by Emily Henry
So far we’ve spotted Dame Judy Dench, Denzel Washington, and young Jimmy Stewart. Our tour includes ferry passage to the Statue of Liberty, and when we get there, we ask a middle-aged woman to take our picture in front of the base, sun in our eyes and wind in our faces.
She sweetly asks, “Where y’all from?”
“Here,” Alex says at the same time I say, “Ohio.”
Halfway through the tour, we skip out and go to Cafe Lalo instead, determined to sit just where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks did in You’ve Got Mail. It’s cold out, and the city looks its best for us, springy pink and white blossoms skittering across the streets as we sip our cappuccinos. He’s been here full-time for five months now, since the fall semester ended and he found a long-term substitute position here for the spring one.
I didn’t know regular life could feel like this, like a vacation you don’t have to go home from.
Of course, it’s not always like this. Most weekends, Alex is tied up with working on his own writing or grading papers and planning lessons, and on weekdays, I only see him long enough for a groggy morning kiss (I sometimes fall back to sleep so fast I don’t even remember it happening), and there’s laundry and dirty dishes (which Alex insists we wash immediately after dinner) and taxes and dentist appointments and lost MetroCards.
But there are also discoveries, new parts of the man I love introduced to me daily.
For example, it turns out Alex can’t fall asleep if we’re spooning. He has to be wholly on his side of the bed, me on mine. Until the middle of the night, at which point I wake up overheated with his limbs flung over me and have to shove him off so I can cool down.
It’s incredibly annoying, but the second I’m comfortable again, I find myself smiling in the dark, feeling so unbelievably lucky to sleep every night beside my favorite person in the world.
Even being uncomfortably warm is better with him.
Sometimes we put on music in the kitchen while we’re (he’s) cooking, and we dance. Not a sweet, swaying embrace like we’re in some romantic movie, but ridiculous writhing, twirling until we’re dizzy, laughing until we’re snorting or crying. Sometimes we catch each other on camera and text the video to David and Tham, or Parker and Prince.
My brothers send back their own kitchen dancing videos.
David replies with some variation of Love you freaks or Apparently there’s someone for everyone.
We’re happy, and even when we’re not, it’s so much better than it was without him.
The last stop of our night playing tourist is Times Square. We saved the worst for last, but it’s a rite of passage and Alex insists he wants to go.
“If you can still love me there,” he says, “I’ll know this is real.”
“Alex,” I say, “if I can’t love you at Times Square, then I don’t deserve you in a Used Bookstore.”
He slips his hand through mine as we’re coming out of the subway station. I think it has less to do with affection (public displays of which he’s still not wild about) and more to do with a genuine fear of getting separated in the ridiculous crowd we’re moving toward.
We last in the square, surrounded by flashing lights and street performers painted silver and jostling tourists, for all of three minutes. Just long enough to get some unflattering selfies of us looking overwhelmed. Then we do an about-face and march right back to the train platform.
Back at the apartment—our apartment—Alex kicks off his shoes, then arranges them perfectly on the mat (we have a mat; we are adults) next to mine.
I’ve got an article to finish writing in the morning, my first for my new job. I was dreading telling Swapna I was leaving, but she wasn’t mad. In fact, she hugged me (it felt like being hugged by Beyoncé), and later that night a huge bottle of champagne was delivered to my and Alex’s door.
Congratulations on your column, Poppy, the note read. I’ve always known you were going places. X, Swapna.
The irony of it all is, I won’t be going places anymore, at least not for work. In a lot of other ways, though, my job won’t be all that different—I’ll still be going to restaurants and bars, writing about the new galleries and ice pop stands springing up around New York.
But People You Meet in New York will be different too, more human interest piece than review. I’ll be exploring my own city but through the eyes of the people who love it, spending a day with someone in their favorite new spot, learning what makes it so special.
My first piece is about a new bowling alley in Brooklyn with an old-school feel. Alex went with me to scope the place out, and I knew as soon as I spotted Dolores in the next lane over, personalized gold ball and matching gloves and a halo of frizzy gray hair, that she was someone who could teach me things. A bucket of beer, a long conversation, and a bowling lesson later, and I had everything I needed for the article, but Alex and Dolores and I walked over to the hot dog place down the street anyway, hung out until nearly midnight.
