Page 78 of The Wreckage of Us

“No. Please. Text me everything, all the things. It might take me a while to reply. But I will reply, Haze. I swear. I want to hear from you. You’re kind of my compass. I don’t want to lose myself in this world. You’re my road map home.”

I smiled at his words and pulled his hoodie to my nose to breathe it in. I’d been spraying it with his cologne every now and again. Jeez ... I was addicted.

“Speaking of being my road map ... today people paid me a lot of cheesy compliments that went directly to my head,” he said. “So in an attempt to not get a big ego, I am requesting that you tell me a handful of my flaws.”

I laughed. “Oh boy. Are you sure? We’ll be here all night.”

“Dive right in. Rip it off like a bandage.”

“You fart in your sleep,” I stated. “And they are smelly. Like rotten eggs in your face, worse than the pigpens, bad.”

“Oh, wow. Okay, took you no time to get that one out.”

“You don’t always flush the toilet. You put the toilet paper on backward like a caveman. Sometimes you leave the bathroom so fast that I doubt you washed your hands, which makes me want to do the HCT.”

“HCT?” he asked.

“Hand-check test. You know, when someone comes out of the bathroom and you shake their hands to see if they are wet or cold from washing them. You can smell them, too, to see if they smell like soap. Then you know they cleaned them well.”

He laughed. “Don’t tell me you go around smelling people’s hands.”

“Well, no. But don’t be freaked out if I do it the next time we hang out.”

“And where did you learn about HCT?”

“My mom used to do it when I was a little kid. I was obsessed with lying about washing my hands. So she created HCT to get me to stop.” I paused for a second. My stomach tightened, and I tried my best to twist my memories of Mama away. There were so few good ones that whenever one popped into my head, it made me want to get emotional on the spot. Of course, I wanted to recall the good moments with Mama, but also thinking back on the good made me miss her even more.

“How is she doing?” Ian asked, probably taking note of my silence.

“Oh, you know. The best she can be. Garrett has shockingly been giving me updates on her. She should be delivering the baby in a few months.”

“How are you feeling about it all?”

Too much. I’m feeling too much.

I curled into a tighter ball. “You snore in your sleep like a rhino. When you clip your toenails, you let the clippings fly anywhere, even if it’s in the kitchen. Did I mention you hang the toilet paper the wrong way?”

He chuckled. “Okay, okay. Obviously, we’re not talking about your mom anymore, but you’re wrong about the toilet paper.”

“No. You hang it with the paper facing over. That’s wrong.”

“No,” he argued. “That makes it easier to pull. Easy access.”

“Wrong, wrong, wrong.” I yawned. It escaped me without thought, and I was quick to cover my mouth.

“Oh shit. It’s almost three in the morning over there, isn’t it? Go to sleep, Haze.”

“I’m fine.” I yawned again.

“Liar. I’ll call you in the morning before you head out to the ranch. Sleep tight. And Haze?”

“Yes?”

“You snore like an elephant with a peanut caught in its nose.”

I snickered. “Good night, Ian.”

“Good night.”