Why My Heart Stayed Soft for Him

Chapter 1: Room 1808

I sent Julian Mercer the message at 11:47 p.m., while standing barefoot in Room 1808 with a paint chip stuck to my heel.

Room 1808. Are you coming?

The words had worked before. They had gotten me through three birthdays, two Christmas Eves, and one power outage during which Julian had carried a flashlight in his teeth and made me laugh while the hotel went dark around us. They had also gotten me through fifteen breakups, if I counted the ones that lasted less than a day.

His reply arrived before I could talk myself out of wanting it.

?

I stared at the punctuation.

Then I typed, Are you seriously asking what that means?

His answer was immediate.

I know what it usually means.

I looked around the suite. The carpet was gone. A plastic sheet covered the windows, and the bare floorboards showed dark marks where an old water stain had spread beneath the wallpaper. The room had once been the most expensive suite at the Bellwether House, a grand hotel on the gray cliffs outside the fictional town of Larkspur Bay. Now it smelled like plaster dust and wet wool.

Julian and I had met here four years ago, when I'd been hired to design the lighting for the hotel's first restoration. He'd been the preservation architect, all rolled sleeves and precise opinions. We'd kissed after midnight in the unfinished suite, with a storm rattling the windows and no furniture except two paint buckets.

I'd come back to the room tonight because the hotel's new owners wanted an updated plan by morning. I'd come back to the text because I'd been alone all day, and Julian was the one person who could make being alone feel like a choice.

I typed, I'm in 1808.

I know.

Are you coming?

Three dots appeared, vanished, then returned.

Do you want me to come over, or do you want to tell me why you're still here?

I hated that he'd learned the difference.

I called him instead.

He picked up on the second ring. "Nora."

"Don't say my name like I've called to discuss the budget."

"Then don't call me to avoid discussing the budget."

I pressed my thumb against the paint chip on my heel. "You're very difficult to seduce."

"I'm not sure you're trying."

The words landed cleanly. No raised voice. No accusation I could turn into a joke.

I walked to the tall windows. Beyond the plastic sheeting, the ocean was a black blur. "I'm asking if you want to come to my room."

"Our room?"

"It isn't ours anymore."

"It wasn't ours then."

I swallowed. "I didn't call to fight."

"Good. I don't want to fight."

"So come over."

"I'm downstairs."

My heart did something embarrassing. "You are?"

"I'm reviewing the revised stair plans with the site manager. I saw your lights on."

For a second I couldn't answer. I'd imagined him in his apartment, or at the table in his office, doing the sensible thing and letting my text sit unanswered. I hadn't imagined him already in the hotel.

"I'll come up," he said. "But I'm not coming for sex."

The first thing I felt was relief. The second was anger at myself for feeling relieved.

"Then what are you coming for?"

"To ask whether you're all right."

"I'm fine."

"Then I'll ask about the lighting plan."

"Great. Very romantic."

"I'm not trying to be romantic, Nora."

I ended the call.

I told myself I'd done it because I didn't want to be handled. I told myself I didn't want pity from a man who had broken up with me as many times as I had broken up with him. Most of all, I told myself I could still decide what the night meant.

A knock sounded at the door.

I opened it. Julian stood in the corridor with a roll of drawings under one arm. His dark hair was damp from the fog, and his work shirt had a chalky streak down the side. He looked tired. He looked exactly like the man I had wanted to see.

His gaze moved over my face, then the empty room behind me. "You're barefoot."

"I know."

"Is that plaster dust?"

"Probably."

He stepped inside only after I moved aside. That small hesitation annoyed me more than it should have.

I shut the door. "You can sit down, if you can find somewhere."

He leaned his drawings against the wall. "I'm not staying long."

"Because you have plans?"

"Because you called me here to make a point, and I'm not sure what the point is."

"I wanted to see you."

"Then you could have said that."

"I did."

"You gave me a room number."

The old answer would have been to close the distance between us. To touch his arm, lift my chin, and make the conversation disappear beneath the familiar heat of his mouth.

I wanted to. I hated that I wanted to.

Instead, I looked at the paint chip on the floor. "I'm tired."

"I know."

"Don't make it into something."

"I'm not."

He picked up his drawings. I thought he was leaving, but he set them on the window ledge and unrolled them. "The owner wants the suite finished first. We need to decide whether the old sconces can be rewired."

"You came upstairs to ask me about sconces?"

"I came upstairs because you asked me to."

He met my eyes. There was no smugness in his expression. No hope I could punish him for having.

"Give me one answer," he said. "Do you want me here tonight?"

I could have said yes. I could have said no. The truth was somewhere between the two, and I'd spent years using that space to keep him waiting.

"I don't know," I said.

Julian rolled up the drawings. "Then I'm going downstairs."

He left without touching me. I stayed in Room 1808, listening to his footsteps fade through the corridor, and realized that for the first time in years, the old message hadn't opened a door.