Page 14 of The Heartbreak Hotel

Eleven

“What about group sessions?” I reach for my wineglass and take a sip, angling on the kitchen island stool to look at Mei. “Where we can all vent about stuff together?”

“Oh, definitely,” she says. There’s a bowl of cheddar popcorn in front of her, and she plucks out a disconcertingly orange piece and pops it in her mouth. “There’s nothing more powerful than a group of women talking about their feelings.”

“Well, there might be men, too.”

Mei grimaces, and I swat at her arm.

“I’m kidding,” she says, reaching for her own wineglass. But then she slants her eyes at me while she takes a sip. “Maybe.”

We’ve been at this all evening: plugging program ideas for the heartbreak retreat into a Word document, open on my laptop between us.

We’re a few days into October and, like clockwork, the evenings have turned chilly.

A fire crackles from the living room and the warm lights below the kitchen cabinets are turned on.

The rest of the house is dark—it feels close and cozy, like the whole space is lit by fireflies.

Mei reaches across me and types: Guided hikes.

“Who’s guiding them?” I say. “Me?”

“I mean, obviously.” In an oversized CU sweatshirt and leggings, Mei could be twenty again, studying beside me in the library. She tucks hair behind one ear. “I know you aren’t an award-winning outdoorswoman, but you’re aware of enough trails up here to take some tourists out for a couple hours.”

When you live in Colorado, everyone assumes you’ve become one with the woods—but this house is my happy place. The nature’s always been a bonus.

“I know, like, two hikes.”

“Two’s fine,” Mei says. She reaches for more popcorn and leans back on her stool to eat it. “People are going to be coming and going—you can just repeat the same two.”

“Okay, I can probably handle that.” As I add the names of the few trailheads I know to the document, my phone buzzes on the counter.

It’s Goldie, a linked article with two words above it: Fuck him. My ribs curl in, bracing my lungs for what my body already knows is coming—something about Nate. I shouldn’t click it. I should stay in this moment with Mei, building my new life, moving forward. I should , but I don’t.

The article is from People , a publication Nate couldn’t have dreamed of seeing his name in before the “Purple Girl” re-release.

But there he is: walking down an L.A. sidewalk with a lanky arm thrown over Estelle’s shoulders, his chin tipped down as he listens to her speak, his eyes hidden behind the sunglasses we picked out together after he lost his favorite Ray-Bans on the Fourth of July.

My finger hovers over my phone screen, afraid to touch it.

The headline is offensive in its simplicity: Nate Payne Steps Out With New Girlfriend in Los Angeles .

“Lou?” Mei’s voice brings me back to myself, a rope thrown down a well. “What is it?”

I blink up at her, then thrust the phone over the counter so she can see it for herself.

This was coming, of course. Nate’s life will keep being visible to me, even when I’m not looking.

It feels like a stomachache—the unsettled roil of your insides completely disagreeing with you, like my body’s working to reject this.

I don’t want to be that girl anymore, tucked under Nate’s arm. But I don’t want this to have a place in my new life—in my kitchen, as I plan a project I’m so excited about—either.

“Oh, hell no,” Mei says. She turns my phone face-down on the counter. “Why would Goldie send that to you?”

I shake my head. “I think she thinks she’s helping—or, like, commiserating, or something.”

“Well, she’s not.” Mei reaches for the wine bottle at the edge of the counter and splits its remaining contents between our glasses. Then she thrusts my glass toward me, meeting my eyes. “Let’s get drunk.”

It’s only nine when the power goes out. Between the two of us, we’re a bottle of wine and two margaritas deep.

Mei has a revenge playlist blasting from the living room TV, and we’re dancing like wet noodles in the kitchen—flailing, sweatshirt sleeves flopping, heads tipped back as we sing along.

Mei wriggles over to the blender with a cup full of ice.

Halfway through its whir—tequila churning at warp speed—the lights go out.

The music stops; the microwave clock blinks off; we’re left in sudden, total stillness.

I can barely see Mei when she turns around to gasp at me.

“It’s probably a breaker,” I say, reaching for my phone flashlight. My cheeks are very, very warm. “They’re in the basement.”

“The creepy murder basement?” Mei stumbles forward to grab my arm. She giggles out a hiccup. “Are we going down there?”

“Yes,” I say, dragging her across the kitchen toward the basement door. “We’re strong women. We’re full of tequila. We’re powerful.”

“I only wish I had another margarita in my hand to power me through this visit to the murder basement.” Mei freezes, jerking me to a stop. “Should we do a shot?”

Standing there, clutching each other in my pitch-black kitchen, it sounds inspired. It sounds like the smartest thing she’s ever said to me.

