Take Me Home

Chapter Nine

Hazel awoke to the smell of bacon and a bright, midmorning beam of light spilling across her face. Voices drifted down the long hall. She burrowed deeper into the most comfortable bed she’d ever slept in and allowed herself another five minutes before she got up.

Her father was scooping scrambled eggs onto everyone’s plates at the table. A fifth plate already waited for her. “She’s alive,” he said. The old familiar greeting stopped her short at the threshold of the kitchen.

She took the seat that she guessed was hers for the week. “I didn’t mean to sleep so late.”

“It’s a great bed, right?” Val said. “Our room had one in Italy, and I’d never slept so well in my whole life. I had to order them for all our bedrooms.”

Next to Hazel, Lucy, immersed in her cell phone, let out a groan. “Children present. No talk of beds.”

“Luce is right. It’s two things on the list,” Raf said around a mouthful of eggs.

Hazel looked to her father. “List?” She would not ask the bigger question: When did you go to Italy?

Lucy leaned in. “All the topics they’re not allowed to talk about. Sleeping. Kissing. Italy. Any description of food that’s remotely sexual.”

Hazel’s cheeks warmed. “Oh.”

On his way back to his seat, her father bent and pressed a kiss to Val’s cheek. “We shouldn’t traumatize the children.”

Hazel searched her memory for a scene like this from her childhood and came up empty. For one thing, her dad had missed a lot of meals. His schedule was all over the place, different from one week to the next. But he and her mom weren’t a kiss-hello-and-goodbye couple, not even in Hazel’s earliest memories. She’d always assumed that was just their preference. But maybe this was what her father looked like in a happy relationship. Hazel had no other points of comparison because he’d never dated after her mom left, at least not while she still lived at home.

“Hazel?” her father said like she’d missed a question.

“Huh?”

“Did you want to go with Val today?”

“After the nursing home, we could do something fun. Manicures?” Val suggested. Hazel thought she kept her face neutral at this, but when she looked from Val to Lucy, their matching hair dye jobs, Val quickly amended, “Or grab coffee, browse a bookstore?”

“I’m at the station late,” her father said, “but y’all should go out to eat, too, after Lucy’s rehearsal.”

It was one thing to have to act like she was part of this family when he was around, but it was a whole different situation to have to do it when her dad wasn’t even there. What would they talk about? What would be the point? “I, um, might have plans today, actually.”

“Oh.” Her father set his fork down. “All day?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. I’m waiting to hear from some friends.” She couldn’t look at him, just scraped butter across every last bit of the craggy surface of her toast.

“Who?”

She could feel red splotches blooming in her neck and cheeks. “Well, there’s Franny, obviously. And…Justin.”

“Justin, huh? You two are still close?”

“We’re…friendly.” Another lie. “He’s working for his dad now,” she added, grateful Ash had given her one tidbit.

She risked a glance. Her father was watching her intently. He didn’t seem outright suspicious, but he clearly had an expectation of how this visit should go, despite them never discussing it, and that expectation wasn’t her having her own plans, her own priorities.

“Sorry.” Her voice came out harsh, verging on sarcastic. Instantly, she wanted to take it back. She wasn’t even angry. Anger required feelings, and hers were not that easily tapped, let alone hurt.

Although, if she really did have plans with old friends, could he honestly hold that against her? He’d asked her to come and assumed she’d be able—would want—to slip into the rhythms of his new family. But he hadn’t been like this before, either. For them, he was so here. He took holidays. He cooked and joked and let them have pets. He didn’t, for example, come home from work late, struggle to come up with a few questions about their days, and shut himself in a bedroom full of unpacked boxes.

“I figured you’d be working,” she said carefully. “You didn’t say I would be needed for anything right away.”

Her father smiled tightly. “I suppose we have the whole week. Maybe you can keep a few windows open? Lucy’s concert, for one. On Thursday at Winter Fest. And the station holiday party on Friday.”

The station party, like she should know about it.

“The wedding on Saturday,” he added, “and Christmas on Sunday, obviously.”

She forced a bright smile. “Absolutely.”

