by Emily Henry
“How long have you two been together?” the sweet, middle-aged woman running the tasting asked as she returned with our next pour, a light and crisp Chardonnay.
“Oh,” Alex said.
Midyawn, I squeezed his biceps and said, “Newlyweds.”
The bartender was tickled. “In that case,” she said with a wink, “this one’s on me.”
Her name was Mathilde, and she was originally from France but moved to the United States after meeting her wife online. They lived in Sonoma but had honeymooned just outside San Francisco. “It’s called the Blue Heron Inn,” she told me. “It’s the most idyllic place I’ve ever seen. Romantic and cozy, with this roaring fire and lovely patio—just a few minutes from Muir Beach. You two must see it. It is perfect for newlyweds. Tell them Mathilde sent you.”
Before we left, we tipped Mathilde for the cost of the free tasting and then some.
For the next couple days, I deployed the newlyweds card regularly. Sometimes we got a discount or a free glass; sometimes we got nothing but a smile, but even those felt genuine and meaningful.
“I feel kind of bad,” Alex told me as we were walking it off in one vineyard.
“If you want to go get married,” I said, “we can.”
“Somehow, I don’t think Julian would take that too well.”
“He won’t care,” I said. “Julian doesn’t want to get married.”
Alex stopped and looked down at me, and then, entirely because of the wine, I started crying. He cupped my face and angled it up to his. “Hey,” he said. “It’s all right, Poppy. You don’t really want to marry Julian, do you? You’re way too good for that guy. He doesn’t deserve you.”
I sniffed back my tears, but that just let more out. My voice came out as a squeak. “Only my parents are ever going to love me,” I said. “I’m going to die alone.” I knew how stupid and melodramatic it sounded, but with him, it was always so hard to rein myself in, to say anything but the absolute truth of how I felt. And worst of all, I hadn’t even known that was how I felt until this moment. Alex’s presence had a way of drawing the truth right to my surface.
He shook his head and pulled me into his chest, squeezing me, lifting me up into him like he planned to absorb me. “I love you,” he said, and kissed my head. “And if you want, we can die alone together.”
“I don’t even know if I want to get married,” I said, wiping the tears away with a little laugh. “I think I’m about to start my period or something.”
He stared down at me, face inscrutable for another beat. It didn’t make me feel x-rayed, like Julian’s eyes. It just made me feel seen.
“Too many wine,” I said, and he finally let a fraction of a smile slip over his lips and we went back to walking off the buzz.
We checked out bright and early from our B and B and called the Blue Heron Inn on speakerphone as we headed back toward San Francisco. It was the middle of the week, and they had plenty of rooms.
“Would you by chance be the Poppy my darling Mathilde said would be calling?” the lady on the phone asked.
Alex shot me a meaningful look, and I sighed heavily. “Yes, but here’s the thing. We told her we were newlyweds, but it was a joke. So we don’t, like, want any free stuff.”
The woman on the other end of the phone gave a hacking cough, which turned out to be laughter. “Oh, honey. Mathilde wasn’t born yesterday. People pull that trick all the time. She just liked you two.”
“We liked her too,” I said, grinning enormously over at Alex. He grinned enormously back.
“I don’t have the authority to give anyone a free stay,” the woman went on, “but I do have a couple year-round passes you can use to visit Muir Woods if you like.”
“That would be amazing,” I said.
And just like that we saved thirty bucks.
The place was adorable, a white Tudoresque cottage tucked down a narrow road. It had a shingled roof and warped windows lined with flower boxes and a chimney whose smoke curled romantically through the mist, windows softly aglow as we pulled into the parking lot.
For two days, we moved between the beach, the redwoods, the inn’s cozy library, and the dining room with its dark wooden tables and blazing fire. We played UNO and Hearts and something called Quiddler. We drank foamy beers and had big English breakfasts.
We took pictures together, but I didn’t post any of them. Maybe it was selfish, but I didn’t want twenty-five thousand people descending on this place. I wanted it to stay exactly as it was.
Our last night we booked a room at a modern hotel that belonged to the father of one of my followers. When I posted about the upcoming trip and asked for tips, she DMed me to offer the room for free.
I love your blog, she said, and I love reading about Particular Man Friend, which is what I call Alex when I mention him at all. I mostly try to leave him out of it, because he, like the Blue Heron Inn, isn’t something I want to share with thousands of people, but sometimes the things he says are too funny to leave out. Apparently he’s bled through more than I realized.
I decided to try harder to keep him out of it, but I accepted the free room, because Money. Also the hotel has free parking for guests, which, in San Francisco, is the equivalent of a hotel giving out free kidney transplants.
We dropped our bags as soon as we got into the city, then headed back out to make the most of our only day in downtown San Francisco. We left the car and took cabs.
First we walked the Golden Gate Bridge, which was amazing, but also colder than I’d expected and so windy we couldn’t hear each other. For probably ten minutes, we pretended to be having a conversation, waving our arms exaggeratedly and shouting nonsense at each other as we power walked over the crowded walkway.
