Page 32 of The Heartbreak Hotel

Henry extends his forearm over the counter so Quinn can reach it. The underside of his arm is smooth, ropy veins racing up to his elbow. The watch at his wrist has a worn leather band and a thin face full of fine Roman numerals.

“How you want it?” Quinn asks, holding the lizard horizontally and then vertically and then at a haphazard angle.

“Whichever way you think looks best,” Henry says. He leans more of his weight into the counter and, below the granite where Quinn can’t see, I brush my thumb in a slow rhythm against his thigh. Henry doesn’t look at me, but I watch the tips of his ears go pink.

“I think like this,” Quinn says, placing the tattoo vertically down the length of Henry’s forearm.

“Perfect,” Henry says, slightly strangled, and Quinn grins.

By the time his nap rolls around, Quinn’s arms are covered in no fewer than seven tattoos.

Goldie won’t like it, but he’s beside himself with glee: a T.

rex reaching for the rocket ship, a puppy chasing a shooting star.

I have a pterodactyl above my elbow and a mouse on my wrist; Henry made it out with only the one.

Quinn gives Henry a double high five and then complains the entire way up the stairs. He doesn’t want to sleep, he isn’t tired, he wants to hang out with Henry. Me, too , I think. But Goldie will be here in a couple of hours, and she’ll never let me hear the end of it if I give her a cranky kid.

When I come back down the stairs, Henry’s looking out the window over the sink. Joss has been in the garden since this morning, planting a new tree at the back of the yard. I come up behind him, resting my palm over the ridge of his spine, and he turns to look down at me.

“Pretty tree,” I say, and Henry says, “Mmm.”

His eyes cast over mine and then he dips his chin, kisses me so lightly that my eyelids are still fluttering shut when he pulls away.

“You all right?” Henry asks, his arm looping around my waist.

I nod and lean into him. “You don’t have to stay, if it’s hard.” His eyes flick back and forth over mine, forget-me-not blue in the light from the window. “I can come to you, next time. We can go anywhere else.”

“I want to stay,” he tells me. Simple, with no hesitation. “It’s hardest at night.”

I think of Rashad, his sleeplessness. How the dark of nighttime is so ripe for self-loathing and sorrow.

“Okay,” I say, and rise onto my toes to kiss him. “I want you to stay, too.”

Henry tips me against the counter, framing my waist, and deepens the kiss.

“Not here,” I say, before I’m too far gone to stop him. “Shani could come down—or Nan.”

“Mm,” Henry murmurs against my neck, hot exhale like he’s resigning himself. Finally he looks up at me and tips his head toward the counter, still strewn with tattoo sheets. “Can I pick one for you, then?”

“Sure,” I say, quietly, and watch Henry sift through the designs. I press my fingertips to my mouth, to the eager tingling of my lips. He bends over, focused, his light eyes flitting back and forth until he finally settles: a cluster of constellations, delicate stars connected by dashed lines.

“Cute,” I say, and he smiles.

“Where do you want it?”

I bite my bottom lip, and Henry reaches out to release it from my teeth. We stand like that, the pad of his thumb pressed to my mouth, until that single point of contact feels inhumanly warm—until I feel like I might evaporate if I can’t have more of him.

“Come with me.” I take Henry’s hand and his fingers thread through mine, hard knots of his knuckles under my fingertips. When I lead him into the first-floor bathroom and close the door, his eyes go dark.

“Okay,” he says, so quietly I hardly hear it. “Where do you want it?”

I’m leaned against the counter, Henry facing me. It’s a small space—white and black subway tiles, gold mirror, warmly glowing torchère lights. With no room for us to move around each other, he feels more inevitable than ever. It makes me feel numb, my brain hazing out.

I reach for the button of my jeans and undo it, sliding the zipper down until I can pull aside the fabric and show him my hip bone, the sensitive strip of skin just inward from my pelvis.

Henry tracks my movements without blinking.

He has the tattoo in one hand and a damp towel in the other.

When I rest my hands behind me on the counter, leaning backward to give him access, he swallows.

His eyes flick up to mine and then he lowers to his knees in front of me. He nudges my legs apart. When I brush the hair back from his forehead, he says, “Hold still.”