Hazel made sure to leave the house before Val to sell the lie of having plans. Then she parked at a McDonald’s and ate lukewarm chicken nuggets. Despite what she’d told her father, she definitely would not be calling up Justin. Or Franny.

She wished instead that she’d brought Sylvia. The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. Sylvia had holiday plans, and it wouldn’t have made sense at all, but Hazel also knew, if she’d asked, Sylvia would have come. And after growing up in Houston, she would have found a million things to marvel at in a town that felt to Hazel like a too-small coat. She would have demanded a trip to the sad windmill museum that Hazel went to for three school field trips, would have bought the souvenir shirt that matched the welcome sign: Unlock Your Dreams in Lockett Prairie.

Hazel supposed she could kill a few hours at the library again. Or go see a movie, a luxury she hadn’t had time for in months. But guilt wriggled in. Maybe it wouldn’t have been that awkward to join Val at the nursing home. She didn’t know why, given all the other ways she bent over backward to please people, pleasing her father felt impossible today. And because of that, she’d boxed herself into a corner, nowhere to go, nothing to do.

She listened to a podcast about brain science until she finished her food and the car got cold. Again, she thought of the study Ash had mentioned about time passing more quickly in small-scaled spaces and wished to crawl into one of his models for the afternoon.

Yesterday, he’d told her to use his number. Just being polite, of course. He was so excited to see his family, he wouldn’t want to leave them. But he’d really been quite insistent.

She wouldn’t use it. Just to see, though, she thumbed through the A’s in her contacts. And was surprisingly let down when his name wasn’t there. She checked the C’s for Campbell. Nothing. She started again from the top and scrolled until finally she found JUST ASH in all caps. And then, forgetting entirely that she didn’t intend to use his number, she started texting.

Hazel: You have no idea how long it took me to find your number, Just Ash.

Hazel: I’m sure you’re busy with your family, so if you tell me to get lost it won’t hurt my feelings and we can pretend this never happened, but do you want to hang out?

Hazel: Again, you can say no. In fact, I’m expecting you to. Or nothing at all since you’re probably with your 17 sisters and nieces and not checking your phone every 5 minutes.

Cool. She sounded unhinged. Hazel searched “how to unsend texts” on the off chance this was possible. It wasn’t.

Hazel: Never mind. Please strike these messages from the official record, thanks.

Just Ash: Come pick me up.

Just Ash: You still there?

Hazel: Not if you’re making fun of me.

Just Ash: Cross my heart. My mom is kicking me out of the house.

Hazel: See you in 10, Asher.

Ash was on the porch with a blonde about their age, who was huddled under a big quilt, holding a coffee mug and a cigarette. A sister? The girl perked up at the sight of Hazel’s car and moved to come down the walk, but Ash blocked her. They exchanged some words. He plucked her cigarette and stubbed it out on the cement, and she flicked his ear. He jogged over, and just as he opened Hazel’s passenger door, the girl drawled suggestively, “Hey, Ash’s friend.”

“Shut up,” he called back before dropping into the seat.

“Why did she say it like that?”

“No reason. Please, go.”

“Was that June?” she asked.

“That was June.”

“She’s so grown up. And pretty.”

“Pretty annoying,” he muttered, but as they left his block, he angled his body toward her, a pleased smile spreading. “So, what happened? Not a fan of the new fam?”

Hazel rolled her eyes. “I could ask you the same thing. How’d you get kicked out already?”

He unbuttoned his jacket. It was different than the gray peacoat he wore over his business clothes and the hoodie he’d worn on the trip here. This one was faded denim with a faux shearling collar. On anyone else, she’d think it was an ironic nod, nostalgic-trendy like corduroy overalls or a fanny pack. On Ash, though, it felt earnest.

“Where’s your scarf?” he asked.

Hazel touched her bare throat then curled her fingers into air quotes. “I ‘donated’ it.” She explained about the price of admission into her father’s neighborhood.

Ash shook his head, seemingly as disappointed by the loss as she was. Hazel appreciated that. After a few minutes of silence, he said, “I may have exaggerated about getting kicked out.”

“You just wanted to see me, huh?”

“My mom told me if I couldn’t stop fixing things, I had to leave.”

