People We Meet on Vacation

WE GET BACK to our downtown hotel room at two thirty in the morning, a little bit hammered. Usually, we don’t drink so much, but this whole trip has been a celebration.

We are celebrating the fact that Alex has graduated from college, and that soon he’ll be leaving to get his MFA in creative writing from Indiana University.

I tell myself it’s not that far away. In fact, we’ll be living closer to each other than we have been since I dropped out.

But the truth is, even with all the traveling I’ve been doing, I’m itching to get out of my parents’ house in Linfield. I’ve started looking for apartments in other cities, flexible jobs bartending and serving where I can work myself to exhaustion, then take weeks off to travel.

Spending time with my parents has been great, but everything else about being home makes me feel claustrophobic, like the suburbs are a net pulling tighter and tighter around me as I struggle against it.

I run into my old teachers, and when they ask what I’m doing, their mouths twist judgmentally at the answer. I see classmates who used to bully me, and some that were friendly enough, and I hide. I work at an upscale bar forty minutes south, in Cincinnati, and when Jason Stanley, my first kiss, came in with his orthodontist-perfected smile and the kind of clothes full-time white-collar jobs require, I dove into the bathroom. Told my boss I had vomited.

For weeks after that, she kept asking how I was doing in a voice that made it perfectly clear she thought I was pregnant.

I was not pregnant. Julian and I are always careful about that. Or at least I am. Julian, in general, is not careful by nature. He is a person who says yes to the world, almost regardless of what it asks. When he visits me at work, he finishes drinks that get left on the bar, and he’s tried most drugs (heroin excluded) once. He’s always up for weekend trips to Red River Gorge or Hocking Hills—or slightly longer trips to New York, on the overnight bus that’s only sixty dollars round trip but often has no bathroom. He has the same kind of flexible schedule I do—he’s a college dropout too, but he left the University of Cincinnati after only one year.

He was studying architectural design, but really, he wants to be a working artist. He shows his paintings at DIY spots around the city, and he lives with three other painters in an old white house that makes me think of Buck and the transients of Tofino. Sometimes, after one too many beers, sitting on the porch while they all smoke weed or clove cigarettes and talk about their dreams, it makes me so nostalgic I could cry from some mixture of sadness and happiness whose proportions I can never quite sort out.

Julian is rake-thin with hollowed-out cheekbones and alert eyes that can feel like they’re x-raying you. After our first kiss, outside his favorite bar, a grungy place downtown that has a bike repair shop in the back, he told me he didn’t ever want to get married or have kids.

“That’s okay,” I told him. “I don’t want to marry you either.”

He laughed gruffly and kissed me again. He always tastes like cigarettes or beer, and when he spends his days off work—he works in a UPS warehouse at the edge of town—painting at home, he gets so lost in his work that he forgets to eat or drink. When we meet up afterward, he’s usually in a foul mood but only for a few minutes, until he has a snack, at which point he melts back into a sweet, sensitive boyfriend who always kisses and touches me so sensually that I regularly find myself thinking, I bet this would look beautiful on film.

I consider saying it to him, asking if we should set up a camera and take some pictures, and I’m immediately embarrassed to have even considered it.

He’s the second person I’ve ever slept with, but he doesn’t know that. He didn’t ask. The first still comes into my bar every once in a while and flirts a little, but we can both tell that whatever mild attraction there was when he first started coming in fizzled after those two quick hookups. They were kind of awkward but fine, and in the end, I’m glad I got them out of the way because I have a sense that Julian would’ve been too freaked to come near me if he’d known how inexperienced I was. He would’ve been afraid I’d get too attached to him, and probably I have, but I think he has too, so for now, it’s okay that we spend every spare minute together.

Julian met Alex once when Alex was home for Christmas break at my bar, a second time during spring break at Julian’s grungy bike bar, and a third time for breakfast at Waffle House before Alex and I left for this trip.

I can tell Julian has very little opinion of Alex, which is mildly disappointing, and likewise I’m aware that Alex despises Julian, which probably shouldn’t have been a surprise.

He thinks Julian is reckless, careless. He doesn’t like that he always shows up late, or that sometimes I don’t hear from him for days, then spend weeks with him almost constantly, or that he hasn’t met my parents though they live in the same city.

“It’s okay,” I insisted when Alex shared these opinions with me on the flight to San Francisco a few days ago. “It works for us.” I don’t even want him to meet my family.

“I can just tell he doesn’t get it,” Alex said.

“Get what?” I asked.

“You,” he said. “He has no idea how lucky he is.”

It was both a sweet and a hurtful thing for him to say. Alex’s take on our relationship made me feel embarrassed, even if I wasn’t sure he was right.

