You and Me on Vacation

by Emily Henry

Touching is such second nature to me that once I accidentally hugged my dishwasher repairman when I let him out of the apartment, at which point he graciously told me he was married, and I congratulated him.

His control over his small smile wavers, and his grin fans wide. “I almost gave the woman next to me a heart attack during some turbulence,” he says. “I grabbed her hand by accident.”

I even convinced him to see a movie at the Cineplex, though he spent the whole time hovering over the seat, trying not to touch anything.

As soon as we lift off and the cabin lights dim, though, the exhaustion kicks in and I find myself being lulled to sleep, head resting on Alex’s shoulder, a small pool of drool accumulating on his shirt, only to jolt awake when the plane hits a pocket of air that makes it dip and Alex accidentally elbows me in the face in response. “Shit!” he gasps as I sit bolt upright, clutching my cheek. “Shit!” His white knuckles are clamped around the armrests, the rise and fall of his chest shallow. “Are you afraid of flying?” I ask. “No!” he whispers, considerate of the other sleeping passengers even in his panic. “I’m afraid of dying.” “You’re not going to die,” I promise. The jet settles into a rhythm, but the seat belt light comes on and Alex keeps gripping the armrests like someone’s flipped the plane upside down and started trying to shake us out. “That doesn’t seem good,” he says. “It sounded like something broke off the plane.” “That was the sound of your elbow smashing into my face.” “What?” He looks over. The two simultaneous expressions on his face are surprise and confusion. “You hit me in the face!” I tell him. “Oh, shit,” he says. “Sorry. Can I see?”

know you do. But my point is, this is better than that. Like, way better. And I’m here with you, and I’ve flown before, so if there’s a reason to panic, I’ll know. And I promise you, in that situation, I will panic and you’ll know something’s wrong. Until then, you can relax.”

legitimately gasp when I see the last shot and grab for his arm the same way he must’ve latched on to the octogenarian he rode next to on the flight.

THE DESERT ROSE apartment complex is a stucco building painted bubblegum pink, its name embossed in curling midcentury letters. A garden full of scrubby cacti and massive succulents winds around it, and through a white picket fence, we spot a sparkling teal pool, dotted with sun-browned bodies and ringed in palm trees and chaise lounges.

“Okay,” he says. “Time to panic. That’s fucking adorable.”

the deep blues and purples of twilight melt into the deeper blues and blacks of night, the starry sky seeming to unfurl over us like a great, light-pricked blanket.

Alex rolls his eyes again then closes them entirely. “Go to sleep, weirdo.”

I sit beside him and make a big show of trying to push him off, but he’s too solid for me to budge him. I twist around, bracing my feet against the floor, my knees against the edge of the bed thing, and my hands against his right hip, as I grit my teeth and try to push him off of it. “Stop it, you weirdo,” he says.

“Shit, shit, shit,” the robber is saying for some reason, and it sounds like he’s in pain. “The police are on their way!” I yelp—which is neither a true statement nor a premeditated one—and scramble to the edge of the bed to snap on the light. “What?” Alex hisses, eyes squinting against the sudden brightness.

He locked the door and wouldn’t let me in for fear of passing the strep along, so I started yelling, “I’m keeping the baby, okay?” through the doorway and he relented.

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.”

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.”

“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.

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.

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.

We eat fluffy, sugar-dusted beignets in an open-air café and spend hours picking our way through the knickknacks being sold outside the French Market (alligator-head key chains and silver rings set with moonstones), the freshly baked breads and chilled local produce and dense little cakes topped with kiwi and strawberries and bourbon-soaked cherries and pralines (in every imaginable manner) being sold in the booths inside.

We have to stand so close I have to tip my head all the way back to see him at all. He brushes my hair from my eyes and cups the back of my neck, as if to stabilize it.

“I can’t decide if you’re too easy to please or too hard,” he says, and swings one leg over, pulling himself onto the saddle next to mine. “Excuse me,” he says, to a burly bartender in a black leather vest. “Give me something that will make me forget this ever happened.”

they’ve got another think coming.”

