People We Meet on Vacation

by Emily Henry

  “I’m not kidding, I can’t put any weight on it.”

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says. “I’m going to pick you up, and I’m going to carry you—very slowly—down the trail. And I’m probably going to have to stop a lot and set you down, and you’re not allowed to call me Seabiscuit, or scream Faster! Faster! in my ear.”

  I laugh into his chest, nod against him, leaving wet marks behind on his T-shirt.

  “And if I find out you faked this whole thing just to see if I would carry you half a mile down a mountain,” he says, “I’m going to be really annoyed.”

  “Scale of one to ten,” I say, leaning back to look into his face.

  “Seven at least,” he says.

  “You are so, so nice,” I say.

  “You mean buttery and warm and perfect,” he teases, widening his stance. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” I confirm, and Alex Nilsen sweeps me up into his arms and carries me down a motherfucking mountain.

  No. I really could not have invented him.

  22

  This Summer

  FULLY RECHARGED AFTER two water bottles and forty minutes in a zoo gift shop full of stuffed camels, we head to our next destination.

  The Cabazon Dinosaurs are pretty much exactly what they sound like: two big-ass dinosaur sculptures on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere, California.

  A theme-park sculptor built the steel monsters hoping to drive business to his roadside diner. Since he died, the property’s been sold to a group that put in a creationist museum and gift shop inside the tail of one of the dinosaurs.

  It’s the kind of place you stop at because you’re already driving past. It’s also the kind of place you drive to, out of your way, when you’re trying to fill every second of your day.

  “Well,” Alex says when we get out of the car. The dusty T. rex and brontosaurus tower over us, a few spiky palm trees and scraggly bushes dotting the sand beneath them. Time and sunlight have drained the dinos of almost any color. They look thirsty, like they’ve been shambling through this place and its harsh sunlight for millennia.

  “Well, indeed,” I agree.

  “Guess we should get some pictures?” Alex says.

  “Definitely.”

  He takes his phone out and waits for me to strike some poses in front of the dinosaurs. After a couple tame Instagram-appropriate pictures, I start jumping and flailing my arms, hoping to make him laugh.

  He smiles but still looks a little peaked, and I decide it’s best if we get into the shade. We amble through the grounds, take a couple more photos closer up and with the smaller dinosaurs that have been added within the scrubby brush surrounding the two main offerings. Then we climb the steps to poke around the gift shop.

  “You can hardly tell we’re inside a dinosaur,” Alex jokingly complains.

  “Right? Where are the giant vertebrae? Where are the blood vessels and tail muscles?”

  “This is not getting a favorable Yelp review,” Alex mutters, and I laugh, but he doesn’t join in. I’m suddenly aware of how pathetic the AC is in this shop. Nothing compared to the zoo gift shop. We might as well be back in Nikolai’s hellhole.

  “Should we get out of here?” I ask.

  “God, yes,” Alex says, and sets down the dinosaur figurine he’s been holding.

  I check the time on my phone. It’s only four p.m. and we’ve burned through everything I had planned for today. I open my notes app and scan the list for something else to do.

  “Okay,” I say, trying to mask my anxiety. “I’ve got it. Come on.”

  The Moorten Botanical Garden. It’s outside, but it’s sure to have a better cooling system than the gift shop inside a steel dinosaur.

  Only I don’t think to check the hours and we drive all the way there only to find it closed. “Closes at one during the summer?” I read the sign incredulously.

  “Do you think it has anything to do with the dangerously high temperature?” Alex says.

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

  “Maybe we should just go home,” Alex says. “See if Nikolai has fixed the AC.”

  “Not yet,” I say, desperate. “There’s something else I wanted to do.”

  “Fine,” Alex says. Back at the car, I head him off at the driver’s-side door, and he asks, “What are you doing?”

  “I have to drive for this part,” I say.

  He arches an eyebrow but gets into the passenger seat. I open my GPS and enter the first address on the list for the “self-guided architecture tour of Palm Springs.”

