You and Me on Vacation

by Emily Henry

ON VACATION, YOU can be anyone you want. Like a good book or an incredible outfit, being on vacation transports you into another version of yourself.

That crush of happiness, that feeling that this is what life’s about: being somewhere beautiful, with someone you love.

“I thought the whole thing about millennials was that we don’t get what we want. The houses, the jobs, the financial freedom. We just go to school forever, then bartend ’til we die.”

“she told me that sometimes, when you lose your happiness, it’s best to look for it the same way you’d look for anything else.”

“By retracing your steps,” Rachel says. “So, Poppy, all you have to do is think back and ask yourself, when was the last time you were truly happy?” The problem is, I don’t have to think back. Not at all.

As I follow him away from the crowded gate, I can’t stop staring at him. In awe that he’s here. In awe that he looks the same. Awed that this is real.

It’s easier than saying, I have missed you, beautiful smile. It’s so good to see you, strong arms and legs. Thank you, freakishly taut belly, for feeding this person I love so much.

When we were together, though, the game didn’t even exist. The rest of the world dissolved until I believed this was how things truly were. Like I’d never been that girl who’d felt entirely alone, misunderstood, and I’d always been this one: known, loved, wholly accepted by Alex Nilsen.

And I told him all of that, minus the part about feeling like I belonged with him, because even after two years of friendship, that seemed like a bit much.

That person is not going to be Alex. Actually, if I were to just choose someone, it probably would be. I’d be straight-up with him, explain what I wanted to do and why, and probably insist both of us sign something in blood saying it would only happen once and we would never speak of it again.

The whole ride home I want to say, I’d take it back. If it would fix this, I’d take it back.

I think about heartbreak. The full-fledged version of this thing I’m feeling right now, but sprawling out for days on end with no relief or escape. Five days of pretending to feel fine, while inside me something is tearing into smaller and smaller pieces until it’s nothing but scraps.

I want to tell him I’ll feel terrible if I leave. I want to say, All I wanted for this trip was to be anywhere with you all day or Who cares about seeing Palm Springs when it’s one hundred degrees out or I love you so much it sometimes hurts. Instead I say, “Okay.”

“I’m just gonna sleep when you leave,” he says. “I’ll be fine without you, Poppy.” This is the last thing I want to hear.

If you marry her, I think, I will lose all of you forever. And then, Probably no matter who you marry, I will have to lose you forever.

When I look back up at him, he’s beaming at me, and I think, I love you more now than I ever have. How is it possible that this keeps happening with him?

I’m crying because I’m relieved. Because I will never again feel as alone as I did during those long nights as a kid. As long as I have him, I will never be alone again.

I would rather have one tiny sliver of him forever than have all of him for just a moment and know I’d have to relinquish all of it when we were through. I could never lose Alex. I couldn’t. And so this is good, this peaceful, sparkless dance. This sparkless trip.

Teasing has always been a big part of our dynamic, and it’s felt like our thing. But there are things he won’t do in front of me now, parts of him he doesn’t trust with me, and I don’t like how that feels.

“I know. You asked me who I was, and—it was like the answer came out of nowhere. Sometimes it feels like I didn’t even exist before that. Like you invented me.”

“My point is, no one really knew me before you, Poppy. And even if … things change between us, you’ll never be alone, okay? I’ll always love you.”

It’s true, but not the full truth. There aren’t words vast or specific enough to capture the ecstasy and the ache and love and fear I feel just looking at him now.

and Alex Nilsen sweeps me up into his arms and carries me down a motherfucking mountain. No. I really could not have invented him.

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.

“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!”

He laughs, squeezes me to him, and right then, my chest aches with how much I love him. I guess I must say something like this aloud, because he murmurs, “That’s probably the fever talking.”

“Are you comfortable?” he asks thickly, like our lying like this could just be a matter of alignment, like we’re building up a narrative that protects us from the truth of what’s happening. That even through the fog of being sick, I can feel him wanting me like I want him.

