Page 37 of Take Me Home

Hazel touched her bare throat then curled her fingers into air quotes. “I ‘donated’ it.” She explained about the price of admission into her father’s neighborhood.

Ash shook his head, seemingly as disappointed by the loss as she was. Hazel appreciated that. After a few minutes of silence, he said, “I may have exaggerated about getting kicked out.”

“You just wanted to see me, huh?”

“My mom told me if I couldn’t stop fixing things, I had to leave.”

“What were you fixing?”

He blew out a long breath and turned to the side window with a shrug. “It’s an old house. I was just trying to— I wasn’t saying they weren’t keeping up with things, or if they weren’t that they didn’t have a good reason to let stuff slide.”

“What reason?”

His face whipped back around, and for a second, he seemed confused by the question. His fingers tapped on his thigh. “Just, uh, they’ve been busy. Holiday errands. Maggie’s kids.”

Hazel didn’t buy that answer, not for a second.

“So, where are we going?” he asked.

She’d given it some thought on the way over. Guilt had fully settled into the space below her ribs, every breath pushing against the mass of it. Guilt and worry that she was coming across like a disgruntled, displaced daughter when that couldn’t have been further from the truth. She needed to show her father just howfineshe was. They were clearly all under the illusion that she needed to be included. So, to get through the week without them resorting to team-building activities and trust falls, she decided to perform a decisive, preemptive gesture of good will.

“We’re going to get a Christmas tree.”

“Okay,” Ash drawled, clearly not expecting this.

“The one at my dad’s was fake, which is just sad. Then there was this whole thing with the dog, and it broke.”

“They sent you for a replacement?”

“It’s a gift. Also, an excuse to leave.” She pressed her palm to her chest. “But it’s from the heart.”

Ash laughed. “Presents instead of your presence. Interesting strategy.”

When he put it this way, it didn’t sound like such a grand gesture. But she had already made up her mind. She was not going back there without a tree.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “I worked at a Christmas tree lot one winter. I’m an expert.”

“Of course you are.”

—

“So what are we looking for?” Ash asked, following her into the pop-up tree lot at the outer edge of a shopping center parking lot. “Wait, let me guess. You’re a scrappy,Charlie Brown Christmaskind of girl.”

She peeked over her shoulder at him as he pulled his sweatshirt hood out of his jacket and over his messy hair. It struck her then that this Ash—Home Ash—was different from Café Ash, both the one who stole her chair and wore whimsical ties and the one who charmed people behind the counter. He wore worn jeans, shitkickers, and the denim jacket, and she’d bet there wasn’t a drop of product in his hair. He looked tousled, simultaneously softer and rougher around the edges. Cozy.

He reached for a scraggly, four-foot tree. It shed half its needles when he tapped its trunk against the asphalt.

“A pity tree?” She hugged her arms around herself. She’d opted for her favorite thick cardigan instead of a warm coat because the elbow patches matched her ankle boots, but without her scarf or a hat, the chill permeated straight to her bones. She headed for an aisle between two rows of trees, hoping they would block the wind.

He leaned the sad tree back into its slot. “All right. Not a pity tree.”

“I want something tall and full.” She spread her hands apart to indicate height then width. “Straight. With a good top. Something…” She thought of the enormous living room where the tree would stand, the shiny tiles she’d mopped last night. “Something stately. A great, big, thick—”

Behind her, Ash choked on a laugh. He waved off her confusion at the interruption. “Sorry. Go on.” But his smile broke across his face again, wider, and his shoulders shook with laughter.

Realization burned through her. “Oh my God, Asher. I’m talking about atree.”

“Nothing wrong with knowing what you want. Something stately it is.”

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