“I’m lucky too,” I said. “He’s really special, Alex.”

He sighed. “Maybe I just need to get to know him better.” I knew from his voice he didn’t think that would fix the problem at all.

In my daydreams, I’d imagined the two of them becoming best friends, so close that it made sense for our summer trip to expand to include Julian, but after seeing how they interacted, I knew better than to even float the idea.

So Alex and I headed to San Francisco on our own. My credit card earned me enough points to get one of the round-trip plane tickets free, and Alex and I split the cost of the other.

We started with four days in wine country, staying at a new Sonoma bed-and-breakfast that comped two nights in exchange for the advertising they’d get to my twenty-five thousand followers. Alex good-naturedly agreed to take my photo doing all kinds of quaint things:

Sitting on one of the old-fashioned red bikes the B and B has for guests, wearing a giant straw sun hat, fresh flowers in the wicker basket fixed to the handlebars.

Walking on the nature trails through the scrubby meadows and their scraggly trees.

Sipping a cup of coffee on the patio, and a chilled old-fashioned in the sitting room.

We lucked out with the wine tastings too. The first winery we visited comped your tastings if you bought a bottle, and I researched the cheapest one online before we went. Alex took my picture posing in between rows of vines with a glimmering glass of rosé, one leg kicked out to the side to show off my ridiculous purple-and-yellow-striped vintage jumpsuit.

I was tipsy by then, and when he knelt, right in the dried-out dirt in his light gray pants, to take the photo, I almost fell over laughing at the bizarre angle he’d chosen for the picture. “Too many wine,” I said, gasping for breath.

“Too. Many. Wine?” he repeated, delighted and disbelieving, and as I fell into a crouch in the middle of the aisle, laughing my head off, he took a few more pictures from way down low, pictures that would make me look like a sassily dressed skin triangle.

He was being a horrible photographer on purpose, not out of protest but to crack me up.

It was the flip side of the Sad Puppy coin, another performance for me and me alone.

By the time we hit the second winery, we were already sleepy from the alcohol and sunshine, and I let my head droop against his shoulder. We were inside, on a technicality: the whole back of the building was a windowed garage door that pulled up so you could move freely from the patio, with its bougainvillea-encroached lattice, to the light, airy bar with its twenty-foot ceilings, big-ass fans spinning lazily overhead, their rhythm like a lullaby.

“How long have you two been together?” the sweet, middle-aged woman running the tasting asked as she returned with our next pour, a light and crisp Chardonnay.

“Oh,” Alex said.

Midyawn, I squeezed his biceps and said, “Newlyweds.”

The bartender was tickled. “In that case,” she said with a wink, “this one’s on me.”

Her name was Mathilde, and she was originally from France but moved to the United States after meeting her wife online. They lived in Sonoma but had honeymooned just outside San Francisco. “It’s called the Blue Heron Inn,” she told me. “It’s the most idyllic place I’ve ever seen. Romantic and cozy, with this roaring fire and lovely patio—just a few minutes from Muir Beach. You two must see it. It is perfect for newlyweds. Tell them Mathilde sent you.”

Before we left, we tipped Mathilde for the cost of the free tasting and then some.

For the next couple days, I deployed the newlyweds card regularly. Sometimes we got a discount or a free glass; sometimes we got nothing but a smile, but even those felt genuine and meaningful.

“I feel kind of bad,” Alex told me as we were walking it off in one vineyard.

“If you want to go get married,” I said, “we can.”

“Somehow, I don’t think Julian would take that too well.”

“He won’t care,” I said. “Julian doesn’t want to get married.”

Alex stopped and looked down at me, and then, entirely because of the wine, I started crying. He cupped my face and angled it up to his. “Hey,” he said. “It’s all right, Poppy. You don’t really want to marry Julian, do you? You’re way too good for that guy. He doesn’t deserve you.”

I sniffed back my tears, but that just let more out. My voice came out as a squeak. “Only my parents are ever going to love me,” I said. “I’m going to die alone.” I knew how stupid and melodramatic it sounded, but with him, it was always so hard to rein myself in, to say anything but the absolute truth of how I felt. And worst of all, I hadn’t even known that was how I felt until this moment. Alex’s presence had a way of drawing the truth right to my surface.

He shook his head and pulled me into his chest, squeezing me, lifting me up into him like he planned to absorb me. “I love you,” he said, and kissed my head. “And if you want, we can die alone together.”

“I don’t even know if I want to get married,” I said, wiping the tears away with a little laugh. “I think I’m about to start my period or something.”

He stared down at me, face inscrutable for another beat. It didn’t make me feel x-rayed, like Julian’s eyes. It just made me feel seen.

