You and Me on Vacation

by Emily Henry

“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.”

“I don’t want to have millennial ennui,” I say. “It makes me feel like an asshole to not just be content with my amazing life.” Rachel snorts again. “Contentment is a lie invented by capitalism,”

“I read this article about it. Apparently the completion of long-term goals often leads to depression. It’s the journey, not the destination, babe, and whatever the fuck else those throw pillows say.”

Whereas my mom used to write little notes on my bathroom mirror in dry-erase marker: Good morning to that beautiful smile. Hello, strong arms and legs. Have a great day, lovely belly that feeds my darling daughter. Sometimes I still hear those words when I get out of the shower and stand in front of the mirror, combing my hair: Good morning, beautiful smile. Hello, strong arms and legs. Have a great day, lovely belly that feeds me.

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.

“I don’t think I knew I was lonely until I met you.” He shakes his head again. “At home, after my mom died and my dad fell apart, I just wanted everyone to be okay. I wanted to be exactly what Dad needed, and exactly what my little brothers needed, and at school, I wanted to be who everyone wanted, so I tried to be calm and responsible and steady, and I think I was nineteen years old the first time it occurred to me that maybe that wasn’t how some people lived. That maybe I just was someone, beyond who I tried to be.

I want not to be alone, and for every breath not to take an immense effort.

You are not the master of your immune system and I can assure you that when your male colleagues have to cancel a trip, they show no indication that they feel they have personally wronged me. Don’t encourage people to blame you for something beyond your control.

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.

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.

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 want this,” I say, but even as I say it, a part of me has no idea what that means.

I feel insufficient as an adult. I look around at the office and see everyone typing, taking calls, making bookings, editing documents, and I know they’re all dealing with at least as much as I am, which only makes me feel worse about how hard everything feels to me.

Sometimes I scrape myself off my sofa, stuff a frozen meal in the microwave, and as I wait for the timer to go off, I just think, I will have to do this again tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Every day for the rest of my life, I’m going to have to figure out what to eat, and make it for myself, no matter how bad I feel or tired I am, or how horrible the pounding in my head is. Even if I have a one-hundred-and-two-degree fever, I will have to pull myself up and make a very mediocre meal to go on living.

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 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.

We’re so old, I think. When did we get so old? 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.

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

This, I realize, is what I’ve been waiting for for years. The moment when I finally know I’ve won: I got out. I made something of myself. I found a place I belonged. I proved I wasn’t broken

“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.

“You terrified me. It doesn’t make any sense how quick my mind works with you. One second we’re kissing and the next, I’m thinking about what our grandkids might be named. It doesn’t make sense.

“I’m afraid of loving you for our entire lives, and then having to say goodbye. I’m afraid of you dying, and the world feeling useless. I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep getting out of bed if you’re gone, and if we had kids, they’d have these horrible lives where their amazing mom is gone, and their dad can’t look at them.”