Page 22 of The Heartbreak Hotel

Seventeen

I don’t sleep that night. For the first time since the breakup, my bedroom feels the distinct lack of Nate. I turn fitfully until five o’clock, waking up from misty half dreams and reaching for his side of the bed like it’s where I’ll still find him.

It’s cruel, dreaming after a loss. I know this.

Your sleeping brain forgets, puts you in dreams where things are as they were.

I dream of being twenty, a college junior kissing Nate in some sweaty dive bar where he spent two hours performing on a sad excuse for a stage.

Twenty-two, decorating the house for our first Christmas in it together.

Twenty-three, ordering honey lavender ice cream while he stands next to me in line, laughing as someone behind us asks disgustedly what Elk Poop is.

I make coffee in the half dark, blue morning just starting to spill into the kitchen. Twenty-six , I remind myself. Nate’s second choice, and all alone now.

“Hey.”

I turn, blinking bleary-eyed down the front hallway. I haven’t turned any lights on, and Rashad emerges like a hologram from the shadows—pixelated and hazy until he gets close. “I thought I heard you down here.”

“Sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Oh, babe.” He swats a hand as he lowers onto a barstool. “I don’t sleep anyway.”

“Still?” I pull down another mug and start making him a latte.

“It’s better,” he tells me. He’s wearing a giant fuzzy hoodie. “But nighttime is the hardest.”

“Yeah,” I say, pouring milk into the metal pitcher. “I feel that.”

“Yeah?” He stifles a yawn behind one hand. “You want to talk about it?”

The kitchen fills with hissing as I steam the milk, saving me from responding. But when I slide Rashad’s mug over the counter, he raises his eyebrows pointedly.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “Not really.”

He takes a sip of the coffee and then stands, tipping his head toward the living room. “Come on. It’s just you and me awake right now anyway.”

We sink into the couch, side by side. Outside, a breeze rustles the aspens and they send dancing shadows through the windows that reflect in the mirror over the fireplace.

“You’ve got a broken heart, too, huh?” He doesn’t ask it like a question, not really. He says it like something he already knows.

I wave a hand, vaguely, around the living room. “We all do, in this house.”

“Sure,” Rashad says. “But we’ve got you to listen to our drivel. Who’s listening to you?”

I smile at him. “I’m all right, Rashad.”

He snorts, taking a sip from his mug. “Oscar-worthy work, here, but you’re puttering around this house at five a.m. like a widow in mourning.”

I groan, leaning my head back on the couch. I close my eyes and leave them shut. “Can we talk about you instead? You said the sleep is getting better?”

“It is ,” he says. “But I leave soon. A week here isn’t going to solve my whole situation, right? I’ve got to keep doing the work.”

“That’s right,” I tell him. “But I’m glad this is helping, at least. And you can always stay longer, you know that.”

“It’s helping,” Rashad says. “But I’ve got to get back to my job one of these days.” There’s a moment of silence, and then his hand lands on my knee and jostles it. “I’m waiting, Miss Lou. What’s the work you’re doing?”

My eyes break open and I cast a sidelong glance at him, not moving my head. “Persistent.”

He shrugs. “I do get what I want.”

I sigh, long and slow. “I went through a breakup, too, recently. A couple months ago. It was for the best, and I’ve been feeling okay about it, but now…” I trail off, stare up at the ceiling. But now. Why does it feel so hard, so suddenly?

“But now that beautiful chocolate brownie man is in the picture, making you all confused.”

I jerk my head around, and Rashad smirks. “You’re not so subtle, okay? We get it: you two have your panties all twisted up for each other.”

“That’s not the situation,” I say, sitting up straight.

He mirrors me, putting his mug down on the coffee table. “Isn’t it? You don’t have to feel guilty, babe.” Rashad turns to face me. “There’s no requisite mourning period. You can move the fuck on.”

I blink at him, my throat suddenly tight. I didn’t realize how desperately I needed someone to give me permission to let go of this—of Nate, of who I was with him, of the idea I had for so long of what my life would be.

In the dark living room, the world feels hazy and half-real. Like Rashad and I aren’t in Estes Park, Colorado, but in a shared dream—a place where we could do anything, say anything. Where we could be honest.

“What if I’m not ready?” I ask.

Rashad tilts his head to one side. “How do you know you’re not?”

My sister shows up on a cloudy morning in a terry cloth onesie.

She started wearing them when she was pregnant with Quinn and never stopped: spaghetti-strap overalls in soft fabrics that she hoisted on over bralettes in summer, skintight long sleeves in fall.

It’s all fun and games until you have to go to the bathroom , she told me the first time I saw her in one.