“What were you fixing?”

He blew out a long breath and turned to the side window with a shrug. “It’s an old house. I was just trying to— I wasn’t saying they weren’t keeping up with things, or if they weren’t that they didn’t have a good reason to let stuff slide.”

“What reason?”

His face whipped back around, and for a second, he seemed confused by the question. His fingers tapped on his thigh. “Just, uh, they’ve been busy. Holiday errands. Maggie’s kids.”

Hazel didn’t buy that answer, not for a second.

“So, where are we going?” he asked.

She’d given it some thought on the way over. Guilt had fully settled into the space below her ribs, every breath pushing against the mass of it. Guilt and worry that she was coming across like a disgruntled, displaced daughter when that couldn’t have been further from the truth. She needed to show her father just how fine she was. They were clearly all under the illusion that she needed to be included. So, to get through the week without them resorting to team-building activities and trust falls, she decided to perform a decisive, preemptive gesture of good will.

“We’re going to get a Christmas tree.”

“Okay,” Ash drawled, clearly not expecting this.

“The one at my dad’s was fake, which is just sad. Then there was this whole thing with the dog, and it broke.”

“They sent you for a replacement?”

“It’s a gift. Also, an excuse to leave.” She pressed her palm to her chest. “But it’s from the heart.”

Ash laughed. “Presents instead of your presence. Interesting strategy.”

When he put it this way, it didn’t sound like such a grand gesture. But she had already made up her mind. She was not going back there without a tree.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “I worked at a Christmas tree lot one winter. I’m an expert.”

“Of course you are.”

“So what are we looking for?” Ash asked, following her into the pop-up tree lot at the outer edge of a shopping center parking lot. “Wait, let me guess. You’re a scrappy, Charlie Brown Christmas kind of girl.”

She peeked over her shoulder at him as he pulled his sweatshirt hood out of his jacket and over his messy hair. It struck her then that this Ash—Home Ash—was different from Café Ash, both the one who stole her chair and wore whimsical ties and the one who charmed people behind the counter. He wore worn jeans, shitkickers, and the denim jacket, and she’d bet there wasn’t a drop of product in his hair. He looked tousled, simultaneously softer and rougher around the edges. Cozy.

He reached for a scraggly, four-foot tree. It shed half its needles when he tapped its trunk against the asphalt.

“A pity tree?” She hugged her arms around herself. She’d opted for her favorite thick cardigan instead of a warm coat because the elbow patches matched her ankle boots, but without her scarf or a hat, the chill permeated straight to her bones. She headed for an aisle between two rows of trees, hoping they would block the wind.

He leaned the sad tree back into its slot. “All right. Not a pity tree.”

“I want something tall and full.” She spread her hands apart to indicate height then width. “Straight. With a good top. Something…” She thought of the enormous living room where the tree would stand, the shiny tiles she’d mopped last night. “Something stately. A great, big, thick—”

Behind her, Ash choked on a laugh. He waved off her confusion at the interruption. “Sorry. Go on.” But his smile broke across his face again, wider, and his shoulders shook with laughter.

Realization burned through her. “Oh my God, Asher. I’m talking about a tree.”

“Nothing wrong with knowing what you want. Something stately it is.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m not a snob about—I mean, I wouldn’t automatically reject a—” She gestured at him vaguely.

Ash clutched his chest. “Hold up. I’m not a pity tree.”

“I didn’t mean you, specifically. I have no idea what you’ve got going on—”

“It’s not A Charlie Brown Christmas in there, I can tell you that.”

A vision of him in the Lovebird Suite, his sweatpants tented by his morning erection, made Hazel cover her face with her freezing hands. “Oh my God. Why are you like this?”

“What am I like?” When she uncovered her eyes, he was still smiling, his dark eyes burning amber.

She rubbed the waxy needles of a nearby branch between her thumb and forefinger. “What’s this one?”

He watched her for a moment, refusing to follow her subject change. What did he want her to say? Between the models and his ambitious workload and the music he’d only ever played because the CD was jammed, she didn’t know what he was like, not like she thought she did. He reminded her of a magic trick she’d seen as a kid: a book with totally blank pages, suddenly filled with black-and-white images, then colorful ones with two simple waves of a wand.

