People We Meet on Vacation

BRYCE’S KIDS ARE six and four years old, both girls, and Cameron’s son is just over two. Tham’s sister has a six-year-old daughter too, and together, the four of them run wild through the restaurant, giggles ricocheting off the chandeliers.

Alex is happy to chase after them, to fling himself onto the floor when they try to knock him over, and to hoist them, happily shrieking, into the air when he catches them.

He is the Alex I know with them, funny and open and playful, and even if I’m not sure how to interact with kids, when he pulls me into the game, I try my best.

“We’re princesses,” Tham’s niece, Kat, tells me, taking my hand. “But we’re also warriors so we have to kill the dragon!”

“And Uncle Alex is the dragon?” I confirm, and she nods, wide-eyed and solemn.

“But we don’t have to kill him,” she explains breathlessly. “If we can tame him, he can be our pet.”

From halfway under a table where he’s fending off the Nilsen brood one at a time, he shoots me an abbreviated Sad Puppy look.

“Okay,” I say to Kat. “What’s the plan?”

The night moves in ebbs and flows. Cocktail hour first, then dinner, a myriad of tiny gourmet pizzas all decked out in goat cheese and arugula, summer squash and balsamic drizzle, pickled red onion and grilled brussels sprouts, and all kinds of things that would make pizza purists like Rachel Krohn scoff.

We take seats at the kids’ table, which Bryce’s wife, Angela, thanks me tipsily for about a hundred times after the meal is over. “I love my kids, but sometimes I just want to sit down to dinner and talk about something other than Peppa Pig.”

“Huh,” I say, “we mostly talked about Russian literature.”

She slaps my arm harder than she means to when she laughs, then grabs Bryce by the arm and pulls him over. “Honey, you have to hear what Poppy just said.”

She hangs on him, and he’s a little stiff—a Nilsen deep down—but he also keeps a hand on her low back. He doesn’t laugh when Angela makes me repeat myself, but says in his flat, sincere, Nilsen way, “That’s funny. Russian literature.”

Before dessert and coffee are served, Tham’s sister (hugely pregnant, with twins) stands and clinks a fork to her water glass, calling attention at the head of the arrangement of tables. “Our parents aren’t much for public speaking, so I agreed to give a little toast tonight.”

Already teary-eyed, she takes a deep breath. “Who would’ve thought my annoying little brother would turn out to be my best friend?” She talks about her and Tham’s childhood in northern California, their screaming fights, the time he took her car without asking and crashed it into a telephone pole. And then the turning point, when she and her first husband divorced, and Tham asked her to move in with him. When she caught him crying while watching Sweet Home Alabama and, after teasing him appropriately, sunk down onto the couch to watch the rest with him, until they were both crying while laughing at themselves and decided they needed to go out in the middle of the night to get ice cream.

“When I got married again,” she says, “the hardest thing was knowing I’d probably never get to live with you again. And when you started talking about David, I could tell how smitten you were, and I was scared I was going to lose even more of you. Then I met David.”

She makes a face that elicits laughter, relaxed on Tham’s side of the family and restrained on David’s. “Right away I knew I was getting another best friend. There’s no such thing as a perfect marriage, but everything you two touch becomes beautiful and this will be no different.”

There’s applause and hugging and kissing of cheeks, and servers have started to come out of the kitchen with dessert when suddenly Mr. (Ed) Nilsen is on his feet, swaying awkwardly, tapping a knife to his water glass so lightly he might as well be pantomiming it.

David shifts in his seat, and Alex’s shoulders rise protectively as attention settles on his father.

“Yes,” Ed says.

“Starting off strong,” Alex whispers tightly. I squeeze his knee beneath the table and fold my hand into his.

Ed takes off his glasses, holds them at his side, and clears his throat. “David,” he says, turning toward the grooms. “My sweet boy. I know we haven’t always had it easy. I know you haven’t,” he adds more quietly. “But you’ve always been a ball of sunshine, and . . .” He blows out a breath. He swallows some rising emotion and continues. “I can’t take credit for how you’ve turned out. I wasn’t always there how I should’ve been. But your brothers did an amazing job raising you, and I’m proud to be your father.” He looks down at the floor, gathering himself. “I’m proud to see you marrying the man of your dreams. Tham, welcome to the family.”

