People We Meet on Vacation

SO I GUESS we’re not talking about what happened on Nikolai’s balcony, and that needs to be fine. When I wake up in our Technicolor hotel room of the Larrea Palm Springs, Alex’s bed is empty and made, and a handwritten note on the desk reads, RUNNING—BE BACK SOON. P.S. ALREADY PICKED UP THE CAR FROM THE SHOP.

It’s not like I expected a bunch of hugs and kisses and pledges of love, but he could’ve spared a Last night was great. Or maybe a cheery exclamation point.

Also, how is he running in this heat? There’s just a lot going on in that very short note and my paranoia helpfully suggests that he’s running to clear his head after what happened.

In Croatia, he’d freaked out. We both had. But that had happened at the tail end of the trip, when we could retreat to our separate corners of the country afterward. This time, we’ve got a bachelor party, rehearsal dinner, and wedding to get through.

Still, I promised I wasn’t going to let this mess us up, and I meant it.

I need to keep things light, to do my part in preventing a postcoital freak-out.

I think about texting Rachel for advice, or just to have someone to squeal with, but the truth is, I don’t want to tell anyone about this. I want it to be something only between Alex and me, like so much of the world is when we’re together. I toss my phone back onto the bed, grab a pen from my purse, and add to the bottom of Alex’s note, At pool—meet me there?

When he shows up, he’s still dressed in his running clothes and carrying a small brown bag and a paper coffee cup, and the sight of all this combined makes me feel tingly and eager.

“Cinnamon roll,” he says, passing me the bag, then the cup. “Latte. And the Aspire’s out in the lot with its flashy new tire.”

I wave my coffee cup in a vague circle in front of him. “Angel. How much was the tire?”

“Don’t remember,” he says. “I’m gonna go shower.”

“Before you . . . come sweat by the pool?”

“Before I come sit in that pool for the entire day.”

It’s not much of an exaggeration. We lounge to our hearts’ content. We relax. We alternate between sun and shade. We order drinks and nachos from the poolside bar and reapply sunblock every hour, and still make it back to the room with plenty of time to get ready for David’s bachelor party. He and Tham decided to do separate ones (though both are coed), and Alex jokes that David chose this plan to force a popularity contest.

“No one is more popular than your brother,” I say.

“You haven’t met Tham yet,” he says, then walks into the bathroom and starts the water.

“Are you seriously showering again?”

“Rinsing,” he says.

“Remember in elementary school how kids used to stand behind you in line for the water fountain and say ‘Save some for the whales’?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Well, save some for the whales, buddy!”

“You have to be nice to me,” he says. “I brought you a cinnamon roll.”Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“Buttery and warm and perfect,” I say, and he blushes as he shuts the bathroom door.

I really have no idea what’s going on. For example: why didn’t we just stay in the room and make out all day?

I slip into a seventies lime-green halter jumpsuit and start working on my hair at the mirror outside the bathroom, and a few minutes later, Alex emerges already dressed and almost ready to go.

“How long do you need?” he asks, looking over my shoulder to meet my eyes in the mirror, his wet hair sticking up in every direction.

I shrug. “Just long enough to spray myself with adhesive and roll in a vat of glitter.”

“So ten minutes?” he guesses.

I nod, set my curling wand down. “Are you sure you want me to come?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s your brother’s bachelor party,” I say.

“And?”

“And you haven’t seen him in months, and maybe you don’t want me tagging along.”

“You’re not tagging along,” he says. “You’re invited. Also there will probably be male strippers and I know how you love a man in uniform.”

“I was invited by David,” I say. “If you wanted alone time with him . . .”

“There are, like, fifty people coming tonight,” he says. “I’ll be lucky if I make eye contact with David.”

“But your other brothers will be there too, right?”

“They’re not coming,” he says. “They’re not even flying out until tomorrow.”

“Okay, but what about all the hot desert broads?” I say.

“Hot desert broads,” he repeats.

“You’re going to be the straight-man belle of the ball.”

His head tilts. “So you want me to go make out with some hot desert broads.”