The article’s almost done, just needs a few finishing touches, but those can wait until the morning. I’m wiped out from our long day, and all I want to do is sink onto the couch with Alex.
“It’s good to be home,” he says, looping his arms around my back and pulling me flush to him.
I slip my hands up the back of his shirt and kiss him like I’ve been waiting to all day. “Home,” I say, “is my favorite place.”
“Mine too,” he murmurs, easing me back against the wall.
Next summer, we will get away from the city. We will spend four days tromping around Norway, another four in Sweden. There will be no Icehotel. (He’s a teacher, I’m a writer, and we’re both millennials. There’s no money for that.)
I’ll leave a key for Rachel to water our plants, and after Sweden, we’ll fly straight back to Linfield for the rest of Alex’s summer break.
We’ll stay in Betty’s house while he fixes it up and I sit on the floor, eating Twizzlers and finding new ways to make him blush. We’ll tear down wallpaper and choose new paint colors. We’ll drink diet soda at dinner with his dad and brothers and the nieces and nephew. We’ll sit on the porch with my parents looking out over the wasteland of Wright Family Cars Past. We’ll try on our hometown the same way we’ve been trying on New York together. We’ll see how it fits, where we want to be.
But I already know how I’ll feel.
Wherever he is, that will be my favorite place.
“What?” he asks, the start of a smile tugging at his lips. “Why are you staring?”
“You’re just . . .” I shake my head, searching for any word that could possibly encompass what I’m feeling. “So tall.”
His smile is wide, unfettered, Naked Alex just for me. “I love you too, Poppy Wright.”
Tomorrow we will love each other a little more, and the next day, and the next day.
And even on those days when one or both of us is having a hard time, we’ll be here, where we are completely known, completely accepted, by the person whose every side we love wholeheartedly. I’m here with all the versions of him I’ve met over twelve years of vacations, and even if the point of life isn’t just being happy, right now, I am. Down to the bones.
Acknowledgments
There are so many people this book would not exist without. First and foremost, I have to thank Parker Peevyhouse. I was on the phone with you when I figured out what I needed to write next. I don’t think anything but that phone call could have created this book. Thank you, my friend.
Thank you also to my incredible editors, Amanda Bergeron and Sareer Khader. There are no words that can adequately describe what working with you both has meant. The time and care you took in helping me find not just a book but the right book is something most writers can only dream of. Sharing ownership and control of your work can be scary, but I’ve known every step of the way that I was in the very best of hands. Thank you for pushing me and m
y writing beyond its limits and for being such an incredible team to collaborate with.
A huge thank-you also to Jessica Mangicaro, Dache Rogers, and Danielle Keir. Without you, I’m not convinced anyone would even read this book, so thank you for using your talent and passion to advocate for my books. You make everything brighter.
Thank you also to everyone else at Berkley for creating such a warm, supportive home for me and my books, including but not limited to Claire Zion, Cindy Hwang, Lindsey Tulloch, Sheila Moody, Andrea Monagle, Jessica McDonnell, Anthony Ramondo, Sandra Chiu, Jeanne-Marie Hudson, Craig Burke, Christine Ball, and Ivan Held. I feel so lucky every day to be working with you.
To my amazing agent, Taylor Haggerty, as well as to everyone else on the phenomenal Root Literary team—Holly Root, Melanie Figueroa, Molly O’Neill—thank you for being so involved, dedicated, and kind. And perhaps most importantly, thanks for the sparkling rosé.
Thank you also to Lana Popović Harper, Liz Tingue, and Marissa Grossman for being such a huge support to me from the very beginning.
My dear friends Brittany Cavallaro, Jeff Zentner, Riley Redgate, Bethany Morrow, Kerry Kletter, David Arnold, Justin Reynolds, Adriana Mather, Candice Montgomery, Eric Smith, Tehlor Kay Mejia, Anna Breslaw, Dahlia Adler, Jennifer Niven, Kimberly Jones, and Isabel Ibañez have been making my life (and writing) better for years, and I can’t thank them enough.
To have the support of members of the book community and writers I so admire has been not only hugely meaningful to me on a personal level, but is largely the reason I’m still able to do this job I love so much. Special thanks to Siobhán Jones and the entire Book of the Month team, as well as Ashley Spivey, Zibby Owens, Robin Kall, Vilma Iris, Sarah True, Christina Lauren, Jasmine Guillory, Sally Thorne, Julia Whelan, Amy Reichert, Heather Cocks, Jessica Morgan, and Sarah MacLean. Your kindness and encouragement have been so important in my journey.
