Page 68 of The Heartbreak Hotel
“Where did we leave things?” Henry says.
I take the pie from his hands and set it on the entryway table behind me. When I step into Henry’s space, an inch away but not touching him, he inhales. “You don’t remember?”
“Remind me,” he says, and I rise onto my tiptoes to press my lips to his. The feeling I’ve been longing for since that night at Ophelia’s—warm and soft and Henry.
He wraps both arms around my waist, pulling me into him. I’m heat and hunger—forget the pie, forget Thanksgiving in its entirety—he makes me feel unmoored, insane, inside out. I knew he couldn’t stay over after Ophelia’s, that it wouldn’t have been right to invite him in as the un-bachelorette crew’s laughter echoed through the house. Knew, too, that he may not have wanted to stay after what happened the first time. I knew these things, but they did nothing to douse the heat of my wanting—especially knowing it would be so long before I’d see him again.
Henry leans me against the wall, now, his knee nudging mine apart and sliding up between my legs. I tip backward, finding his eyes.
“Don’t start something you aren’t planning to finish,” I whisper.
His lips twitch. “Who says I’m not planning to finish?”
But then he releases me, a suddenwhooshof cold, and steps backward. His hand slides the length of my arm before lacing our fingers together. He nods his head down the hall. “Come in.”
I bite my lip, and his eyes darken. He reaches out to unhook my lip from my teeth.
“Hungry?” he asks softly.
“Starving.”
“Good.” He leads me further into the house, and I follow. “Let’s eat.”
Henry’s small, tidy kitchen smells like rosemary. When he pulls a turkey breast from the oven with paw-print-patterned oven mitts, I take a sip from my wineglass. It’s disorienting, to watch him here—this man who restored my historic home with brass faucets and stained glass and printed wallpaper, the only point of light in his own gray, standard-issue house. I know without checking that none of the doors in this condo creak like music, like a song I’d learn by heart.
“Can we talk about what happened last month?” Henry says, his back to me. He slides the mitts off and reaches for a thermometer. Straightaway, I think of him in the first-floor bathroom. His cheek pressed to my thigh, his chin tilted up to look at me, his knees on the woven bath mat.
I cross my legs on the stool at his island, squeezing. “Which part?”
Henry sets the thermometer aside and turns to me, hands braced against the counter on either side of his hips. Music plays, softly, from speakers in the ceiling. “Louisa.”
I could get drunk from it, the way he says my name. “Yes?”
“The part where your sister showed up and you shooed me out the back door like a delinquent teenager.”
I take another sip of wine. “Ah. That part.”
“That part,” Henry says. He crosses his long legs at the ankles and glances down at his feet; when he looks back up, there’s a pink flush across his cheekbones. “Are you ashamed of me?”
Oh, god. Am I ashamed ofHenry? Henry, who reached forthat roll of paper towels the day I cried in his office, who’s every animal’s favorite person. Whose expressions bear his feelings so clearly—like his face is the book that taught me to read.
“No,” I say, as quickly as I can get the word out. I don’t tell him what pops, unbidden, to the roof of my mouth: I’m ashamed ofme.“Of course not.”
“Then, what? You clearly didn’t want her to see me again.”
“I was trying to protect—” I break off. Protect him? Protect myself? I wave a hand between us. “This.” This vulnerable thing that’s flickered between us since the start, that crystalized so sharply in the dark of my living room back in October at two o’clock in the morning. “Goldie’s so judgmental, I was worried she’d—I don’t know.” I take a breath and let it out, my shoulders slumping. I know I owe him an explanation, but I so, so keenly don’t want to talk about her. I want to stay Henry’s version of me: the woman who’s cared for his house all these years, the woman who steps up. Not Goldie’s version: the woman who hasn’t amounted to anything yet. “It would have been complicated.”
Henry studies me. His arms are crossed over his chest, sweater tugged up above the bones of his wrists. I want to walk over and untwist the pretzel of his body. “I’m okay with complicated.”
I swirl the wine in my glass, instead, watching it move. “Fine,” I say, drawing another breath. When I look back up at Henry, he hasn’t shifted a centimeter: legs crossed at the ankles, eyes unwavering on mine. “Goldie and I had a hard childhood. It wasn’t—” I look away from him, out the kitchen windows, where the last licks of daylight sink over the lake. “It wasn’t allbad. But our mom was—is—tough.” I inhale slowly and then tell him what I hardly tell anyone; not because I need to, but because he showed me something, that night on the couch. “She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder when I was in elementary school, and there was almost always an awful boyfriend in the picture. It all just—” I glance at Henry and quickly away. His eyes are too endless, too soft. “It made Goldie really scared all the time. She needs to control everything, even me. And she’s really distrustful of men.” I take a long sip of wine, steeling myself to look at him and add, “I didn’t want her to mess this up.”
Henry shifts off the counter, stepping around the island. He swivels my stool so that I’m facing him, his hips bracketed by my knees, and tips my chin up so I have to meet his eyes.
“Thank you for telling me that,” he says quietly. He presses his lips to mine. “And I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.” I lean my forehead into his sternum, breathe in the heady smell of his citrusy soap, of the spices he’s been cooking with, of his skin. “It’s just like I said: complicated.”
Henry’s hand smooths over my hair, warm and grounding. I bookend his ribs with my palms. “How was your trip?”
