing. But you get in the way of it sometimes with this inability to let yourself be loved and accepted the way you are. Which is awesome. The way you are, that is, not the way you sabotage relationships.”
“I don’t sab—”
“You do. If you didn’t, you would have called me before you panicked and left or…flipped a table?” She frowned but shook her head like they would have to come back to that detail later. “Or you would have just come here for Christmas like always.”
“My dad is getting married. I had to come.”
“Why?”
Hazel rubbed her forehead where a deep ache pulsed. She was tired of explaining the concept of familial obligation to people who didn’t need a reason or an invitation to see their families. “It would have been a bigger issue if I hadn’t.”
“So, you came for the wedding. But now you’re in a motel in some other town two days before Christmas, and the wedding is…”
“Tomorrow.”
“And you’re going to go back, or…”
Hazel groaned. This was the exact problem. “I don’t know.”
“Seems like avoiding making an issue has made it a bigger issue.”
“Thanks. I see that.” Hazel snapped, then winced. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
Sylvia gave her a pitying look. “Are you upset he’s getting married?”
Sure, she’d been surprised to see how involved her father was with Val and her kids. His proud presence at Lucy’s choir performance had struck a nerve. Not comparing him now to him five or ten years ago was impossible, as much as the comparison was also pointless. But Val was warm and kind, not the Stepford wife she’d originally pictured. And when Hazel managed not to think too hard about her parents’ relationship, it was kind of nice to see her father with Val. She didn’t want him to be unhappy. She didn’t want him to never change or grow, even if she might have benefited from him doing it sooner.
“I accepted the way things were before, that I just didn’t have deep relationships with my parents. I figured it would never change, so why get worked up about it? Why wish for something else just to be disappointed? But as it turns out…”
“He changed for them,” Sylvia concluded.
Hazel shrugged, not wanting to admit her best friend was right on the money.
“Both your parents should have tried harder, you know. You made everything easier on them because they were going through their own shit. Your mom deserved her fancy job, the life she waited for all those years. Your dad deserved to be a lead reporter after putting in so much work. That’s how you explained it to me—what they deserved, why it was all okay that you didn’t get what you deserved: their presence, the kind of love that leaves no room to question it. They should have known better than to let you make things easier on them. You’re still doing it.” She put on a bright smile. “?‘Don’t worry about me. I’m fine with whatever.’?”
“I don’t sound like that.”
“Please. Do you know the moment I realized we were actual friends and not just decent roommates? It was when the northside dining hall started making those rocky road cookies. Remember? I was obsessed with them. I had been bringing extras of the chocolate chip ones back to our room for you, but I switched, and you stopped eating them, and I was like, ‘Why aren’t you eating the cookies? Are you sick? Are you on a diet? Are you mad at me?’?”
Hazel snorted, remembering.
“And you told me you preferred chocolate chip.”
“Wait, that was, like, sophomore year.”
Sylvia nodded slowly, eyes wide, like this proved her point. “It took you living with me almost two years to tell me you had a cookie preference.”
“That doesn’t mean we weren’t friends before.”
Sylvia shrugged. “You’re a tough nut to crack, Hazel. But you’re one of my favorites.”
“Don’t make me cry again.”
“This is actually another special moment for me—you crying. It means I’m your person, too.”
“Well.” Hazel exhaled. “You might be my only person at this point.”
“Nope. We’re going to fix this. But you’re going to have to tell me everything.”
So, Hazel did. She recounted the initial deal and every obstacle that followed, from the storm that stranded her and Ash to the security gate, her father’s Christmas tree allergy, the cranberry dress, Winter Fest. By the time she got to the dinner, all the toasts, every slight that had incensed Ash and which she’d tried to ignore, her father inviting Justin, and finally her outburst over the family photo, she was worked up all over again. She’d blown everything, undermined all her efforts since she’d arrived.
“Ash tried to tell me it was all going to be fine somehow, some opportunity. It was so infuriating. He just couldn’t fathom things not working out. But things don’t work out all the time.”
“But sometimes they do,” Sylvia offered gently.
“Not this time.”
“With your dad or with Ash?”
Hazel shrugged, wiping at fresh tears.
“So, you took off?”
“And turned off my phone.”
Sylvia was quiet.
Finally, Hazel prompted her. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“How do you think that made them feel?”
“I don’t know. Probably annoyed. What?”
“You think your dad feels annoyed right now? Or do you think, maybe, he’s worried out of his mind?”
For the first time since she’d run from the party last night, Hazel imagined her father in his new house, at the dining table where everyone had a specific seat, even her. She saw him typing out those text messages, one every hour, waiting for the clock to okay the next one.
“Worried,” she admitted. “I should probably tell him I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere, huh?” It was a sign of just how truly dysfunctional she was as a person that such a message, proof of life for her own father, felt like it would dangerously overexpose her.
“Probably,” Sylvia said. “Now the other thing.”
“What thing?”
“Could you be in love with Ash?”
Hazel closed her eyes. Ash, holding her fruitcake. Offering his old Christmas ornaments. Scribbling her height on his laundry room door. Cradling her face, his touch soft despite the desire in his taut muscles and dark eyes. Pretty sure I’m falling for you. Don’t panic, okay? He always found the softest way to say hard things.
“I can’t even deal with that. It’s enough that my dad thinks—”
“A, you don’t know what your dad thinks because you haven’t talked to him. And B, wouldn’t it maybe be a relief if he knew?”
“Knew what?”
“Everything. That you miss him. That you wish he knew you—the actual you, not the perfect, polite daughter who never needs anything.”
“How—”
“I know and see all,” Sylvia reminded her. Then, softly, “I’m sorry, but Ash wasn’t wrong. You want a relationship with your dad. Maybe this is an opportunity. But you won’t know if you don’t try.”
Hazel didn’t know what to say. Even if she could fix any of it—and that was a big if—it all felt too huge at the moment.
Sylvia seemed to sense her exhaustion and said, “Okay, enough tough stuff. I’m going to send you pictures of the kittens Dave is choosing between.”
And for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, they kept talking, even through dinner—Sylvia and Dave at their dining table with a meal he’d cooked, Hazel on the motel bed with a spread of vending machine chips and peanut M&Ms. Her phone nearly died, and she had to scramble to find her charger, Sylvia yelling dramatically, “Do not die on us! Not at Christmas!”
When her exhaustion from the day finally made it impossible to stay awake, Hazel said, “You can watch me sleep like a weirdo, but I’m closing my eyes now.”
“Wait,” Sylvia said on a yawn. “Don’t forget. Call your dad.”
Hazel opted for a text: I’m in Garrettsville. I’m okay. Sorry if I made you worry.
The dots indicating his reply looped several times before a message finally came: Thank you.