“Cutie,” he says, grinning, the first time he does this, but it feels almost brotherly.

In the magic of the city and its music and smells and glimmering lights, I felt something I’d never felt with him before. Scarier than that, I’d known from the way Alex looked into my eyes, smoothed his hand down my arm, eased his cheek against mine, that he felt it too.

“I bet you’re all buttery and warm and sweet and perfect.” “Are you talking to me or the croissant?” he asks.

Later that day, while we’re sitting at lunch, something brilliant occurs to me. “Lita!” I cry, seemingly out of nowhere. “Bless you?” Alex says.

Several silent minutes into our drive back to the resort, with worried creases shooting up from the insides of his eyebrows, Alex says, “I hate thinking about you being lonely.”

The muscles along his jaw leap as he considers his next words, never one to blurt anything out without first weighing it. “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.”

“You have beautiful hands, Poppy.” He tries very, very hard—perhaps his hardest ever—not to smile, but slowly it happens anyway, and I break into a teary laugh.

“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.”

“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.”

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.

“You won’t lose me,” he says, voice dimmed by the rain. “As long as you want me, I’m here.”

“I always want you, Alex,” I whisper. “Always.”

It makes me feel fluttery and warm. It makes me think about him pulling the hood of my sweatshirt tight around my face and grinning at me through the chilly dark, murmuring under his breath: cutie.

I can’t wait to see you, I say, feeling suddenly like saying this very normal thing is bold, risky even. I know, he writes back, it’s all I can think about.

He gives a faint smile. “I grabbed some stuff on the way here so I wouldn’t have to go back out. Does soup sound okay?” “Why are you so nice?” I whisper. He studies me for a moment, then bends and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Think the tea will be ready by now.”

“No, Poppy,” he says. “I came here to be with you.”

“Hey.” He brushes the hair out of my face. “You know I don’t care about that, right? I only care about getting to spend time with you.” His thumb lightly traces the wet streak making its way down the side of my nose, heading it off just before it reaches my top lip. “I’m sorry you don’t feel well, and that you’re missing the ice hotel, but I’m okay right here.”

just nod and catch his bottom lip between my teeth again, and he turns me against the stucco wall, presses me back into it as he kisses me more urgently.

“I think about you all the time,” he says, and kisses me slowly, drags his mouth down my neck, goose bumps fluttering out in his wake. “I think about 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.”

“Stop being impatient,” he teases. “I’ve waited twelve years. I want this to last.”

Alex just sits up and draws me into his lap, holding me close as he pushes into me again slow, deep, hard, and says, “I love you too.”

My stomach flutters. “I love you,” I murmur, this time on purpose. “I love you so much, Poppy,” he says, and somehow, just the sound of his voice tips me over the edge and I’m coming undone. We are, together.

Now Alex leans to kiss me right over the heart, sending chills down my stomach and up my legs that his fingers trace over. “That would’ve happened if Nikolai had never been born. It just might not have happened on this balcony.”

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 can’t keep doing this to you,” I say when I’m finally out of tears. “Doing what?” he asks in a whisper. “I don’t know. Needing you.” He shakes his head against the side of mine. “I need you too, Poppy.” It’s then that I realize how thick and wet and trembling his voice is. When I pull back from him, I realize that he’s crying. I touch the side of his face. “Sorry,” he says, closing his eyes. “I just … I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.” And then I understand. To someone like Alex, who lost his mother how he did, pregnancy isn’t just a life-changing possibility. It’s a potential death sentence. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “God, I don’t know why I’m crying.” I pull his face down into my shoulder, and he cries some more, his huge shoulders heaving with it. In all the years we’ve been friends, he has probably seen me cry hundreds of times, but this is the first time he’s ever cried in front of me. “It’s okay,” I whisper to him, and then, as many times as it takes, “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay, Alex.” He buries his damp face in the side of my neck, his hands curling in tight against the small of my back as I run my fingers through his hair, his damp lips warm against my skin. 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.

He laughs, touches my waist. “Because looking at you makes me think about last night, and call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t want to lie by the hotel pool with a raging hard-on all day.”