And the tequila does, somehow, make the murder basement feel less murdery.

We trip over each other down the wooden stairs, our phone flashlights bouncing like lasers at a rave.

The basement is damp and ancient, like a root cellar or an apocalypse bunker.

There’s nothing down here but the breakers and a few storage boxes.

“Hurry up!” Mei says, nudging me forward when we hit the bottom of the stairs. “I’m going to need another shot if we spend more than ninety seconds down here.”

“Calm thineself,” I say, cutting across the cement floor toward the breaker box.

Mei cackles, her voice filling the room. “Okay, Shakespeare.”

“It felt right coming out.”

“That’s what she said.” Mei careens into me as I open the breaker panel. We train our flashlights to the rows of switches, scanning. They’re all labeled in neat block print that goes a little blurry the harder I try to bring it into focus. First Fl. Bath, Kitchen Appl., Disposal.

“What’s kitchen apple?” Mei says, and a laugh bubbles from me like carbonation.

“Appliances, genius.”

“This is the apple power supply , madame, and you shall not disrespect its gravitas.”

I find the switch labeled Main , but when I throw it, nothing happens.

Mei and I look up at the ceiling, like the universe herself might intervene.

I try every other breaker in rapid succession.

Clicks fill the basement. But nothing happens—no light coming through the open basement door from upstairs, no music coming from the TV, nothing at all.

“Well, shit,” I say. “Now what?”

Mei sighs. “I’m not too big to admit that I usually call my dad in these situations.”

“I guess I could call Nate,” I say, unlocking my phone and scrolling through my recent texts. He’s a ways down—we haven’t spoken since he picked up his things.

“Did you sustain a brain injury I don’t know about?” Mei plucks the phone out of my hand and keeps scrolling. “Absolutely not.”

When she starts tapping out a text, I wriggle around to read over her shoulder—and when I see who she’s texting, I let out a strangled noise and try to swipe my phone back. But she’s too quick, spinning away from me. “We need his help!”

“But he’s mad at me! He’s super mad at me for that article in the—”

“Here.” Mei hands the phone back to me, the smug look on her face barely visible in the dark. When I look down at the text to Henry, my eyes struggle to focus—but even I can tell half the words are misspelled.

“ Mei ,” I wail, and she throws her arms up.

“What else are we going to do, Lou? Get murdered in the basement? Let’s go upstairs while we wait for him to respond.”

She tugs me back up to the kitchen, and she’s reaching for the bottle of tequila on the counter when my phone buzzes. Henry’s text says only, What?

“Mei!” I cry again, thrusting it at her. “He’s going to think I’m a sloppy mess.”

“Tell him it was a typo!” she counters, pouring us two more shots. “Calm thineself.”

Sory! I send, closing one eye to focus and still managing to misspell it. Power out an can fix with braker

Three dots appear, then disappear. It happens twice more in the time it takes for Mei to pass me a shot that I knock back without thinking. Then my phone starts buzzing in earnest—Henry’s calling me.

“Shit!” I say, dropping the phone like it burned me. “He’s calling.”

“So answer.” Mei rolls her eyes. “And he can tell us what to do.”

“Okay,” I say, picturing the flush of his cheeks in my kitchen last week. The shredded quality to his voice as he thrust the article at me across the counter. “Okay. Okay, okay.”

“Henry!” I cry when I pick up, both too loud and too enthusiastic. I wince, and he pauses on the other end of the line.

“Louisa,” he says finally. His voice is soft and close, and I press the phone to my ear until it hurts my cartilage. “What’s going on?”

“The power’s out. And we tried to flip the breakers but none of them did anything and it’s so dark in here and I’m not sure if—”

“We?” Henry says. I hesitate, my brain lagging three steps behind me. Nate , I remember. He thinks I mean Nate.

“My friend Mei,” I say, and she lifts another shot glass in the air as if cheersing me. “You met Mei, she was here that day when Nate—with the espresso—I mean—” I bite my lip, squeezing my eyes shut. Why did I drink all that tequila?

“I remember,” Henry says. “You tried all of the breakers?”

“All of them,” I confirm. A laugh chortles out of me, obscene. “Even the kitchen apples.”

Mei cackles, and Henry says, “The what?”

“The appliances for the kitchen—the breaker is labeled, like, A-P-P-L, and Mei thought it was apples—” My voice dissolves into a gasping laugh. Across the kitchen, Mei’s clutching her abs, tears in her eyes. Kitchen apples.

“I’m going to come over there,” Henry says, and it shuts me right up.

“Oh, you don’t have to—”