“Too many wine,” I said, and he finally let a fraction of a smile slip over his lips and we went back to walking off the buzz.

We checked out bright and early from our B and B and called the Blue Heron Inn on speakerphone as we headed back toward San Francisco. It was the middle of the week, and they had plenty of rooms.

“Would you by chance be the Poppy my darling Mathilde said would be calling?” the lady on the phone asked.

Alex shot me a meaningful look, and I sighed heavily. “Yes, but here’s the thing. We told her we were newlyweds, but it was a joke. So we don’t, like, want any free stuff.”

The woman on the other end of the phone gave a hacking cough, which turned out to be laughter. “Oh, honey. Mathilde wasn’t born yesterday. People pull that trick all the time. She just liked you two.”

“We liked her too,” I said, grinning enormously over at Alex. He grinned enormously back.

“I don’t have the authority to give anyone a free stay,” the woman went on, “but I do have a couple year-round passes you can use to visit Muir Woods if you like.”

“That would be amazing,” I said.

And just like that we saved thirty bucks.

The place was adorable, a white Tudoresque cottage tucked down a narrow road. It had a shingled roof and warped windows lined with flower boxes and a chimney whose smoke curled romantically through the mist, windows softly aglow as we pulled into the parking lot.

For two days, we moved between the beach, the redwoods, the inn’s cozy library, and the dining room with its dark wooden tables and blazing fire. We played UNO and Hearts and something called Quiddler. We drank foamy beers and had big English breakfasts.

We took pictures together, but I didn’t post any of them. Maybe it was selfish, but I didn’t want twenty-five thousand people descending on this place. I wanted it to stay exactly as it was.

Our last night we booked a room at a modern hotel that belonged to the father of one of my followers. When I posted about the upcoming trip and asked for tips, she DMed me to offer the room for free.

I love your blog, she said, and I love reading about Particular Man Friend, which is what I call Alex when I mention him at all. I mostly try to leave him out of it, because he, like the Blue Heron Inn, isn’t something I want to share with thousands of people, but sometimes the things he says are too funny to leave out. Apparently he’s bled through more than I realized.

I decided to try harder to keep him out of it, but I accepted the free room, because Money. Also the hotel has free parking for guests, which, in San Francisco, is the equivalent of a hotel giving out free kidney transplants.

We dropped our bags as soon as we got into the city, then headed back out to make the most of our only day in downtown San Francisco. We left the car and took cabs.

First we walked the Golden Gate Bridge, which was amazing, but also colder than I’d expected and so windy we couldn’t hear each other. For probably ten minutes, we pretended to be having a conversation, waving our arms exaggeratedly and shouting nonsense at each other as we power walked over the crowded walkway.

It made me think about that water taxi ride in Vancouver, how Buck kept vaguely gesturing, talking at an easy clip like one of those orthodontists who can’t stop asking you open-ended questions while his hands are in your mouth.

Luckily the weather had decided to be sunny; otherwise, we would have probably gotten hypothermia on the bridge. We stopped halfway across, and I pretended to climb over the railing. Alex made his trademark grimace and shook his head. He grabbed my hands and tugged me away from the railing, leaning in close so I could hear him over the wind when he said against my ear, “That makes me feel like I’m going to have diarrhea.”

I broke into laughter and we kept walking, him on the inside, me closest to the railing, resisting a powerful urge to keep messing with him. Probably I’d accidentally actually fall over and not only die but traumatize poor Alex Nilsen, and that was the last thing I wanted.

At the far end of the bridge, there was a restaurant, the Round House Cafe, a round, windowed building. We ducked inside to drink a cup of coffee while we gave our ears a chance to stop ringing from the wind.

There were dozens of bookshops and vintage stores in San Francisco, but we decided two of each should be enough.

We took a cab to City Lights first, a bookstore and publisher in one that had been around since the height of the beatnik era. Neither of us was a big beat person, but the store was exactly the kind of old, meandering shop that Alex lived for. From there we stopped by a store called Second Chance Vintage, where I found a sequined bag from the forties for eighteen dollars.

After that, we’d planned to go to the Booksmith, over by the Haight-Ashbury, but by then, that big English breakfast from the Blue Heron Inn had worn off and the Round House coffee had us both feeling a little jittery.

“Guess we just have to come back,” I said to Alex as we left the shop in search of dinner.

“Guess so,” he agreed. “Maybe for our fiftieth anniversary.”

He smiled down at me, and my heart swelled until it felt so big and light my body could float away. “Just so you know,” I said, “I would marry you all over again, Alex Nilsen.”

His head tipped sideways. He affected the Sad Puppy Face. “Is that just because you want more free wine?”

It was hard to choose a restaurant in a city with this much to offer, but we were too hungry to pore over the list I’d compiled, so we just went classic.

