by Emily Henry
Alex smiles at the steering wheel, shaking his head. “And you’re some girl from Linfield who sings . . .” He thinks for a second. “‘Dancing Queen’ at karaoke?”
“Only time will tell,” I say. “I’ve never been to karaoke.”
“Seriously?” He looks over at me, broad, unfiltered surprise on his face.
“Aren’t most karaoke bars twenty-one and up?” I say.
“Not all bars card,” he says. “We should go. Sometime this summer.”
“Okay,” I say, as surprised by the invitation as by my accepting it. “That’d be fun.”
“Okay,” he says. “Cool.”
So now we have two sets of plans.
I guess that makes us friends. Sort of?
A car flies up behind us, pressing in close. Alex, seemingly unbothered, puts on his signal to move out of his way. Every time I’ve checked the speedometer, he’s been holding steady precisely at the speed limit, and that’s not about to change for one measly tailgater.
I should’ve guessed what a cautious driver he’d be. Then again, sometimes when you guess about people, you end up very wrong.
As the sticky, glare-streaked remains of Chicago shrink behind us and the thirsty fields of Indiana spring up on either side of us, my shuffling driving playlist moves nonsensically between Beyoncé and Neil Young and Sheryl Crow and LCD Soundsystem.
“You really do like everything,” Alex teases.
“Except running, Linfield, and khakis,” I say.
He keeps his window up, I keep mine down, my hair cycloning around my head as we fly over flat country roads, the wind so loud I can barely make out Alex’s pitchy rendition of Heart’s “Alone” until he gets to the soaring chorus and we belt it out together in horrendous matching falsettos, arms flying, faces contorted, and ancient station wagon speakers buzzing.
In that moment, he is so dramatic, so ardent, so absurd, it’s like I’m looking at an entirely separate person from the mild-mannered boy I met beneath the globe lights during O-Week.
Maybe, I think, Quiet Alex is like a coat that he puts on before he walks out the door.
Maybe this is Naked Alex.
Okay, I’ll think of a better name for it. The point is, I’m starting to like this one.
“What about traveling?” I ask in the lull between songs.
“What about it?” he says.
“Love or hate?”
His mouth presses into an even line as he considers. “Hard to say,” he replies. “I’ve never really been anywhere. Read about a lot of places, just haven’t seen any of them yet.”
“Me neither,” I say. “Not yet.”
He thinks for another moment. “Love,” he says. “I’m guessing love.”
“Yeah.” I nod. “Me too.”
6
This Summer
I MARCH INTO SWAPNA’S office the next morning, feeling wired despite the late night I had texting Alex. I plop her drink, an iced Americano, down on her desk and she looks up, startled, from the layout proofs she’s approving for the upcoming fall issue.
“Palm Springs,” I say.
For a second, her surprise stays fixed on her face, then the corners of her razor-edged lips curl into a smile. She sits back in her chair, folding her perfectly toned arms across her tailored black dress, the overhead light catching her engagement ring so that the behemoth ruby set at its center winks fantastically.
“Palm Springs,” she repeats. “It’s evergreen.” She thinks for a second, then waves her hand. “I mean, it’s a desert, of course, but as far as R+R, there’s hardly any place more restful or relaxing in the continental United States.”
“Exactly,” I say, as if that had been what I was thinking all along. In reality, my choice has nothing to do with what R+R might like and everything to do with David Nilsen, youngest brother of Alex and a man set to marry the love of his life this time next week.
In Palm Springs, California.
It was a hiccup I hadn’t expected—that Alex already had a trip scheduled next week: his brother’s destination wedding. I’d been crushed when he told me, but I said I understood, asked him to congratulate David, and set my phone down, expecting the conversation to end.
But it hadn’t, and after two more hours of texting, I’d taken a deep breath and pitched the idea of him stretching his three-day trip to spend a few extra days on an R+R-funded vacation with me. He’d not only agreed but invited me to stick around for the wedding after.
It was all coming together.
“Palm Springs,” Swapna says again, her eyes glossing as she slips into her mind and tries the idea out. She breaks suddenly from her reverie and reaches for her keyboard. She types for a minute, then scratches her chin as she reads something on her screen. “Of course, we’d have to wait to use that for the winter issue. The summer’s low season.”
“But that’s why it’s perfect,” I say, spitballing and a little panicked. “There’s all kinds of stuff going on in the Springs in the summer, and it’s less crowded and cheaper. This could be a good way to kind of get back to my roots—how to do this trip on the cheap, you know?”
Swapna’s lips purse thoughtfully. “But our brand is aspirational.”
“And Palm Springs is peak aspiration,” I say. “We’ll give our readers the vision—then show them how they can have it.”
Swapna’s dark eyes light up as she considers this, and my stomach lifts hopefully.
Then she blinks and turns back to her computer screen. “No.”
“What?” I say, not even on purpose, just because my brain can’t compute that this is happening. There is no way that this, my job, is where the train goes off the rails.
Swapna gives an apologetic sigh and leans over her gleaming glass desk. “Look, Poppy, I appreciate the thought that went into this, but it’s just not R+R. It will translate as brand confusion.”
