People We Meet on Vacation

by Emily Henry

I go on loving him.

Maybe things can always get better between people who want to do a good job loving each other. Maybe that’s all it takes.

Suddenly we’re not kids anymore, and it feels like it happened overnight, so fast I didn’t have time to notice, to let go of everything that used to matter so much, to see that the old wounds that once felt like gut-level lacerations have faded to small white scars, mixed in among the stretch marks and sunspots and little divots where time has grazed against my body. I’ve put so much time and distance between myself and that lonely girl, and what does it matter? Here is a piece of my past, right in front of me, miles away from home. You can’t outrun yourself. Not your history, not your fears, not the parts of yourself you’re worried are wrong.

I didn’t know regular life could feel like this, like a vacation you don’t have to go home from.

Tomorrow we will love each other a little more, and the next day, and the next day. And even on those days when one or both of us is having a hard time, we’ll be here, where we are completely known, completely accepted, by the person whose every side we love wholeheartedly. I’m here with all the versions of him I’ve met over twelve years of vacations, and even if the point of life isn’t just being happy, right now, I am. Down to the bones.