Farallon is not a cheap place, but on the second day of wine tasting, when we were both slaphappy, Alex had ordered another drink, crying, “When in Rome!” and ever since, whenever one of us had waffled about buying something, the other had insisted, “When in Rome!”

So far, this had been limited mostly to enormous ice cream cones and used paperback books, and lots of wine.

But Farallon is gorgeous, and a San Francisco staple, and if we were going to spend too much money, it might as well happen there. As soon as we walked into the building, with its opulent, rounded ceilings and gilded light fixtures and golden-edged booths, I said, “No regrets,” and forced Alex to high-five me.

“Giving high fives makes me feel like my insides have poison ivy,” he murmured.

“Might as well get that out of the way in case you’re about to find out you’re allergic to seafood.”

I was so enraptured by the over-the-top decor that I tripped three times on our way to the table. It was like being in the castle from The Little Mermaid, except not animated and everyone was fully clothed.

When our server left us with our menus, Alex did that old-man thing, where he opened it and reared back from the prices with widening eyes, like a startled horse.

“Really?” I said. “That bad?”

“It depends. Do you want more than one half-ounce of caviar?”

It wasn’t the kind of expensive that the upper middle class of Linfield would avoid, but for us, yes, it was expensive.

We split a two-person platter of oysters, crab, and shrimp along with one cocktail.

Our server hated us.

When we left, we walked past him, and I thought I heard Alex saying under his breath, “Sorry, sir.”

We went straight to a walk-up pizza place and scarfed down a whole large cheese pizza between the two of us.

“I ate way too much,” Alex said as we were walking along the street afterward. “It was like some kind of Midwestern demon possessed me while I was sitting in that restaurant and that tiny platter came out. I could hear my dad in my head saying, ‘Now, that’s not economical.’”

“I know,” I agreed. “Halfway through, I was just like, get me out of here, I need to get to a Costco and buy a five-dollar bag of noodles that could feed a family for weeks.”

“I think I’m bad at vacation,” Alex said. “All this living large makes me feel guilty.”

“You’re not bad at vacation,” I argued. “And pretty much everything makes you feel guilty, so don’t blame that on the living large.”

“Touché,” he agreed. “But still. You probably would’ve had more fun if you’d taken this trip with Julian.” He didn’t say it like a question, but the way his eyes darted over to me, then back to the sidewalk ahead of us, I could tell that it was one.

“I thought about inviting him,” I admitted.

“Yeah?” Alex pulled one hand from his pocket and smoothed his hair. For some reason, the streetlights passing over him on the dark sidewalk made him seem taller. Even slouching, he was towering over me. I guess he always was. I just didn’t always notice because he so often brought himself down to my level or pulled me up to his.

“Yeah.” I looped my arm through his elbow. “But I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad it’s just us.”

He looked down over his shoulder at me and slowed. I slowed beside him. “Are you going to break up with him?”

The question caught me off guard. The way he was looking at me, his eyebrows pinched and mouth small, caught me off guard too. My heart tripped over its next beat.

Yes, I thought right away, without any consideration.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

We kept walking. Up ahead we stumbled upon a bar that was Hemingway themed. That may seem rather ambiguous as a theme, but they pulled it off with their sleek dark wood and amber light and fishnets (not the stockings, actual nets for fish) suspended from the ceiling. The drinks were all rum cocktails, named after Hemingway books and short stories, and over the next two hours, Alex and I had three each, along with a shot. I kept saying, “We’re celebrating! Come on, Alex!” but really, I felt like there was something I was trying to forget.

And now, as we’re stumbling back into our hotel room, it occurs to me that I don’t remember what I was trying to forget, so I guess it worked.

I kick off my shoes and collapse onto the nearest bed while Alex disappears into the bathroom and comes back with two cups of water.

“Drink this,” he says. I grunt and try to swat his hand away. “Poppy,” he says more firmly, and I brattily push myself upright and accept the cup of water. He sits on the bed beside me until I’ve drained my glass, then goes back to refill both of them.

I’m not sure how many times he does this—I’m edging closer to sleep all the while. All I know is that eventually, he sets the glasses aside and starts to stand up, and from my half-dream, full-drunk state, I reach for his arm and say, “Don’t go.”

He settles back down on the bed and lies beside me. I fall asleep curled up against his side and when I wake up the next morning to my alarm going off, he’s already in the shower.

The humiliation at having made him sleep next to me is instantaneous and flaming hot. I know right then I can’t break up with Julian when I get home. I have to wait, long enough to be sure I’m not confused. Long enough that Alex won’t think the two events are connected.

They’re not, I think. I’m pretty sure they’re not.