Chapter Six
“You’re quiet.”
Only when Hazel spoke did Ash register the absolute silence they’d been driving in for the better part of an hour. She wasn’t even playing any music.
They’d traveled through the pine-dense and hilly parts of the state yesterday. Now, the West Texas plains stretched for miles all around them, gentle snow-dusted slopes that would continue to flatten throughout the five-hour drive, a lone oil pump seesawing lazily in the distance. Ash’s thoughts swung up and down just like it, imagining awful scenarios he might walk into at home, then reassuring himself with his mother’s refrain: Everything’s fine. No need to worry.
“Sorry,” Ash said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Anything. What are your parents like?”
Ash picked at a hole in his jeans, forcibly extracting himself from mental quicksand. “My mom used to be a painter. She teaches middle school art.”
Hazel nodded at the model of Maggie’s house in the back seat. “You get that from her?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“And your dad?”
“He’s a mail carrier.”
“Is he totally swamped right now with all the holiday mail?”
Ash let his eyes go unfocused on the mesmerizing rows of snow-sprinkled winter wheat through his side window. The furrows between the plants remained uncovered, making repeating outward avenues, one stark runaway line after another across the field. “He’s taking some time off this year.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Hazel said.
Ash swallowed. He could just tell her that his dad wasn’t on vacation, that he’d fallen from a ladder while cleaning the gutters the day before Thanksgiving. Two sentences maybe.
Except he didn’t want to open the door to having to say more, whether the fall was an isolated, freak accident, as his mother insisted, or a sign of deterioration, the benchmark of “normal” nudged back another yard or ten or fifty. With his father’s type of MS, they never knew when a relapse would hit, how long it would last, how severe the symptoms would be, though at least he still recovered between them. Relapsing-remitting MS tended to transition to progressive MS. In that stage, his father would never regain lost neurological function or mobility. Ash wasn’t particularly superstitious, but his stomach went leaden at the thought of speaking about it before he could assess his father for himself.
“We should eat there,” Hazel said as they passed a sign for the next town.
“Sure.”
Silence descended around them again until she said, “Did I snore last night? You seem tired.”
He turned his back to the window, willing himself to stay focused on her, to stop drifting. “Do you usually snore?”
“I don’t think so. Sylvia claims I talk sometimes, though.”
That morning, when he’d lain perfectly still half under her, he could have sworn she’d told him to do something. He thought for sure she’d woken up. Before he could ask for clarification or, hell, exact instructions, she’d grabbed his shirt and pressed herself against his hip, and he’d waited for her to make another move, pressing his itching palm flat against the bed so he wouldn’t sink his fingers into her soft thigh. He wouldn’t touch her unless he was sure she wanted it. But her breathing had stopped abruptly, and her body went rigid. Then, she rolled away.
“Crap, did I?” Hazel asked. “Like I didn’t word-vomit enough at you last night.”
“Lovely image.”
“How do you do that anyway?”
“Do what?”
“Jedi mind trick me into telling you things. I’m not usually so…”
Warmth filled his chest at the cute way she wrinkled her nose in embarrassment. “Forthcoming?” he said.
“Pathetic.”
“I don’t find you pathetic, Hazel. Not at all.”
Taking the exit into the tiny town, she held his gaze for a few seconds before returning her focus to the road ahead. “Looks like our choices are Whataburger or mystery Tex-Mex.”
“Whataburger. That place looks like it still has a smoking section.”
The parking lot was riddled with potholes, and the restaurant’s iconic white-and-orange stripes were in desperate need of a power wash.
“The good news is,” Hazel said, climbing out, “soon we won’t be stuck together, and your voodoo won’t work on me anymore.”
Ash wanted to admit he didn’t feel stuck with her, but his thoughts were derailed at the door to the restaurant by a fluffy tuxedo cat snoozing below a LOST CAT sign. The name, Fitzwilliam, was written above a picture of the exact same cat.
“Is that the missing cat?” Hazel asked the pimply teenage boy behind the counter, thumbing over her shoulder.
“Nah,” he said.
“Are you sure? It looks just like the picture.”
“That’s just Toast.”
Hazel shot Ash one of the same private, amused glances she’d cast his way in the diner last night.
Her comment about their impending separation weighed on him as they ordered and settled into a corner booth. He’d been focused on getting home, hadn’t thought beyond the drive, but now it hit him. Once they arrived, this new, cozy bubble forming around them would pop. At the café, in their regular life, he saw her nearly every day. And now that they’d had real conversations, now that he knew what her body felt like pressed against his, now it wouldn’t be enough to pour her coffee and get a rise out of her over that stupid chair. A week with no contact at all? He didn’t like it.
He gestured for her phone on the table. “Let me give you my number. We still haven’t nailed down when we’re leaving.”
She tapped in her passcode but held on to it, side-eyeing him. “Day after Christmas. Early, preferably.”
“Seriously? That soon?”
She sighed, finally handing her phone over. “I have things to do, next semester to prepare for. You knew I wouldn’t want to hang around Lockett Prairie for the entire break. Don’t you have to work?”
“Not until the twenty-ninth. We could leave on the twenty-eighth.”