He licked his lips, made her wait before his gaze finally shifted over her shoulder. “That’s a Leyland cypress. Nice shape. Doesn’t really have a smell.”

Hazel leaned in and breathed deeply. He was right. It had no scent. She faced the opposite line of trees. Ash hadn’t been totally off the mark about the kind of tree she would have chosen for herself—small and unique. But for her peace offering she needed something impressive.

“You’re the expert,” she said. “What’s the most classic tree?”

“Can’t go wrong with a Douglas fir.” He pointed at the end of the walkway, where a batch of trees leaned against the outer wall of the lot.

She could smell the sweet, earthy aroma before she reached them. Yes, this was the Christmas smell she was after.

“They’ve got sturdy branches. Good for decorating.”

“This is more like it.” She muscled one out and stood it up. But it barely surpassed Ash’s height, maybe six and a half feet. She leaned it back and righted another, then another. “They’re all short.”

The lot wasn’t as full as the ones she remembered wandering through as a kid, tugging her dad along behind her. But maybe that was because everything looked bigger from a kid’s vantage point. Then again, they also usually got their tree well before Christmas.

Ash confirmed her suspicion. “The best ones go early.”

“So, these are all the leftover trees no one wanted?”

“No,” he said slowly then again with more confidence. “No, sometimes the good ones are hiding behind all the basic, traditional trees that everyone picks first.”

“You just said the best ones go early.”

“I meant the ones everyone thinks are best.”

She squinted, blinded by the midday sun behind him. “Are you saying there’s some weird, artsy, emo tree with quiet, overlooked beauty tucked in a corner? Hair in a bun, dorky glasses?”

He grinned. “Yes.”

“I don’t know, that still sounds like a pity tree to me.”

They wandered to the other side of the lot, where a teenager emerged from a trailer and asked if he could help them find anything in a tone that begged them to say no.

“We’re looking for a tree that would be into Sylvia Plath,” Hazel said.

“Actually—” Ash pointed at a menu on the side of the trailer and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.

She laughed. Even his wallet was duct-taped.

“Can we get a couple hot chocolates?”

“You don’t have to pay,” she said, remembering his tight finances. “This is my errand I dragged you on.”

He passed over a five, and the boy ducked back into the trailer.

“It’s cold,” Ash said simply, gesturing at her nose, the frigid tip of which she assumed looked like Rudolph’s. “And I didn’t get dragged here. I wanted to come.”

“Right.” She followed him to a nearby picnic table and sat across from him. “For a guy who was so desperate to get home, you have to admit it’s a little weird you’re not there.”

“I told you. My mom kicked me out.”

Hazel narrowed her eyes. He’d already walked that back. “You were fixing things,” she prompted.

Ash drummed his fingers on the table, looking longingly at the trailer. When the teenager didn’t immediately emerge with their drinks, he relented. “My dad is a big DIY guy. All my life, he’s made me help fix things. Once, he made me help replace our entire roof in the middle of summer. But now, I’m supposed to do nothing while all these things are clearly—” He shook his head, pursing his lips.

“Broken?”

He eyed her, a silent debate warring across his features. She wanted to pounce, to say, Tell me. She’d revealed all kinds of personal things to him already. It was only fair. She sat up straighter, ready to say as much, when the kid came out with their drinks.

“Do you remember that party freshman year?” Ash asked, removing the lid to let it cool. “Right after the dorms opened but before classes started.”

“Vaguely.” Hazel’s nerves hummed to life. “Why?”

“You had cut your hair since graduation, and you looked really…” He trailed off, scratching one of his thick eyebrows. “It was just off your shoulders.”

“Yeah, I did the cliché girl thing and chopped off half my hair after Justin and I broke up.”

One corner of his mouth tipped up. “Part of your ‘fresh start,’?” he recalled.

She crossed her arms. “I didn’t invent wanting a fresh start in college.”

“Didn’t say you did.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying—” He laughed into his palms, raked both hands through his hair. “Why do you always assume I’m picking on you?”

She shrugged and shook her head like, Aren’t you?

