by Emily Henry
“Allergies?” Bernard says. “You can use my hankie.”
Then he passes me an honest-to-god embroidered hankie.
I wish Bernard would do something awful, like floss at the table, or just anything that would give me the courage to demand an hour of space and privacy.
This is the most beautiful and worst trip Alex and I have ever taken.
On our last night, the three of us get roaring drunk at a restaurant overlooking the sea, watching the pinks and golds of the sun melt across everything until the water is a sheet of light, replaced gradually by a blanket of deep purple. Back at the resort, the sky gone dark, we part ways, exhausted in more ways than one and heavy with wine.
Fifteen minutes later, I hear a light knock on my door. I answer in my pajamas and find Alex standing there, grinning and flushed. “Well, this is a surprise!” I say, slurring a little.
“Really?” Alex says. “With how you were plying Bernard with alcohol, I thought this was part of some evil plan.”
“Is he passed out?” I ask.
“Snoring so fucking loud,” Alex says, and as we both start to laugh, he presses his forefinger to my lips. “Shhh,” he warns, “I’ve tried to sneak over here the last two nights and he woke up—and came out of his bedroom—before I even made it to the door. I thought about taking up smoking just so I could have an ironclad excuse.”
More laughter bubbles through me, warming my insides, fizzing through them. “Do you really think he would’ve followed you over?” I whisper, his finger still pressed to my lips.
“I wasn’t willing to take that chance.” On the other side of the wall, we hear a wretched snore, and I start giggling so hard my legs go watery and I sink to the floor. Alex does too.
We fall into a heap, a tangle of limbs and silent, quaking laughter. I smack futilely at his arm as another horrible thunder-roll snore roars through the wall.
“I’ve missed you,” Alex says through a grin as the laughter’s subsiding.
“Me too,” I say, cheeks aching. He brushes the hair out of my face, static making a few strands dance around his hand. “But at least now I have three of you.” I grip his wrist to steady myself and close one eye to see him better.
“Too many wine?” he teases, slipping his hand around my neck.
“Nah,” I say, “just enough to knock out Bernard. The perfect amount.” My head is pleasantly swimming and my skin feels warm beneath Alex’s hand, rings of satisfying heat reverberating out from it all the way to my toes. “This must be how it feels to be a cat,” I hum.
He laughs. “How so?”
“You know.” I rock my head side to side, nestling my neck against his palm. “Just . . .” I trail off, too contented to go on. His fingers scratch in and out against my skin, tugging lightly on my hair, and I sigh with pleasure as I sink against him, my hand settling on his chest as my forehead rests against his.
He sets his hand on mine, and I lace my fingers into it as I tip my face up to his, our noses grazing. His chin lifts, fingers graze my jaw. Next thing I know, he’s kissing me.
I’m kissing Alex Nilsen.
A warm, slow drink of a kiss. Both of us are almost laughing at first, like this whole thing is a very funny joke. Then, his tongue sweeps over my bottom lip, a brush of fiery heat. His teeth catch it briefly next, and there’s no more laughing.
My hands slip into his hair and he pulls me across his lap, his hands running up my back and down again to squeeze my hips. My breaths are shuddering and quick as his mouth teases mine open again, his tongue sweeping deeper, his taste sweet and clean and intoxicating.
We’re frantic hands and sharp teeth, fabric peeled away from skin, and fingernails digging into muscles. Probably Bernard is still snoring, but I can’t hear him over Alex’s deliciously shallow breath or his voice in my ear, saying my name like a swear word, or my heartbeat raging through my eardrums as I rock my hips against his.
All those things we didn’t get to say no longer matter because, really, this is what we needed. I need more of him. I reach for his belt—because he’s wearing a belt, of course he’s wearing a belt—but he catches my wrist and draws back, his lips bee-stung and hair mussed, all of him rumpled in a completely unfamiliar and extremely appealing way.
“We can’t do this,” he says, voice thick.
“We can’t?” Stopping feels like running into a wall. Like there are little cartoon birds twirling dazedly around my head as I try to make sense of what he’s saying.
“We shouldn’t,” Alex amends. “We’re drunk.”
“Not too drunk to make out but too drunk to sleep together?” I say, almost laughing from the absurdity, or from the disappointment.
Alex’s mouth twists. “No,” he says, “I mean, it shouldn’t have happened at all. We’ve both been drinking, and we’re not thinking clearly—”
“Mm-hm.” I scoot away from him, smoothing my pajama shirt back down. My embarrassment is the total-body kind, a gut punch that makes my eyes water. I shove myself off the floor, Alex following my lead. “You’re right,” I say. “It was a bad idea.”
Alex looks miserable. “I just mean . . .”
“I get it,” I say quickly, trying to patch the hole before the boat can take on more water. It was a mistake to go there, to risk this. But I need to convince him everything’s fine, that we didn’t just pour gasoline onto our friendship and light a match. “Let’s not make this a big deal—it’s not,” I go on, my conviction building. “It’s like you said: we each had, like, three bottles of wine. We weren’t thinking clearly. We’ll pretend it never happened, okay?”
He stares at me hard, a tense expression I can’t quite read. “You think you can do that?”