It made me think about that water taxi ride in Vancouver, how Buck kept vaguely gesturing, talking at an easy clip like one of those orthodontists who can’t stop asking you open-ended questions while his hands are in your mouth.
Luckily the weather had decided to be sunny; otherwise, we would have probably gotten hypothermia on the bridge. We stopped halfway across, and I pretended to climb over the railing. Alex made his trademark grimace and shook his head. He grabbed my hands and tugged me away from the railing, leaning in close so I could hear him over the wind when he said against my ear, “That makes me feel like I’m going to have diarrhea.”
I broke into laughter and we kept walking, him on the inside, me closest to the railing, resisting a powerful urge to keep messing with him. Probably I’d accidentally actually fall over and not only die but traumatize poor Alex Nilsen, and that was the last thing I wanted.
At the far end of the bridge, there was a restaurant, the Round House Cafe, a round, windowed building. We ducked inside to drink a cup of coffee while we gave our ears a chance to stop ringing from the wind.
There were dozens of bookshops and vintage stores in San Francisco, but we decided two of each should be enough.
We took a cab to City Lights first, a bookstore and publisher in one that had been around since the height of the beatnik era. Neither of us was a big beat person, but the store was exactly the kind of old, meandering shop that Alex lived for. From there we stopped by a store called Second Chance Vintage, where I found a sequined bag from the forties for eighteen dollars.
After that, we’d planned to go to the Booksmith, over by the Haight-Ashbury, but by then, that big English breakfast from the Blue Heron Inn had worn off and the Round House coffee had us both feeling a little jittery.
“Guess we just have to come back,” I said to Alex as we left the shop in search of dinner.
“Guess so,” he agreed. “Maybe for our fiftieth anniversary.”
He smiled down at me, and my heart swelled until it felt so big and light my body could float away. “Just so you know,” I said, “I would marry you all over again, Alex Nilsen.”
&n
bsp; His head tipped sideways. He affected the Sad Puppy Face. “Is that just because you want more free wine?”
It was hard to choose a restaurant in a city with this much to offer, but we were too hungry to pore over the list I’d compiled, so we just went classic.
Farallon is not a cheap place, but on the second day of wine tasting, when we were both slaphappy, Alex had ordered another drink, crying, “When in Rome!” and ever since, whenever one of us had waffled about buying something, the other had insisted, “When in Rome!”
So far, this had been limited mostly to enormous ice cream cones and used paperback books, and lots of wine.
But Farallon is gorgeous, and a San Francisco staple, and if we were going to spend too much money, it might as well happen there. As soon as we walked into the building, with its opulent, rounded ceilings and gilded light fixtures and golden-edged booths, I said, “No regrets,” and forced Alex to high-five me.
“Giving high fives makes me feel like my insides have poison ivy,” he murmured.
“Might as well get that out of the way in case you’re about to find out you’re allergic to seafood.”
I was so enraptured by the over-the-top decor that I tripped three times on our way to the table. It was like being in the castle from The Little Mermaid, except not animated and everyone was fully clothed.
When our server left us with our menus, Alex did that old-man thing, where he opened it and reared back from the prices with widening eyes, like a startled horse.
“Really?” I said. “That bad?”
“It depends. Do you want more than one half-ounce of caviar?”
It wasn’t the kind of expensive that the upper middle class of Linfield would avoid, but for us, yes, it was expensive.
We split a two-person platter of oysters, crab, and shrimp along with one cocktail.
Our server hated us.
When we left, we walked past him, and I thought I heard Alex saying under his breath, “Sorry, sir.”
We went straight to a walk-up pizza place and scarfed down a whole large cheese pizza between the two of us.
“I ate way too much,” Alex said as we were walking along the street afterward. “It was like some kind of Midwestern demon possessed me while I was sitting in that restaurant and that tiny platter came out. I could hear my dad in my head saying, ‘Now, that’s not economical.’”
“I know,” I agreed. “Halfway through, I was just like, get me out of here, I need to get to a Costco and buy a five-dollar bag of noodles that could feed a family for weeks.”
“I think I’m bad at vacation,” Alex said. “All this living large makes me feel guilty.”
“You’re not bad at vacation,” I argued. “And pretty much everything makes you feel guilty, so don’t blame that on the living large.”
“Touché,” he agreed. “But still. You probably would’ve had more fun if you’d taken this trip with Julian.” He didn’t say it like a question, but the way his eyes darted over to me, then back to the sidewalk ahead of us, I could tell that it was one.
“I thought about inviting him,” I admitted.
“Yeah?” Alex pulled one hand from his pocket and smoothed his hair. For some reason, the streetlights passing over him on the dark sidewalk made him seem taller. Even slouching, he was towering over me. I guess he always was. I just didn’t always notice because he so often brought himself down to my level or pulled me up to his.
“Yeah.” I looped my arm through his elbow. “But I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad it’s just us.”
He looked down over his shoulder at me and slowed. I slowed beside him. “Are you going to break up with him?”
The question caught me off guard. The way he was looking at me, his eyebrows pinched and mouth small, caught me off guard too. My heart tripped over its next beat.
