Page 17 of The Heartbreak Hotel

Thirteen

Grace stays four nights, says not a single other word to me, and leaves a five-star review before I’ve even had time to wash her bedding.

“See?” Mei says when I show it to her. “Even just your presence makes people feel better.”

“I don’t think it’s me,” I say, and she waves me off.

But it’s the house. It’s always been the house—first for me, now for Mei and Grace. And for Rashad, who shows up two days after Grace checks out, in a tracksuit the color of aluminum foil. When he rings the doorbell, he’s nearly reflective in the window through the door.

“You must be Louisa,” he says, thrusting a lime-green suitcase into the entryway. “When I tell you I’m overcome to be here.”

“I am,” I say, taking the duffel that he holds out to me. “Are you Rashad? How was your journey?”

“Nightmarish.” He lowers his sunglasses and takes in the house, dark eyes flicking from room to room. “Have you ever flown after spending the entire night crying? I’ve never been so dehydrated in my life.”

“Let’s get you some water.” I motion him toward the kitchen. “Then I’ll show you to your room and you can get settled in.”

“The last thing I need is to settle.” He harrumphs into an island stool like a deflating balloon.

“I can not be alone right now—I swear. I’ve been holed up in my apartment like a vampire, charging up my depression batteries with the full moon.

I can’t see my friends because they’re all his friends, too, but if I spend one more minute alone I will truly join the undead—if I haven’t already—do I feel human to you?

Is this a healthy ninety-eight point six or what?

” He tips his forehead at me over the counter, and I rest the back of my hand lightly against it.

“Confirmed human,” I say, and slide a glass of water toward him. “Though I understand not feeling that way, especially right after a big loss. It can be disorienting.”

“No shit.” Rashad drinks the entire glass in one long gulp. Then he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s like I’m relearning who I even am, which is so pathetic.”

“It’s not pathetic.” I refill his glass at the fridge. Distantly, I hear Mei’s voice—she’s upstairs on a work call. “It means you cared.”

“Too much,” he says, accepting the second glass of water. He’s young: early twenties, maybe. Hair buzzed close to his scalp, dark eyes fringed in gorgeous black lashes. “Way, way, way too much.”

“Why do you say that?” I lean my hip against the counter, settling in. He’s the opposite of Grace: no preamble, right into the heart of it, like he’s been waiting for someone to tell all this to.

“Because it wasn’t mutual.” Rashad waves his hands into the space between us, like it’s obvious. “Because he dumped my sorry ass the second shit got hard.”

“So, there was a fight?”

Rashad sighs, long-suffering, and shoulders off his silver jacket.

Underneath it, he wears a T-shirt printed in yellow-and-pink checkerboard.

“Hardly even. It was what I’d call a conversation , but he acted like I was accusing him of first-degree homicide.

We can’t talk through a difference of opinion without it turning into the end?

That’s how little I’m worth to you? Where’s the investment? ”

“Hmm.” I flip on the espresso machine, and Rashad leans toward me over the counter.

“What? What hmm ?”

I glance at him, reaching into the cabinet for two mugs. “It sounds to me like you know, somewhere in there, that it’s not really about what you’re worth.”

His eyebrows—perfectly groomed—hike up. Flatly, he says, “Do I.”

“Your partner turned a difference of opinion into a reason to run, whereas you were ready to talk it through.”

He just looks at me. I wait for him to pick up the thread on his own, the espresso machine humming. But then he waves his hand, like, And?

“You were ready to do the emotional labor it takes to create intimacy.” I slide a mug under the spout and, through the window over the sink, see Henry cross the garden.

He’s in a button-down and a black peacoat, like he came from work.

“Which, um—” I stumble. What’s he doing here?

I force myself to turn back to Rashad. “Which goes to show you have a deeper understanding of what it takes to really be with someone. And maybe he didn’t.

Is that really”—the back door pushes open, and I finish—“on you?”

We both turn to Henry. His cheeks are clean-shaven, pinked up from the October wind. He’s holding a reusable grocery bag.

“Are you staying here, too?” Rashad waves a hand from Henry to me. “Louisa was just making coffee and telling me I’m incredibly emotionally intelligent, if you want to join us.”

“Um, no.” Henry glances at me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you had someone coming today, I should’ve checked before—”

“It’s okay.” I think I lost my right to reasonable boundaries when I threw myself at him in the basement. I gesture at the espresso machine. “Do you want a coffee? I’m no expert, but I’m getting better.”

Before Henry can reply, Rashad says, “Is this your man?”

The laugh I let out is strangled and quavering, like I’m thirteen again. I look away from Henry immediately. “No, Henry just owns the house.”

Henry clears his throat before repeating, “I just own the house.”

“My bad,” Rashad says. “You had this sweet domestic look to you—like you were bringing her groceries or something. What’s in the bag?”

When I glance at Henry, he swallows. “The upstairs faucet was leaking when I came to fix the shower. I went to the hardware store—but I can come back at a better time.”

“My faucet?” Rashad asks, glancing between us.

“No.” I slide an espresso mug toward him. “A different bathroom, don’t worry.”

“He can stay.” Rashad sips from the mug and flicks his lashes toward Henry. “I don’t mind.”