“Not particularly, but I figure you should know that you still have that option. I mean, just because we . . .”

His brow crinkles. “What are you doing, Poppy?”

I absently touch my hair. “I was trying for a beehive, but I think I’m going to have to settle for a bouffant.”

“No, I mean . . .” He trails off. “Do you regret last night?”

“No!” I say, my face going red-hot. “Do you?”

“Not at all,” he says.

I turn to face him head-on instead of through the mirror. “Are you sure? Because you’ve barely looked at me today.”

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.”

“Really?” You’d think he just recited a love poem to me by the sound of my voice.

He presses me back onto the edge of the sink as he kisses me once, slow and heavy, his hands circling my neck to find the clasp of the jumpsuit’s halter. It falls loose, and I arch back as he slides the fabric down to my waist. He cups my jaw and draws my mouth back to his, and I wrap my legs around him as our kisses deepen, his free hand moving down my bare chest.

“Do you remember when I was sick?” I whisper against his ear.

His hips grind against mine, and his voice comes out low and husky: “Of course.”

“I wanted you so badly that night,” I admit, untucking his shirt.

“That whole week,” he says, “I kept waking up on the verge of coming. If you hadn’t been sick . . .”

I lift myself against him, and his mouth sinks into the side of my neck as I work at the buttons on his shirt. “In Vail when you carried me down that mountain . . .”

“God, Poppy,” he says. “I spent so much time trying not to want you.” He lifts me off the sink and carries me to the bed.

“And not nearly enough time kissing me,” I say, his laugh rattling against my ear as he lays us down. “How long do we have?”

He kisses the very center of my chest. “We can be late.”

“How late?”

“As late as it takes.”

•   •   •

“OH. MY. GOD,” I say as we step out onto the driveway of the midcentury mansion, with its Googie-style swooped roof. “This is amazing. He has this whole place rented out?”

“Did I forget to mention that Tham is Very Fancy?”

“May have,” I say. “Is it too late for me to marry him?”

“Well, there are two days until the wedding and he’s gay,” he says. “So I really don’t see why not.”

I laugh, and he catches my hand, slips it into his own. Somehow walking into a bachelor party holding Alex Nilsen’s hand is more surreal than every surreal thing that just happened at the hotel. It makes me feel buzzy and giddy and intoxicated in the best possible way.

We follow the music up the driveway, each holding one of the bottles of wine we picked out on the way here, and step into the cool dark of the foyer.

Alex said there’d be fifty people. Making our way through the house, I’d guess there are at least a hundred, leaning on walls and sitting on the backs of fabulously gilded furniture. The back wall of the house is entirely glass and overlooks a massive pool, lit up purple and green, with a waterfall flowing into it on one side. People lounge on inflatable flamingos and swans in various states of undress: women and drag queens in full-length, sparkly gowns; men in swim trunks and thongs; people in angel wings and mermaid costumes alongside Assumed Linfield People in suits and peplum dresses.

“Wow,” Alex says. “I haven’t been to a party this out of control since, like, high school.”

“You and I had very different high school experiences,” I say.

Just then an Adonis of a man with a charmingly boyish grin and a mop of golden waves spots us and springs out of the egg-shaped hanging chair where he was sitting.

“Alex! Poppy!” David comes toward us with arms open and a lightly drunk sheen in his hazel eyes. He hugs Alex first, then grabs the sides of my face and plants sloppy kisses on both my cheeks. “I’m so happy you’re—” His eyes fall to our clasped hands and he claps his together. “Holding hands!”

“You’re welcome,” I say, and he chortles, clamps a hand on each of our shoulders.

“You need some water?” Alex asks him, big-brother mode activated.

“No, Dad,” he says. “You need some booze?”

“Yes!” I say, and David waves his hand to a server I had not noticed in the corner largely because she’s spray-painted gold.

“Wow,” Alex says, accepting two flutes of champagne from the faux statue’s tray. “Thanks for . . . Wow.”

She retreats, goes stone-still again.

“So what’s Tham doing tonight?” I ask. “A bonfire of dollar bills on a solid-gold yacht?”

