Page 20 of The Heartbreak Hotel

Hold still. What he said to me when I told him the power was out. Everything that happened afterward. I bite my lip, and Henry’s eyes lift from my hands to my mouth. His fingers, gently wiping the pad over the heel of my palm, go still.

Answer Nan’s question , I think. I want to know what he told her—if he’s lost someone, if that flash of rough-edged pain I saw in my kitchen after the Denver Post article is what I thought it was: heartbreak. The longer we hold each other’s eyes, the more it feels like he actually might tell me.

But of course he doesn’t, and his eyes flick back down, and I jerk just as violently when he brings the alcohol to my second hand.

“He said hold still,” Mei tells me. I shoot her a look—she stands just behind Henry’s shoulder, grinning.

She could have helped me with this. Should have.

But it’s Henry dressing my palms in gauze, wrapping them in the tacky bandaging I’ve never used before in my life, finally letting them drop into the space between us.

“Be careful,” he says softly. I meet his eyes and don’t say what I’m thinking—which is that this does feel dangerous. That it has nothing to do with the wilderness.

“I want ice cream,” Rashad says the minute we’re back in the parking lot.

My wrapped hands are throbbing, and there’s a sheen of sweat on the back of my neck that’s made my hair sticky and unbearable.

Even in the crispness of autumn, the sun is unforgiving at elevation—it might as well be summer, for how clammy I feel. “Can we get ice cream?”

“I’d do ice cream,” Bea says, nudging Kim. “Eh?”

“Have you ever seen me turn down ice cream?” Kim asks, retying her ponytail. It’s late afternoon by now—the sun is high and hot across the unshaded lot.

“I’m lactose intolerant,” Nan announces. “But I love a sorbet.”

“Polliwog’s has sorbet,” Mei says, turning to me. “Should we go on the way home?”

“I don’t want to keep Henry,” I say, gesturing in his direction without actually looking at him.

It’s unclear to me if the throbbing in my palms is from the scrapes or the ghost of his touch, and I’m afraid to discover what other unhinged feelings I might develop if I spend much longer in his general vicinity.

“I’m sure he has things to do, and we’re his ride home. ”

What I don’t add is that Polliwog’s is Nate’s spot: the ice cream shop he grew up visiting with his brothers, the one he was so excited to show me that we hadn’t unpacked a single box before he took me there on move-in day for a drippy, double-scoop cone.

“Henry?” Mei asks, turning to him. “This plan appears to depend on you.”

I force myself, finally, to look at him. He’s next to Nan with his shirtsleeves pushed up, utility jacket long stuffed into his backpack. Behind his dark sunglasses I can’t make out his eyes, which is for the best—I can’t tell if he’s looking at me or not when he says, “I like ice cream.”

Rashad lets out a whoop and makes for Nan’s car.

“Are you sure?” I ask, gesturing one bandaged hand in Henry’s direction. “You don’t just feel pressured to say that?”

Henry’s quiet for a full beat before saying, “No, Louisa, I don’t feel pressured to lie about whether or not I like ice cream.” Then he turns to follow Nan to her car.

“Nicely done.” Mei hooks her arm through mine to drag me behind Bea and Kim. “You okay?”

“Of course,” I say, though even to me, my voice sounds slightly strangled. “Why?”

Her voice is low, nearly a whisper. “You seem a little on edge.”

I let out a gust of breath. “I did eat shit in front of everyone.”

Mei’s lips part, but she hesitates, glancing at me and then ahead, where Bea and Kim are waiting at my parked car.

“Say it,” I tell her.

“You’re being weird about Henry.”

I look at him instinctually, but he’s not paying attention to us; at Nan’s Cadillac, he’s waiting for her to slide in behind the wheel so he can close the door.

“No, I’m not.”

“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 Nate was 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’s Elk 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 little hm! 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?”

I look from him to the register, where the woman appears slightly confused and is clearly waiting for me to pay. I shake my head and mumble an apology while digging into my back pocket.

“Here.” Henry taps his credit card across the reader, offering the woman a smile. “Have a good one.”

I jerk my cup of ice cream off the counter and step out of line, clustering immediately into Henry’s personal space in the crowded shop. It’s all black-and-white checkerboard and chrome accents in here; over the speakers, an old Johnny Cash song plays.

“Everyone else got a table outside,” Henry says. I look up at him. We’re close enough that I can smell his soap, citrus, and his chocolate ice cream and something else, too—sweat, the scent of being outdoors in the sun. His eyes move over mine. “What happened there?”

I could lie, easily. I could say I’m dehydrated, or I zoned out, or I could thank him for the ice cream and pretend nothing happened at all.

But I think of Henry on the trail, telling me to hold still, and I think of him in my basement, calling me Louisa , and I think of him that first day in his office—the softness that changed his face when I talked about the house.

I think of how he’s lost someone, too. I know he has.

“I was remembering something,” I tell him. It doesn’t make sense—not really. But Henry’s eyes hold mine. “And I just got lost in it for a minute.”

He nods, then. Someone passes behind him and he steps even closer to me, close enough that my wrist brushes the buttons on his shirt.

“I understand,” he says. He tips his head toward the window. He doesn’t reach for me to make me follow him, like Nate would have. He only moves, and I follow him on my own. “Let’s get some air.”