Page 48 of The Heartbreak Hotel

Thirty-Six

The story unfolds in bits and pieces, all four of my guests—Nan and Pauline, new arrivals Daria and Leigh—talking over each other to deliver the details. Sad puppy , Pauline says. He was moping , Nan adds. And then, from Daria, the simplest description of them all: Heartbroken .

“So we sat him down,” Nan tells us, sipping from her mug of tea, “and said—look, Henry. There’s nothing stopping you from going over there to Ohio and getting her.”

“It’s a gesture ,” Pauline says, nodding.

“But he was nervous,” Nan says. “Thought maybe you needed space from him. But I said: If I know our Lou, what she needs is a hug.”

My eyes fill with tears, hot and blurry.

“I said: Our Lou’s not the type to want space.”

“It’s true,” Mei says, gathering me into a squishy embrace.

“So we spring into action.” Pauline gestures between the four of them. “Leigh’s booking a flight, Daria’s packing some snacks, Nan’s figuring out what hotel you went to.”

I shake my head, rubbing at my eyes. What the hell did I do to deserve these people?

Maybe they never needed me at all. Maybe it wasn’t me helping anyone heal, but the space we created together, here—the simple fact of our connectedness, of sharing our pain.

Maybe all healing requires is a taking of turns.

Leaning on whoever has the strength in each fleeting moment.

“And then Henry leaves,” Nan says now. “Just after noon. Nervous wreck. Very charming.” She looks at her watch. “His flight was at four o’clock. Should be landed by now.”

I pull out my phone, snapping a selfie on the living room couch—huddled in a blanket, hair limp from flying, eyes wet with tears. Smiling in spite of myself. I send it to Henry, and add: Come home? Nan filled me in.

His reply comes through minutes later. A selfie of his own: Henry’s dark eyebrows, his unbelievable eyes. His smile, soft and exhausted and relieved. He’s standing in front of a giant sign dotted in snowflake decals that says Welcome to Columbus!

And just two words: Hold still.

But I don’t. Henry takes a six a.m. flight out of Ohio, and I drive straight back to the Denver airport to meet him.

There’s no way I’m sleeping anyway—and I refuse to wait one minute longer than I need to.

I park in the short-term lot this time and hightail it to Arrivals, huddled in my coat.

A week into December, and it’s decidedly winter.

I wait for Henry at the center of the sprawling terminal.

Waves of people come up from the airport trams, one escalator load after another after another.

I’m rising onto my tiptoes and lowering back down, rhythmic, like if I can just keep moving, my nerves will stay at bay.

But then Henry ascends up the escalator, and his eyes lock on mine, and my heart drops entirely out of my body onto the scuffed tile floor.

I wave to him. Wave . Like a preschooler in a dance recital.

Like he hasn’t already seen me, like that secret smile isn’t spreading over his face, like every step he closes between us doesn’t nudge me closer to certain death.

I’ve been holding my breath for too long.

When he gets to me, I gasp for air and say, “How was Ohio?”

Henry says, “Lonelier than anticipated.”

He’s a foot away from me, black suitcase parked next to his feet. In his wool coat and marled sweater he looks like a Christmas card, like a goddamn dream, like I made him up.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and he takes a half step closer.

“ I’m sorry.”

I shake my head. “I’ve been so stupid, Henry. I’m sorry I lied about my license. I’m sorry I disappeared after Thanksgiving—I got scared and it was silly of me; I’d told you about my mom and I could feel you holding back about Molly and I got completely in my head about it.”

Henry’s eyes track back and forth over mine, taking this in. The crowd parts around us, a break in the current, but I know that if I stop talking now, I’ll never get the rest of this out.

“I got scared that I was doing what I always do,” I say.

“Give all of myself, and take care of everyone around me, even if I don’t get it back.

I’m always disappearing in my relationships because I take care of the other person and I forget—I mean, I love taking care of people, and I want to do it, but I have a tendency to just—to let it be unbalanced?

And Goldie was giving me such a hard time, and I just—” I break off, sucking in an open-mouthed breath that makes Henry smile.

It touches his eyes in the most exquisite way, so they go iridescent under the overhead lights.

“I was so wrong, Henry. I want you to share everything with me because I want to share everything with you—but it doesn’t have to be now.

You can take all the time you need about Molly.

” I swallow, heat radiating from my face.

“You’ve taken care of me so well, and so often, and in every way I’ve asked and even ones I haven’t.

The past couple days with my mom were so tough and they made me think so much about you, and about everything, and how it’s okay to care for people if they care for you back.

It’s good. You’re good. I want to do this with you.

I want”—my eyes flicker over his—“I want to hold your hand at every crosswalk.” I draw a long, shaking breath. “If you’ll let me.”

Henry closes the distance between us, hands framing my face, and murmurs, “I’m going to kiss you now,” right against my mouth.

I sink into him like an exhale, like something trapped let free.

His lips are soft and warm, his arms dropping to wrap around my waist. When he lifts me off my feet I bury my face in his shoulder and breathe him in.