A deep trench formed between his eyebrows. “This is exactly my point.”

“What is your point?”

“Nothing.”

“No. Go on.” She learned her elbows on the table. “You saw me at the party, and I looked like Audrey Tautou in Amélie—that was my hair inspiration—and then what? Something happened?” A lot had happened at that party, and while she couldn’t remember all the specifics, the bits and pieces that stuck had really stuck. She picked at a splinter on the edge of the table.

“You were real happy to see me,” he said with a dark laugh.

“Did you think I would be?”

Ash peered past her into the trees, shrugged.

Tensing under his silence, Hazel said, “In my defense, someone had spilled beer on my shoes, Sylvia disappeared five minutes into that party, and I dropped my ID through the patio slats, so you turning up right then was just—”

“?‘Shit icing on a shit cake,’?” he quoted.

Hazel winced.

“It was also the first time you called me Asher.”

“I was drunk.”

He laughed. “Oh, I know.”

The few times she’d tagged along with Justin and his friends to parties in high school, she’d easily declined every cup and joint passed her way. But everything had changed that summer before college. Old Hazel had been too passive. Things wouldn’t happen to College Hazel. She would make things happen.

So, she’d tried a beer, just to see if she liked it. But the noise and congestion inside the apartment sent her out for fresh air, only for the soupy August heat to plaster her short hair to her forehead and neck. Bored and hot but determined to make it at least one hour at her first college party, she drank more. When Ash stepped through the sliding patio door, the extra syllable tacked itself onto his name. But it also sounded weirdly right. Asher. An uptight chauffeur, judging her in his rearview mirror.

“When I saw you,” he said across the picnic table, pressing a palm to his chest, “I thought, Thank God I don’t have to recite my hometown for the hundredth time. But you. You were like, ‘Just fucking great. Forty thousand students at this school, and you had to come to this fucking party?’?”

“I didn’t swear that much.”

“Hazel, you swore like a damn sailor from the moment you saw me. At one point, you turned to some random girls on the lawn, shouted, ‘Hey, this guy is the fucking worst’ and got them all to boo me.”

“Well!” she said, defensive. Then…nothing because she had no good argument or explanation for herself. She had been annoyed to see him. Her first college party had seemed like a great opportunity to try on the new, improved version of herself. But a new haircut and a borrowed skimpy top from the roommate she barely knew hadn’t automatically banished Hazel’s old ways. When that guy spilled beer on her, she’d apologized to him. And instead of drunkenly yelling the school fight song or making out on the lawn like the rest of the partygoers, she’d spent her time texting her lost roommate, fretting about how to replace her dropped ID, regretting her new ponytail-resistant haircut, and slapping futilely at mosquitoes.

Ash’s arrival was a cosmic taunt, a barb from the past hooking her. He’d lurked in the periphery of her relationship with Justin, and now, everything she’d spent the summer trying to forget slammed back into focus. Justin had lied to her about losing his baseball scholarship, let her think they were still coming to college as a couple. So, she’d fallen that last bit in love with him, slept with him, only to find out at graduation, when the principal announced everyone’s post-commencement plans, that he’d landed a walk-on spot with a school in Missouri she’d never heard of. And that was that. Her first love: over. He’d expected her to still join him at a graduation party that night and to “make the most” of summer before they parted ways, but she’d ended it in the parking lot, not yet free from her scratchy commencement robe.

“You wanted your fresh start,” Ash said, turning his hot chocolate cup in circles on the picnic table, “and apparently, you couldn’t do it with me around.”

“I told you. I didn’t keep in touch with anyone after I left home. I wanted to be different in college. I thought it would be easier without any ties to people who knew me before. Especially someone who never liked me to begin with.”

He nodded, thoughtful. “I’m not sure when you decided that.”

“What?”

“That I didn’t like you.”

Hazel didn’t realize she had a guffaw in her repertoire, but welp, there it was. “You literally used to groan when you saw me coming. When Justin started talking about us all going to college together, you acted like I was some parasite who’d glommed on to your best friend, like you dreaded having to put up with me for a minute longer. I got early admission, for Christ’s sake—before we’d even started dating. I might have stupidly believed we’d last, but I was never just following him.”

