Page 15 of Take Me Home

“We should eat.” She opened the nightstand drawer. “Do you think they have room service here?”

Ash sprang to his feet. He neededoutof this room. “I saw a diner down the street. My treat.”

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After watching a car slide across the inn parking lot and T-bone a truck, they decided to walk the two blocks. The almost painful shock of the cold was also a relief. Already Ash’s head was clearing from the dizzying spell of that room, which was ten percent Technicolor chaos and ninety percentbed.

The thin jacket Hazel had thrown on over her sweaterdress seemed to be doing nothing to block the frigid wind, but despite her violent shivering, she snagged his sleeve just short of the diner. “Wait. Look.” She tipped her face up to the sky.

He’dseensnow. West Texas got a dusting every few winters, occasionally a few inches. But not like this. The fine, icy precipitation had turned into genuine, fat Christmas movie snowflakes that were already sticking to the sidewalk. Ash wasn’t sure if the sudden flurry in his stomach was from the novelty ofrealsnowfall, or the pretty way, when Hazel opened her arms and turned in a careful circle, the flakes caught in her dark hair, on her lashes, her scarf. Lamplight bathed her cheeks golden.

As it turned out, even the biting cold sneaking down the back of his collar couldn’t completely freeze out the heat that had ignited under his skin in that room.

“Lookup,” she insisted again.

He squinted up into the falling snow.

“It’s pretty,” she said.

“It’s pretty,” he agreed.

But the awkward thickness that blanketed his voice must have sounded like sarcasm because she huffed, “Fine,” and left him standing there.

According to the half-burnt-out neon sign above the door, the diner was called, simply,DINER. Hazel tilted her head, considering theNo Shoes No Shirt No Servicesign.Someone had SharpiedNo Animalsat the bottom and, below that in blue pen,This includes hamsters, Keith!

“Wait,” Ash said. “Is it no service if you bring an animal, or no service if youdon’t?”

“So many questions,” she murmured, opening the door for him. He caught the top of it and nudged her through.

The smells hit him first: maple syrup, burnt bacon, very burnt coffee. The dining room was empty, two rows of booths to the left and a short counter to the right, split by a narrow walkway to the kitchen. Meat Loaf’s “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” played from behind the swinging doors, accompanied by someone confidently belting out the words off-key. Whoever was back there hadn’t heard the bell jingle with their entry, just kept shout-singing the chorus.

Hazel opened the door again, rattling the bell a second time, and the music abruptly stopped, followed by a clatter and a sharp curse. An older woman with a neck tattoo and her gray hair in braided pigtails burst through the kitchen doors like a bull out of a chute. Her breathing was labored like she’d been on a table doing air guitar back there, but her stern glare made absolutely no acknowledgment that they’d walked in on her mid-power-ballad. “Y’all never been here before.” Unclear if this was a question or a statement.

“No,” Hazel answered, scooting closer to Ash.

“Take a seat,” the woman barked, chest still heaving. “Dial nine when you’re ready to order.”

“Dial…nine?” Ash asked, scanning the dining room again. Flickering fluorescent lights. Pepto-pink walls. Framed art, all wrapped for the holidays in green paper with armadilloswearing cowboy hats. Which was weirder than if they’d had Santa hats. At least that was ostensibly Christmassy.

“It ain’t even a rotary phone. Shouldn’t be that hard to figure out.”

He saw it then. A cream-colored telephone, grimy from what looked likedecadesof diner guests’ greasy hands, mounted to the wall above the nearest table. And more phones at all the other tables.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of these young Z-boys who’s afraid to talk on the phone,” she snapped, hooking her thumbs behind a longhorn belt buckle the size of a dinner plate. She was still panting, still pretending she wasn’t.

“Z…what?”

Hazel choked on a laugh and turned abruptly to hide it. She was so close he could smell her mint gum. Her eyes were wide with joyful desperation, checking that he was fully absorbingall of this.

Pop Rocks sparked through his entire body, cutting through the fog of disorientation that was apparently part and parcel of this town. Helikedthis—her looking to him, being on the same side of the joke.

“Gen Z,” Hazel squeaked. “I think she means Gen Z.”

He rolled his lips between his teeth to contain his own laugh since no one was shieldinghimfrom the woman’s impatient glare.

“We call,” he said, “from the table?”

“Why else,” she huffed, “would it be called the Phone It In Diner?”

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