Page 41 of Take Me Home

“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 toshe was drunkand 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 Idrive?”

“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—herwildhair 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—hisbodywas much closer than expected—and he wassmiling. 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 hadnotoccurred 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. Hisbestfriend. “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.”

---