I could stay here , I think. I could live at the Denver International Airport if it meant being somewhere with Henry.

“I don’t want you to disappear,” he says, lowering me to the floor.

My arms tuck in against his chest. “Not ever, for any reason, and especially not in our relationship. You couldn’t.

You’re the brightest thing—” Henry stops, swallowing.

That line appears between his brows, there and gone, like he’s working through the words but then, finally, finds them.

“That first night, when I couldn’t sleep at the house, I thought I’d ruined this before it could even begin.

But then you found me, and you didn’t try to fix me. ”

“Fix you?” I push my hands up his chest, bracket his jaw between my fingers.

“Or explain it away.” His voice is soft, and the terminal is loud, but my whole body is tuned to him: to every dip of his words, every brush of his fingertips under my coat at the small of my back.

“All I’ve wanted, all this time, is to explain it away.

To force some kind of logic into what happened, to train my feelings into some other shape that hurts less.

” Henry’s hands slide upward, framing my ribs, and ease me even closer.

“That doesn’t end in you in bed without me. ”

I imagine him, that night: the fevered heat of his skin, the shudder of his breathing under my palm. The way he pulled me into him, after, and pressed me to the hurt.

“You saw me as I am,” Henry says simply.

“And you told me it was okay, and for the first time, I believed it.” I brush my thumb over his cheek and he tilts into the touch, the slightest tip of his chin into my palm.

“You have this way of seeing people, Louisa. It feels like cheating, how lucky I am when you turn your gaze on me.”

I pull his face to mine, rising to my toes as his fingers spread to steady me. Our mouths meet, and his soft exhale is a whisper in the clamor of the terminal, and I want to tell him that I could spend my whole life learning him. My whole life seeing only him, and it wouldn’t be enough.

“I’m sorry I made you feel isolated about Molly,” Henry says into the space between our lips.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, sooner, about Joss.

” He dips his chin, pressing his mouth to mine again—like he’s reminding himself that he can, like he can’t quite help it.

“That was wrong. I want to share everything with you, too—I’m just a little out of practice. ”

“We have time,” I tell him. It’s a gift. It’s the truth. All this time that’s spread before us—it aches right at the center of my rib cage, imagining it. The longing for something already held in my hands. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

Henry makes a sound that’s not quite an exhale, not quite a word. He carries it to my lips and it tastes like relief.

“Joss told me about the tree,” I say, quietly, as we pull apart. Henry’s fingers splay over my lower back, rooting me to him. “That you thought it wasn’t the right time. Why?”

When he lifts one shoulder in half a shrug, it’s sad and vulnerable. Softly, he says, “Because the house is yours, now.”

“It’ll always be hers, too.” I tuck my fingers around the back of his neck. Smooth my thumb over one clean-shaven cheek. “You don’t have to erase any of yourself to have a life with me.”

Henry tips forward, forehead coming to rest on mine, and closes his eyes. “I worried,” he says quietly, “that if I showed you my past, it would scare you away.”

I shake my head, our noses brushing. Lower my palms to his chest and pull away so he has to look me in the eyes. “You can give me anything, Henry. Any part of you. I’ll take care of it.”

“And you,” he says. One hand rises from my waist to my cheek.

“You don’t know how it killed me not to be with you, these last couple days.

To be stuck here, imagining you—” He shakes his head, just barely, his eyes like sunlight on mine.

Like the single point that illuminates everything else, that makes me real and visible at all.

“Imagining what you were going through, and being so far away. Your mom—?”

“She’s okay,” I tell him, barely a whisper. His fingertips curl around the base of my skull, tipping my face to his as his eyes cast over me.

“And you?”

I feel weightless, is the truth. With my hip in the crook of Henry’s elbow and his gaze on me like this—perceptive, protective—I feel like I could trust the world to carry me. Trust myself, too.

“I’m okay.”

He exhales, long and slow, through his nose. “That’s the most important.”

“Not the most ,” I say, and Henry dips his mouth to mine.

“It’s the most important,” he murmurs, “to me.”

I part my lips and he meets me there without hesitation, the warm slide of his tongue and the pressure of all five of his fingertips holding me steady.

I forget we’re in the middle of an airport; I forget the day’s hardly begun at all—that the sun hasn’t risen, that the rest of the world isn’t as illuminated as I feel, right in this moment.

“Louisa,” Henry says, soft, at the corner of my mouth.

The three rumbled syllables of my name, my favorite sound.

“It’s only ever been the fear of losing you that’s made me keep things from you.

That it would be too complicated, or too painful, or you wouldn’t want to be with someone as brokenhearted as me.

” He pulls back just the smallest distance, half a breath, so he can meet my eyes.

“I’d have done anything to keep you close. Anything not to lose you again.”

“You won’t.” We look at each other, the crowd moving around us, holiday music playing low and soft from somewhere across the terminal. I have the sudden thought that I want to do every good and bad and human thing with Henry Rhodes.

“And besides,” I say. Henry’s eyebrows rise. “I’m good with heartbreak, remember?”