  “It’s . . . a hotel,” Alex says, confused, when we pull up to the funky angular building with its flagstone siding and orange-outlined sign.

  “The Del Marcos Hotel,” I say.

  “Is there . . . a steel dinosaur inside?” he asks.

  I frown. “I don’t think so. But this whole neighborhood, the Tennis Club neighborhood, is supposed to be full of all these ridiculously amazing buildings.”

  “Ah,” he says, like that’s all he can muster in the way of enthusiasm.

  My stomach drops as I punch in the next address. We drive around for two hours, stop for a cheap dinner (which we drag out for another hour because Cold Air), and when we return to the car, Alex cuts me off at the driver’s-side door. “Poppy,” he says pleadingly.

  “Alex,” I say.

  “You can drive if you want,” he says, “but I’m getting a little carsick, and I don’t know if I can take seeing any more strangers’ mansions today.”

  “But you love architecture,” I say pathetically.

  His brow furrows, his eyes narrow. “I . . . what?”

  “In New Orleans,” I say, “you just walked around pointing at, like, windows the whole time. I thought you loved this kind of thing.”

  “Pointing at windows?”

  I throw my arms out to my sides. “I don’t know! You just, like . . . fucking loved looking at buildings!”

  He lets out a fatigued laugh. “I believe you,” he says. “Maybe I do love architecture. I don’t know. I’m just . . . really tired and hot.”

  I scramble to get my phone out of my purse. There’s still no word from Nikolai. We cannot go back to that apartment. “What about the air museum?”

  When I look up, he’s studying me, head tilted and eyes still narrow. He runs a hapless hand through his hair and glances away for a second, sets his hand on his hip. “It’s, like, seven o’clock, Poppy,” he says. “I don’t think it’s going to be open.”

  I sigh, deflating. “You’re right.” I cross back to the passenger seat and flop down, feeling defeated as Alex starts the car.

  Fifteen miles down the road, we get a flat tire.

  “Oh, god,” I groan as Alex pulls off to the side of the road.

  “There’s probably a spare,” he says.

  “And you know how to put that on?” I say.

  “Yes. I know how to put that on.”

  “Mr. Homeowner,” I say, trying to sound playful. Turns out I too am deeply grumpy and that’s how my voice portrays me. Alex ignores the comment and gets out of the car.

  “Do you need help?” I ask.

  “Might need you to shine a light,” he says. “It’s starting to get dark.”

  I follow him to the back of the car. He pops the hatch door, moves some of the mats around, and swears. “No spare.”

  “This car aspires to destroy our lives,” I say, and kick the side of the car. “Shit, I’m going to have to buy this girl a new tire, aren’t I?”

  Alex sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. “We’ll split it.”

  “No, that’s not what I was . . . I wasn’t saying that.”

  “I know,” Alex says, irritated. “But I’m not letting you pay for the whole thing.”

  “What do we even do
?”

  “We call a towing company,” he says. “We Uber home, and we mess with it tomorrow.”

  So that’s what we do: We call the towing company. Sit in silence on the tailgate while we wait for them to come. Ride back to the shop in the front of the tow truck with a man named Stan who has a naked lady tattooed on each arm. Sign some papers, call an Uber. Stand outside while we wait for the Uber to come.

  Get into a car with a lady named Marla who Alex whispers under his breath “looks exactly like Delallo,” and at least that’s something to laugh about.

  And then Marla’s app messes up and she gets lost.

  And our seventeen-minute drive becomes a twenty-nine-minute drive before our eyes. And neither of us is laughing. Neither of us is saying anything, making any sound.

  Finally, we’re almost to the Desert Rose. It’s pretty much pitch-black outside, and I’m sure the stars overhead would be amazing if we weren’t trapped in the back of Marla’s Kia Rio inhaling lungful after lungful of the sugar cookie Bath & Body Works spray she seems to have doused the entire car in.