“I didn’t think you were a parasite.”

“Once, I overheard you ask what he saw in me because I wasn’t even his type.”

Ash’s leg bounced erratically under the table. He didn’t speak, apparently had no defense on that point.

“Yeah, that was pretty harsh,” she said.

“You weren’t.” He shook his head, nostrils flaring and jaw clenching. Finally, he looked directly at her, his dark eyes stormy. “You were sweet and smart, and you didn’t care about baseball or being cool or any of the dumb shit that whole crowd was into. You cared about school and those kids you mentored. You planned that whole sports day for them.”

Hazel nearly interrupted to point out that at that event—a field day for little kids with tough upbringings, which she’d convinced the baseball coach to make a mandatory volunteer day for his team—Ash had bailed early. She’d even thought he was kind of cute at first. The other guys had shown up hungover and tired, complaining about giving up their Saturday morning, but he’d seemed excited to meet the kids and amused by her whistle-blowing to rally the lethargic group. Fifteen minutes into the morning, though, he was glued to his phone. Then he walked out without an explanation. Justin had been the one to horse around, his energy and attention for the kids boundless. Both had made a strong impression.

“You weren’t Justin’s type,” Ash insisted, “but that wasn’t criticism, just fact.”

He lifted a stern eyebrow, as though asking if she was getting this statement through her stubborn head, and she swallowed, feeling weirdly chastened.

For the first time, she wondered if Ash and Justin were still close. After the breakup, Hazel had left Lockett Prairie earlier than planned to visit her mom in New York, wanting to nurse her broken heart as far away as possible, but rumors of a fight between the guys had reached her. She’d never learned the specifics or whether they’d made up. She hadn’t cared at the time.

“What,” she asked quietly, “does any of this have to do with that party?”

“Because for a minute that night, I thought—” He cupped his hot chocolate carefully. “For just a minute,” he repeated, cautious, “it was…fun.”

“What was fun?”

“Talking.”

“Us talking was fun?”

He laughed. “I mean, yeah, at first you were pissed I was there. You wanted to divide campus into your side and mine so we’d never cross paths again. Which, come to think of it, is kind of a recurring theme for you.”

She glared at him.

“But then…I don’t know. It shifted.”

Hazel racked her brain for details from that night. Sweat. Mosquitoes. Grit on her knees from kneeling on the patio. The drunk, floaty feeling that rolled through her just as Ash opened that sliding door. And later, after she laid into him for reasons that amounted to she was drunk and he was a symbolic extension of her ex, he’d egged her on.

“What else?” he’d challenged, a chuckle shaking his shoulders. “What else is wrong with me, Hazel?”

“You’re flaky. You have terrible taste in music. You crack your knuckles constantly. You don’t take anything seriously—school, baseball, anything. The way you drive is annoying.”

“The way I drive?”

“With your wrist flopped over the top of the steering wheel like, ‘Oh, I’m so cool.’?”

“Didn’t realize you cared so much where I put my hands.”

“I don’t— That’s not—” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you anyway. College is supposed to be my fresh start.”

“Fresh start?”

“You know, clean slate. Hazel 2.0.”

“And what exactly is going to be so different about you, other than your hair?”

She’d heard it as more criticism—her wild hair that she’d expected to look so sophisticated but, in actuality, curled up in all the wrong places and puffed out like a poodle in the humidity. “Everything.”

“Specifically, though. Is there a list?”

She cocked out a hip, refused to let him belittle her plan. “One: I drink now.”

“I see that.”

“And B: I took a self-defense class over the summer, so I know, like, three different ways to incapacitate you.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“I’m sure you would.”

“What else?”

“Yoga.”

“Show me some yoga.”

She didn’t hesitate. She straightened abruptly, slapped her palms together high over her head, and tucked one beer-soaked flat to the inside of her other knee. “Tree,” she announced, like he should be very impressed. She only bobbled a little, covered it up by stepping back into a deep lunge. “Warrior one.”

“Incredible,” he said, helping with a hand around her bicep when she had to pull on the railing to get back up. “You might also be a little drunk there, warrior.”

