People We Meet on Vacation

WE GET THE thermostat down to seventy-nine and set it for seventy-eight before we leave for a Mexican restaurant called Casa de Sam, which has a great score on Tripadvisor and only one dollar sign signifying its cost.

The food is great, but the air-conditioning is the real MVP of the night. Alex keeps leaning back in the booth, closing his eyes, and making contented sighs.

“Do you think Sam will let us sleep here?” I ask.

“We could try just hiding in the bathroom until closing,” Alex suggests.

“I’m afraid to drink too much and get heat exhaustion,” I say, taking another sip of the jalapeño margarita we ordered a pitcher of.

“I’m afraid to drink too little and not be able to knock myself out for an entire night.”

Even thinking about it has my neck crawling with sweat. “I’m sorry about the Airbnb,” I say. “None of the reviews mentioned faulty air-conditioning.” Though now I’m wondering how many people stayed there in the dead of summer.

“It’s not your fault,” Alex says. “I hold Nikolai fully responsible.”

I nod, and the silence unfurls awkwardly until I ask, “How’s your dad?”

“Yeah,” Alex says. “Good. He’s doing good. I told you about the bumper sticker?”

I smile. “You did.”

He gives a self-conscious laugh and thrusts his hand through his hair. “God, getting old is boring. My best party story is that my dad got a new bumper sticker.”

“Pretty great story,” I insist.

“You’re right.” His head tilts. “Next do you want to hear about my dishwasher?”

I gasp and clutch my heart. “You own your own dishwasher? Like, it’s in your name?”

“Um. They don’t typically register dishwashers to your name, but yes, I bought it. Right after I got the house.”

A nameless emotion stabs at my chest. “You . . . bought a house?”

“I didn’t tell you?”

I shake my head. Of course he didn’t tell me. When would he have told me? But still it hurts. Every single thing I’ve missed in the last two years hurts.

“My grandparents’ house,” he says. “After my grandma passed away. She left it to my dad, and he wanted to sell it, but it needs work he didn’t have the time or money for, so I’ve been living in it, fixing it up.”

“Betty?” I swallow the tangle of emotions rising in my throat. I only met Alex’s grandmother a few times, but I loved her. She was tinier than me and fierce, a lover of murder mysteries and crocheting, spicy food and modern art. She’d fallen in love with her priest and he’d left the priesthood to marry her (“And that’s how we became Protestants!”) and then (“eight months later,” she told me with a wink), Alex’s mother had been born with a head of thick dark hair just like hers and a “strong” nose like Alex’s grandfather, God rest his soul.

Her house was a funky quad-level from the early sixties. It had the original orange and yellow floral wallpaper in the living room, and she’d had to put ugly brown carpet over the hardwood and tile—even in the bathroom—after she slipped and broke her hip several years ago.

“Betty’s gone?” I whisper.

“It was peaceful,” Alex says, without looking at me. “You know, she was really, really old.” He’s started to fold our straw wrappers, precisely, into small squares. He shows no sign of emotion, but I know Betty was pretty much his favorite family member, maybe tied with David.

“God, I’m sorry.” I fight to keep my voice from shaking, but my emotion is rising, tidal-wave style. “Flannery O’Connor and Betty. I wish you’d told me.”

His hazel eyes drag up to mine. “I wasn’t sure you wanted to hear from me.”

I blink back tears, glance away, and pretend I’m sweeping my hair out of my face rather than wiping at my eyes. When I look back at him, his gaze is still fixed on me.

“I did,” I say. Shit, the tremors have arrived.

Even the mariachi band playing in the back room seems to quiet to a hum, so that it’s just us in this red booth with its colorful hand-carved table.

“Well,” Alex says softly. “Now I know.”

I want to ask if he wanted to talk to me in all that time, if he ever typed out messages that went unsent or thought about calling for so long he actually started to dial.

If he too feels like he lost two good years of his life when we stopped talking, and why he let it happen. I want him to say things can be how they were before, when there was nothing we couldn’t say to each other, and being together was as easy and natural as being alone, without any of the loneliness.

But then our server comes by with the check. I instinctively reach for it before Alex can.

“That’s not R+R’s card?” he says, like it’s a question.

Without actively deciding to, I lie. “They just reimburse us now.” My hands tingle, itch with discomfort over the deception, but it’s too late to take it back.

When we get outside, it’s dark and starry. The heat of the day has broken, and though it still must be in the upper seventies, it’s nothing compared to the one hundred and six we were dealing with earlier. There’s even a breeze. We’re silent as we cross the parking lot to the Aspire. There’s a heaviness between us now that we’ve brushed against what happened in Croatia.

I’d convinced myself we could leave it in the past, but now I realize that every time I learn something new from the last two years, it will press on that same raw spot in my heart.

It’s got to be having some kind of effect on him too, but he’s always been good at bottling up his feelings when he doesn’t want to share them.