  When traffic suddenly stops half a mile from the Desert Rose, I almost cry.

  “Must be an accident blocking the road,” Marla says. “No reason on heaven or earth traffic should be this backed up.”

  “Do you want to walk?” Alex asks me.

  “Why the hell not,” I say, and we get out of Marla’s car, watch her turn the Kia around in a fifteen-point turn, and start down the dark shoulder of the road toward home.

  “I’m getting in that pool tonight,” Alex says.

  “It’s probably closed,” I grunt.

  “I’ll climb the fence,” Alex says.

  A fizzy, tired chuckle moves through my chest. “Okay, I’m in.”

  23

  Five Summers Ago

  OUR LAST NIGHT on Sanibel Island, I lie awake, listening to the rain thrum against the roof, replaying the week as if watching through a sheen that’s thick and hazy and ever rippling, trying to capture this one split second that seems to wink out of view every time I reach for it.

  I see the stormy beaches. The Twilight Zone marathon Alex and I snooze through on the couch. The seafood place where he’d finally given me the grisly details of his and Sarah’s breakup—that she’d told him their relationship was about as exciting as the library where they’d met, before dumping him and leaving for a three-week yoga retreat. If she wants excitement, I’d said, I’m happy to key her car. My memory skips forward, to the bar called BAR, with its sticky floors and thatched fans, where I step out of the bathroom and see him at the bar, reading a book, and feel so much love I could split open, and how after I tried to jar him from his post-Sarah sadness with an over-the-top “Hey, tiger!”

  Then there comes the moment that we ran through the downpour from BAR to our car, the ones spent listening to the windshield wipers squeak across the glass as we sliced through the torrential rain back to our rain-soaked bungalow.

  I’m getting closer to that moment, that one I keep reaching for and coming up empty-handed, as if it were nothing but a bit of reflected light, dancing on the floor.

  I see Alex asking to take a picture together, surprising me with the flash on the count of two instead of three. The both of us choking over laughter, moaning at the heinousness of our picture, arguing whether to delete it, Alex promising I don’t look anything like that, me telling him the same.

  Then he says, “Next year let’s go somewhere cold.”

  I say okay, that we will.

  And here it comes, the moment that keeps slipping through my fingers, like it’s the game-changing detail in an instant replay I can’t seem to pause or slow down.

  We are just looking at each other. There are no hard edges to grab hold of, no distinct markers on this moment’s beginning or end, nothing to separate it from the millions just like it.

  But this, this is the moment I first think it.

  I am in love with you.

  The thought is terrifying, probably not even true. A dangerous idea to entertain. I release my hold on it, watch it slip away.

  But there are points in the center of my palms that burn, scorched, proof I once held it there.

  24

  This Summer

  THE APARTMENT HAS become the seventh ring of hell, and there’s no sign Nikolai has been there. In the bathroom, I change into my bikini and an oversized T-shirt, then fire off another angry text demanding an update.

  Alex knocks on the door when he’s finished changing in the living room, and we skulk down to the pool, towels in hand. We sneak over to check the gate first. “Locked,” Alex confirms, but I’ve just noticed the bigger problem.

  “What. The. Hell.”

  He looks up and sees it: the empty concrete basin of the pool.

  Behind us, someone gasps. “Oh, hon, I told you it was them!”

  Alex and I spin around as a middle-aged leathery-tanned couple comes bounding up. A redheaded woman in sparkly cork heels and white capris beside a thick-necked man with a shaved head and pair of sunglasses balanced on the back of his head.

  “You called it, babe,” the man says.

  “The Newwwwwlyweds!” the woman sings, and grabs me in a hug. “Why didn’t y’all tell us you were headed to the Springs?”

  That’s when it clicks. Hubby and Wifey from the cab ride out of LAX.

  “Wow,” Alex says. “Hi. How’s it going?”

  The woman’s neon-orange fingernails release me, and she waves a hand. “Oh, you know. Was going good until this nonsense. With the pool.”

