Page 5 of The Heartbreak Hotel

“You’re my partner,” Mei says, dropping her head onto my shoulder and nuzzling into me.

“You have a nonplatonic partner waiting for you.”

“What if you sell a kidney?” Mei suggests, reaching for another peach slice. “Is that a thing you can do for money, or only as a Good Samaritan kind of gesture?”

“I know you can sell plasma,” Joss offers. “There’s a place off Highway 7—you wouldn’t even have to go very far.”

“ Great ,” I say, but the smallest gurgle of a laugh rumbles through the word. “I’ll just vampire myself into affording rent.”

“Good.” Joss smiles at me, a little sad, over the table. “I can’t really imagine this house without you anymore.”

“Was the previous tenant horrible?” Mei asks, sitting back up. “Some old-money snob with disgusting taste in landscaping?”

Joss laughs. “Something like that.”

This place was pristine when Nate and I moved in—if a little lifeless.

The house was more than seventy years old but immaculately renovated: a surprise to Nate, who remembered it as colossal but disheveled.

The kitchen had been gutted and remodeled with brass fixtures and soft-close drawers; each bathroom had a new shower, sleek tile, a wide vanity mirror with warm lighting.

The wood floors refracted the high Colorado sun, freshly lacquered.

There were no traces of them, whoever had lived here before us. Just a gorgeous canvas of a home, whispering for me to fill it with color.

“Well,” I say on a sigh. “Hopefully the next tenant’s even cooler than me.”

“The next tenant’s going to be you,” Mei says, reaching over to smack my hand. “Without No-Spine Nate to hold you down.”

My throat tightens, and I nod. Reach for another peach slice so I don’t have to meet anyone’s eyes as my own fill back up with tears.

“If you need help getting rid of Nate’s things,” Joss says gently, “I’m around, okay?”

“Oh, god.” My head drops directly onto the table. “I hadn’t even thought about his things. Six bedrooms’ worth of things.”

We’d filled this house like mice, nesting.

Every side table was cluttered with my thrift store treasures, every picture rail hung with paintings and photographs and cross-stitched landscapes, still in their hoops.

Nearly all of it was mine—but Nate was everywhere, too.

Stacks of his records in the front bedroom; his clothes in the closets, smelling of smoke and sage and his skin.

A tube of Carmex lip balm dropped into a drawer in every single room of the house.

Mei makes a soothing sound, and I feel her hand land on my shoulder. I breathe, my eyes pressed shut. And as my words hang between us— six bedrooms’ worth of things —I feel them start to blur. Going fuzzy at the edges, blooming, shifting into something else entirely. Six bedrooms.

Four upstairs bathrooms.

A circular driveway with plenty of parking.

A massive kitchen with seating for ten.

A way, maybe, for me to stay—without having to sell my kidney.

Mei can’t live here, but other people could. The kind of people with money to spend and calligraphy art on their walls—the kind that says, The mountains are calling and I must go.

I sit up and look between Mei and Joss through blurry eyes. “I think I have an idea.”

Nate always dealt with the rent; it’s humiliating to admit that I don’t even know our landlord’s last name.

I don’t know if Nate paid online or by check.

When I text him late Saturday morning, I need the landlord’s contact info , he just replies with a name— Henry Rhodes —followed by an address and phone number.

When I call the number, I’m expecting the grumbly voice of an old, harried man. No one young is named Henry, for starters. And what young person could afford to own this house? But it’s a woman’s voice, clipped and professional.

“Good afternoon, this is Rita speaking. How can I help you?”

“Rita, hi.” I turn on my heel in the living room, plastering a smile on my face as if she could see me. “I’m looking for Henry.”

“Yes, you’ve reached his office. How can I help you?”

“Um.” I squint out the window, where sun cuts through the boughs of a juniper tree in the side yard. “I’m his tenant out on Cedarcliff? The stone house with the porch? I was hoping to discuss something with him in, um, in person?”

There’s a brief pause. “Dr.Rhodes had a cancellation for four o’clock today. Otherwise, we’re closed Sundays and Mondays and I’m booking appointments two weeks out. The earliest I have available is September thirteenth.”

Dr. Rhodes? I glance at the coffee table, where all my frenetic research is scribbled out on scrap paper.

Mei slept over in spite of my protests— Andy’s at dinner with college friends!

I don’t want to listen to them reminisce about Habitat for Humanity anyway!

Shut up right now! —and we spent most of the night researching vacation rentals.

What the other options are in Estes Park, what kinds of rules I’d need to follow, what I could charge for a place like this.

She left a couple hours ago but it’s only noon; I can get this jumble of information presentable in four hours.

“I’m…not sure I need an appointment,” I say to Rita. “I just need to discuss a matter about the house? But I can do today at four, too.”

“Great,” Rita says. I hear her tapping at a keyboard. “What was your name?”

“Louisa Walsh,” I say. “But he might only recognize my boyfriend’s name, Nate Payne. He usually deals with the rent.”

The word boyfriend seeps through me like vinegar, burning all the way down. Rita is unfazed.

“Thanks, Louisa. We’ll see you at four.”

The phone clicks off. I catch my reflection in the mirror above the fireplace: pale cheeks, rat’s nest hair, enormous *NSYNC T-shirt with a hole in one shoulder that I haven’t peeled off my miserable body in forty-eight hours.

I point one finger at my face. Meet my own, red-rimmed eyes in the glass. “Get your shit together.”