As the applause lifts around the room, David crosses to his father. He shakes his hand, then thinks better of it and pulls Ed into a hug. It’s brief and awkward, but it happens, and beside me Alex relaxes. Maybe when this wedding is over, everything will go back to how it was before, but maybe they’ll change too.

After all, Mr. Nilsen is wearing a big-ass gay-pride pin. Maybe things can always get better between people who want to do a good job loving each other. Maybe that’s all it takes.

That night, when we get back to the hotel, Alex takes a quick shower while I flip through channels on the TV, pausing on a rerun of Bachelor in Paradise. When Alex gets out of the bathroom, he climbs onto the bed and draws me into him, and I lift my arms over my head so he can take my baggy T-shirt off, his hands spanning wide across my ribs, his mouth dropping kisses down my stomach. “Tiny fighter,” he whispers against my skin.

This time everything is different between us. Softer, gentler, slower. We take our time, say nothing that can’t be said with our hands and mouths and limbs.

I love you, he tells me in a dozen different ways, and I say it back every time.

When we’re finished, we lie together, tangled up and sheened in sweat, breathing deep and calm. If we talked, one of us would have to say Tomorrow is the last day of this trip. We’d have to say What next, and there’s no answer for that yet.

So we don’t talk. We just fall asleep together, and in the morning, when Alex gets back from his run with two cups of coffee and a piece of coffee cake, we just kiss some more, furiously this time, like the room’s on fire and this is the best way to put it out. Then, when we have to, when we’re out of time, we unwind from each other to get ready for the wedding.

The venue is a Spanish-style house with wrought-iron gates and a lush garden. Palm trees and columns and long, dark wooden tables with high-backed, hand-carved chairs. Their floral arrangements are all vibrant yellow, sunflowers and daisies and delicate sprigs of tiny wildflowers, and a white-clad string quartet plays something dreamy and romantic as guests are entering the grounds.

More high-backed chairs are lined up on a stretch of uninterrupted lawn, a burst of yellow flowers lining the aisle between them. The ceremony is short and sweet because—in David’s words, as they’re walking back down the aisle to an upbeat, strings version of “Here Comes the Sun”—it’s time to party!

The day is whooshing past, and an ache takes up residence beneath my clavicles that seems to deepen with the twilight. It’s like I’m experiencing the whole night twice over, two versions of the same film reel playing slightly overlapped.

There’s the me who’s here now, eating an incredible seven-course Vietnamese meal. The same one who’s chasing kids around the legs of oblivious adults, playing hide-and-seek with them and Alex under tables. The same one who’s chugging margaritas on the dance floor with Alex while “Pour Some Sugar on Me” plays at top volume and drops of sweat and champagne sprinkle over the crowd. The same one who’s pulling him close when the Flamingos come on, playing “I Only Have Eyes for You,” and who buries my face in his neck, trying to memorize his smell more thoroughly than the last twelve years have allowed, so I can summon it at will, and everything about this night will come rushing back: his hand tight on my waist, his mouth ajar against my temple, his hips just barely swaying as we hold on to each other.

There’s that Poppy, who’s experiencing it all and having the most magical night of her life. And then there’s the one who’s already missing it, who’s watching this all happen from some point in the distance, knowing I can never go back and do it all over again.

I’m too afraid to ask Alex what comes next. I’m too afraid to ask myself that. We love each other. We want each other.

But that hasn’t changed the rest of our situation.

So I just keep holding on to him and tell myself that, for now, I should enjoy this moment. I’m on vacation. Vacations always end.

It’s the very fact that it’s finite that makes traveling special. You could move to any one of those destinations you loved in small doses, and it wouldn’t be the spellbinding, life-altering seven days you spent there as a guest, letting a place into your heart fully, letting it change you.

The song ends.

The dance ends.

Not long after that, there are sparklers being lit in a long tunnel of people who love David and Tham, and then they’re running through it, their faces awash in warm light and deep love, and then, as if it’s a person drifting off to sleep, the night ends.

Alex and I say our goodbyes, loose enough from a night of drinking and dancing to hug dozens of people who were perfect strangers hours ago. We drive home in silence, and when we get there, Alex doesn’t shower, doesn’t even undress. We just get into bed and hold on to each other until we fall asleep.

•   •   •

THE MORNING IS better.

