People We Meet on Vacation

I’M HEAVING. WHEEZING. Splintering as I cross the parking lot.

One hand clamped over my mouth as sobs snap through me, slice and stab in every sharp little corner of my lungs.

It’s both hard to keep moving and impossible to stop. I’m power walking to my parents’ car, then leaning against it, head bowed, horrible sounds coming out of me, snot dripping down my face, the blue of the sky and its fluffy cumulous clouds and the rustling trees alongside the parking lot all turning into a summery blur, the whole world melting into a swirl of color.

And then there’s a voice, spread thin by the breeze and the distance. It’s coming from behind me, obviously it’s his, and I don’t want to look.

I think one more look at him might be the tipping point, the thing that breaks my heart forever, but he’s saying my name.

“Poppy!” Once. Then again. “Poppy, wait.”

I shove all the emotions down. Not to ignore them. Not to deny them, because it almost feels good to feel something so purely, to know without question what it is my body’s experiencing. But because these are my feelings, not his. Not something for him to swoop in and shoulder, like he does almost compulsively.

I wipe my hands across my face and make myself breathe normally as I listen to his steps scuffing over asphalt. I turn as he’s slowing from a jog, taking his last steps at a determined but casual pace until he stops, closing me in between the van and himself.

There’s a lull before he speaks, a pause that’s just for our breathing.

After another second of silence, he says, “I started seeing a therapist too.”Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

Despite myself, I give a phlegmy laugh at the idea that he’s chased me down just to say this. “That’s good.” I wipe at my face with the heel of my hand.

“She says . . .” He rakes his hands through his hair. “She thinks I’m afraid to be happy.”

Why is he telling me this? one voice says in my head.

I hope he never stops talking, another says. Maybe we can keep talking forever. Maybe this conversation can span our entire lives, the way our text messages and phone calls seemed to for all those years.

I clear my throat. “Are you?”

He looks at me for a long moment, then gives the smallest shake of his head. “No,” he says. “I know if I got on a plane with you back to New York, I would be so fucking happy. For as long as you’d have me, I’d be happy.”

Again that kaleidoscopic swirl of colors blurs across my vision. I blink the tears back.

“And I want that so badly. I do regret every chance I missed to tell you how I felt, all the times I convinced myself I’d lose you if you really knew, or that we were too different. I want to just be happy with you. But I’m afraid of what comes after.” His voice cracks.

“I’m afraid of you realizing I bore you. Or meeting someone else. Or being unhappy and staying. And . . .” His voice catches. “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.”

His hand passes over his eyes, catching some of the moisture there.

“Alex,” I whisper. I don’t know how to comfort him. I can’t take any of his past pain away or promise it won’t happen again. All I can do is tell him the truth, as I’ve seen it. As I know it: “You already went through that. You lost someone you loved, and you kept getting out of bed. You were there for the people in your life, and you love them, and they love you back. You’ve got all of that in your life still. None of it went away. It didn’t end just because you lost one person.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m just . . .” His voice draws taut, and his huge shoulders shrug. “Scared.”

I reach out for his hands instinctively, and he lets me draw him closer, folding his fingers up between my palms. “Then we’ve found something else to agree on besides hating it when people call boats ‘she,’” I whisper. “It’s fucking terrifying to be in love with each other.”

He sniffs through a laugh, cups my jaw in his hands, and presses his forehead against mine, his eyes closing as his breath syncs with mine, our chests rising and falling like we’re two waves in the same body of water. “I never want to live without this,” he whispers, and I knot my fists into his shirt as if to keep him from slipping through my fingers.

The corners of his mouth twist as he breathes out, “Tiny fighter.”

His eyes slit open, and the flutter in my chest is so strong it almost hurts. I love him so much. I love him more than I did yesterday, and I already know tomorrow I’ll love him even more, because every piece of him he gives me is another to fall in love with.

He locks his arms tight around my back, his damp eyes so clear and open I feel like I could dive into him, swim through his thoughts, float in the brain I love more than any other on the planet.

His hands move into my hair, smoothing it against my neck, his eyes moving back and forth over my face with such beautifully calm Alexian purpose. “You are, you know.”

“A fighter?” I say.

“My home,” he says, and kisses me.

We are, I think. We’re home.