When she looked up to tell him he could let her go, thank you very much, his face was much closer than expected—his body was much closer than expected—and he was smiling. Not smirking, not sneering, but actually smiling at her.

It hit her like sun breaking through blue-black West Texas thunderclouds—a thought so ridiculous she knew it meant she was drunk. At this proximity, she could see little gold flecks in his dark brown eyes. She’d raised her hand to touch the white scar cutting through one of his thick eyebrows but stopped herself when his gaze caught her hand hovering there. Still, she let him take more of her weight as that heady, swimmy feeling rolled over her again.

“And you can’t do all of this fresh start stuff,” he said, licking his lips, “if I’m around? Who knew I had so much influence?”

Hazel ran her tongue over her lips, too. She nodded very seriously, raised her beer—third? fourth?—for another sip.

“Did it ever occur to you,” he murmured, his breath laced with cinnamon gum, “that if you can change, I could also change?”

That had not occurred to her. And between the beer and his sudden proximity, she felt like she was bobbing, rudderless, pulled by some unseen tide.

Grasping for an anchor, she found Justin. His best friend. “You know,” she said, shuffling back against the patio rail and wiping a bead of sweat from her neck, “he screwed you, too. Justin? You guys were supposed to be roommates.”

Ash shrugged it off. “Actually, I ended up with a friend from this baseball camp I went to a few years back.”

“You were able to pick your roommate that late?”

“It wasn’t that—” He stopped, turned to look out into the dark lawn, drummed his fingers on the rail.

“They sent roommate assignments back in June. How did you change yours?”

He didn’t face her as he said, “I changed it in April.”

Even though she was drunk, she’d gone over the timeline enough to have absolute clarity on at least this one thing. At the beginning of April, Justin had pitched a bad game, started a fight on the field. That night, he’d told her he loved her—but not that the college coach in the stands had rescinded his scholarship and spot on the team. Two weeks later, after prom, she’d slept with him. Then, for five more weeks, he’d kept quiet, let her look up the best dining hall, avoided her questions about his course load and which parking lot he planned to get a permit for, all the while knowing they weren’t going to go to college as a couple.

And if Ash had had time to request a different roommate—

“You knew?”

Ash squeezed the back of his neck. “Hazel—”

“So, the whole time I was going on and on about doing our laundry on weekends and riding home together at Thanksgiving, you knew he wasn’t coming to school here. God, you must have thought I was so stupid. You spent all those weeks just, what, laughing at me?”

“I wasn’t laughing at—”

“Bro code?” she went on. “That’s what that was?”

“No.” He reached for her, but she pulled away.

Only, the patio was beginning to tilt, and she stumbled. He caught her by the waist before she could face-plant off the step down to the lawn. “Hazel, I think you’re pretty drunk.”

Hazel wasn’t yet versed in the transitions from tipsy to fun drunk to not-fun drunk, but she supposed this seesawing feeling meant she’d gone too far. But she’d be damned if Ash Campbell was right about anything, drunk or not. She shoved him. “I’m fine. Leave me alone.”

He’d raised his palms in surrender and backed off. “Just— Do you have a ride home?”

“That’s not your concern.” She power walked across the small lawn, into the parking lot.

He followed, and when she stumbled again, he grabbed her elbow. “Will you just stop?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re headed directly for the train tracks.”

“Now you care about me?”

“Christ, Hazel. Yeah, I care if you stumble in front of a train.”

They stopped under the orange glow of a halogen light, moths circling frantically above them. Cicadas shrieked in a continuous chorus. Hazel wanted to join them, just scream at Ash until he went away.

“Why? Because we went to high school together? College is for new experiences, not old baggage, Asher. There are, like, twenty thousand other girls here for you to bother. Just because we’re from the same nowhere town doesn’t mean we have to be anything to each other.”

“Fine, but I’m not leaving you out here.”

“Oh my God. Why? What is this? First, you hate me. Now, you can’t leave me alone?”

“Would you please just let me drive you home?”

Hazel laughed in his face. “What, like, to hook up? This”—she waved a hand between them—“is never going to happen.”