“Brand confusion,” I say, apparently still too stunned to come up with my own words.
“I thought about it all weekend, and I’m sending you to Santorini.” She looks back to the layout proofs on her desk, her face shifting gears from Empathetic but Professional Manager Swapna to Concentrating Magazine Genius Swapna. She’s moved on, the signal so strong that I find myself standing even though, inside, my brain is still caught on a refrain of but, but, but!
But this is our chance to fix things.
But you can’t give up that easily.
But this is what you want. Not gorgeous whitewashed Santorini and its sparkling sea.
Alex in the desert, in the dead of summer. Wandering into places before checking them out on Tripadvisor, unstructured days and late, late nights and full hours of sunshine lost to the inside of a dusty bookstore he couldn’t pass by, or a vintage shop whose clutter and germs have him standing, rigid yet patient, near the door as I try on dead people’s hats. That’s what I want.
I stand in the doorway of the office, heart racing, until Swapna looks up from the proofs, her eyebrow arched inquiringly, as if to say, Yes, Poppy?
“Give Santorini to Garrett,” I say.
Swapna blinks at me, evidently confused.
“I think I need some time off,” I blurt out, then clarify. “A vacation—a real one.”
Swapna’s lips press tight. She’s confused but not going to push for more information, which is good because I wouldn’t know how to explain anyway.
She gives a slow nod. “Send me the dates, then.”
I turn and walk back to my desk feeling calmer than I have in months. Until I sit down and reality forces its way in.
I’ve got some savings, but taking a trip that’s affordable by R+R’s standards—and on their dime—is a very different thing from taking a trip that I can afford with my own money. And as a high school English teacher with a doctorate and all of its associated debt, there�
�s no way Alex could afford to split costs with me. I doubt he’d agree to take the trip at all if he knew I was funding it myself.
But maybe this is a good thing. We always had so much fun on those trips we cobbled together on cents. Things only started going downhill once R+R got involved in our summer trips. I can do this: I can plan the perfect trip, like I used to; remind Alex how good things can be. The more I think about it, the more this makes sense. I’m actually excited by the idea of having one of our old-school, dirt-cheap trips. Things were so much simpler back then, and we always had a blast.
I pull out my phone and take my time trying to craft the perfect message.
Fun thought: Let’s do this trip the way we used to. Cheap as shit, no professional photographers tailing us, no five-star restaurants, just seeing Palm Springs like the impoverished academic and digital-age journalist that we are.
Within a few seconds, he replies: R+R’s okay with that? No photographer?
I unconsciously start waggling my head back and forth like the tiny angel and devil on my shoulder are taking turns tugging it from left to right. I don’t want to outright lie to him.
But they are okay with it. I’m taking a week off, so I’m free.
Yep, I say. Everything’s all set if you’re okay with it.
Sure, he writes. Sounds good.
It does sound good. It’ll be good. I can make it good.
7
This Summer
AS SOON AS the plane touches down, the four babies that spent the full six-hour flight screaming stop at once.
I slip my phone from my purse and turn off airplane mode, waiting out the flood of incoming text messages from Rachel, Garrett, Mom, David Nilsen, and—last but absolutely not least—Alex.
Rachel says, in three different ways, to please let her know as soon as I land that my plane didn’t crash or get sucked into the Bermuda Triangle, and that she’s both praying for and manifesting a safe landing for me.
Safe and sound and already missing you, I tell her, then I open up the message from Garrett.
Thank you SO MUCH for not taking Santorini, he writes, then, in a separate message: Also . . . Pretty weird decision IMHO. I hope you’re okay . . .
I’m fine, I tell him. I just had a wedding come up last minute and Santorini was your idea. Send me lots of pics so I can regret my life choices?
Next, I open the message from David: SO happy you’re coming with Al! Tham’s excited to meet you, and of course you are invited to EVERYTHING.
Of all of Alex’s brothers, David has always been my favorite. But it’s hard to believe he’s old enough to get married.
Then again, when I said that to Alex, he texted back, Twenty-four. I can’t imagine making a decision like that at that age but all my brothers got married young, and Tham’s great. My dad’s even on board. He got a bumper sticker that says I’M A PROUD CHRIST FOLLOWER WHO LOVES MY GAY SON.
I snorted laughter into my coffee as I read that one. It was so supremely Mr. Nilsen, and also perfectly played into Alex’s and my running joke about David being the family favorite. Alex hadn’t even been allowed to listen to secular music until he was in high school, and when he decided to go to a secular university, there had been weeping.
In the end, though, Mr. Nilsen really did love his sons, and so he pretty much always came around on matters that concerned their happiness.
If you’d gotten married at twenty-four, you’d be married to Sarah, I texted Alex.
You’d be married to Guillermo, he said.
I sent him back one of his own Sad Puppy selfies.
Please tell me you’re not still carrying a torch for that dick, Alex said.
The two of them had never gotten along.
Of course not, I wrote back. But Gui and I weren’t the ones in a torturous on-and-off relationship. That was you and Sarah.
Alex typed and stopped typing so many times I started to wonder if he was doing it just to annoy me.
