Page 7 of Take Me Home

“Asher, no,” she said, her voice muffled by the scarf.

Ah, the name thing again. It had been a couple weeks since she’d pulled that one out. He knew she knew his name, that this was just payback for never giving her the chair, but as juvenile a tactic as it was, it worked. Her pretending not to know his name made him unconsciously flex, as if by making himself physically bigger, she’d have toseehim. He hated to but gave her exactly the reaction she was looking for, correcting, “Ash.”

Unwrapping her scarf, she marched off to claim the green chair with her bag, then came back to the board. “You’re going to end up with some wacko serial killer. Like…the Merry Murderer. Or the Jingle Bell Butcher.” Her eyes danced. “Wait, no. The One-Horse Open Slayer. Get it? Sleigh-er?”

He swallowed the laugh building in his throat, not so much at what she’d said as how she’d said it, with such open delight. This unstressed, post-finals Hazel had an entirely different energy from the past several weeks—more like how she’d been in high school. Her playfulness sparked a little flame in his chest, a small flickering thing.

“You think we get a lot of murderers in here?” He dropped his voice, nodding to the knitters by the back window. “Sweet old Edna?”

“You never really know people as well as you think.”

“I think I could take her.” He gestured at his comparatively bigger frame.

One corner of her mouth twitched. “I don’t know. She’s pretty spry. She could get a knitting needle to the jugular.”

“You’ve given this some thought before now, haven’t you?”

“Anything to get you out of my chair.”

There was a long silence when Ash could have asked the obvious question. It wouldn’t be that weird to bring up her plans for the break. He made similar small talk with the other regulars. But she’d already watched him scramble for a ride last night and said nothing. As far as he knew, she never went back to Lockett Prairie. He’d never seen her on breaks, and her old friends, whom he occasionally ran into there, never knew more than he could glean from her Instagram himself.

Plus, she’d made it pretty clear their first week of college that coming from the same hometown didn’t make them friends. He could have pointed out that, with as many times as he’d drivenher and Justin around so that his ex–best friend wouldn’t drink and drive, as far as rides were concerned, some might argue she owed him. But that was only an argument if she were already headed home.

When their mutual silence turned awkward, Hazel tucked her hair behind her ear and said, “So, no luck on all your posts?” just as he said, “Semester’s over. Shouldn’t you be—”

She motioned for him to go ahead.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping off a hangover or something?”

“That’s how undergrads celebrate. In grad school, you just eat a cheeseburger in the bathtub and watch a movie on your precariously balanced laptop, hoping it doesn’t fall in and kill you.”

He huffed a laugh.

She looked half surprised, like she hadn’t expected him to reward her with his amusement, mild as it was. Holding his gaze, she walked backward to the old green chair and settled into its high back, twirling one of her dark curls around her finger. “As it happens,” she said airily, “I am here for pleasure.”

His brain went straight to unauthorized places. Hazel, in that chair, wearing that ridiculously long scarf—onlythe scarf— “What?”

She waved a paperback at him. “Yesterday was work. Today, pleasure. Plus, I knew you were working this morning and couldn’t take my chair.”

“You do know it’s creepy that you’ve memorized my schedule.”

“You say creepy. I say resourceful.”

“Maybe the real wacko serial killer around here is you. The Scarlet Scarf Strangler.”

She gave her scarf mock-serious consideration, and the basest parts of his brain jumped right back in.

“Coffee?” He bolted for the counter, needing the distraction of pouring her a cup.

“I want the mug with all the cats licking their butts,” she called.

And thank God for that competing image.

—

By noon, Ash had two leads, the sketchy moving truck driver from Craigslist who was coming through town on his way to Big Spring and a student headed to El Paso from the rideshare board, who’d texted to say she’d like to meet him first and came straight over.

When he offered his hand in greeting, she pushed back from the counter. “Wait, you’re a guy? I thought Ash was short for, like, Ashley.” Only then did he realize that in his few text messages he hadn’t made his gender explicitly clear. He didn’t blame her for rescinding the offer. If one of his sisters were in her position, he assumed they’d do the same.

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