Page 108 of People We Meet on Vacation

“Of course I am. Your little brothers only get married... three times.”

“And yourfavoriteone only gets married once,” David says. “Fingers crossed.”

“I hear you and Tham are amazing together,” I say. “And that he is Very Fancy.”

“The fanciest,” David agrees. “He’s a director. We met on set.”

“On set!” I cry. “Listen to you!”

“I know,” he says. “I’m an insufferable L.A. person.”

“No, no, definitely not.”

Someone shouts for David then from the pool, and he gives her aone minutesignal, then faces us again. “Make yourselves at home—notourhome, obviously,” he adds to Alex, “but, like, a super-loud, super-fun, super-gay home with a dance floor out back—which I expect to see you both on shortly.”

“Stop trying to make Poppy fall in love with you,” Alex says.

“Yeah, you really don’t need to waste your time,” I say. “I’m already sold.”

David grabs my head and smooches the side of it again, then does the same thing to Alex and dances over to the girl in the pool pretending to reel him in with an invisible fishing rod.

“Sometimes I worry he takes himself too seriously,” Alex says flatly, and when a laugh rockets out of me, the corner of his mouth twitches in and out of a smile. We stand there grinning for a few more seconds, our locked hands swinging back and forth between us.

“I thought you didn’t like holding hands,” I say.

“And you said you did,” he says.

“So, what? I just get whatever I want now?” I tease.

His smile flickers back into place, calm and restrained. “Yes, Poppy,” he says. “You get whatever you want now. Is that a problem?”

“What if I wantyouto have whatyouwant?”

He arches an eyebrow. “Are you just saying that because you know what I’m going to say, and you want to make fun of me for it?”

“No?” I say. “Why? What are you going to say?”

Our hands go still between us. “I have what I want, Poppy.”

My heart flutters, and I pull my hand from his, coil it around his waist, and tip my head back to peer into his face. “I am resisting the urge to PDA all over you right now, Alex Nilsen.”

He bends his neck and kisses me so long that a few people start cheering. When we pull apart, he’s pink cheeked and bashful. “Damn,” he says. “I feel like a horny teenager.”

“Maybe if we utilize the Jäger Bomb station in the backyard,” I say, “we’ll go back to feeling like demure, mature thirty-year-olds.”

“That sounds realistic,” Alex says, tugging me toward the back patio. “I’m in.”

There’s a bar out back and a food truck serving fish tacos parked on the grass. Behind that, a garden stretches out like something from a Jane Austen novel, right here in the middle of the desert.

“Probably not great for conservation,” Alex remarks in true grandpa form.

“Probably not,” I agree. “But possiblygreatfor conversation.”

“True,” he says. “When all else fails, you can always engage a stranger in thoughtful small talk about the dying earth.”

At some point we find ourselves sitting on the edge of the pool, pants and jumpsuit legs rolled up and legs dangling in the warm water, and that’s when we hear David shouting excitedly from within a crowd, “Where’s my brother? He’s got to be part of this.”

“Sounds like you’re needed.”

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