“Two.”
“And you’ve never met any of them? Have you at least FaceTimed or something?”
She cringed at the sticky gunk now caught under her nail and grabbed a napkin. “Why would I FaceTime with them?”
“They’re about to be your family, right?”
Hazel balled up the soiled napkin then turned her full attention to the menu, which was so long it would give a CVS receipt a run for its money. “Technically. But I won’t ever see them.”
“Because you never go home?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, clearly growing impatient with his questions.
Ash rubbed his forehead, unsure whether to keep pushing or to drop the subject. But he was curious. He didn’t know anyone else who hadn’t returned home at least once since high school.
College is for new experiences, not old baggage, she’d told him once.
He’d thought a lot about that party freshman year, before she’d all but told him to go bother twenty thousand other girls instead of trying anything with her. Part of that night had been all right. Good, even. Until she remembered her shitty ex was his best friend. She had no idea of the fight Ash and Justin had that summer or the rift that remained, nor how utterlydisloyalto Justin his thoughts about Hazel were that night. How she looked edgier,sexierwith her new, shorter hair. Or how, for the first time since they’d met, she didn’t look past him to search the room for Justin. How he’d thought, briefly, things could be different.
ButJustin’s friendwas all she’d ever really seen him as. Justin’sbroodyfriend, apparently. The guy who ferried her and her boyfriend around to a handful of parties senior year because otherwise Justin would drive drunk. Ash’s reward: getting to watch them make out in his back seat.
“Afraid you’ll run into Justin or something?” Ash guessed.
Hazel pressed her mouth into a tight line but otherwise didn’t react. He couldn’t quite tell what was real with her. Mild annoyances flashed, fiery and unfiltered, in her eyes, and she could tap into biting sarcasm on a dime, but other times, she was freakishly cool and impassive. He found himself swinging to the same extremes around her, mirroring her energy, trying to stay on even footing. But holding his every reaction in check had been exhausting enough in high school. It took even more out of him now. He knew why he’d done it as a teenager—he wasn’t trying to steal his best friend’s girl—but he wasn’t sure why he’d started doing it again when she walked into his café two months ago. Except that, because she couldn’t totally read him, she kept trying to.
The epitome of casual, Hazel asked, “Is Justin back in town?” And maybe she wasalwayshiding something. Maybe her first instinct was to cover her real reaction until she calculated the risk anddecidedto have it.
“Yeah, he tore his rotator cuff sophomore year, lost his scholarship. He works for his dad.”
“Huh.” Ash caught the glimmer of concern in her pinched brow, the same little kick he felt when he pictured Justin’s dad barking orders at him again, only now without Ash or a coach to buffer.
“So, he’s not the reason you never go home?” Ash asked.
She closed her menu and folded her hands atop it. “I’m ready to order. Are you?”
Clearly, he’d pushed as far as she intended to let him.
In addition to the menu being a novel, someone must have been high when they named the items, because each was more ridiculous than the last. He wasn’t dying to order the Big Bubba’s Belly Blaster Burger or the Dreamy Creamy Broccoli and Cheese-y Soup. “What are you getting?”
She shrugged, a little too casual, and said, “Dial nine.”
He lifted the receiver and pressed the button. A shrill, piercing tone rang out just behind Hazel’s head, and she ducked, startled. The kitchen doors swung open, and out charged the same woman to lift the phone from the wall by the counter. She stood no more than four feet from Ash and, making aggressively direct eye contact, snapped, “What?”
“Uh, we’re ready to order.” He eyed her name tag. “Emeline.”
“It’s pronounced Emeleen.”
Hazel slunk even further down into her seat and probably would have melted right onto the floor in a laughing fit if he hadn’t reached under the table and squeezed her knee. At his touch, she yelped, lurched back, and banged her elbow against the wall.
“Go on then,” the woman said. “Into the phone.”
Something about her intense eye contact at such a close range made Ash’s palms sweat. He forgot what he’d planned to order and opened his menu again, squeezing the receiver between his shoulder and ear. It slipped and clattered onto the table, and Hazel made a strangled sound. He glared first at her and then at Emeline in a silent plea to let the phone thing go and just take their order like a normal person.
She pointed her pen at his receiver.
He lifted it back to his face. “I’ll have the chicken and waffles.”
“The what?”
