Page 28 of Take Me Home

“You’re an adult now. What do you and your friendsdotogether?”

“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 athightattoo. 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.”

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