“I’m just tired,” she said, and something told Asa that hadn’t been her original idea for finishing that sentence. The fake snow was falling on her hair, glinting under the light for a second before dissolving into the dark strands. “Will you take me home?”
He switched off the snow machine, stalling long enough before answering that Lauren rushed to fill the silence.
“You can drive my car,” she said. “Unless you’ve also had too much to drink, but I thought . . .”
His hesitation had nothing to do with his level of inebriation—he’d had a single beer and hadn’t bothered to finish it, so he had no worries on that score. It hadn’t even been about the car situation. He was just trying to figure out where Lauren’s head was at.
“Sure,” he said. “Of course I’ll drive you.”
She started digging around for her keys before giving up and handing him the whole purse. It was surprisingly messy inside, given what he’d seen of Lauren otherwise and her penchant for things being organized and minimal. Under her wallet was a crush of receipts, pens, tampons, breath mints, and finally, all the way at the bottom, her keys.
On the way out, Asa said a quick goodbye to Elliot, the least occupied of his housemates, and told them he was leaving with Lauren.
He opened the passenger door for her and made sure she was settled inside before crossing behind the car, grabbing the antifreeze on his way and putting it on the floorboard in the back. He had to adjust the seat for his height, and it took a second to find the button for the headlights on the dashboard instead of off the steering column where it was in his car. It felt weirdly intimate to be driving her car, to have looked through her purse. He realized he was about to see where she lived. It felt . . . boyfriend-y.
He switched the radio on, partly to fill the silence and push thoughts like that out of his head, and partly to see what she listened to. He wasn’t expecting the Spanish new wave that came from the speakers, but he wasn’t mad about it.
“I think it’s the Latin alternative hour on public radio tonight. They play this band a lot.” She leaned her forehead briefly against the glovebox before tilting her head back against the seat and looking at him. “Honestly, it would be so good to touch you.”
Her eyes were so dark, and he felt himself falling into them.
“But it’s useless, your body’s made of latex,” she continued, and he blinked at her.
“What?”
“The song,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the radio. “That’s what it’s saying. Or something close. My Spanish is rusty.”
He put the car in reverse, bracing his hand on her headrest while he backed out of the parking space. He asked for her address and she described her apartment building, which he recognized as being one he passed on the way to work every morning. “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”
“I understand more than I speak,” she said. “Miss Bianca and her telenovelas . . . I could understand enough to get the gist of Dolores and Daniel’s argument earlier. I think Cold World is in some serious trouble. This contest or whatever it is, it’s more than just a fun game to see what we come up with. It’s a last-ditch attempt to save the place.”
Her words didn’t surprise him, necessarily. He knew Cold World was struggling. And there had been Dolores’ cryptic comment earlier that night, about never knowing when it might be the last holiday party. But still, he couldn’t stop the lump of panic that rose to his throat at the idea of the place no longer being there.
“Who’s Miss Bianca?” he asked.
She rolled her head from side to side, like she was half shaking her head no and half working out a kink in her neck. “I shouldn’t have said all that stuff during karaoke. About families and traffic lights and who knows what else. I ruined everything tonight.”
He’d long given up on following her train of thought. His impression so far of Lauren when impaired was that she rambled and was on her own internal emotional roller coaster. He just wanted to make sure she got home safely and was taken care of.
“You didn’t ruin anything.”
“Oh yeah? I had you for Secret Santa, you know. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t figure out what to get you. So instead I traded with Marcus . . .”
They’d reached her apartment complex, and he pulled into an empty space in front of the building she pointed out as the one she lived in. He switched off the headlights and engine, the silence in the car feeling heavy without the music on in the background.