For one thing, we both forgot to set alarms, and we were up late enough that even Alex’s internal alarm clock doesn’t wake us in time to laze around the hotel. We’re running late from the moment we open our eyes, and there’s nothing to do but throw clothes into bags, check under the beds for dropped socks and bras and whatever else.

“We still have to take the Aspire back!” Alex realizes aloud as he’s zipping his luggage closed.

“On it!” I say. “If I can get ahold of the girl who owns it, maybe she’ll let us leave it at the airport and pay her an extra fifty bucks or something.”

But we don’t get ahold of her, so instead we’re screaming down the highway, crossing our fingers we make it to the airport in time.

“Really regretting not showering now,” Alex says as he rolls his window down and rakes a hand through his dirty hair.

“Showering?” I say. “When I was falling asleep, I had the thought, I have to pee, but I’ll hold it until morning.”

Alex glances over his shoulder. “I’m sure you left an empty cup in here at some point this week, if things get desperate.”

“Rude!” I say, but he’s right. There’s one under my foot and another in the back seat’s cup holder. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I’m not a famously good shot.”

He laughs, but it’s wooden. “This is not how I imagined this day going.”

“Me neither,” I say. “But then again, the whole trip was sort of surprising.”

At that, he smiles, grips my hand against the gearshift, and lifts it to his lips a few seconds later, holding it there but not quite kissing it.

“What, am I sticky?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Just want to remember what your skin feels like.”

“That’s really sweet, Alex,” I say, “and not at all something a serial killer would say.”

I’m deflecting, but I’m not sure how else to handle this. A mad dash, together, to the airport. A hasty goodbye at our gates—or maybe just splitting off and running in opposite directions. It’s the exact antithesis of every rom-com movie I’ve ever loved, and if I let myself think about it, I think I might have a full-blown panic attack.

By a miracle and a fair amount of speeding (and yes, bribing an Uber driver to skim through a few late-yellow lights after dropping off the Aspire), we make it to the airport and get checked into our flights. Mine leaves fifteen minutes after Alex’s, so we head to his gate first, detouring to buy a couple granola bars and the latest issue of R+R from a bookstore in the terminal.

We get to his gate just as boarding begins, but we have a few minutes until his group is called, so we stand there, panting, sweaty, shoulders sore from carrying our bags, my ankle scuffed from accidentally whacking it into my hard-shell carry-on bag every few steps.

“Why are airports so hot?” Alex says.

“Is this the set-up for a joke?” I ask.

“No, I genuinely want to know.”

“Compared to Nikolai’s apartment, this is arctic, Alex.”

His smile is tense. Neither one of us is handling this well.

“So,” he says.

“So.”

“How do you think this article is going to go over with Swapna? Gardens that close in the middle of the day, and carousels so hot they’re unsafe to ride?”

“Oh. Right.” I cough. I’m less embarrassed that I lied to Alex about this trip than at the fact that I forgot to mention it until now, and am forced to use several of our last precious moments together explaining it. “So R+R might not have technically approved this trip.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Might not have?”

“Or might have outright rejected it.”

“What, seriously? Then why were they paying for—” He cuts himself short as he reads the answer on my face. “Poppy. You shouldn’t have done that. Or you should have told me.”

“Would you have taken this trip if you knew I was paying for it?”

“Of course not,” he says.

“Exactly,” I say. “And I needed to talk to you. I mean, obviously we needed to talk.”

“You could have called me,” he reasons. “We were texting again. We were . . . I don’t know, working on it.”

“I know,” I say. “But it wasn’t that simple. I was having a hard time at work, just feeling over the whole thing, and lost and bored, and like—like I don’t even know what I want next in my life, and then I talked to Rachel, and she pointed out that I’d sort of . . . gotten everything I wanted professionally, and maybe I just needed to find something new to want, and then I thought back to when I was last happy and—”

“What are you talking about?” Alex says, shaking his head. “Rachel told you to . . . trick me into going on a trip with you?”

“No!” I say, panic wriggling in my gut. How is this going off the rails so quickly? “Not that! Her mom’s a therapist, and according to her, it’s common to be depressed when you’ve met all your long-term goals. Because we need purpose. And then Rachel suggested maybe I just needed to take a break from life and let myself figure out what I want.”

“A break from life,” Alex says quietly, his mouth going slack, his eyes dark and stormy.

