Page 16 of The Heartbreak Hotel
We have less than a month before the permit goes into effect: three weeks to get the word out about the rentals and inspire enough bookings to make this worth Henry’s while. As Mei continues to bejewel my descriptions—adding words likecozyandendearingandpicturesque—my phone buzzes on the side table. I put down my coffee mug and pick it up.
It’s Goldie:Be strong today and DO NOT let him weasel back in.
It takes a full beat for me to remember what she’s talking about, but when I do, I gasp so sharply Mei stops typing.
“What?” she says.
“Nate’s coming today.” I worm out from under the throw blanket we’re sharing and swivel around the living room, taking in the disaster of it. There’s food everywhere—the Sour Patch Kids from last night, an open box of cinnamon rolls that Mei and I decided we needed this morning, empty glasses ringed in dry red wine. “To get his stuff.” I look down at myself—wrinkledpajama shorts, legs prickly with stubble, hideous Peter Pan sweatshirt I got at Disneyland when I was nineteen. “Oh my god.”
“When?” Mei slides the laptop off her legs. “Like, soon?”
“Ten, he said.” I scramble for my phone again, and it glares up at me: 9:18. “Oh mygod.”
“Okay, go shower.” Mei flaps her hands at me. “I’ll clean up down here. Don’t wash your hair, just do that low bun thing, and maybe mascara and, like—” She hesitates. “Concealer? You look tired.” I groan, already making for the stairs, and she shouts from behind me, “But beautiful!Sobeautiful.”
In the swirl of Mei’s breakup and the new angle for the rentals, I’ve somehow managed to forget about Nate. We set this date last week, after I’d asked for Henry’s contact information. The band leaves for Australia soon, and Nate wants to clean house before he goes. After talking about it with Goldie I decided not to pack all his things for him—they’re everywhere in the house, still. Our winter sweaters mixed together in the Juniper Room’s closet, his small collection of paperbacks stacked on the dresser in our bedroom.Make him do it all, Goldie said.Make it hard for him.
But I know it won’t just be hard for Nate. It’ll be hard for me—to have him back here, moving through my space. The indisputable fact of his body. The heat between us cooled a long time ago, but it doesn’t change the fact that for so many years, Nate was the most familiar thing in my life. My nose starts to burn just thinking about it as I strip my pajamas off in the bathroom, and by the time I step into the shower my eyes are glazed over with tears.Fuck. Fuck, fuck,fuckthis.
By the time I’m dressed and downstairs it’s 9:57. I’ve suckedmy tears back inside, taken enough deep breaths to power a hot-air balloon, put on Nate’s favorite perfume. Just to be petty. Just to feel like someone he desired, once.
“Okay, so Henry is stopping by,” Mei says. She’s at the kitchen sink, sudsing up a wineglass.
“What?” I shove the mail on the front table into a pile, as if seeing how organized I am will make Nate regret his choice.
“Henry, your landlord? He texted.” Mei juts her chin toward my phone, which is sitting on the kitchen island. “He said he has this espresso machine he doesn’t use and asked if you wanted it for the B&B, so I said yes.”
I blink at her. What’s Henryit’s-best-if-I’m-not-involvedRhodes doing offering me an espresso machine?
“Um,” I say, shaking my head a little. Yesterday made it clear that this house—thatnear me—is the last place Henry wants to be. “Okay? He’s coming right now?”
“I guess?” Mei says. “He didn’t really specify—”
The doorbell rings, and we both freeze. My heart seizes, hot and violent. When I turn, I can see the top of Nate’s head through the narrow window in the door: his light hair, just the right shade of disheveled, and a thin strip of his tan forehead. The place I used to press kisses, right at his hairline, when he was sad.
Suddenly behind me, Mei whispers, “I love you. You’ve got this.”
“Okay,” I tell her, and then I open the door.
“Hi,” Nate says immediately, a little too loud. I know he’s as anxious as I am when he pinches the skin behind one elbow, a nervous tic he’s had for as long as I’ve known him.
“Hi.” My voice is quieter. “Come on in.”
Nate waits for me to pull the door wide and steps over the threshold, toeing off his sneakers. It was a debate, in the beginning—he came from a shoes-on household; I was staunchly shoes-off. I look at his socked feet on the hardwood floor and will myself not to cry.
It’s not Nate himself, not really. It’s the weight of an entire life we built up around each other, suddenly justgone. It feels like a death.
“Hey, Mei,” Nate says.
“Nathan,” she replies coolly. She’s perched on the bottom landing of the carved wooden staircase: a strategic choice, maybe, because it makes her taller than Nate. It occurs to me that he might think she’s here because I wanted backup for this, which makes me feel like a fool. “I’d say it’s nice to see you, but.”
“Yeah,” Nate says. When our eyes meet, he looks sorry. I wanted him to be an asshole today. I didn’t want him to be nervous. I didn’t want him to hold my gaze the way he does now; the way he’s done so many times before. I wanted to hate him, and I know—as his hand lifts, as his fingers brush my wrist, as I watch him stop himself from comforting me—that I don’t. That even after all of this, Nate and I meant something to each other once, and nothing can undo it. “Lou.”
It’s almost like he doesn’t realize he’s said it. I can tell he has no idea where to take the sentence, and as my name hangs between us in the sunlit entryway I nearly forget that Mei’s here. Nearly forget that Nate came to empty the rest of himself from my life. His lips part, and I force myself to speak first.
“Your things are where you left them.”
Nate shuts his mouth.
