by Emily Henry
When we finally finished the twenty-minute goodbye required to leave my house and made it back to Alex’s car, he said only of the whole affair, “Your parents seem nice.”
I responded, with accidental aggression, “They are,” like I was daring him to bring up the dust or the humping husky or the two billion childhood drawings still magnetized to our fridge or anything else, but of course he didn’t. He was Alex, even if I didn’t understand everything that meant back then.
In all the years I’ve known him since, he’s still never said an unkind word about any of it. He even sent flowers to my dorm when Rupert, the husky, died. I always felt we had a special connection after that night we shared, he joked in the card. He will be missed. If you need anything at all, P, I’m here. Always.
Not that I have the note memorized or anything.
Not that, in the lone shoebox’s worth of saved cards and letters and scraps of paper I allow myself to keep in my apartment, this one made the cut.
Not that there were full days during our friendship’s hiatus when I tortured myself with the thought that maybe I should throw that card away since, as it turned out, always had ended.
Toward the back of the plane, one of the babies starts screaming again, but we’re pulling up to the gate now. I’ll be off in no time.
And then I’ll see Alex.
A thrill zings up my spine, and a nervous flutter works back down into my stomach.
I open the last unread message in my inbox, the one from him: Just landed.
Same, I type back.
After that, I don’t know what to say. We’ve been texting for over a week, never broaching the topic of the ill-fated Croatia trip, and everything’s felt so normal until right now. Then I remember: I haven’t seen Alex in real life in over two years.
I haven’t touched him, haven’t even heard his voice. There are so many ways this could be awkward. Almost certainly we’ll experience some of them.
I’m excited to see him, of course, but more than that, I realize I’m terrified.
We need to pick a meeting point. Someone has to suggest it. I summon the layout of LAX to mind from the soup of hazy memories of every dully carpeted gate and electric walkway I’ve seen in the last four and a half years of working at R+R.
If I ask to meet at baggage claim, will that mean a long stretch of walking toward each other silently until we’re close enough to actually talk? Am I supposed to hug him?
The Nilsens aren’t a huggy bunch, as opposed to the Wrights, who are known to grab, elbow, slap, rustle, squeeze, and nudge for emphasis during any conversation, no matter how mundane. Touching is such second nature to me that once I accidentally hugged my dishwasher repairman when I let him out of the apartment, at which point he graciously told me he was married, and I congratulated him.
Back when Alex and I were close, we hugged all the time; but that was then, when I knew him. When he was comfortable with me.
I fight my roller bag free from the overhead bin and push it along ahead of me, sweat gathering in my armpits beneath my light sweater and under the blunt little approximation of a ponytail swept off my neck.
The flight took forever; every time I checked the clock, it seemed like full hours had been condensed into a minute or two. I was bouncing-up-and-down-in-my-very-small-seat eager to get here, but now it’s like time is making up for the ballooning it did during the flight, shrinking so that I travel the whole length of the jet bridge in an instant.
My throat feels tight. My brain feels like it’s sloshing around in my skull. I step out into the gate, move sideways out of the path of everyone coming off the jet bridge behind me, and slip my phone out of my pocket. My hands are sweaty as I start to type: Meet at bag—
“Hey.”
I spin toward the voice just as the owner of it sidesteps the stroller parked between us.
Smiling. Alex is smiling, his eyes puffy in that sleepy way, his laptop bag slung over one shoulder and earbuds hanging around his neck, his hair an utter mess compared to his dark gray trousers and button-up and his scuffless leather boots. As he closes the gap between us, he drops his carry-on bag behind him and pulls me into a hug.
And it’s normal, so natural to push up on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around his waist, burrow my face into his chest, and breathe him in. Cedar, musk, lime. There is no greater creature of habit than Alex Nilsen.
Same inscrutable haircut, same cleanly warm scent, same basic wardrobe (though enhanced a little over time with better tailoring and shoes), same way of squeezing me around the upper back and drawing me in and up against him when we hug, almost pulling me off the ground but never tightening so much that the embrace could be considered bone-crunching.
It’s more like sculpting. Gentle pressure on all sides that briefly compresses us into one living, breathing thing with twice as many hearts as we should have.
“Hi,” I say, beaming into his chest, and his arms slide down to my midback, tightening.
“Hi,” he says, and I hope he heard the smile in my voice the way I hear it in his. Despite his general aversion to any form of public affection, neither of us lets go right away, and I have the sense that we’re thinking the same thing: it’s okay to hold on for an inappropriately long time when it’s been two years since you’ve hugged.
I shut my eyes tight against rising emotion, pressing my forehead into his chest. His arms fall down to my waist and lock there for a few seconds. “How was your flight?” he asks.
I draw back enough to look up into his face. “I think we had some future world-class opera singers on board. Yours?”
His control over his small smile wavers, and his grin fans wide. “I almost gave the woman next to me a heart attack during some turbulence,” he says. “I grabbed her hand by accident.”
