Pete
Later that day, I woke Ash as we passed a spot that was perhaps scenic enough for him to photograph, despite a years-old instinct to let him sleep. He wasn’t a great passenger—cars, trains, planes: he hated them all—and it was sometimes better to let him doze a journey away. But I’d been an asshole earlier, and I wanted to try and make upforit.
I shook him and he jumped, sitting bolt upright, instantly alert, his gaze darting around for danger. “Easy, fucker. It’sjustme.”
Ash brought his hand to his chest like he could slow the painful rush of his stampeding heart. “I know. I know. Fuck. Wherearewe?”
I told him. “It’s pretty dark,” I added. “But we can stop ifyouwant?”
Ash glanced out of the window at the murky landscape. “Huh. It doesn’t seem such a good idea now. Maybe on thewayback?”
“Sure.” It had slipped my mind that we’d have to drive all the way home again at some point. I didn’t even know how long Ash had intended to stay with Jed and his partner. “So, where does Jed live, if it’s not inPortland?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if Itoldyou.”
“No?”
Ash rubbed the last remnants of sleep from his eyes. “It’s toofreaky.”
“Tryme.”
“Ashton.”
“Seriously?”
“I know, right? Maybe there’s a Petesville nearby.” Ash took his phone from the dashboard and peered at the screen. “Only an hour to go till Minneapolis. Do you want to go tothatclub?”
“Um…” Did I? It had been a while since we’d last hit a club together or separately, in fact. Ash rarely drank anymore, and I’d become terminally antisocial, so what was the point? But we’d had some great nights in the past when we’d left it all behind and gotten cozy in the dark corner of a smoky club, so… why the hell not? “I’m game ifyouare?”
Ash snickered. “Gameon,then.”
* * *
Minneapolis wasawesome.The last time I’d left Chicago had been years ago to confront my sister about her bullshit, and before that, my dad had been alive. Now I was wandering the brightly lit streets of Minneapolis, gazing around like a dorky tourist, I couldn’timaginewhy.
And the fact that I was with Ash made it seem like I was seeing the world through new eyes. I tried to remember the last time we’d walked around our neighborhood like this—hand-in-hand, worrying about nothing more than where we were going to eat dinner. It used to be our favorite way to pass an evening together. When had we stopped doing it? It was unfair to blame Cosmo and Liam. Even with conflicting work schedules, we always had time for each other,right?
“How about this place?” Ash stopped in front of a Turkish restaurant. “You like kebabs,don’tyou?”
“Sure.” Though by now, I was so hungry I’d agree to pretty muchanything.
Ash tugged me into the restaurant, and we scored a booth in a quiet corner—my favorite way to eat dinner with him. We ordered the first things on the menu that we vaguely recognized and then kicked back with a beer for me, and a sodaforAsh.
“So you likeMinneapolis,huh?”
I twirled the straw in Ash’s glass. “So far. The hotel’s cool too. I was half expecting Joe to have booked us into some kind of noveltyhellhole.”
“You mean like the hot dog place we saw onthenews?”
“Thewhat?”
“We saw a hotel on Fox News last week that was shaped like a bun, and all the rooms had wienersforbeds.”
“What the fuck were we watching FoxNewsfor?”
“Cosmo hid theremote.”
“Oh, I don’trememberthat.”
