People We Meet on Vacation

by Emily Henry

  I must be making a face, because he sighs and says, “It’s really that bad?”

  “No?” I say.

  “Is that a question?” he asks.

  “No!” I say. “I mean, no, it’s not bad. It’s kind of cute, but, Alex, what are you supposed to talk about when you go out with a girl who’s already read all this?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably I’d just ask them questions about themselves.”

  “That feels like a job interview,” I say. “I mean, yes, it is a rare and wonderful thing when your Tinder date asks you a single question about yourself, but you can’t just not talk about yourself at all.”

  He rubs at the line in his forehead. “God, I really hate having to do this. Why’s it so hard to meet people in real life?”

  “It might be easier . . . in another city,” I say pointedly.

  He glances askance at me and rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Okay, what would you write, if you were a guy, trying to woo yourself?”

  “Well, I’m different,” I say. “What you’ve got here would totally work on me.”

  He laughs. “Don’t be mean.”

  “I’m not,” I say. “You sound like a sexy, child-rearing robot. Like the maid from The Jetsons but with abs.”

  “Poppyyyyy,” he groan-laughs, throwing his forearm over his face.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll take a crack at it.” I take his phone again and erase what he wrote, committing it to memory as well as I can in case he wants to restore it. I think for a minute, then type and pass the phone back to him.

  He studies the screen for a long time, then reads aloud, “‘I have a full-time job and an actual bed frame. My house isn’t full of Tarantino posters, and I text back within a couple hours. Also I hate the saxophone’?”

  “Oh, did I put a question mark?” I ask, leaning over his shoulder to see. “That’s supposed to be a period.”

  “It’s a period,” he says. “I just wasn’t sure if you were serious.”

  “Of course I’m serious!”

  “‘I have an actual bed frame’?” he says again.

  “It shows that you’re responsible,” I say, “and that you’re funny.”

  “It actually shows that you’re funny,” Alex says.

  “But you’re funny too,” I say. “You’re just overthinking this.”

  “You really think women will want to go out with me based on a picture and the fact that I have a bed frame.”

  “Oh, Alex,” I say. “I thought you said you knew how grim it was out there.”

  “All I’m saying is, I walk around all day with this face and a job and a bed frame, and none of that has gotten me very far.”

  “Yeah, that’s because you’re intimidating,” I say, saving the bio and going back to the slideshow of women’s accounts.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Alex says, and I look up at him.

  “Yes, Alex,” I say. “That is it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember Clarissa? My roommate at U of Chicago?”

  “The trust-fund hippie?” he says.

  “What about Isabel, my sophomore-year roommate? Or my friend Jaclyn from the communications department?”

  “Yes, Poppy, I remember your friends. It wasn’t twenty years ago.”

  “You know what those three people had in common?” I say. “They all had crushes on you. All of them.”

  He blushes. “You’re full of shit.”

  “No,” I say. “I’m not. Clarissa and Isabel were both constantly trying to flirt with you, and Jaclyn’s ‘communication skills’ just utterly failed whenever you were in the room.”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know that?” he demands.

  “Body language, prolonged eye contact,” I say, “finding every excuse to touch you, making overt sexual innuendos, asking you for help with papers.”

  “We always did that over email,” Alex says, like he’s found a hole in my logic.

  “Alex,” I say calmly. “Whose idea was that?”

  The look of victory leaches from his face. “Wait. Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” I say. “So with that in mind, would you like to take your new photo and bio for a spin?”

  He looks aghast. “I’m not going to go on a date during our trip, Poppy.”

  “Damn right, you’re not!” I say. “But you can at least try it out. Besides, I want to see what kinds of girls you swipe right for.”

  “Nuns,” he says, “and aid workers.”

  “Wow, you’re such a good person,” I say in a breathy Marilyn Monroe voice. “Please allow me to show my appreciation with a—”

  “Okay, okay,” he says. “Don’t give yourself an asthma attack. I’ll swipe, just go gently on me, Poppy.”

  I bump my shoulder lightly against his. “Always.”

  “Never,” he says.

  I frown. “Please call me on it if I ever make you feel bad.”

  “You don’t,” he says. “It’s fine.”

  “I know I joke rough sometimes. But I never want to hurt you. Not ever.”

  He doesn’t smile, just gazes back steadily like he’s taking the time to let the words soak in. “I know that.”

  “Okay, good.” I nod, train my eyes on his phone screen. “Ooh, what about her?”

  The girl on-screen is tanned and pretty, bending at the knee and blowing a kiss at the camera. “No kissy faces,” he says, and swipes her off the screen.

  “Fair enough.”

  A girl with a lip ring and dark eye makeup appears in her place. Her bio reads, All metal, all the time.

  “That’s a lot of metal,” Alex says, and swipes her away too.

  Next up, a girl in a green leprechaun hat, grinning in a green tank top, holding up a green beer. She has big boobs and a bigger smile.

  “Oh, a nice Irish girl,” I joke.

  Alex vanishes that one without comment.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with her?” I ask. “She was gorgeous.”

  “Not my type,” he says.

  “Hokay. Moving on.”

