Page 10 of Take Me Home

All around the room, wooden models of buildings clutteredwhat little space was left. She crouched for a closer look at the one on the coffee table. Its front open like a dollhouse, the long, ranch-style home had wooden shingles on the roof and a pebble-fronted fireplace inside. In a pink-and-purple room with a bed and a toothpick crib, tiny childlike art hung on the walls. A cotton-ball beanbag chair sat in the corner. Every room was furnished, down to rugs made of patterned fabric and stamp-sized framed portraits.

The next model, between Ash’s futon and a bookcase, jolted her with recognition. Its lower level was full of fake plants and café tables, a newspaper-strewn farm table, her green wingback chair. Ash had re-created his own apartment in the loft with mind-boggling detail. He’d painted everything nearly the same colors of their real-life counterparts, stacked tiny books on the coffee table, hung a gray dish towel over the top of a kitchen cabinet, just as one hung there now in reality.

Hazel was squinting at the picture on the mini bedside table when the door opened right behind her. A yelp—“Jesus fuck!”—pierced through the music. She ducked and covered, emitting her own strangled sound of surprise, then twisted around to find Ash clutching a toiletries bag to his chest and gripping the knob of the bathroom door.

Hazel slapped her hand over her mouth to stop a laugh. It came out as a giggle and then a loud snort, which made her laugh harder. “That sound. I thought you were a little girl with a filthy mouth.”

He huffed. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“I knocked.” Another wave of mirth spilled over as he frowned deeply and leaned against the doorframe, his jaw tight. “I called out. Your door latch sucks, by the way. It swung right open.”

“And you came right in.”

She turned off the speaker. “Maybe if you had this at anormal volume, you would have heard me. Or if you were ready on time after demanding that I—”

“I was ready. I just wanted to brush my teeth.”

“Aw,” Hazel deadpanned. “For me?”

“Anyway,” he said with put-on weariness. He strode past her to stuff his toiletries into the duffel by the door. He was dressed but freshly showered, hair still damp. The scent of his soap wafted out with the humid air from the bathroom. Hazel hated that she wanted to rub like a cat into the source of that fresh, earthy lemongrass smell.

After carefully lowering the ranch house model into a large box, Ash held it under one arm, grabbed his sweatshirt and duffel, and nudged her ahead of him into the hall. Downstairs, he cut a wordless detour through the café to pour to-go cups of coffee and stick two blueberry muffins into a bag. Then, they were off.

Or they would have been. But before she could pull out, Ash objected to the route Hazel had chosen. He “didn’t trust” Google Maps and claimed perpetual freeway construction would add at least a half hour to her route on top of holiday traffic. Hazel had never made the drive back after moving here, so she had no clue if he was right.

“There won’t be that many holiday travelers,” she said. “Christmas isn’t for a week.”

“But all the schools just got out.”

“Well,” Hazel said, reselecting her original route and setting her phone into the cradle on the dash, “I’m not sleeping in my car in some cow pasture when we run off your little two-lane, farm-to-market road because of bad visibility.”

He shook his head but dropped it.

They made it approximately two miles before he pulled her phone back out of the cradle and asked her to unlock it.

“Why?”

“I want to see your playlist.”

“We agreed I pick the music.”

“Yeah, but seriously, is this all so depressing?”

“Sorry it’s not your belovedNow That’s What I Call Music: Deep Synth Volume 3.”

His unfiltered laugh, throaty and full, surprised them both. “Beloved,” he repeated.

“It was all you ever played.”

He laughed again, shaking his head.

“What?”

“First of all, get your subgenres straight. That wasNow That’s What I Call Music: Psychedelic Space Trance.”

“Oh, okay.”

“And secondly, that mix CD was stuck in the player when I bought my car. The radio didn’t work. It was the only thing I could play until I replaced the stereo.” He swung his gaze out the front windshield, a wry smile creeping from one corner of his mouth to the other. “You really thought I drove around justvibingto that?”

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