I shake my head. “I just … never get to look at you like this.” The corner of his mouth twitches into a smile. “You could have always looked,” he says in a low voice. “Just so you know.” “Well, you could’ve too,” I say. “Trust me,” he says. “I did.”

He would or he wouldn’t, but in the end, there would be someone, and I didn’t think my heart could take it. So I said yes to Trey that night and we went to a bar with free Skee-Ball and hot dogs, and by the end of that night, I knew I could fall in love with him. Trey was to me what Sarah Torval was to Alex. Someone who fit. So I kept saying yes.

“I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone the way I love Alex,” I said, and then I thought, But maybe I won’t ever love anyone like I love Trey either.

And that’s how it is in real life too. You can love someone and still know the future you’d have with them wouldn’t work for you, or for them, or maybe even for both of you.

Alex bumps his leg into mine under the table, and when I glance at him, he’s not even looking my way. He’s just reminding me that he’s here, that nothing can really hurt me.

I know the feeling will pass, but right then I wish so badly that we were here alone. That we had yet to even meet Sarah and Trey. That we could hold on to each other as long and tight as I think we might need to.

We don’t so much as brush against each other until we hug goodbye. We never speak about what happened again. I go on loving him.

Years of undying love, occasional jealousy, missed opportunities, bad timing, other relationships, building sexual tension, a fight and the silence afterward, and the pain of living life without him. “Our Airbnb’s air-conditioning broke.”

The way he’d broken down once I finally gathered myself, hunched his head, and cried against me. I can’t keep doing this to you, I’d said. Needing you. He’d told me he needed me too, but with Trey and Sarah there, the bubble that always seemed to envelop us, separate us from the world, had popped, and I’d felt so deeply ashamed for wanting so much of him, and I could tell he had too.

“I’m not mad at you, Alex!” I cry. “I’m mad at myself! For not caring that I was getting in the way. For asking so much of you and—and keeping you from what you want.”

“Why did she break up with you?” I bite back. “Tell me it had nothing to do with me. That Sarah didn’t end things because of this—this thing between us. That since I’ve been out of your life, she hasn’t been reconsidering everything. Just tell me that, if that’s the truth, Alex. Tell me I’m not the reason you’re not married with kids right now, and everything else you wanted.”

He shakes his head. “I scared myself so much that I couldn’t tell you what had happened. It was terrifying to realize how much I loved you. And then you and Trey broke up, and––God, Poppy, of course all of it was because of you. Everything is because of you. Everything.”

“It’s not your job to make me happy, okay? You can’t make anyone happy. I’m happy just because you exist, and that’s as much of my happiness as you have control over.”

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

“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 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.

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.

I know that I wish I could see him every single day, and there’s no part of me that’s imagining what else could be out there, who I might miss out on knowing and loving if we were to really be together. I know that the thought of a life in Linfield terrifies the hell out of me. I know I worked so hard to be this person—independent, well traveled, successful—and I don’t know who I am if I let that go.

You can’t outrun yourself. Not your history, not your fears, not the parts of yourself you’re worried are wrong.

“I love you so much that I’ve spent twelve years putting as much distance between us as I could. I moved. I traveled. I dated other people. I talked about Sarah all the fucking time because I knew you had a crush on her, and it felt safer that way. Because the last person I could take being rejected by was you.

“You’re not a vacation, and you’re not the answer to my career crisis, but when I’m in a crisis or I’m sick or I’m sad, you’re the only thing I want. And when I’m happy, you make me so much happier. I still have a lot to figure out, but the one thing I know is, wherever you are, that’s where I belong. I’ll never belong anywhere like I belong with you. No matter what I’m feeling, I want you next to me. You’re home to me, Alex. And I think I’m that for you too.”

“I don’t want you to give anything up,” he says. “I want us to just make sense, and we don’t, Poppy. I can’t watch it fall apart again.”

I’m nodding now. For a long time. It’s like I can’t stop accepting it, over and over again. Because this is what it feels like: like I’ll have to spend the rest of my life accepting that Alex can’t love me the way I love him.