“I really hate to tell you this, Pop,” David says, “but a golden yacht would sink. Trust me. We tried. Do you two want shots?”

“Yes,” I say at the same time Alex says, “No.”

As if by magic, shots are already being handed to us, vodka and Goldschläger, with its little gold shavings floating in the glasses. The three of us clink them together and down the spicy-sweet liquid in one gulp.

Alex coughs. “I hate that.”

David slaps him on the back. “I’m so glad you’re here, dude.”

“Of course I am. Your little brothers only get married . . . three times.”

“And your favorite one only gets married once,” David says. “Fingers crossed.”

“I hear you and Tham are amazing together,” I say. “And that he is Very Fancy.”

“The fanciest,” David agrees. “He’s a director. We met on set.”

“On set!” I cry. “Listen to you!”

“I know,” he says. “I’m an insufferable L.A. person.”

“No, no, definitely not.”

Someone shouts for David then from the pool, and he gives her a one minute signal, then faces us again. “Make yourselves at home—not our home, obviously,” he adds to Alex, “but, like, a super-loud, super-fun, super-gay home with a dance floor out back—which I expect to see you both on shortly.”

“Stop trying to make Poppy fall in love with you,” Alex says.

“Yeah, you really don’t need to waste your time,” I say. “I’m already sold.”

David grabs my head and smooches the side of it again, then does the same thing to Alex and dances over to the girl in the pool pretending to reel him in with an invisible fishing rod.

“Sometimes I worry he takes himself too seriously,” Alex says flatly, and when a laugh rockets out of me, the corner of his mouth twitches in and out of a smile. We stand there grinning for a few more seconds, our locked hands swinging back and forth between us.

“I thought you didn’t like holding hands,” I say.

“And you said you did,” he says.

“So, what? I just get whatever I want now?” I tease.

His smile flickers back into place, calm and restrained. “Yes, Poppy,” he says. “You get whatever you want now. Is that a problem?”

“What if I want you to have what you want?”

He arches an eyebrow. “Are you just saying that because you know what I’m going to say, and you want to make fun of me for it?”

“No?” I say. “Why? What are you going to say?”

Our hands go still between us. “I have what I want, Poppy.”

My heart flutters, and I pull my hand from his, coil it around his waist, and tip my head back to peer into his face. “I am resisting the urge to PDA all over you right now, Alex Nilsen.”

He bends his neck and kisses me so long that a few people start cheering. When we pull apart, he’s pink cheeked and bashful. “Damn,” he says. “I feel like a horny teenager.”

“Maybe if we utilize the Jäger Bomb station in the backyard,” I say, “we’ll go back to feeling like demure, mature thirty-year-olds.”

“That sounds realistic,” Alex says, tugging me toward the back patio. “I’m in.”

There’s a bar out back and a food truck serving fish tacos parked on the grass. Behind that, a garden stretches out like something from a Jane Austen novel, right here in the middle of the desert.

“Probably not great for conservation,” Alex remarks in true grandpa form.

“Probably not,” I agree. “But possibly great for conversation.”

“True,” he says. “When all else fails, you can always engage a stranger in thoughtful small talk about the dying earth.”

At some point we find ourselves sitting on the edge of the pool, pants and jumpsuit legs rolled up and legs dangling in the warm water, and that’s when we hear David shouting excitedly from within a crowd, “Where’s my brother? He’s got to be part of this.”

“Sounds like you’re needed.”

Alex sighs. David spots him and jogs over. “I need you to do this game.”

“Drinking game?” I guess.

“Not for Alex,” David says. “I bet he won’t have to drink one single time. It’s a David Trivia game. You in?”

Alex winces. “Do you want me to be?”

David crosses his arms. “As the groom, I demand it.”

“You really are never allowed to divorce Tham,” Alex says, lumbering to his feet.

“For a multitude of reasons,” David says, “I agree.”

Alex walks over to the long, candlelit table where the game is starting up, but David lingers by me, watching him go. “He seems good,” he says.

“Yeah,” I agree. “I think he is.”