Her gaze flitted to the door, where a trucker stomped in with the tuxedo cat tucked under his beefy arm. “Found your cat,” he announced.
“Every freaking day,” the teenager grumbled.
Ash slid Hazel’s phone back to her, smiling at her little laugh. “This is why we should have each other’s number,” he pointed out. “We can figure it out later.”
“Fine.” She stole one of his onion rings, as though it were payment for her dropping the subject.
“Help yourself,” he deadpanned.
She bit into it, holding his gaze defiantly. Flaky breading caught on her lower lip. His fingers twitched, moving to brush it away, but he stopped himself. She popped the last bite into her mouth, and then her eyes fell to his milkshake.
Ash pulled the cup to the edge of the table. “Nuh-uh. You should have gotten your own.”
“I don’t want a whole one.”
She reached slowly across the table, eyes dancing playfully, daring him to stop her. He didn’t, only said as she stole his cup, “You know this isn’t normal dining behavior.”
With a shrug, she lowered her lips to the straw, never breaking her gaze. He knew she was just seeing what she could get away with. And as she smacked her lips in exaggerated satisfaction, he worried the answer was everything.
“What do you even do at home?” Hazel wanted to know later, as they neared Lockett Prairie.
“Hang out with my family. See friends. Eat.”
“But don’t you feel different?” She was tapping the steering wheel, all nervous energy.
“Different how?”
“You’re an adult now. What do you and your friends do together?”
“I don’t know. We hang out. We drink.”
“At your parents’ house?”
“No.” He laughed. “Some of them have their own places. Or we go to bars.”
Hazel gaped at him. “There are bars in Lockett Prairie?”
“Of course.”
“Where?”
“Downtown. Vintage Square.”
She snorted. The joke about downtown was that the tallest building in its skyline was the four-story First National Bank, and Vintage Square, the adjacent district, was no more vintage than a fifth grader. Someone’s idea of a quaint town center with a gazebo and quirky antique shops, it had been developed just over a decade ago. But the last oil boom around the same time had set off massive growth in Lockett Prairie, and new modern subdivisions and chain restaurants pulled the sprawl to the other side of town before all the colorful Vintage Square shops were even leased. Teens back then, and still, wanted brand-name clothing stores and Starbucks. Ash wasn’t surprised Hazel had never spent time there.
“Do you ever run into old teachers?” she asked.
“Buying a cookie cake at H-E-B in their pajamas?” he joked.
She rolled her eyes. “Or friends you stopped calling, and now it’s super uncomfortable to face them? Asking for a friend.”
“Ah.” He supposed Justin somewhat fit that description, but he didn’t want to talk about Justin.
“Junior year,” she said, glancing sidelong at him and chewing her lip, “I went around town selling candy bars for a fundraiser, and randomly, Mr. Newton answered a door without a shirt on in these tiny yellow shorts. I swear the entire universe turned inside out and never went back again. He had a happy trail and weird nipples and a thigh tattoo. A full-color tiger.”
“Jesus.” Ash grimaced. “Why would you tell me that?”
“Because that’s basically what I fear about this whole trip. Some equivalent of my old math teacher’s nipples around every corner.”
“I have never seen any of my old teachers’ nipples,” he assured her, laughing into his palms. “Christ, Hazel.”
“Yet,” she corrected with a slap to his knee. The touch, already over before he could even register it, made him turn to the window to hide his grin.
Soon, they passed the oil fields, the sun low in the late afternoon sky and casting long shadows from all the metal pumps. Hazel wrinkled her nose. “Still stinks.”
A sulfur smell hung in the air, thick and cloying. Her shoulders visibly tensed as they passed the sign welcoming them to Lockett Prairie. Ash wanted to massage the strain back out of her muscles, but she’d probably startle and run them off the road.
Minutes later, she pulled into his driveway. He opened her back door but hesitated before lifting the model from the seat. She was going to drive away, and he wouldn’t see her for days.
Hazel peered back at him in the rearview mirror, blowing a curl out of her eyes.
“Listen,” he said. “I know you’re not thrilled to be back, but you really saved my Christmas.”
She shrugged. “I had to come anyway.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to bring me. And you were right about that storm. So, if there’s anything you need this week—” He felt weirdly out of breath, palms clammy, like he was asking her for a date. He cleared his throat. “If you end up needing to talk or—”
She opened her mouth, but he pressed on before she could get a word in.
“Or if you need safety in numbers rounding all the unpredictable, dangerous corners in town, you should use my number.”
She turned forward in her seat and gripped the gear shift. “I’m not going to bother you while you’re with your family.”
He tried to suffuse his words with gravity, a force she couldn’t so easily brush off. “You’re not a bother to me.”
In the rearview mirror, the lines between her eyebrows deepened, and he wanted to shake her for whatever uncertainty about him remained. He was home, finally, and he’d been dying to run up the walk, burst inside, and hug his family, but he needed her to get this. “At least copy me on your next proof of life to Sylvia, so I know you haven’t peaced out and ditched me here.”
She smiled into the mirror and gave a shrug that turned into a nod. That was enough. “Merry Christmas, Asher,” she said.
“Merry Christmas, Hazel.”