Page 50 of The Heartbreak Hotel
He nods, then waves a hand at me, giving me the floor.
“We met in college,” I say straight into the pasta pot. The last thing I want to think about is Nate, but if this is theonething Henry most wants to know about me—well. “We were just kids.”
“Not by the end.”
“No,” I say, meeting his eyes. I wonder, not for the first time, how much older Henry is than Nate and me.
“And you just hit it off, or…?”
“One question at a time, sir.”
“I don’t think you finished answering my first one.”
“I did,” I say, smiling sweetly. “We wound up together after meeting in college.”
Henry makes a sound in his throat, a frustrated sort of growl that I feel in my stomach.
“How old are you?” I say into the pot, steam rising to heat my cheeks.
“Thirty-four.” He takes a sip of wine and adds, “But I have it on good authority that I have a baby face.”
“No,” I groan, holding up the pot lid and hiding behind it.I like your baby face. I peek at him over the top of it. “You remember that?”
He smiles, but it isn’t smug. It’s delighted. He’s unreasonably, unforgivably handsome. “Do you?”
“Yes,” I admit, my cheeks burning. “But I was hoping you didn’t.”
Henry runs a hand along his jaw. I remember what it felt like: Soft. Hard line of bone. “I’ve been shaving since, haven’t I?”
It lands like an ice cube at the back of my throat—an irrepressible jolt. I whirl toward the pasta pot, fighting to swallow my smile.
From behind me, Henry says, “Do you think I’m old?”
When I look back at him, glass of wine poised halfway to his mouth, I nearly laugh: he’s so beautiful, framed in the window, lit orange by the lowering sun. “Is that your question?”
“Yes,” he says, smiling.
“No.” I reach for my own glass of wine, taking a drink that warms me all the way down. “I don’t think you’re old, Henry. Besides, maybe I’m thirty-four, too.”
“You aren’t thirty-four,” he says, and I raise my eyebrows. “I have your birthday from the original rental agreement.”
I study him. “And you just…remembered it?”
He shrugs, completely unembarrassed. “Maybe.”
I laugh, and it goes high-pitched before I can help it. “Okay.”
“Why’d you stay in Colorado after school if your family’s so far away?”
My family. I know he means Goldie and Quinn, not my mother, who’s still in Ohio. It’s a loaded question, one with so many facets I could spend the rest of the night answering it. I let out a slow breath of air, turning from the stove to face Henry.
“That one’s got areallylong answer,” I tell him.
Henry shifts his weight against the counter. Doesn’t look away from me. “I have time.”
By eight o’clock we’ve hadbowls of mac and cheese with Quinn, watched two episodes of a show about an animated dog, and poured third glasses of wine. When I come back downstairs from putting Quinn to bed, Henry’s still on the couch. For a moment I stand in the hallway taking him in: his silver-threaded hair in the lamplight, one hand curved around his wineglass, the dark lines of his legs stretched out over the rug. He looks exactly right in this room: like all my decorating, all these years, was to make him make sense here.
Something aches, painful and good, in the pit of my stomach. Nate’s energy was a lit fuse in this house, crackling and then gone. Henry, here, is different: quiet and enormous. Henry, here, makes this house feel more like mine.