But that was the end of that conversation. When he next texted me, the following day, it was with a non sequitur, a picture of BeDazzled black robes that said SPA BITCH on the back.
Summer Trip Uniform? he wrote, and we’ve dodged the topic of Sarah ever since, which makes it pretty damn clear to me that there’s something going on between them. Again.
Now, sitting on the cramped and sweltering plane, taxiing toward LAX, in the post-baby-scream silence, it still makes me a little sick to think about. Sarah and I have never been each other’s biggest fans. I doubt she’d approve of Alex taking another trip with me if they were back together, and if they aren’t properly but are on their way to being, then this could very well be the last summer trip.
They’d get married, start having kids, take their whole family to Disney World, and she and I would never be close enough for me to be a real part of Alex’s life anymore.
I push the thought away and answer David’s text message: I’M SO EXCITED AND HONORED THAT I GET TO BE THERE!
He sends back a gif of a dancing bear, and I tap open the text from my mom next.
Give Alex a big hug and kiss for me:), she writes, with the smiley face typed out. She never remembers how to use emojis and becomes impatient immediately when I try to show her. “I can type them out just fine!” she insists.
My parents: not the biggest fans of change.
Do you want me to grab his butt while I’m at it? I write back to her.
If you think that will work, she replies. I’m getting tired of waiting for grandbabies.
I roll my eyes and exit out of the message. Mom has always adored Alex, at least partly because he moved back to Linfield and she’s hoping we’ll wake up one day and realize we’re in love with each other and I’ll move back too and get pregnant immediately. My father, on the other hand, is a doting but intimidating man who has always terrified Alex so much that he’s never let one ounce of personality out while in the same room as Dad.
He’s brawny with a booming voice, mildly handy in the way so many men of his generation are, and he has a tendency to ask a lot of blunt, bordering-on-inappropriate questions. Not because he’s hoping for a certain response but because he’s curious and not very self-aware.
He is also, like all members of the Wright family, not amazing at modulating his voice. To a stranger, my mother shouting “Have you tried these grapes that taste like cotton candy? Oh, you’ll love them! Here, let me wash some off for you! Oh, let me wash a bowl first. Oh, no, all our bowls are in the fridge with Saran Wrap covering our leftovers—here, just grab a fistful instead!” might be mildly overwhelming, but when my father’s brow crinkles and he blasts out a question like “Did you vote in the last mayoral election?” it’s easy to feel like you’ve just been shoved into an interrogation room with an enforcer the FBI pays under the table.
The first time Alex picked me up at my parents’ house for a karaoke night that first summer of our friendship, I tried to shield him from my family and my house, as much for his sake as for my own.
By the end of our first road trip home I knew enough about him to understand that his walking into our tiny house filled to the brim with knickknacks and dusty picture frames and dog dander would be like a vegetarian taking a tour of a slaughterhouse.
I didn’t want him to be uncomfortable, sure, but just as badly, I didn’t want him to judge my family. Messy and strange and loud and blunt as they were, my parents were amazing, and I’d learned the hard way that that wasn’t what people saw when they came through our front door.
So I’d told Alex I’d meet him in the driveway, but I hadn’t stressed the point, and Alex—being Alex Nilsen—had come to the door anyway, like a good 1950s quarterback, determined to introduce himself to my parents, so they “wouldn’t worry” about me riding off into the sunset with a stranger.
I heard the doorbell and went running to head off the chao
s, but in my vintage pink-feathered house shoes, I wasn’t fast enough. By the time I got downstairs, Alex was standing in the front hall between two towers of stacked storage containers, getting batted back and forth by our two very old and badly behaved husky mixes, as a slew of unseemly family photos stared down at him from every side.
At the moment I came skittering around the corner from the stairs, Dad was booming out, “Why would we worry about her going out with you?” and then, “And when you say ‘going out,’ do you mean that you two are—”
“Nope!” I interrupted, dragging the hornier of our dogs, Rupert, back by the collar before he could mount Alex’s leg. “We are not going out. Not like that. And you definitely don’t need to worry. Alex is a really slow driver.”
“That’s what I was trying to say,” he stammered. “I mean, not the driving speed. I drive . . . the speed limit. I just meant, you don’t need to worry.”
Dad’s brow furrowed. Alex’s face drained of blood, and I wasn’t sure whether he was more unnerved by my father or by the layer of dust visible along the baseboards in the hallway, which, frankly, I’d never noticed until that moment.
“Did you see Alex’s car, Dad?” I said quickly, a diversion. “It’s very old. His phone too. Alex hasn’t gotten a new phone in, like, seven years.”
Alex’s face went red even as my father’s relaxed into interest and approval. “Is that so?”
Still, all these years later, I can remember with vivid clarity the way Alex’s gaze flickered to mine, searching my face for the correct answer. I gave him a little nod.
“Yes?” he answered, and Dad clapped a hand on his shoulder so hard Alex flinched.
Dad gave a big, no-holds-barred grin. “It’s always better to repair than to replace!”
“Replace what?” Mom shouted from the kitchen. “Did something break? Who are you talking to? Poppy? Does anyone want some chocolate-dipped pretzels? Shoot, let me just find a clean plate . . .”