Page 41 of The Heartbreak Hotel

Thirty

I spend the next day and a half at the desk in my bedroom, scrolling through licensing exam study guides and writing notes longhand.

Through the bay window, I see Joss come and then go on Saturday.

She puts Christmas lights on every tree except the new one—the baby pine that Henry hates.

Thinking about him makes my stomach go tight, and I force myself to stop.

The day ticks by, the sun lowering. When I get to section three in my practice exam, Helping Relationships, Goldie’s voice whispers through the room—so vivid it’s like she’s breathing up through my floorboards. You do this, Lou. You do this . Helping everyone else.

I press my pencil so firmly into my notepad that the lead snaps. I need to center myself in my own life. Help myself for once. When Henry texts me at five to ask if I want to meet for dinner, I tell him that I can’t.

It isn’t true; I don’t even eat dinner that night.

But when I think of Henry—his low voice in my ear, You’re so beautiful —it tugs so hard and so deep inside of me that I know I’m ruined.

That being near Henry is a danger, a vast hole opening up, a void I’m desperate to fall into.

I want him so violently that I can’t see myself clearly.

I know that if I meet him—if I touch him, if I catch even the shallowest scrape of the sadness I’m frantic to fix—I’ll turn myself inside out trying to be a balm.

I’ll break every promise I’ve made to myself in the last twenty-four hours.

I need him , my body screams.

And my brain, in a stern voice that sounds a lot like my sister’s, replies: You need space.

“Home sweet home,” Nan says, stepping through the threshold and opening her arms for a hug. Her perfume, floral and familiar, fills the foyer. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” I take her suitcase and start up the stairs toward her room. “How was your Thanksgiving?”

“Superb,” she says, following me. “I have new twin grandsons and they’re just perfection. Cherubic. Too small to cause much trouble.”

“Congratulations.” I set her suitcase on the foot of her bed. “What does your family think of you staying here?”

“They’re always bugging me to take a vacation,” Nan says. “This is just one long one.”

I smile, twisting my watch around my wrist. “I’m glad it feels that way.”

Nan lowers to the edge of the bed, patting the mattress beside her. When I sit, she asks, “How was your Thanksgiving?”

I tilt my head back and forth, trying to decide how honest I should be. “Mixed bag.”

“You stayed here?”

I nod, and Nan raises one eyebrow. “Alone?”

In the split second of my hesitation, Nan makes a satisfied little harrumph. “You were with Henry, weren’t you?”

I splutter, already feeling heat in my cheeks. “How did you know?”

“I may be old,” Nan says, tapping her brow, “but my eyes still work. You two are like magnets underwater—drawn to each other, pushing everything else out of the way.”

I laugh, my first real one in days. “Okay.”

“He’s a catch,” Nan says, shrugging. “So are you.” I nudge my knee against hers and she adds, “Why a ‘mixed bag’?”

“Just some family stuff.” I offer her a small smile. “I’m sure you know how it is.”

“Yes and no,” she says, surprising me. I expected her to agree, to brush it off— Of course I do , or Who doesn’t? “I know my family’s stuff. But I expect yours is different, as are all of our problems.”

“Yeah,” I say, letting out a breath of a laugh and twisting my fingers together. “You’re right.”

“So?” She leans toward me, raising both eyebrows this time. “What’s going on?”

“Nan,” I say, smoothing my palms over my jeans. “We don’t have to—you’re here for you , yeah? How did your first Thanksgiving without Teddy feel?”

“Don’t call upon my dead husband to change the subject, Lou. If you’re upset, we can talk about it.” She waves a hand toward her open door, the house beyond it. “Isn’t that the point of this place?”

“Yeah, for you ,” I say. “For the guests.”

“Well,” Nan counters, “it’s us two here right now.”

I think of Rashad, back in October—that predawn morning we spent on the couch together. How much I needed him then.

“I had to help my mom with some bills,” I tell Nan. “And it was stressful.”

Her hand moves to cover mine where it still rests on my leg. Her skin is warm and papery soft. “That does sound stressful. Were you able to be open with Henry about it? Lean on him for support?”

Too much so , I think. If I’m honest, it’s another reason I’ve been avoiding him the last few days: shame.

“Yeah,” I say, straight down at my lap. “And it feels kind of embarrassing, because he’s had some stuff going on, too, and I can tell he doesn’t really want to talk to me about it. So I feel like I’m asking too much, or I am too much.”

“My dear.” Nan squeezes my hand. “There could never be too much Lou in this world.”

I look up at her, exhaling on a smile. “Thanks.”

“And sometimes we have to show people how to love us, or how to trust us, or how to care for us—by giving them that gift first.” She shrugs. “It’s not fair. But it’s okay to go first. It’s bighearted and brave.”

What if , I think, we never meet in the middle? What if I wind up back where I’ve always been: giving and giving and giving with such imbalance that the person I love knows all my softest places, all the ways to bend me? What if this ends like Nate? Like my mother?

I don’t say any of this. But almost as if I did—as if she heard me loud and clear—Nan adds, “Your openness is your superpower, Lou, not your weakness. Don’t let the world convince you otherwise.”

Pauline arrives the next afternoon, her knock jaunty and complicated, like the secret code of a child at a tree house door.

It snowed overnight and she’s in a down parka that reaches her knees.

When I open the door Custard’s framed across the street behind her, tail wagging as he watches us from his fenced-in front yard, paws hidden in the snow.

I think of Henry back in August—the afternoon sun in his eyes, his fingers combing through Custard’s fur.

The longing feels like a corset, flattening me.

Pauline’s in her midforties and frustrated after a string of duds (her words, from the lengthy email she sent me after booking). I have a feeling she and Nan are going to be fast friends. As soon as she sees me, she shouts my name like we’ve known each other for years.

“Welcome,” I say, ushering her over the threshold on a smile. “How was your journey?”

“Easy as pie.” Pauline lives in Utah, and drove over the state line for her four-night stay. “Gorgeous weather on 70. View after view after view.”

“I do love that drive,” I say. “Did you—”

“And look what I found at the gas station in town!” She thrusts a newspaper into my hands and unwinds a scarf from around her neck. As she shakes out her perfectly blown-out hair I look down at the copy of The Estes Park Trail-Gazette , marked with today’s date.

All of it hits me at the exact same time, disparate pieces of information clustering up at the front of my skull to jockey for my attention:

The headline: Estes Home with Heartbreaking History Becomes a Haven for the Brokenhearted .

The lede: For the last few months, the Comeback Inn—a bed-and-breakfast in Estes Park’s Ponderosa Ranch neighborhood—has welcomed heartbroken out-of-staters and Coloradans alike into its warm embrace. It’s a heartwarming turn of events for a home with a painful past.

The photograph: My house from the sidewalk. A head-on shot of the front porch, the wide wooden door. Unfamiliar flowerpots lining the steps. A family of three clustered at the top: Henry, a small girl on his lap. His arm around a woman.

The woman: Joss.

My gardener, my friend. The person who sat in my kitchen just a couple days ago, drinking my tea.

And, apparently, Henry’s ex-wife.