Page 67 of The Heartbreak Hotel
Henry laughs, glancing around. Lucy and Co. are too many cosmos deep to care that I’ve brought a man into our midst, or even to remember that I’m here at all.
“This music’s awful,” Henry says.
He’s right—it’s still an impossible cacophony of house music and bluegrass, twangy strings and booming bass. But when I pull him away from the bar he comes with me, and in the tangle of the dance floor he winds both arms around my waist—a Henry-shaped bubble in the chaos.
“Did you drive here?” he asks me, nearly a shout over the music.
“No!” I have one hand wound around his neck, one pressed flush to his chest. “We took the only rideshare in Estes Park.”
Henry nods, glancing over the crowd like he’s trying to figure out whoweis.
“Wait,” I say, standing still so I can get him in focus. “Is that why you came? You thought I’d try to drive myself home?”
“I came,” Henry says, dragging me back into a sway, “because I have this new ailment where I feel sick if I haven’t seen you ina few days.” I mash my lips together to keep from smiling, and Henry ducks close to my ear again. “But maybe I wanted to drive you home myself.”
“You’ll have to take all of us,” I tell him, leaning back and gesturing around the bar.
Henry tips his head to the right, where a man in leathers is sipping a Coors. “Even the guy in the Harley jacket?”
“No, just the jilted bride and her five drunk friends. We’ll squeeze.”
Henry shakes his head, a smile tugging at his lips, and dips his chin to kiss me. “Fine,” he says. “One condition.”
I wind my arms around his neck, pressing our bodies together in the dark. “I’m listening.”
Henry’s fingers spread wide and warm over the small of my back. “I always go to Florida, the first half of November. Help my parents for a while.”
Firsthalf? I feel my mouth going pouty. It’s the cosmos—it’s thedamncosmos—but I can’t help it when I blurt, “But I just got you back.”
Henry’s eyes find mine in the dark. They glint, crinkling up in a way that’s so pleased I’m almost glad I said it. He dips his mouth to my ear. “Spend Thanksgiving with me, when I get back.” The words are soft—nervous—at their edges. When I pull back to look at him, he’s watching me carefully. There’s something so vulnerable in the tense line of his mouth that I tip forward without thinking to soften his lips with my own.
“Is that a yes?” His words, right against my mouth, are so quiet I nearly miss them. He meets my eyes, and his face splits into a smile when I nod.
“It’s a yes.” Ayesthat pings inside me like a shiver, rattling.Yes.
Henry tugs me closer into the warm wall of his body. “Good,” he says, and starts to move us in time to the music. The shiver only grows when he brushes his lips against my ear and whispers, “I promise I’ll make it worth the wait.”
Twenty-Seven
Thanksgiving is a cold, sunnyThursday that I wake up to alone. For the first time since September, my house is empty: Lucy, Willa, and the rest of their friends are gone; Nan flew home yesterday. She’ll be back after visiting her family in Pennsylvania, and everyone else I care about is scattered like dandelion filaments across the country: Mei’s at home in California; Goldie and Quinn are in New York; my mother, I assume, is with Mark in Ohio. Usually I spend Thanksgiving with Nate’s family in Denver, but this year—well.
When Henry dropped us back at the house after dancing at Ophelia’s, he crowded me into the doorframe as everyone else tumbled upstairs. His hands were cold from the October chill, raising goose bumps on my neck when he lifted them to my face.
“Thank you,” I’d told him, and he answered by kissing me long and slow before walking back to his car. I haven’t seen him since then—just a string of texts, back and forth, photos of theFlorida coast, and oneI wish you were here with mesent past midnight that wrung through me like a muscle spasm.
Now I’m parked in front of his condo: one in a row of identical units overlooking Lake Estes. My phone buzzes as I stare up at his door—Goldie, the first time I’ve heard from her since she left nearly a month ago. It’s a photo of Quinn in a construction-paper hat shaped like a turkey, grinning so hard his eyes are pressed shut. Beneath it:Happy Thanksgiving.I send a heart emoji and nothing else; I’m still mad at her. Goldie’s the last person I want to think about right now.
Henry’s door is nondescript, a carbon copy of the ones on either side of it. I hear his footsteps before I see him, each one thudding in my chest like a heartbeat. He opens the door in a deep green wool sweater and dark jeans. Socked feet. Clean-shaven. When he smiles, it’s small and shy and it makes me want to launch myself at him.
But I only say, “Hi,” and he says, “Hi.”
I hold out the pie I spent all morning making: Nan’s recipe, apples with cinnamon and homemade piecrust she prepared for me in advance. “Pie.”
Henry takes it. “Thank you.”
“Least I could do,” I say as he ushers me through the doorframe. “Considering where we left things.”
Holding the pie with both hands, Henry watches me unzip my boots. His condo is clean and plain: gray walls, neutral furniture, a few framed paintings that look like they belong in a hotel room. It’s nothing like the house, and it squeezes my heart to imagine him here alone, all these years, just down the street from me. Coming home from work to this emptiness.