  He rejects a rock climber, a Hooters waitress, a painter, and a hip-hop dancer with a body to rival Alex’s own.

  “Alex,” I say. “I’m beginning to think the problem lies not with the bio but with the biographer.”

  “They’re just not my type,” he says. “And I’m definitely not theirs.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Look,” he says. “Here. She’s cute.”

  “Oh my god, you’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “What?” he says. “You don’t think she’s pretty?”

  The strawberry blonde smiles up at me from behind a polished mahogany desk. Her hair is clipped back into a half ponytail and she’s wearing a navy blue blazer. According to her bio, she’s a graphic designer who loves yoga, sunshine, and cupcakes. “Alex,” I say. “She’s Sarah.”

  He rears back. “This girl looks nothing like Sarah.”

  I snort. “I didn’t say she looks like Sarah”—though she does—“I said she is Sarah.”

  “Sarah’s a teacher, not a graphic designer,” Alex says. “She’s taller than this girl and her hair is darker and her favorite dessert is cheesecake, not cupcakes.”

  “They dress exactly the same. They smile exactly the same. Why do all guys want girls who look like they’re carved out of soap?”

  “What are you talking about?” Alex says.

  “I mean, you had no interest in all those cool, sexy girls and then you see this wannabe kindergarten teacher and she’s the first person you even consider. It’s just . . . typical.”

  “She’s not a kindergarten teacher,” he says. “What do you have against this girl?”

  “Nothing!” I say, but it doesn’t
sound like it’s true, even to me. I sound annoyed. I open my mouth, hoping to walk my reaction back a little, but that’s not what happens at all. “It’s not the girl. It’s—it’s guys. You all think you want a sexy, independent hip-hop dancer, but when that person appears in front of you, when she’s a real person, she’s too much and you’re not interested and you’ll go for the cute kindergarten teacher in the turtleneck every time.”

  “Why do you keep saying she’s a kindergarten teacher?” Alex cries.

  “Because she’s Sarah,” I blurt out.

  “I don’t want to date Sarah, okay?” he says. “And also Sarah teaches ninth grade, not kindergarten. And also,” he goes on, picking up steam, “you talk a big game, Poppy, but I guarantee that when you’re on Tinder, you’re swiping right for firefighters and ER surgeons and professional fucking skateboarders, so no, I don’t feel bad for homing in on women who look like they’re probably sweet—and to you, yes, maybe a little bit boring—because it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that maybe women like you think I’m boring.”

  “Fuck that,” I say.

  “What?” he says.

  “I said, fuck that!” I repeat. “I don’t think you’re boring, so that whole argument fails.”

  “We’re friends,” he says. “You wouldn’t swipe right on me.”

  “I would too,” I say.

  “You would not,” he argues.

  And here’s my chance to let it go, but I’m still too fired up, too annoyed to let him think he’s right about this.

  “I. Would.”

  “Well, I would for you too,” he retorts, like somehow this is all some sort of argument.

  “Don’t say something you don’t mean,” I warn. “I wouldn’t be wearing a blazer or sitting behind a desk, smiling.”

  His lips press closed. His jaw muscles bounce as he swallows. “Okay, show me.”

  I open my own Tinder app and hand my phone over so he can see the picture. I’m smiling sleepily, dressed like an alien in a silver dress and face paint with aluminum antennae hot-glued to my headband. Halloween, obviously. Or wait, was it Rachel’s X-Files-themed birthday party?

  Alex considers the photo seriously, then scrolls down to read my bio. After a minute, he hands my phone back to me and looks me dead in the eye. “I would.”

  My whole body tingles with pins and needles. “Oh,” I say, then manage a small “okay.”

  “So,” he says, “are you done being mad at me?”

  I try to say something, but my tongue feels too heavy. My whole body feels heavy, especially where my hip is touching his. So I just nod.

  Thank God for his back spasm, I think. Otherwise I’m not sure what would happen next.

  Alex studies me for a few seconds, then reaches for the forgotten laptop. His voice comes out thick. “What do you want to watch?”

  19

  Six Summers Ago

  ALEX AND I were both pretty strapped for cash when the resort in Vail, Colorado, reached out to offer me a free stay.

  At that point, whether the trip would happen was up in the air.

  For one thing, when Guillermo broke up with me for a new hostess in his restaurant (a waifish blue-eyed girl almost fresh off the plane from Nebraska)—six weeks after I took the plunge and moved into his apartment—I had to scramble to find a new place to live.

  Had to take an apartment on the high end of my price range.

  Had to pay for a U-Haul for the second time in two months.

  Had to buy new furniture to replace the stuff that had become redundant and thus been discarded—Gui already had nicer versions of my things: sofa, mattress, Danish-look kitchen table. We’d kept my dresser, because the leg on his was broken, and my bedside table, because he only had the one, but other than that, pretty much everything we’d kept was his.

  The breakup came just after we’d gone to Linfield for Mom’s birthday.

  For weeks beforehand, I’d debated whether to warn Gui what to expect.

