“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.
Asa cleared his throat. “I knew,” he said. “That you’d traded with Marcus. It’s okay.”
She sat back in her seat, tucking her hair behind her ears like she was bracing for something. Then she went to undo her seat belt, before seeming to realize that she’d already unbuckled. “Sorry, I— Thanks for driving me home. I’m just going to—”
She’d opened the door and exited the car before he could stop her. He still had her keys, a fact that she must’ve realized by the time she reached the front door of her second-floor apartment. He climbed the stairs after her, taking them two at a time.
“I think you’re going to need these,” he said, handing the keys to her. He stood back, watching as it took a few tries for her to get the right key inserted in the lock in the right direction. She gave him a sheepish look over her shoulder, then hesitated in the open doorway.
“Do you want to come in?”
He followed her into the apartment, glancing around as she switched on a couple lights. It appeared to be fairly standard, with a small common area, a narrow galley kitchen, and a hallway where he could see into the bathroom. He knew that she kept her office at Cold World neat and nondescript—at least until their decorating contest had spruced it up a little—but he was still surprised to find her apartment much the same way. There was a blue sofa, small enough to be more of a loveseat, with a scuffed coffee table in front of it. No TV, but the open laptop on the coffee table suggested that maybe Lauren watched on that instead. The tiny offshoot of the common area next to the kitchen was just large enough to house a table and two chairs.
“How long have you lived here?” he asked.
The place had evidence of being lived in—mail on the kitchen counter, flip-flops by the door, an empty bowl in the sink—but there were no pictures on the walls or any other personal touches. He was surprised when Lauren said she’d moved in two years before, and his face must’ve shown it because she glanced around as if seeing the place with new eyes.
“I never saw any point in decorating,” she said, dropping her keys on the counter but missing by a few inches. She frowned at them down on the floor, as though she didn’t understand how they’d gotten there. “I’d have to fill in any holes in the walls when I moved out, anyway. This place isn’t permanent.”
He was fortunate to have a pretty decent landlord, all things considered, but he knew that property management for larger complexes like this one weren’t always as lenient. He couldn’t blame her for not wanting to leave any marks. On the other hand, tonight had been her third holiday party at Cold World, and still she’d talked about moving on depending on how things went with the proposals to Dolores. She’d referred to whatever they were doing as casual sex. He wondered what it took to get Lauren to see something as permanent.
“So what’s your plan, then?” he asked.
“For the apartment?”
He shrugged, trying not to look like her answers mattered as much as they did. “For the future. Go back to school to be an accountant? Buy a house you can decorate? Get married, have a family?”
She shook her head slowly. “It’s better not to make plans. Things never go the way you want them to.”
She was the one with the color-coordinated file folders, the organized task lists. If anyone had a solid five-year plan, he would’ve bet that it would be her. But he remembered what she’d said earlier, about how nothing that night had gone the way she’d hoped it would. He’d assumed she meant her date with Daniel and hadn’t wanted to push for any more details. But now she looked so dejected, all he cared about was finding a way to get the light back into her eyes.
“Sometimes that’s half the fun,” he said, and she snorted her disbelief. “No, hear me out. I’d planned to get that snow machine rigged up the night I stayed at Cold World, right? If I’d been able to do it fast enough, maybe we never would’ve gotten locked in. Or if I’d listened to you about the outlet, maybe it would’ve worked and I would’ve been tinkering with it instead of having dinner with you or playing our random number generator game.”