And as always, thank you to my family, for raising me to be both pretty weird and weirdly confident, and to my husband, for always stopping to kiss my head on the way to the kitchen. You are the best, and no one could deserve you.
READERS GUIDE
People We Meet on Vacation
EMILY HENRY
Behind the Book
Every time I start to watch When Harry Met Sally . . . , it feels like the first time. Not because I don’t remember every iconic scene in Nora Ephron’s rom-com masterpiece—I do.
But because I hate Harry. Every time. I catch myself thinking, however briefly, I don’t remember him being this awful! Or Sally really carries this movie. During their first scenes together, I find cynical, horny Harry almost unbearable. But then Ephron works her magic, and everything changes. A softer Harry emerges, the true Harry, a Harry capable of great love and tenderness, one who only needed some time to grow up and to grow on Sally, and you.
And together, over the course of minutes and years, Sally and I fall in love with the last person we expected to.
When I started People We Meet on Vacation, I didn’t set out to write a homage to one of my favorite romantic comedies. But perhaps it was Ephron who left this indelible mark on me, planted a seed of ardent appreciation for characters who grate and irritate and infuriate, until the moment they suddenly don’t. Not only because they’ve changed, but because you’ve begun to see the full picture of who they are.
And that was what I set out to write in this book. Two characters with no obvious reason to like each other, let alone love each other. Two people with so little in common that romance never seemed to be on the table, and thus friendship could blossom. That once-in-a-lifetime kind of true, bone-deep, unconditional friendship that becomes such a part of your DNA that you could never feel quite like yourself again without it. Alex and Poppy, Poppy and Alex.
On the surface, of course, this is a book about vacations, written in a time before COVID-19, when weekends away and transcontinental flights felt much more within reach than they do these days. But as with Harry—and with Alex—the surface image of a thing is rarely the truth, at least not all of it.
This is, ultimately, a book about home. About finding it, about staying in it, about wrapping your arms tightly around it and breathing it in until it fills up your lungs. It’s about a world built for two, the magical Venn diagram formed by a special friendship: You, Me, and the sacred overlap called Us.
So, while we might not all be able to hop on an airplane or stuff ourselves into a Greyhound seat, scour Groupon for discounted country-music-themed motels and questionably safe water taxi services, I hope this book carries you somewhere magical. I hope it lets you feel ocean breezes in your hair and smell spilled beer on a karaoke bar’s floor. And then I hope it brings you back. That it brings you home, and fills you with ferocious gratitude for the people you love.
Because, really, it’s less about the places we go than the people we meet along the way. But most of all, it’s about the ones who stay, who become home.
Discussion Questions
When they first meet, Alex and Poppy are immediately put off by each other. Have you ever made a friend after a bad first impression?
What’s something you do on vacation that you’re unlikely to do in your daily life? Is there a certain comfort in anonymity?
Have you ever met a goal and found that your reaction wasn’t quite what you expected?
What is your worst vacation memory? Your best?
Poppy is going through professional burnout. Have you ever experienced that kind of fatigue? How did you get through it?
Which vacation of Alex and Poppy’s would you most want to take? Which would you least want to take?
Having grown up in a small town, Poppy struggles to break free of her reputation—or at least struggles to believe she can do so. When have you felt misunderstood, and how did you get past it?
Why do you think it takes Poppy and Alex so long to admit their feelings to each other?
Rachel has a lot to say about contentment versus purpose. In your own life, do you prize one above the other? Are these ideas mutually exclusive, or can you have both?
Do you think Poppy and Alex are going to make it?
What’s in Emily’s Carry-On?
Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley
The Boyfriend Project by Farrah Rochon
The Marriage Game by Sara Desai
Eliza Starts a Rumor by Jane L. Rosen
Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory
One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London
East Coast Girls by Kerry Kletter
Luster by Raven Leilani
Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho
Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
Photo by Devyn Glista/St. Blanc Studios
Emily Henry writes stories about love and family for both teens and adults. She studied creative writing at Hope College and the New York Center for Art & Media Studies, and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it.
CONNECT ONLINE
EmilyHenryWrites
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.
0%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share