  For example, the Beverly Hillbillies–style junkyard that was our front lawn. Or Mom’s Museum to Our Childhood, as me and my brothers called the house itself. The baked goods my mother would pile up around the kitchen the whole time we were there, often with a frosting so thick and sweet it made non-Wrights cough as they ate, or the fact that our garage was riddled with things like once-used duct tape Dad was sure he could repurpose. Or that we’d be expected to play a days-spanning board game we’d invented as kids based on Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

  That my parents had recently adopted three senior cats, one of whom was incontinent to the point of having to wear a diaper.

  Or that there was a decent chance he’d hear my parents having sex, because our house had thin walls, and as previously stated, the Wrights are a loud clan.

  Or that there’d be a New Talent Show at the end of the weekend, where everyone was expected to perform some new feat they’d only started learning at the start of the visit.

  (Last time I’d been home, Prince’s talent had been having us call out the name of any movie and trying to connect it back to Keanu Reeves within six degrees.)

  So I should’ve warned Guillermo what he was walking into, definitely, but doing so would’ve felt like treason. Like I was saying there was something wrong with them. And sure, they were loud and messy, but they were also amazing and kind and funny, and I hated myself for even considering being embarrassed by them.

  Gui would love them, I told myself. Gui loved me, and these were the people who’d made me.

  At the end of our first night there, we shut ourselves into my childhood bedroom and he said, “I think I understand you better now than ever before.”

  His voice was as tender and warm as ever, but instead of love, it sounded like sympathy.

  “I get why you had to flee to New York,” he said. “It must’ve been so hard for you here.”

  My stomach sunk and my heart squeezed painfully, but I didn’t correct him. Again, I just hated myself for being embarrassed.

  Because I had fled to New York, but I hadn’t fled my family, and if I’d kept them separate from the rest of my life, it was only to protect them from judgment, and myself from this familiar feeling of rejection.

  The rest of the trip was uncomfortable. Gui was kind to my family—he was always kind—but I saw every interaction they had through a lens of condescension and pity after that.

  I tried to forget the trip had happened. We were happy together, in our real life, in New York. So what if he didn’t understand my family? He loved me.

  A few weeks later, we went to a dinner party at his friend’s brownstone, someone he’d known from boarding school, a guy with a trust fund and a Damien Hirst painting hanging over the dining room table. I knew this—would never forget it—because when someone said the name, unrelated to the painting, I said, “Who?” and laughter followed.

  They weren’t laughing at me; they genuinely thought I was making a joke.

  Four days after that, Guillermo ended our relationship. “We’re just too different,” he said. “We got swept up in our chemistry, but long term, we want different things.”

  I’m not saying he dumped me for not knowing who Damien Hirst was. But I’m not not saying that either.

  When I moved out of the apartment, I stole one of his fancy cooking knives.

  I could’ve taken them all, but my mild form of revenge was imagining him looking everywhere for it, trying to figure out if he took it with him to a dinner party or it fell into the gap between his enormous refrigerator and the kitchen island.

  Frankly, I wanted the knife to haunt him.

  Not in a My-Ex-Is-Going-to-Go-All-Glenn-Close-in-Fatal-Attraction way, but in a Something-About-This-Missing-Knife-Seems-to-Be-Conjuring-a-Strong-Metaphor-and-I-Can’t-Figure-Out-What-It’s-Saying way.

  I started feeling guilt
y after a week in my new apartment—once the sobbing wore off—and considered mailing the knife back but thought that might send the wrong message. I imagined Gui showing up to the police department with the package, and decided I’d just let him buy a new knife.

  I thought about selling the stolen one online, and worried the anonymous buyer would turn out to be him, so I just kept it and resumed my sobbing until I was done threeish weeks later.

  The point is, breakups suck. Breakups between cohabitating partners in overpriced cities suck a little extra, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to afford a summer trip this year.

  And then there was the matter of Sarah Torval.

  Adorable, willowy yet athletic, clean-faced, brown-eyeliner-wearing Sarah Torval.

  Who Alex has been seriously dating for nine months. After their first chance encounter when Alex was visiting friends in Chicago, their texting had quickly evolved into phone calls, and then another visit. After that they’d gotten serious fast, and after six months long distance, she’d taken a teaching job and moved to Indiana to be with him while he finished his MFA. She’s happy to stay there while he works toward his doctorate, and will probably follow him wherever he lands afterward.

  Which would make me happy if not for my increasing suspicion that she hates me.

  Whenever she posts pictures of herself holding Alex’s brand-new baby niece with captions like family time, or this little love bug, I like the post and comment, but she refuses to follow me back. I even unfollowed and refollowed her once, in case she hadn’t noticed me the first time.

  “I think she feels kind of weird about the trip,” Alex admits on one of our (now fewer and farther between) calls. I’m pretty sure he only calls me from the car, when he’s on his way to or from the gym. I want to tell him that calling me only when she’s not around probably isn’t helping.

  But the truth is, I don’t want to talk to him while anyone else is around, so instead this is what has become of our friendship. Fifteen-minute calls every couple weeks, no texting, no messaging, hardly any emailing except the occasional one-liner with a picture of the tiny black cat he found in the dumpster behind his apartment complex.