David’s gaze drops to me, and he lowers himself onto the slick side of the pool, slipping his legs into the water. “So,” he says. “How did this happen?”

“This?”

He lifts his brow skeptically. “This.”

“Um.” I try to think of how to explain it. 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.”

David stares at me for a few seconds, then drops his face into his hands, chuckling. “Damn,” he says, straightening up. “I have to say I’m relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“Yeah.” David shrugs. “You know. It’s like . . . now that I’m getting married—now that I know I’m staying in L.A.—I guess I’ve just been worried about him. Back in Ohio. On his own.”

“I think he likes Linfield,” I say. “I don’t think he’s there out of necessity. Besides, I wouldn’t say he’s on his own. Your whole family’s there. All the nieces and nephew.”

“That’s my point.” David looks toward the trivia game at the table, watches as the three other contestants down shots of something caramel colored and Alex sips on a cup of water victoriously. “He’s kind of an empty nester now.” His mouth twists into a frown that’s so like his brother’s that I feel a quick, painful impulse to kiss it away.

When I think about what David’s actually saying, the pain gets worse, harboring itself behind my rib cage like a little red knot. “You think he feels like that?”

“Like he raised us? Put all his emotional energy into making sure the three of us were okay? Driving Betty around to doctor appointments, packing our fucking school lunches and getting Dad out of bed when he had one of his episodes, and then, all of a sudden, we all went off and got married and started having kids of our own, while he’s left to make sure Dad’s all right?” Stony serious, David looks back at me. “No. Alex would never think like that. But I think he’s been lonely. I mean . . . we all thought he was going to marry Sarah, and then . . .”

“Yeah.” I lift my legs out of the pool and cross them in front of me.

“I mean, he had the ring and everything,” David goes on, and my stomach drops. “He was supposed to propose, and then—she was just gone, and . . .” He trails off when he sees the look on my face.

“Don’t get me wrong, Poppy.” He sets his hand on mine. “I always thought it should be you two. But Sarah was great, and they loved each other, and—I just want him to be happy. I want him to stop worrying about other people and have something that’s just his, you know?”

“Yeah.” I can barely get the word out. I’m still sweating, but my insides have swiftly gone cold, because all I can think is, He was going to marry her.

She said it in Tuscany, and after a few weeks, I brushed it off as an offhand comment, but now I can’t help but see everything that happened on that trip in a different light.

It was three years ago, but I still see it so vividly: Alex and me out on the terrace minutes before the sun rose, my arms crossed tight, nails bitten to the quick. Pregnancy tests lined up on the stone wall and Alex’s watch chirping at us that it was time to find out what the future held.

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.

Trey seems like a great guy, he’d said, and that was as close to saying We have to stop this as we could get. Saying that would’ve been an admission of guilt. Even if we never kissed, never said the words outright, we were keeping whole parts of our hearts for each other only.

Alex had wanted to marry Sarah, and I know now that I’d kept him from being able to. She’d broken up with him a second time after Tuscany, and even if she never knew exactly what had transpired, I was sure it had left a mark on him, shifted things between them for the worse.

If I had been pregnant, if I’d decided to have the baby, I know beyond any doubt Alex would have been there for me, given up anything he had just to help.

Sarah, like always, would’ve had to deal with the reality of me or move on. I can’t help but wonder if I’d forced her to that point. If our friendship had cost him the woman he wanted to marry. I feel sick, ashamed by the thought. Guilty over how I ignored my more complicated feelings for him so I could justify staying in his life.

It’s one thing when your boyfriend’s rowdy brothers, or his widower father, need him.

But I was just some other woman, whose needs he’d always put first to the detriment of his own wants and happiness. And this week, I’d stumbled into this selfishly, because that was my default with him. To ask for what I wanted, to let him give it to me even if it wasn’t necessarily the best thing for him.

I’m no longer giddy or buzzy or anything but sick to my stomach.

David sets his hand on my shoulder and smiles at me, jarring me out of the kaleidoscope of complicated, painful feelings pinwheeling through me. “I’m glad he has you now.”

“Yeah,” I whisper, but a vicious little voice inside me says, No, you have him.