Yes, I thought right away, without any consideration.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
We kept walking. Up ahead we stumbled upon a bar that was Hemingway themed. That may seem rather ambiguous as a theme, but they pulled it off with their sleek dark wood and amber light and fishnets (not the stockings, actual nets for fish) suspended from the ceiling. The drinks were all rum cocktails, named after Hemingway books and short stories, and over the next two hours, Alex and I had three each, along with a shot. I kept saying, “We’re celebrating! Come on, Alex!” but really, I felt like there was something I was trying to forget.
And now, as we’re stumbling back into our hotel room, it occurs to me that I don’t remember what I was trying to forget, so I guess it worked.
I kick off my shoes and collapse onto the nearest bed while Alex disappears into the bathroom and comes back with two cups of water.
“Drink this,” he says. I grunt and try to swat his hand away. “Poppy,” he says more firmly, and I brattily push myself upright and accept the cup of water. He sits on the bed beside me until I’ve drained my glass, then goes back to refill both of them.
I’m not sure how many times he does this—I’m edging closer to sleep all the while. All I know is that eventually, he sets the glasses aside and starts to stand up, and from my half-dream, full-drunk state, I reach for his arm and say, “Don’t go.”
He settles back down on the bed and lies beside me. I fall asleep curled up against his side and when I wake up the next morning to my alarm going off, he’s already in the shower.
The humiliation at having made him sleep next to me is instantaneous and flaming hot. I know right then I can’t break up with Julian when I get home. I have to wait, long enough to be sure I’m not confused. Long enough that Alex won’t think the two events are connected.
They’re not, I think. I’m pretty sure they’re not.
16
This Summer
I FIND A TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR pharmacy in Palm Springs and drive toward it through the first soft rays of sunrise. Afterward, I get back to the apartment before most other stores have opened. By then the parking lot of the Desert Rose has started to bake again, and the cool hours of predawn shrink to a distant memory as I climb the steps, loaded with grocery bags.
“How are you doing?” I ask Alex as I shut the door behind me.
“Better.” He forces a smile. “Thanks.”
Liar. His pain is written all over his face. He’s worse at hiding that than his emotions. I put the two ice packs I bought into the freezer, then go to the bed and plug in the heating pad. “Lean forward,” I say, and Alex shifts enough for me to slide the pad down the stack of pillows where it can sit across his midback. I touch his shoulder, helping to slow his descent as he leans back. His skin is so warm. I’m sure the heating pad won’t be comfortable, but hopefully it will do the trick, warming the muscle until it relaxes.
In half an hour, we’ll switch to the ice pack to try to bring down any inflammation.
I may have read up on back spasms in the quiet, fluorescent-lit aisles of the drugstore.
“I’ve got some Icy Hot too,” I say. “Does that ever help?”
“Maybe,” he says.
“Well, it’s worth a try. I guess I should’ve thought of that before you leaned back and got comfortable again.”
“It’s fine,” he says, wincing. “I never really get comfortable when this happens. I just sort of wait for the medicine to knock me out, and by the time I wake up, I usually feel a lot better.”
I slide off the edge of the bed and gather the rest of the bags, carrying them back to him. “How long does it last?”
“Usually just a day if I stay still,” he says. “I’ll have to be careful tomorrow, but I’ll be able to move around. You should go do something you know I’d hate.” He forces another smile.
I ignore the comment and search through the bag until I find the Icy Hot. “Need help leaning forward again?”
“No, I’m good.” But the f
ace he makes suggests otherwise, so I shift beside him, take his shoulders in my hands, and slowly help him ease upright.
“I feel like you’re my nurse right now,” he says bitterly.
“Like, in a hot and sexy way?” I say, trying to lighten his mood.
“In a sad-old-man-who-can’t-take-care-of-himself way,” he says.
“You own a house,” I say. “I bet you even ripped the carpet out of the bathroom.”
“I did,” he agrees.
“Clearly you can take care of yourself,” I say. “I can’t even keep a houseplant alive.”
“That’s because you’re never home,” he says.
I twist the top off the Icy Hot and get a glob onto my fingers. “I don’t think so. I got these hardy things, pothos and ZZ plants and snake plants—they’re, like, the kinds of plants they stick in lightless malls for months at a time and they still don’t die. Then they move into my apartment and immediately give up on life.” I steady his rib cage with one hand so I don’t jostle him too much and, with my other, reach around to carefully massage the cream onto his back.
“Is that the right place?” I ask.
“A little higher and to the left. My left.”
“Here?” I look up at him, and he nods. I tear my gaze away and focus on his back, my fingers turning gentle circles over the spot.
“I hate that you have to do this,” he says, and my eyes wander back to his, which are low and serious beneath a furrowed brow.
My heart feels like it drops through my chest and soars back up. “Alex, has it ever occurred to you that I might like taking care of you?” I say. “I mean, obviously I don’t love that you’re in pain, and I hate that I let you sleep in that abominable chair, but if someone’s going to have to be your nurse, I’m honored it’s me.”
