Page 72 of People We Meet on Vacation

“Don’t say something you don’t mean,” I warn. “I wouldn’t be wearing a blazer or sitting behind a desk, smiling.”

His lips press closed. His jaw muscles bounce as he swallows. “Okay, show me.”

I open my own Tinder app and hand my phone over so he can see the picture. I’m smiling sleepily, dressed like an alien in a silver dress and face paint with aluminum antennae hot-glued to my headband. Halloween, obviously. Or wait, was it Rachel’sX-Files-themed birthday party?

Alex considers the photo seriously, then scrolls down to read my bio. After a minute, he hands my phone back to me and looks me dead in the eye. “I would.”

My whole body tingles with pins and needles. “Oh,” I say, then manage a small “okay.”

“So,” he says, “are you done being mad at me?”

I try to say something, but my tongue feels too heavy. My whole body feels heavy, especially where my hip is touching his. So I just nod.

Thank God for his back spasm, I think. Otherwise I’m not sure what would happen next.

Alex studies me for a few seconds, then reaches for the forgotten laptop. His voice comes out thick. “What do you want to watch?”

19

Six Summers Ago

ALEX AND Iwere both pretty strapped for cash when the resort in Vail, Colorado, reached out to offer me a free stay.

At that point, whether the trip would happen was up in the air.

For one thing, when Guillermo broke up with me for a new hostess in his restaurant (a waifish blue-eyed girl almost fresh off the plane from Nebraska)—six weeks after I took the plunge and moved into his apartment—I had to scramble to find a new place to live.

Had to take an apartment on the high end of my price range.

Had to pay for a U-Haul for the second time in two months.

Had to buy new furniture to replace the stuff that had become redundant and thus been discarded—Gui already had nicer versions of my things: sofa, mattress, Danish-look kitchen table. We’d kept my dresser, because the leg on his was broken, and my bedside table, because he only had the one, but other than that, pretty much everything we’d kept was his.

The breakup came just after we’d gone to Linfield for Mom’s birthday.

For weeks beforehand, I’d debated whether to warn Gui what to expect.

For example, theBeverly Hillbillies–style junkyard that was our front lawn. Or Mom’s Museum to Our Childhood, as me and my brothers called the house itself. The baked goods my mother would pile up around the kitchen the whole time we were there, often with a frosting so thick and sweet it made non-Wrights cough as they ate, or the fact that our garage was riddled with things like once-used duct tape Dad was sure he could repurpose. Or that we’d be expected to play a days-spanning board game we’d invented as kids based onAttack of the Killer Tomatoes.

That my parents had recently adopted three senior cats, one of whom was incontinent to the point of having to wear a diaper.

Or that there was a decent chance he’d hear my parents having sex, because our house had thin walls, and as previously stated, the Wrights are a loud clan.

Or that there’d be a New Talent Show at the end of the weekend, where everyone was expected to perform some new feat they’d only started learning at the start of the visit.

(Last time I’d been home, Prince’s talent had been having us call out the name of any movie and trying to connect it back to Keanu Reeves within six degrees.)

So I should’ve warned Guillermo what he was walking into, definitely, but doing so would’ve felt like treason. Like I was saying there was something wrong with them. And sure, they were loud and messy, but they were also amazing and kind and funny, and I hated myself for evenconsideringbeing embarrassed by them.

Gui would love them, I told myself. Gui loved me, and these were the people who’d made me.

At the end of our first night there, we shut ourselves into my childhood bedroom and he said, “I think I understand you better now than ever before.”

His voice was as tender and warm as ever, but instead of love, it sounded like sympathy.

“I get why you had to flee to New York,” he said. “It must’ve been so hard for you here.”

My stomach sunk and my heart squeezed painfully, but I didn’t correct him. Again, I just hated myself for being embarrassed.

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