“Alex, of course,” I say. “We’ve got way more history than just one drunken night.”
“Okay.” He nods. “Okay.” After a beat of silence, he says, “I should get to bed.” He studies me for another beat, then mumbles, “Good night,” and slips out the door.
After a few minutes of mortified pacing, I drag myself to bed, where every time I start drifting off, the whole encounter plays over in my mind: the unbearable excitement of kissing him and the even more unbearable humiliation of our conversation.
In the morning, when I wake, there’s one blissful moment when I think I dreamed the whole thing. Then I stumble to the bathroom mirror and see a good old-fashioned hickey on my neck, and the cycle of memories starts anew.
I decide not to bring it up when I see him. The best thing I can do is pretend to truly have forgotten what happened. To prove I’m okay and nothing has to change between us.
When we get to the airport—Bernard, Alex, and I—and Bernard wanders off to use the bathroom, we have our first minute alone of the day.
Alex coughs. “I’m sorry about last night. I know I started it all and—it shouldn’t have happened like that.”
“Seriously,” I say. “It’s not a big deal.”
“I know you’re not over Trey,” he murmurs, looking away. “I shouldn’t have . . .”
Would it make things better or worse to admit how little Trey crossed my mind for weeks before this trip? That last night I hadn’t been thinking about anyone but Alex?
“It’s not your fault,” I promise. “We both let it happen, and it doesn’t have to mean anything, Alex. We’re just two friends who kissed once while drunk.”
He studies me for a few seconds. “All right.” He doesn’t look like he’s all right. He looks like he’d rather be at a saxophone convention with any number of serial killers right now.
My heart squeezes painfully. “So we’re good?” I say, willing it to be so.
Bernard reappears then with a story about a heavily toilet-papered airport bathroom he once visited—on the Sunday of Mother’s Day, for those who want the exact date—and Alex and I barely look at each other.
When I get home, something keeps me from texting him.
He’ll text me, I think. Then I’ll know we’re okay.
After a week of silence, I send him a casual text about a funny T-shirt I see on the subway, and he writes back ha but nothing else. Two weeks later, when I ask, Are you okay? he just replies, Sorry. Been really busy. You okay?
For sure, I say.
Alex stays busy. I get busy too, and that’s it.
I always knew there was a reason we kept a boundary up. We’d let our libidos get the best of us and now he couldn’t even look at me, text me back.
Ten years of friendship flushed down the drain just so I could know what Alex Nilsen tastes like.
34
This Summer
I CAN’T STOP THINKING about that first kiss. Not our first kiss on Nikolai’s balcony but the one two years ago, in Croatia. All this time, that memory has looked one way in my mind, but now it looks entirely different.
I’d thought he regretted what happened. Now I understood he regretted how it happened. On a drunk whim, when he couldn’t be sure of my intentions. When I wasn’t sure of my intentions. He’d been afraid it hadn’t meant anything, and then I’d pretended it hadn’t.
All this time I’d thought he’d rejected me. And he’d thought I’d been cavalier with him and his heart. It made me ache to think of how I’d hurt him, and worst of all, maybe he was right.
Because even if that kiss hadn’t meant nothing to me, I also hadn’t thought it through. Not the first time, and not this time either. Not like Alex had.
“Poppy?” Swapna says, leaning around my cubicle. “Do you have a moment?”
I’ve been at my desk, staring at this website for tourism in Siberia, for upwards of forty-five minutes. Turns out Siberia is actually sort of beautiful. Perfect for a self-imposed exile if one should have need of such a thing. I minimize the site. “Um, sure.”
Swapna glances over her shoulder, checking who else is in today, parked at their desks. “Actually, are you up for a walk?”
It’s been two weeks since I got back from Palm Springs, and it’s technically too early for fall weather, but we’ve got a random pop of it today in New York. Swapna grabs her Burberry trench and I grab my vintage herringbone one and we set off toward the coffee shop on the corner.
“So,” she says. “I can’t help but notice you’ve been in a funk.”
“Oh.” I thought I’d been doing an okay job hiding how I was feeling. For one thing, I’ve been exercising for, like, four hours a night, which means I sleep like a baby, wake up still exhausted, and trudge through my days without too much brainpower left for wondering when Alex might answer one of my phone calls or call me back.
Or why this job feels as tiring as bartending back in Ohio did. I can’t make anything add up how it should anymore. All day long, I hear myself saying this same phrase, like I’m desperate to get it out of my body even as I feel incapable: I am having a hard time.
As mild as that statement is—every bit as mild as I can’t help but notice you’ve been in a funk—it sears to my center every time I hear it.
I am having a hard time, I think desperately a thousand times a day, and when I try to probe for more information—A hard time with what?—the voice replies, Everything.
I feel insufficient as an adult. I look around at the office and see everyone typing, taking calls, making bookings, editing documents, and I know they’re all dealing with at least as much as I am, which only makes me feel worse about how hard everything feels to me.
Living, being responsible for myself, seems like an insurmountable challenge lately.
