Page 60 of The Heartbreak Hotel
Henry stands, putting a hand on Quinn’s head as they turn toward me. “How many areyougoing to get?”
“Twenty!” he cries, then giggles hysterically.
“I don’t know about that,” I say. Henry lifts Quinn into one of the island stools like he’s done it a hundred times before—like Molly used to sit here, maybe, while he made dinner. Then he comes around to me, his hand rising to the small of my back.
“Hi,” he says. I want to kiss him, but I know it would open up an entire can of worms with my sister if Quinn saw me do it. So I only say, “Hi,” as Henry’s thumb brushes the base of my spine.
“Me first!” Quinn says, leaning over the counter to inspect the tattoo sheets. He spreads them out in a fan, considering carefully, before selecting a rocket ship and holding it up to me.
“That one?” I ask, and he nods. “Do you want to pick one for Henry and me, too?”
He ducks back over the counter, finally choosing a pterodactyl for me and what looks like a Komodo dragon for Henry.
“Like the lizard in your bathroom,” Quinn says as he hands Henry the sheet. Henry looks between us, eyebrows quirked together.
“At your office,” I explain. “We saw all the photos of your clients in the bathroom—there was a lizard.”
“Oh,” Henry says, lifting up Quinn’s tattoo selections to examine them. “That’s Mr.Stink, the skink.” Quinn shrieks with delight and Henry grins at him, setting the tattoos back on the counter. “Good choices.”
“Now me.” Quinn thrusts his arm over the counter, and I peel the backing off the rocket ship to apply it to his bicep. Henry asks him about home while I wet the tattoo with a towel: where he lives (New York City), if he likes school (yes), if he has any pets of his own (not yet but Mom says when I’m ’ponsible enough). It’s unstitching something in my heart, listening to them.
I imagine Henry with his daughter, here in this house. Younger and lighter. The way he must have been with her, the way I know him to be: gentle and sturdy and kind. I pull away and Henry takes Quinn’s wrist to examine the tattoo through the paper. They crane toward each other over the island, their heads ducked close, Henry talking about space and stars and the vastness of the universe.So much to explore, he tells Quinn.Maybe by someone like you.
I lean in to blow on the tattoo, and feel Henry turn to look at me. All three of our faces are inches apart, like children telling secrets at a slumber party. He nudges my hip with his. I feel a sadness I can’t quite name: holding a grief that isn’t mine, thatI didn’t know about, that happened in my happiest place. I peel the paper off Quinn’s tattoo.
“Me next?” Henry asks, when Quinn flexes his arm in the space between us.
“Yeah,” Quinn says, his eyes flicking to me. “Can I do it?”
“Of course,” I say, a little too thickly, and pass him the Komodo dragon. Henry looks at me, his eyebrows twitching together. That line there and then gone, the one I already know so well:I’m worried.
I shake my head and curl my hand around his thigh below the counter. My feelings about this aren’t his to hold, the way it pushes on my ribs to imagine him living through this. We’re here, now—I make myself focus in on it.
Henry extends his forearm over the counter so Quinn can reach it. The underside of his arm is smooth, ropy veins racing up to his elbow. The watch at his wrist has a worn leather band and a thin face full of fine Roman numerals.
“How you want it?” Quinn asks, holding the lizard horizontally and then vertically and then at a haphazard angle.
“Whichever way you think looks best,” Henry says. He leans more of his weight into the counter and, below the granite where Quinn can’t see, I brush my thumb in a slow rhythm against his thigh. Henry doesn’t look at me, but I watch the tips of his ears go pink.
“I think like this,” Quinn says, placing the tattoo vertically down the length of Henry’s forearm.
“Perfect,” Henry says, slightly strangled, and Quinn grins.
By the time his nap rolls around, Quinn’s arms are covered in no fewer than seven tattoos. Goldie won’t like it, but he’s beside himself with glee: a T. rex reaching for the rocket ship, apuppy chasing a shooting star. I have a pterodactyl above my elbow and a mouse on my wrist; Henry made it out with only the one.
Quinn gives Henry a double high five and then complains the entire way up the stairs. He doesn’t want to sleep, he isn’t tired, he wants to hang out with Henry.Me, too, I think. But Goldie will be here in a couple of hours, and she’ll never let me hear the end of it if I give her a cranky kid.
When I come back down the stairs, Henry’s looking out the window over the sink. Joss has been in the garden since this morning, planting a new tree at the back of the yard. I come up behind him, resting my palm over the ridge of his spine, and he turns to look down at me.
“Pretty tree,” I say, and Henry says, “Mmm.”
His eyes cast over mine and then he dips his chin, kisses me so lightly that my eyelids are still fluttering shut when he pulls away.
“You all right?” Henry asks, his arm looping around my waist.
I nod and lean into him. “You don’t have to stay, if it’s hard.” His eyes flick back and forth over mine, forget-me-not blue in the light from the window. “I can come to you, next time. We can go anywhere else.”
“I want to stay,” he tells me. Simple, with no hesitation. “It’s hardest at night.”