But they’re so clearly her comfort outfit—her go-to for any travel day or homebound weekend—that now, when I picture her, she’s always wearing one.

The coziness outweighs the peeing issue, apparently.

When I open my front door Quinn has his hand buried in one of the slouchy overall pockets, digging for a snack.

“LOU-LOU!” he screeches at the sight of me, flinging his fingers from the pocket and sending a Werther’s Original flying across my driveway. He bolts up the steps and Goldie goes to collect it.

“We went on the airplane!” he shouts as he throws his arms around me. When I pick him up and spin him around, he giggles—the most perfect sound ever uttered on god’s green earth. Behind him, Goldie sifts through the browning aspen leaves on my driveway to pick up the candy.

“Did you see clouds?” I ask, peppering his face with kisses. “The moon? An alien?”

“ No ,” he chides, grabbing my face in both hands to hold me still. We look at each other, eye to eye. “There was a man in the window seat and Mom said I couldn’t bother him.”

“Ah,” I say, reaching out an arm to fold Goldie into our hug as she arrives at the top of the stairs. “Men are the worst.”

“I’m a man!” Quinn protests, his face flanked by our shoulders.

“You’re a boy,” I say, plopping him down on the landing. “And one day, you’ll be the best of men.”

“Yeah, the best,” Quinn says as he shuffles past me into the house. Goldie puts the Werther’s Original in my palm.

“Why are you giving Quinn grandpa candy?”

“They’re his favorite,” she tells me on a sigh. “?‘Your children come through you, not from you,’ or whatever the saying is.”

“Well, you can keep this.” I drop it back into her pocket and look up at her. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she says. Her hands land on my shoulders, grounding me.

Goldie and I are the exact same height: five feet, three and a half inches.

But she has Mom’s blond hair, wispy waves that frame her face like a halo, and her pale blue eyes.

I carry the darkness of a man I never met: dishwater hair, not quite brown, and hazel irises that change in the light. “You look tired.”

“So do you.”

“I just flew across the country with a five-year-old. What’s your excuse?”

I wave a hand through the front door. “I run my own business now, remember?”

Goldie lets out a sigh, long and withering. It speaks sentences all on its own: Yes, I remember this batshit idea of yours. Yes, I remember this inadvisable scheme. Yes, I remember that I’m leaving my pride and joy in a house full of strangers.

“I want complete details on everyone staying here before I leave Quinn tomorrow,” she says. She’ll head to Denver in the afternoon for her conference, leaving Quinn and me with a week of our own. “ Especially any men.”

“No men at the moment,” I tell her, though Henry’s face pops, unbidden, into my mind. Rashad left yesterday, with a lung-flattening hug and a promise to call me at five thirty in the morning when neither of us can sleep. “Just a group of incredibly delightful—if sad—women.”

She levels me with her gaze and sidesteps me into the house. “We’ll see. Quinn? Where’d you go?”

“I found Mei!” he shouts from the living room. “Remember Mei, Mom?”

“Of course,” Goldie says. Mei is Goldie’s favorite: the person she wishes I was. When we join them in the living room, Quinn’s perched next to Mei on the couch, her work laptop open on the coffee table in front of them. Last I checked, Kim and Bea were upstairs doing a puzzle with Nan.

“Hey, you,” Mei says, standing to give Goldie a hug. “Love the overalls.”

“Oh,” Goldie says, accepting the hug and then waving her off. “They’re ancient. But thank you.” She pulls away and drops her hands onto Mei’s shoulders, just like she did with me. “I was so sorry to hear about Andy.”

I resist the rigidity that nags at the base of my spine, threatening to freeze me up. Our whole lives, it’s been like this: the warmth Goldie’s capable of with others and never with me. Mei’s sadness makes sense to her; mine is a problem to solve.

“Who’s Andy?” Quinn asks before Mei can respond. She squeezes Goldie’s elbow in thanks and then sits back down next to him, tipping her head into the couch cushion.

“Andy was my partner,” she says. “But we broke up.”

“What’s ‘partner’?” Quinn asks, leaning closer to her. He’s so unbelievably delicious: shiny blond hair, Goldie’s blue eyes magnified by little-kid glasses, tiny fingers that curl around Mei’s forearm like he can’t help but get closer to her.

Mei glances at Goldie before saying, “Do you know what a girlfriend is? Or a boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” Quinn says, giggling again like the word itself is a scandal between them.

“It’s like that,” Mei tells him. “Except Andy is non-binary, which means they aren’t a boy or a girl. So we call them my partner, instead of my boyfriend or girlfriend.”