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

When we reach the apartment, it is officially hotter inside than outside. We both beeline for the thermostat. “Eighty-one?” he says. “It went up again?”

I rub the bridge of my nose. A headache is starting behind my eyes, from heat or alcohol or stress, or all of it. “Okay. Okay. We’ve got to turn it back up to eighty, right? And let it drop to that before we lower it again?”

Alex stares at the thermostat like it just knocked an ice cream cone out of his hand. There are unintentional shades of Sad Puppy Face in his expression.

“One degree at a time. That’s what Nikolai said.”

He adjusts the temperature to eighty, and I slide open the door to the balcony.

But the wall of plastic sheeting is keeping out the fresh air. In the kitchenette, I rifle through drawers until I find a pair of scissors.

“What are you doing?” Alex asks, following me onto the balcony.

“Just the bare fucking minimum,” I say, slicing the scissors into the middle of the plastic.

“Oooh, Nikolai’s gonna be maaaaad at you,” Alex teases.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

“I’m not too happy with him either,” I say, and cut a long flap in the plastic, pulling it aside and loosely knotting it, so there’s a gap for air to flow through.

“He’s going to sue us,” he deadpans.

“Come at me, Nicky.”

Alex chuckles, and after a few seconds of silence, I say, “Tomorrow I was thinking we could check out the art museum and go take the tramway. The view’s supposed to be amazing.”

Alex nods. “Sounds good.”

Again we lapse into quiet. It’s only ten thirty, but things are just awkward enough that I think calling it a day might be our best bet. “Do you need into the bathroom before . . .”

“No,” Alex says. “Go ahead. I’m gonna catch up on some emails.”

I haven’t checked my work email since I got here, and I’ve also let a few messages from Rachel sit, along with the always overflowing group text between my brothers and me. It’s largely just the two of them brainstorming ideas that won’t go anywhere. Last I checked in, they were concocting a board game called War on Christmas and demanding I contribute puns.

So at least I’ll have something to do while lying on the chair bed, wide awake.

Headache still building, I tug my hair into my go-to stubby ponytail and cross the scuffed wooden floors to the space-age bathroom. In its strange blue light, I wash my face, but rather than applying any of the fancy moisturizers or serums that Rachel is constantly offloading on me, I splash my face with cold water when I’m done, rub some on my temples and my neck.

In the mirror, my reflection looks as wretchedly stressed as I feel. I need to turn this around and remind Alex how things used to be, and I only have five days left to do it, the last three of which will be peppered with wedding festivities.

Tomorrow has to be amazing. I need to be Fun Poppy, not Weird, Hurt Poppy. Then Alex will loosen up, and everything will smooth out. I change into a pair of silky pajama shorts and a tank top, brush my teeth, then step back into the living space to find that Alex has turned off all the lights except the lamp beside the bed, and he’s lying on the chair mattress in a pair of exercise shorts and a T-shirt, his same book from earlier in hand.

I happen to know that Alex Nilsen has always slept shirtless, even when the temperatures are not this absurdly high, but that’s neither here nor there because the point is, I’m supposed to take the foldout chair.

“Get out of my bed!” I say.

“You paid,” he says. “You get the bed.”

“R+R paid.” Just like that, I’m deeper into the lie. It’s not like it’s a harmful one, but still.

“I want the chair,” Alex says. “How often does a grown man get to sleep on a fuzzy foldout chair, Poppy?”

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.

“I’m not the weirdo.” I turn sideways, try to use my hip and side body to force him off. “You’re the one who’s trying to steal my one joy in life, this weird bed.”

In that moment, when all my weight is pretty much focused in my hip, he stops resisting and scoots sideways a little, and somehow I tumble halfway onto the chair bed and halfway onto his chest, forcefully knocking his book onto the floor in the process. He laughs, and I laugh too, but I’m also feeling kind of tingly and heavy and, frankly, turned on, lying on him like this.

Worst of all, I can’t seem to make myself move. His arm has come around my back, loose over the curve at its base, and when his laughter settles, I look up into his eyes, my chin resting on his chest. “You tricked me,” I hum. “I bet you didn’t even have emails to respond to.”

“For all you know, I don’t even have an email account,” he teases. “Are you mad?”

“Furious.”

His laugh shivers through me, goose bumps chasing it down my spine, and the heat of the apartment sinks into my skin, gathers between my legs.

“I’d forgive you eventually,” I say. “I’m very forgiving.”

“You are,” he agrees. “I’ve always liked that about you.”

His hand just barely brushes the skin between the bottom of my tank top and the top of my shorts, and I shift against him, feeling as if we could melt into each other.

What am I doing?

I sit up suddenly and take my hair down just to put it back up. “You’re sure you’re cool to sleep on the chair bed?” My voice comes out too high.

“Of course. Yeah.”

I stand and pad over to the bed. “Okay, cool, then . . . good night.”

I turn off the light and climb onto bed. Onto, not into, because it’s way too hot for blankets.