I manage a smile in Henry’s direction. My skin feels like it’s vibrating. “Do you want a coffee first?”

His gaze tracks to the machine, just over my shoulder, and I think of him plucking my water glass out of my hand. Drinking it in one fluid movement. “Take your time,” he says, not exactly an answer, as he starts toward the staircase. “I’ll come back down for it in a bit.”

“Okay,” I say, busying myself with a second espresso and trying to pretend it’s taking up all my brain space. “Thanks for fixing the sink.”

In the silence Henry leaves behind, I can hear Rashad’s brain whirring. “You’re a loud thinker,” I say, and when I glance over my shoulder at him, he’s smirking.

“What?”

Rashad swirls his espresso. “He’s very pretty.”

I betray myself by doing the prepubescent laugh again.

“Is he single?”

I turn back to Rashad, lifting my own espresso to take a sip. “I’m not sure.” There’s a clunk from upstairs, and as I lean back into the counter we both glance at the ceiling—a bag of hardware store supplies hitting a tile bathroom floor, maybe. “He doesn’t wear a ring.”

“I noticed that, too,” Rashad says, which makes me realize that it’s something I also noticed, enough to have brought it up without even thinking. “But some folks don’t wear them. Want me to ask when he comes back down? I have no shame. We can blame it on my breakup.”

“No,” I say quickly. We don’t need to scheme together about anything—and certainly not about anything related to Henry. “We’re focusing on you . Where were we?”

“I don’t remember,” Rashad says, then shoots me a wink as he stands. “I do think I’m ready for a nap, though. Show me where my room is?”

Though I have three more guests arriving over the weekend, tonight it’s just Rashad.

So when I show him to his room and hand him the check-in questionnaire, I also ask him to pick what’s for breakfast in the morning.

I’m in the kitchen thirty minutes later, chopping dried cherries for Mei’s foolproof (“not saying you’re a fool, Lou, just—well, you know”) overnight oats, when my phone rings.

I expect it to be Goldie—who’s taken to twice-daily proof-of-life check-ins—but it isn’t. It’s my mother.

You can always send her to voicemail , I hear Goldie say. I pick up on the final ring.

“Mom, hi.”

“Lou!” She’s outside—wind batters through the line. “It’s been too long, honey.”

I blink across the kitchen. I resent the bitterness that seeps through me, the jadedness—that right away, I know she wants something. My mother tends to call when she needs money, and hardly ever else.

“It has,” I say carefully.

“How’s the west? The trees are changing colors, yes? And the cold, I’m sure—you’re wearing a coat?”

I turn the paring knife in my hand, watching light from the window glint across its blade. “Not too cold, just yet.”

“Well, good, good. It’s already chilly here so I’m going to Miami, can you believe it!” She laughs, a trill I’d recognize anywhere. “Your mother! On vacation!”

I know better than to take an interest, but I can’t help it. “With who?”

“Oh, Mark, honey! I told you about Mark.” Of course. Mark, her supervisor at McNeely’s, the hardware store where she’s worked for the last four months. “He’s taking me on a little trip.”

I wonder if she’s told Goldie yet. If she’s calling me because my sister didn’t pick up the phone.

Growing up, we were not a family that vacationed.

When I was in eighth grade and living with Goldie, Mom took us to a cabin in Hocking Hills—the first time we’d ever stayed anywhere overnight that qualified as a “trip.” She paid for it with holiday tips from work; it was January and freezing, awful Ohio weather.

Goldie was at the start of a new semester and buried under homework.

When she declined a hike through the frigid slush so she could study for a political science quiz, Mom told her she was ruining the entire vacation.

Then Mom dragged me, cold and wet, through the woods as she complained about my ungrateful sister.

The sister who’d taken me in, raised me when Mom wouldn’t.

By the time we got back to the cabin, Goldie had figured out a ride back to campus for the two of us. We didn’t take a trip together again.

On the other end of the line, finally, my mother gets to the point. “Nate still has a place in Miami,” she says. “Doesn’t he, honey?”

I turn the knife blade into the pad of my thumb—not quite hard enough to break the skin. “He does.”

“He’d let us stay, don’t you think? Just for a few nights? I’d have called him myself, but I seem to have lost his phone number! Such a sweet boy. And if he’s in town, maybe we can have dinner!”

My fingertip turns white, red splotches blooming under the skin.

I think about hanging up—I think about how much better it would have been if I hadn’t answered in the first place.

I thank every star in the infinite universe that she couldn’t find Nate’s phone number.

And then I make myself tell her the truth.

“I don’t think that’ll be possible. Nate and I broke up.”

There’s silence, punctuated only by wind on her end of the line. “Oh, Lou,” she says finally.

I hear footsteps on the old wooden stairs—the familiar creak as Henry descends into the kitchen.

His shirtsleeves are pushed up, his hair rumpled in a way that makes him look young.

He has the grocery bag fisted in one hand.

He meets my eyes over the long hallway, and I gesture to the espresso machine with my free hand, raising my eyebrows.

Henry shakes his head, just once, and raises a hand—like he’s saying goodbye.

In my ear, my mother says, “What did you do ?”

In the foyer, Henry opens the front door.

In my chest, a quiet impulse whispers, Please don’t go.