His face twisted. “You think I’m hitting on you?” The vehemence in his voice pressed a bruise deep inside her, even though she couldn’t have made her own feelings any clearer. She was either going to cry or vomit and couldn’t focus past breathing down the sickening lump in her throat.

Only later did she piece together that he’d taken her phone, texted Sylvia until she came, and ordered them a ride back to their dorm.

Now, across the picnic table, the chilly December breeze carrying the sweet, earthy scent of Christmas trees blew a loose curl across Ash’s forehead. He shook the hair out of his eye.

“Part of that night was fun,” Hazel said, echoing him from before.

“Yeah.”

“And then…”

“Yeah.”

She pulled her hands into her lap, confused by the gulf between how she’d seen him back then and how she was seeing him now.

“You avoided me after that,” he said.

“You avoided me, too.”

“Only once I realized you were always speed-walking around corners when I saw you.”

She gave a helpless little shrug.

“Four years.” He sawed his teeth into his lower lip, shaking his head. “I wanted to tell you— I thought I’d get the chance, some other time when you were sober, to let you know I really did just want to make sure you got home okay. I wasn’t”—his face screwed up with something dark—“trying to take advantage.”

Remorse wormed through Hazel. She didn’t blame herself for not knowing, for not realizing Ash was good, but she wished all the same she’d seen him more clearly then. “I know,” she said.

He pressed his lid carefully back onto his drink. “And I was never laughing at you. I told Justin a hundred times to come clean. He kept saying he would. You don’t know this, but we fought that summer, after you left town. Not just about what he did to you, but that was part of it. When I saw you at that party, and you acted like we couldn’t be friends because I was Justin’s friend, I hadn’t spoken to him all summer.”

He held her gaze, his eyes boring into her, like he had so much more to say. She found herself holding her breath, wanting to hear it. Long seconds passed. The breeze rustled the trees and blew that same errant curl back across his forehead.

Finally, he said, “I guess I just wish it hadn’t taken you four years to come into my café.”

She would have huffed at that possessive pronoun, but she felt strangely breathless, like time had lurched forward and she’d fallen out of step. There was something knowing and steady in Ash’s face now, as though this conversation had lifted a weight from him, but Hazel felt newly burdened, like she’d lost something. Time, maybe. Or a possibility.

Ash sipped his hot chocolate and hummed in approval. Then, he nodded at a batch of trees leaning against the side of the trailer. “What about those?”

White tags fluttered on their branches. “They look like they’re reserved.”

Ash hopped up from the table. “This close to Christmas,” he said over his shoulder, “I bet some of these won’t even get picked up.”

For reasons she couldn’t pinpoint, she wanted him to turn around, to gather her into a wordless hug. Instead, she wrapped her arms around her middle and followed him.

She had to jump back as he hauled one tree out from the group and dropped its trunk to the asphalt with a thud, its unbound branches bouncing from the impact, shaking some needles loose. They both leaned back to see the top of the tree. It had to be eleven or twelve feet tall. The aroma of Christmas surrounded her. And despite having been crammed in the middle of the group, its branches were full and uncrushed.

“You want this tree,” Ash said, not a question.

It was perfect. But she lifted its tag. It was very clearly reserved for an M. Conway.

Ash peeked around the tree, then behind her, then over his shoulder. He tore the name from the tree and toed it back into the mess of needles under the other unclaimed trees.

“What are you doing?”

“If that kid comes out, ask him to show you where the blue spruces are.”

“Asher—”

He pushed her toward the front of the trailer. As she rounded the corner, she ran right into the teenager in question and blanked for a few long seconds before blurting, “Blue spruce?”

After making the kid pull out every last scraggly tree from the blue spruce section of the lot, Hazel apologized for taking up his time. Back by the picnic table, Ash stood with the enormous tree, looking mildly aggrieved at how long she’d taken. “You’re not gonna believe this, Haze,” he said, selling his excitement.

Haze. Her insides flipped. “Wow, where’d you find that?”

He pressed his lips together, gave a slight shake of his head at her too-enthusiastic acting voice, and gestured at the back corner of the lot. “Behind those over there. Isn’t it— What’s the word? Stately?”

Her cheeks burned from the force of her smile.