It’s immediately obvious that I’ve said the wrong thing. This is all coming out so wrong. I have to fix it. “I just mean, I hadn’t really been happy since our last trip.”

“So you lied to me so I’d take a trip with you, and then you had sex with me, and you told me you loved me and came to my brother’s wedding, because you needed a break from your real life.”

“Alex, of course not,” I say, reaching for him.

He steps back from me, eyes low. “Please don’t touch me right now, Poppy. I’m trying to think, okay?”

“Think about what?” I ask, emotion thickening my voice. I don’t understand what’s happening, how I’ve hurt him or how to fix it. “Why are you so upset right now?”

“Because I meant it!” he says, finally meeting my eyes.

A pulse of pain shoots through my stomach. “So did I!” I cry.

“I meant it, and I knew I meant it,” he says. “It wasn’t an impulse. I knew for years that I loved you, and I thought about it from every single angle and knew what I wanted before I ever kissed you. We went two years without talking, and I thought about you every day and I gave you the space I thought you wanted, and that whole time I asked myself what I’d be willing to do, to give up, if you decided you wanted to be with me too. I spent that whole time alternating between trying to move on and let you go, so you could be happy, and looking at job postings and apartments near you, just in case.”

“Alex.” I shake my head, force the words past the knot in my throat. “I had no idea.”

“I know.” He rubs at his forehead as he closes his eyes. “I know that. And maybe I should have told you. But, fuck, Poppy, I’m not some water taxi driver you met on vacation.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand. When he opens his eyes, they’re so teary I start to reach for him again until I remember what he said: please don’t touch me right now.

“I’m not a vacation from your real life,” he says. “I’m not a novelty experience. I’m someone who’s been in love with you for a decade, and you should never have kissed me if you didn’t know that you wanted this, all the way. It wasn’t fair.”

“I want this,” I say, but even as I say it, a part of me has no idea what that means.

Do I want marriage?

Do I want to have kids?

Do I want to live in a seventies quad-level in Linfield, Ohio?

Do I want any of the things that Alex craves for his life?

I haven’t thought any of that through, and Alex can tell.

“You don’t know that,” Alex says. “You just said you don’t know, Poppy. I can’t leave my job and my house and my family just to see if that cures your boredom.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that, Alex,” I say, feeling desperate, like I’m grappling for purchase and realizing everything under me is made of sand. He’s slipping through my grip for the last time, and there will be no packing this all back into form.

“I know,” he says, rubbing the lines in his forehead, wincing. “God, I know that. It’s my fault. I should’ve known this was a bad idea.”

“Stop,” I say, wanting so badly to touch him, aching at having to settle for clenching my hands into fists. “Don’t say that. I’m figuring things out, okay? I just . . . I need to figure some things out.”

The gate agent calls for group six to start boarding and the last few stragglers line up.

“I have to go,” he says, without looking at me.

My eyes cloud up with tears, my skin hot and itchy like my body’s shrinking around my bones, becoming too tight to bear. “I love you, Alex,” I get out. “Doesn’t that matter?”

His eyes cut toward me, dark, fathomless, full of hurt and want. “I love you too, Poppy,” he says. “That’s never been our problem.” He glances over his shoulder. The line has almost disappeared.

“We can talk about this when we’re home,” I say. “We can figure it out.”

When Alex looks back at me, his face is anguished, his eyes red ringed. “Look,” he says gently. “I don’t think we should talk for a while.”

I shake my head. “That’s the last thing we should do, Alex. We have to figure this out.”

“Poppy.” He reaches for my hand, takes it lightly in his. “I know what I want. You need to figure this out. I’d do anything for you, but—please don’t ask me to if you’re not sure. I really—” He swallows hard. The line is gone. It’s time for him to go. He forces out the rest in a hoarse murmur. “I can’t be a break from your real life, and I won’t be the thing that keeps you from having what you want.”

His name catches in my throat. He bends a little, resting his forehead against mine, and I close my eyes. When I open them, he’s walking onto the jet bridge without looking back.

I take a deep breath, gather up my things, and head to my gate.

When I sit down to wait and pull my knees into my chest, hiding my face against them, I finally let myself cry freely.

For the first time in my life, the airport strikes me as the loneliest place in the world.

All those people, parting ways, going off in their own directions, crossing paths with hundreds of people but never connecting.