  Hubby grunts agreement.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Some kid went and diarrhea’d in it! A lot, I guess, because they had to go and drain the whole thing. They say it should be up and running again tomorrow!” She frowns. “Of course, tomorrow, we’re off to Joshua Tree.”

  “Oh, cool!” I say. It’s a strain to sound bright and chipper when really, my soul is quietly shriveling within the empty shell of my body.

  “Won a free stay there.” She winks at me. “I’m good luck.”

  “Sure are,” Hubby says.

  “I’m not just saying that!” she goes on. “We won the lottery a few years back—not one of those quadrillion-dollar ones but a nice little chunk, and I swear, ever since then it’s like I win every raffle, sweepstakes, and contest I so much as look at!”

  “Amazing,” Alex says. His soul, it sounds like, has also shriveled.

  “Anyway! We’ll leave you two lovebirds to do your bidding.” She winks again. Or maybe her false eyelashes are just sticking together. Hard to say. “Just couldn’t believe what weird luck it was that we were staying in the same place!”

  “Luck,” Alex says. He sounds like he’s in a bad-luck-induced trance. “Yeah.”

  “It’s a tiny world, ain’t it?” Wifey says.

  “It is,” I agree.

  “Anyway, y’all enjoy the rest of your trip!” She squeezes one of each of our shoulders and Hubby nods, and then they’re off and we’re left standing in front of the empty pool.

  After three silent seconds, I say, “I’ll try to call Nikolai again.”

  Alex says nothing. We go back upstairs. It’s ninety degrees. Not metaphorically. It’s literally ninety degrees. We don’t turn on any lights except the one in the bathroom, like even one more illuminated bulb could get us to an even hundred degrees.

  Alex stands in the middle of the room, looking miserable. It’s too hot to sit on anything, to touch anything. The air feels different, stiff as a board. I dial Nikolai repeatedly as I pace.

  The fourth time he rejects the call, I let out a scream and stomp back to the kitchenette for the scissors.

  “What are you doing?” Alex asks. I just storm past to the balcony and stab the plastic sheeting. “That’s not going to help,” he says.
“It’s as hot out there as it is in here tonight.”

  But I can’t be reasoned with. I’m hacking away at the plastic, cutting down giant strip after giant, tattered strip and tossing them onto the ground. Finally half of the balcony is open to the night air, but Alex was right. It doesn’t matter.

  It is so hot I could melt. I march back inside and splash my face with cold water.

  “Poppy,” Alex says, “I think we should check into a hotel.”

  I shake my head, too frustrated to speak.

  “We have to,” he says.

  “That’s not how this is supposed to go,” I bite out, a sudden throb going through my eye.

  “What are you talking about?” he says.

  “We’re supposed to do this how we used to!” I say. “We’re supposed to be keeping things cheap and—and rolling with the punches.”

  “We have rolled with a lot of punches,” Alex insists.

  “Hotels cost money!” I say. “And we’re already going to have to drop two hundred to get that horrible car a new tire!”

  “You know what costs money?” he says. “Hospitals! We’re gonna die if we stay here.”

  “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go!” I half shout, a broken record.

  “It’s how it’s going!” he fires back.

  “I just wanted it to be how it used to be!” I say.

  “It’s never going to be like that!” he snaps. “We can’t go back to that, okay? Things are different, and we can’t change that, so just stop! Stop trying to force this friendship back to what it used to be—it’s not going to happen! We’re different now, and you have to stop pretending we aren’t!”

  His voice breaks off, eyes dark, jaw taut.

  There are tears blurring my vision, and my chest feels like it’s being sawed in half as we stand there in the half dark, facing off in silence, breathing hard.

  Something disrupts the silence. A low, distant rumble, and then, a quiet tap-tap-tapping.

  “Do you hear that?” Alex’s voice is a dim rasp.

  I give one uncertain nod, and then another rumble shivers out. Our eyes find each other’s, wide and desperate. We run to the edge of the balcony.