I bite my lip, barely breathing as Henry presses the tattoo to my hip.

He’s gentle: dabbing the towel over the contact paper, carefully wetting the edges until it sticks to my skin on its own.

He drops the towel on the floor behind him and wraps his fingers around my ankle, sliding his hand all the way up my leg before reaching for one edge of the paper and peeling it back.

My skin burns—under the fabric of my jeans, where his fingers were; around the edges of the tattoo, where they are now; at the tops of my cheeks, when his eyes come up to mine.

“Beautiful,” Henry says, pulling the last edge of the paper away.

The constellation spreads from my hip bone to my belly button.

I watch him drop the paper and then lean in, hands coming to bracket my thighs, as he blows cool air over the tattoo.

His lips are centimeters from my skin. His breath tickles.

If it weren’t for his hands on my legs, I’d float away entirely.

I close my eyes, and his mouth lands on my stomach.

My sharp intake of breath makes him look up, his eyes dark and liquid, and when he says, “Is this okay?” it takes every single one of my faculties to muster a breathless, “Yes.” Henry kisses my hip bone, my belly button, the swell of my stomach, the laced edge of my underwear.

When his fingers find the waistband of my jeans, I tilt my hips so he can pull them down to my feet.

He slides them over my heels and across the room, running his hands up the bare length of my legs, wrapping his fingers around my waist and lifting me so I’m sitting on the edge of the counter.

I tilt backward into the mirror and hiss at the cold.

I’m wearing a tank top—easiest for tattoo access—and the glass is freezing between my shoulder blades.

Henry pulls his T-shirt over his head in one fluid movement and reaches around me to wrap it over my shoulders.

I press my palms to his chest, smooth them up to his collarbone and his jaw.

When I pull him in to kiss me it’s quick and wet and then he’s gone, stamping his mouth to the corner of my lips, to my pulse point, to the top of my shoulder.

He kisses the tattoo and then his lips land between my legs, tongue pressing to the heat of me.

I gasp, bucking forward, and thrust a hand into his hair.

He kisses the fold of my hip, the inside of my thigh.

When he rolls his cheek onto my leg, looking up at me from his knees, I tighten my hand in his hair.

“Can I take these off?” he whispers, one finger hooked through the waistband of my underwear. I nod—I have no words now. Not as he pulls my underwear over my knees, not as he tosses them behind him, not as he presses the flat of his tongue against me.

My head tilts back into the mirror. Henry’s hands are warm and rough—wrapped around my thighs, then my ass. Tilting me into him, kneading my skin. With my knees hooked over his bare shoulders he’s the only thing keeping me steady. I could slip away; I could disappear; I could drown in this.

When he takes me over the edge my mouth drops open, eyes pressed shut, a broken gasp that’s much too loud for the guests upstairs.

Henry presses one last kiss between my legs.

Then my thigh, my hip bone, the bottom edge of my ribs.

He stands, finally. Wraps his arms around my back—I’m sacked out, slumped into the mirror.

He wipes the back of one wrist over his lips and then kisses me, careful and slow and torturous.

“Henry,” I breathe, and I feel him smile against my mouth.

“Louisa,” he says, kissing the corner of my lips, the crest of my cheekbone.

“Let me,” I whisper. I drag my hands from his chest to his stomach, over the soft trail of dark hair I noticed that day with Henry spread flat on his back in my shower.

My fingertips dip below the waistband of his jeans and he tenses, arms stiffening where they’re pressed into the counter on either side of me.

I undo the button and push them down, Henry leaning backward to give me space. When I touch him through the thin fabric of his boxers he flexes into my hand, his forehead dropping to my shoulder. A gust of breath rushes over my chest.

“You don’t have to,” he says, and I wrap my fingers around him.

“I want to.”

And I do. When I slide a hand into Henry’s boxers, he’s warm and wanting.

He groans as my fingers close around him—a soft noise that I could spend the rest of my life listening to.

He leans his weight into me as I start to move, like he’s weak.

Like this takes everything from him. I could get drunk off of it—Henry, vulnerable in my hands, his head on my shoulder and his eyes pressed shut and his breath hot in the space between us. I could stay here forever. I want to.

But then the doorbell rings.