A high-pitched laugh shivers through me, and his smile goes wider, his arms tighter.
Naked Alex, I think, then push the thought away. I really should’ve come up with a better way of describing this version of him a long time ago.
As if he’s reading my thoughts and fittingly mortified, he tamps his smile back down and releases his hold on me, stepping back for good measure. “You need to get anything from baggage claim?” he asks, grabbing the handle of my bag along with his.
“I can get that,” I offer.
“I don’t mind,” he says.
As I follow him away from the crowded gate, I can’t stop staring at him. In awe that he’s here. In awe that he looks the same. Awed that this is real.
He glances down at me as we walk, his mouth twisting. One of my favorite things about Alex’s face has always been the way that it allows two disparate emotions to exist on it at the same time, and how legible those emotions have become to me.
Right now, that twist of his mouth is saying both amused and vaguely wary.
“What?” he says, in a voice that rides that same line.
“You’re just . . . tall,” I say.
He’s cut too, but commenting on that usually leads to embarrassment on his part, like having a gym body is somehow a personality flaw. Maybe to him it is. Vanity is something he was raised to avoid. 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.
“You’re staring at me because I’m tall?” Alex says.
“Very tall,” I say, as if this clears things up.
It’s easier than saying, I have missed you, beautiful smile. It’s so good to see you, strong arms and legs. Thank you, freakishly taut belly, for feeding this person I love so much.
Al
ex’s grin ripens to the point of splitting open as he holds my gaze. “It’s good to see you too, Poppy.”
8
Ten Summers Ago
A YEAR AGO, WHEN I met Alex Nilsen outside my dormitory with a half dozen bags of dirty laundry, I wouldn’t have believed we’d be taking a vacation together.
It started with the occasional text after our road trip home—blurry pictures of the Linfield movie theater as he drove past, with the caption don’t forget to get vaccinated, or a shot of a ten-pack of shirts I’d found at the supermarket, birthday present typed beneath it—but after three weeks, we’d graduated to phone calls and hangouts. I even convinced him to see a movie at the Cineplex, though he spent the whole time hovering over the seat, trying not to touch anything.
By the time summer ended, we’d signed up for two core requirement classes together, a math and a science, and most nights, Alex came to my dorm or I went to his to struggle through the homework. My old roommate, Bonnie, had officially moved in with her sister, and I was rooming with Isabel, a premed student who’d sometimes look over Alex’s and my shoulders and correct our work while crunching on celery, her alleged favorite food.
Alex hated math as much as I did, but he loved his English classes and devoted hours each night to their assigned reading while I aimlessly perused travel blogs and celebrity gossip rags on the floor beside him. My courses were uniformly boring, but on nights when Alex and I walked the campus after dinner with cups of hot chocolate, or weekends when we wandered the city on a quest for the best hot dog stand or cup of coffee or falafel, I felt happier than I ever remembered. I loved being in the city, surrounded by art and food and noise and new people, enough that the school part of it was bearable.
Late one night, when snow was piling up in my windowsill and Alex and I were stretched out on my rug studying for an exam, we started listing places we wished we were instead.
“Paris,” I said.
“Working on my American Lit final,” Alex said.
“Seoul,” I said.
“Working on my Intro to Nonfiction final,” Alex said.
“Sofia, Bulgaria,” I said.
“Canada,” Alex said.
I looked at him and erupted into slaphappy exhaustion-laughter, which triggered his trademark chagrin. “Your top three vacation destinations,” I said, lying back on the rug, “are two separate essays and the country nearest to us.”
“It’s more affordable than Paris,” he said seriously.
“Which is what really matters when you’re daydreaming.”
He sighed. “Well, what about that hot spring you read about? The one in a rain forest? That’s in Canada.”
“Vancouver Island,” I supplied, nodding. Or a smaller island near it, actually.
“That’s where I’d go,” he said, “if my travel companion weren’t so disagreeable.”
“Alex,” I said, “I will happily go to Vancouver Island with you. Especially if the other options are just watching you do more homework. We’ll go next summer.”
Alex lay back beside me. “What about Paris?”
“Paris can wait,” I said. “Also we can’t afford Paris.”
He smiled faintly. “Poppy,” he said, “we can barely afford our weekly hot dogs.”
But now, months later, after a semester of picking up every possible shift at our campus jobs—Alex at the library, me in the mailroom—we’ve saved enough for this very cheap red-eye (complete with two layovers), and I’m buzzing with excitement as we finally board.
As soon as we lift off and the cabin lights dim, though, the exhaustion kicks in and I find myself being lulled to sleep, head resting on Alex’s shoulder, a small pool of drool accumulating on his shirt, only to jolt awake when the plane hits a pocket of air that makes it dip and Alex accidentally elbows me in the face in response.
“Shit!” he gasps as I sit bolt upright, clutching my cheek. “Shit!” His white knuckles are clamped around the armrests, the rise and fall of his chest shallow.
