Page 35 of The Heartbreak Hotel
“Yes, you are.” Mei’s eyebrows jut up her forehead. “He seems perfectly happy to be here and you keep acting like you can’t get away from him fast enough. Even after he played nurse for you.”
“No, I—”
She cuts me off with a dry look. “Let it be, okay? Maybe he’s here for a reason.”
“We keep roping him into things and he’s too nice to say no?”
“I was thinking more like: he needs this, too.” I meet Mei’s eyes. “Maybe this is helpful for him.”
I look back at Henry again, letting Mei’s words breathe between us in the dry autumn air.
Have you lost someone, dear?
This time, Henry’s looking at me, too.
Polliwog’s hasn’t changed since Natewas a kid; it’s what he loved so much about it.Enduring charm, he said. Perched at the edge of a soft-shouldered road and painted periwinkle, the wood-slatted storefront is surrounded by pines and always has a line winding to the parking lot. The air smells like waffle cones from the moment we step out of the car.
“Okay, what’s everyone’s order?” Rashad points one finger around the group as we join him, Nan, and Henry in line. “Says a lot about a person. I read ice cream preferences like star signs—lay ’em on me.”
“Lemon sorbet for me,” Nan chirps, adjusting the brim of her sun hat. Henry cranes over her to read the chalkboard at the front of the building, the long line of his throat arced in the sun. I think of Nate, pulling me by the hand across the Polliwog’s threshold, laughing—First-timers have to get the Elk Poop.
“Such a sophisticated choice,” Rashad tells her. “A classy and elegant selection for a classy and elegant lady.” Nan beams, and Rashad scans over the rest of us. “Who’s next?”
“What’sElk Poop?” Bea asks, making a pinched face as she squints at the menu. “They can’t be serious.”
“It’s peanut butter with Whoppers in it,” I tell her, the words out before I’ve realized I’m speaking. “Local rules say first-timers have to get it.”
“Yuck,” she says, but Kim shrugs.
“I’ll get it, if that’s the rule. Not looking for any more bad karma.”
“Bold and curious,” Rashad tells her, nodding his approval. “Your flavor selection tells me there are bright and unexpected joys in your future.”
“God willing,” Kim groans, and Bea nudges her in the arm.
“What’s the horoscope on chocolate brownie?” Henry asks, crossing his arms against the breeze as he turns to Rashad. It ruffles through his hair, sending it loose and wild over his forehead.
Rashad lets out a chirped littlehm!and rolls one hand dramatically in the space between them. “An expected but delicious choice that tells me you’re a steady, reliable, and delectable man.”
Henry barks a laugh that surprises me so thoroughly I actually jump. The bright flash of his teeth, the backward tip of his throat, the sound of his startled joy. It shreds across the memory of Nate here, and I feel suddenly unsteady, too warm.
“What’s yours, Lou?” Rashad asks as we step forward in line. “And don’t say mint chip, girl. I’m warning you now that vile toothpaste flavor was my ex’s.”
“It’s lavender,” I say, trying to breathe. “They, um—” I wave toward the menu board. “It’s honey lavender here.”
Mei puts her arm around me, like she knows I’m wavering. I feel Henry watching us.
“Oh,yes,” Rashad says, clapping once. “I knew you’d come through. Soapy perfumy lavender queen, making things so fresh and clean. Light and floral and unexpectedly complex.” He presses his palms together and bows in my direction. “Perfection.”
And purple, I don’t say. I want to make myself order something different; I want to rewrite this place and change myself into someone else—not Nate’s ex-girlfriend, not someone who knows the Elk Poop rule because he held me to it himself.
But when I get to the counter, it’s the same woman who’s always worked here. Gray-blond curls, a retro diner hat in turquoise paper, a warm smile that says she recognizes me. It’s all so familiar that I can’t break character. I feel Nate’s fingertips on the back of my neck as I order, the way he used to dance them along my spine.
“Honey lavender,” I tell her.Purple girl, I hear Nate say.
“Louisa.”
I blink, and there’s Henry. Holding a waffle cone piled with chocolate ice cream, his sunglasses pushed up into his hair. They’ve left little indents on the sides of his nose. “Are you all right?”
