Page 64 of People We Meet on Vacation

It’s not like it was with Julian, not all-consuming and unpredictable. We see each other two or three times a week, and it’s nice, the way this leaves space in my life for other things.

Spin classes with Rachel and long walks down the mall of Central Park with a dripping ice cream cone in hand, gallery openings and special movie nights at neighborhood bars. People in New York are friendlier than the rest of the world warned me they would be.

When I tell Rachel this, she says, “Most people here aren’t assholes. They’re just busy.”

But when I say the same thing to Guillermo, he gently cups my jaw, laughs, and says, “You are so sweet. I hope you don’t let this place change you.”

It’s sweet, but it also worries me. Like maybe the thing Gui loves best about me isn’t some essential part, but something changeable, something that could be stripped away by a few years in the right climate.

As we wander the streets of New Orleans, I think multiple times of telling Alex about what Guillermo said, but every time I catch myself. I want Alex to like Guillermo, and I worry he’d be offended on my behalf.

So I tell him other things. Like how calm Guillermo is, that he laughs easily, how passionate he is about his job, and food in general.

“You’ll like him,” I say, and I really believe it.

“I’m sure I will,” Alex insists. “If you like him, I’ll like him.”

“Good,” I say.

And then he tells me about Sarah, his unrequited college crush. He ran into her when he was up in Chicago visiting friends a few weeks ago. They grabbed a drink.

“And?”

“And nothing,” he says. “She lives in Chicago.”

“It’s not Mars,” I say. “It’s not even that far from Indiana University.”

“She’s been texting me a little,” he admits.

“Of course she is,” I say. “You’re a catch.”

His smile is bashful and adorable. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe next time I’m in town we’ll meet up again.”

“You should,” I press.

I’m happy with Guillermo, and Alex deserves to be happy too. Any tension that five percent of our relationship—the what-if—let in seems to have been resolved.

While staying in the French Quarter had seemed ideal when I booked our Airbnb, it turns out the nights are pretty loud. Themusic goes on until three or four and starts up surprisingly early in the morning. We find ourselves venturing to the rooftop pool at the Ace Hotel, which is free on weekdays, and napping on a couple of chaise lounges in the sun.

It’s probably the best sleep I get all week, so by the time we take the cemetery tour on the last day of the trip, I’m slaphappy from fatigue. Alex and I expected haunting ghost stories. Instead we get information about how the Catholic Church cares for some graves—the ones for which people bought “perpetual care” generations ago—and lets the others crumble to dust.

It is decidedly boring, and we’re baking in the sun, and my back hurts from walking in sandals all week, and I’m exhausted from barely sleeping, and halfway through, when Alex realizes how miserable I am, he starts raising his hand every time we stop at another grave for more bland factoids and asking, “So isthisgrave haunted?”

At first our tour guide laughs his question off, but he’s less amused every time it happens. Finally, Alex asks about a big white marble pyramid at odds with the rest of the stacked, rectangular French- and Spanish-style graves, and the tour guide huffs, “I certainly hope not! That one belongs to Nicolas Cage!”

Alex and I deteriorate into cackles.

It turns out he’s not joking.

This was supposed to be a big reveal, probably with a built-in joke, and we ruined it. “Sorry,” Alex says, and passes him a tip as we’re leaving. I’m the one who works in a bar, but he’s the one who always has cash.

“Are you secretly a stripper?” I ask him. “Is that why you always have cash?”

“Exotic dancer,” he says.

“You’re an exotic dancer?” I say.

“No,” he says. “It’s just helpful to carry cash.”

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