“Are you afraid of flying?” I ask.
“No!” he whispers, considerate of the other sleeping passengers even in his panic. “I’m afraid of dying.”
“You’re not going to die,” I promise. The jet settles into a rhythm, but the seat belt light comes on and Alex keeps gripping the armrests like someone’s flipped the plane upside down and started trying to shake us out.
“That doesn’t seem good,” he says. “It sounded like something broke off the plane.”
“That was the sound of your elbow smashing into my face.”
“What?” He looks over. The two simultaneous expressions on his face are surprise and confusion.
“You hit me in the face!” I tell him.
“Oh, shit,” he says. “Sorry. Can I see?”
I pull my hand away from my throbbing cheekbone, and Alex leans in close, his fingers hovering over my skin. His hand falls away without ever landing. “It looks okay. Maybe we should see if a flight attendant can bring some ice.”
“Good idea,” I say. “We can call her over and tell her you hit me in the face, but I’m sure it was an accident and also it’s not your fault—you were surprised and—”
“God, Poppy,” he says. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt that bad.” I nudge his elbow with mine. “Why didn’t you tell me you were afraid of flying?”
“I didn’t know I was.”
“Meaning?”
He tips his head back against the headrest. “I hadn’t flown before tonight.”
“Oh.” My stomach clenches guiltily. “I wish you’d told me.”
“I didn’t want to make it a thing.”
“I wouldn’t have made it a thing.”
He looks over at me skeptically. “And what do you call this?”
“Okay, fine, yes, I made it a thing. But look.” I slide my hand under his and tentatively fold my fingers into his. “I’m here with you, and if you want to sleep for a little, I’ll stay awake to make sure the plane doesn’t crash. Which it won’t. Because this is safer than driving.”
“I hate driving too,” he says.
“I know you do. But my point is, this is better than that. Like, way better. And I’m here with you, and I’ve flown before, so if there’s a reason to panic, I’ll know. And I promise you, in that situation, I will panic and you’ll know something’s wrong. Until then, you can relax.”
He stares at me through the dark of the cabin for a few seconds. Then his hand relaxes into mine, his warm, rough fingers settling. It gives me a surprising thrill to hold his hand. Ninety-five percent of the time, I see Alex Nilsen in a purely platonic way, and I’d guess his number hovers a bit higher. But for that other five percent of the time, there’s this what-if.
It never lasts long or pushes too hard. It just sits there, cupped between our hands, a gentle thought without much weight behind it: What would it be like to kiss him? How would he touch me? Would he taste the way he smells? No one has better dental hygiene than Alex, which isn’t exactly a sexy thought but certainly sexier than the opposite end of the spectrum.
And that’s about as far as the thought ever goes, which is perfect, because I like Alex way too much to date him. Plus we’re entirely incompatible.
The plane judders through another quick stretch of turbulence, and Alex’s grip tightens.
“Time to panic?” he asks.
“Not yet,” I say. “Try to sleep.”
“Because I need to be well rested when I meet Death.”
“Because you need to be well rested when I get tired in Butchart Gardens and make you carry me the rest of the way.”
“I knew there was a reason you brought me with you.”
“I didn’t bring you with me to be my mule,” I argue. “I brought you with me to be my patsy. You’re gonna c
ause a diversion as I run through the dining room of the Empress Hotel during high tea, stealing tiny sandwiches and priceless bracelets off unsuspecting guests.”
He squeezes my hand. “I guess I’d better sleep, then.”
I squeeze back. “Guess so.”
“Wake me up when it’s time to panic.”
“Always.”
He rests his head on my shoulder and pretends to sleep.
When we land, he will have a horrible kink in his neck and my shoulder will ache from sitting in this position for so long, but right now I don’t mind. I have five glorious days of travel with my best friend ahead of me, and deep down, I know: nothing can go wrong, not really.
It’s not time to panic.
9
This Summer
DO WE HAVE a rental car?” Alex asks as we head out of the airport into the windy heat.
“Sort of.” I chew on my lip as I fish my phone out to call a cab. “I sourced a ride from a Facebook group.”
Alex’s eyes narrow, the jet-induced gusts rolling through the arrivals area making his hair flap against his forehead. “I have no idea what you just said.”
“Remember?” I say. “It’s what we did on our first trip. To Vancouver? When we were too young to legally rent a car?”
He stares at me.
“You know,” I say, “that women’s online travel group I’ve been in for, like, fifteen years? Where people post their apartments for sublet and list their cars for rent? Remember? We had to take a bus to pick up the car outside the city and walk, like, five miles with our luggage?”
“I remember,” he says. “I’ve just never stopped to wonder why anyone would rent their car to a stranger before this moment.”
“Because a lot of people in New York like to leave for the winter and a lot of people in Los Angeles like to go somewhere else for the summer.” I shrug. “This girl’s car would’ve been sitting unused for, like, a month, so I got it for the week for seventy bucks. We just have to take a cab to pick it up.”