Sometimes I scrape myself off my sofa, stuff a frozen meal in the microwave, and as I wait for the timer to go off, I just think, I will have to do this again tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Every day for the rest of my life, I’m going to have to figure out what to eat, and make it for myself, no matter how bad I feel or tired I am, or how horrible the pounding in my head is. Even if I have a one-hundred-and-two-degree fever, I will have to pull myself up and make a very mediocre meal to go on living.
I don’t say any of this to Swapna, because (a) she’s my boss, (b) I don’t know if I could translate any of these thoughts into spoken words, and (c) even if I could, it would be humiliating to admit that I feel exactly like that incapable, lost, melancholy stereotype of a millennial that the world is so fond of raging against.
“I guess I have been in a little bit of a funk,” is what I say. “I didn’t realize it was affecting my work. I’ll do better.”
Swapna stops walking, turns on her towering Louboutins, and frowns. “It’s not only about the work, Poppy. I have personally invested in mentoring you.”
“I know,” I say. “You’re an amazing boss, and I feel so lucky.”
“It’s not about that either,” Swapna says, the slightest bit impatient. “What I’m saying is that of course you’re not obligated to talk to me about what’s going on, but I do think it would help if you spoke with someone. Working toward your goals can be very lonely, and professional burnout is always a challenge. I’ve been there, trust me.”
I shift anxiously on my feet. While Swapna has been a mentor to me, we’ve never veered toward anything personal, and I’m unsure how much to say.
“I don’t know what’s going on with me,” I admit.
I know my heart is broken at the thought of not having Alex in my life.
I know that I wish I could see him every single day, and there’s no part of me that’s imagining what else could be out there, who I might miss out on knowing and loving if we were to really be together.
I know that the thought of a life in Linfield terrifies the hell out of me.
I know I worked so hard to be this person—independent, well traveled, successful—and I don’t know who I am if I let that go.
I know that there’s still no other job out there calling to me, the obvious answer to my unhappiness, and that this one, which has been amazing for a good portion of the last four and a half years, lately has only left me tired.
And all of that adds up to having no fucking clue where I go next, and thus no real right to call Alex, which is why I’ve finally stopped trying for the time being.
“Professional burnout,” I say aloud. “That’s a thing that passes, right?”
Swapna smiles. “For me, so far, it always has.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a little white business card. “But like I said, it helps to speak with someone.” I accept the card, and she tips her chin toward the coffee shop. “Why don’t you take a few minutes to yourself? Sometimes a change of scenery is all that’s needed to get a little perspective.”
A change of scenery, I think as she starts back the way we came. That used to work.
I look down at the business card in my hand and can’t help but laugh.
Dr. Sandra Krohn, psychologist.
I pull out my phone and text Rachel. Is Dr. Mom accepting new patients?
Is the current Pope wildly transgressive? she texts back.
* * *
• • •
RACHEL’S MOTHER HAS a home office in her brownstone in Brooklyn. While Rachel’s own design aesthetic is airy and light, her mother’s decor is warm and cozy, all dark wood and stained glass, hanging leafy plants and books piled high on every surface, wind chimes twinkling outside almost every window.
In a way, it reminds me of being at home, although Dr. Krohn’s artsy, cultivated version of maximalism is a far cry from Mom and Dad’s Museum to Our Childhood.
During our first session I tell her I need help figuring out what comes next for me, but she recommends we start with the past instead.
“There’s not much to say,” I tell her, then proceed to talk for fifty-six minutes straight. About my parents, about school, about the first trip home with Guillermo.
She’s the only person I’ve shared any of this with aside from Alex, and while it feels good to get it out, I’m not sure how it’s helping with my life-exploding crisis. Rachel makes me promise to stick with it for at least a couple months. “Don’t run from this,” she says. “You won’t be doing yourself any favors.”
I know she’s right. I’ve have to run through, not away. My only hope for figuring this out is to stay, sit in the discomfort.
In my weekly therapy sessions. In my job at R+R. In my mostly empty apartment.
My blog sits unused, but I start to journal. My work trips are limited to regional weekend getaways, and during my downtime, I scour the internet for self-help books and articles, looking for something that speaks to me like that twenty-one-thousand-dollar bear statue definitely did not.
Sometimes, I look for jobs in New York; other times, I check listings near Linfield.
I buy myself a plant, a book about plants, and a small loom. I try to teach myself how to weave with YouTube videos and realize within three hours that I’m as bored by it as I am bad at it.
Still, I let the half-finished weaving sit out on my table for days, and it feels like proof that I live here. I have a life, here, a place that’s mine.
On the last day of September, I’m on my way to meet Rachel at the wine bar when my bag gets caught in the subway doors of a crowded train car.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I hiss, while on the other side, a few people work to pry them open. A balding but youngish man in a blue suit manages to get the doors apart, and when I look up to thank him, recognition flashes clear and sharp across his blue eyes.
“Poppy?” he says, pushing the doors a little further apart. “Poppy Wright?”
I’m too stunned to reply. He steps out of the train car, despite having made no effort to get out the first time the doors opened. This isn’t his stop, but he’s getting out and I have to step back to make room for him as the doors snap closed again.
And then we’re standing there on the platform, and I should say something, I know I have to—he got off the freaking train. I manage only, “Wow. Jason.”