Page 3 of People We Meet on Vacation

“So,” I say. “Should we take it from the top again? I’ll be the sexy stranger at the bar and you be your charming self, minus the cat stuff. We’ll get you back in the dating pool in no time.”

He looks up from his phone, nearly smirking. I’ll just call it smirking, because for Alex, this is as close as it gets. “You mean the stranger who kicks things off with a well-timed ‘Hey, tiger’? I think we might have different ideas of what ‘sexy’ is.”

I spin on my stool, our kneesbump-bumping as I turn away from him and then back, resetting my face into a flirtatious smile. “Did it hurt...” I say, “... when you fell from heaven?”

He shakes his head. “Poppy, it’s important to me that you know,” he says slowly, “that if I everdomanage to go on another date, it will have absolutely nothing to do with your so-called help.”

I stand, throw back the rest of my drink dramatically, and slap the glass onto the bar. “So what do you say we get out of here?”

“How are you more successful at dating than me,” he says, awed by the mystery of it all.

“Easy,” I say. “I have lower standards. And no Flannery O’Connor to get in the way. And when I go out to bars, I don’t spend the whole time scowling at Yelp reviews and forcefully projectingDON’T TALK TO ME. Also, I am, arguably, gorgeous from certain angles.”

He stands, setting a twenty on the bar before tucking his wallet back into his pocket. Alex always carries cash. I don’t know why. I’ve asked at least three times. He’s answered. I still don’t know why, because his answer was either too boring or too intellectually complex for my brain to even bother retaining the memory.

“Doesn’t change the fact that you’re an absolute freak,” he says.

“You love me,” I point out, the tiniest bit defensive.

He loops an arm around my shoulders and looks down at me, another small, contained smile on his full lips. His face is a sieve, only letting out the smallest amount of expression at a time. “I know that,” he says.

I grin up at him. “I love you back.”

He fights the widening of his smile, keeps it small and faint. “I know that too.”

The tequila has me feeling sleepy, lazy, and I let myself lean into him as we start toward the open door. “This was a good trip,” I say.

“Best yet,” he agrees, the cool rain gusting in around us like confetti from a cannon. His arm curls in a little closer, warm and heavy around me, his clean cedarwood smell folding over my shoulders like a cape.

“I haven’t even minded the rain much,” I say as we step into the thick, wet night, all buzzing mosquitoes and palm trees shivering from the distant thunder.

“I’ve preferred it.” Alex lifts his arm from my shoulder to curl over my head, transforming himself into a makeshift human umbrella as we sprint across the flooding road toward our little red rental car. When we reach it, he breaks away and opens my door first—we scored a discount by taking a car without automatic locks or windows—then runs around the hood and hurls himself into the driver’s seat.

Alex flicks the car into gear, the full-tilt AC hissing its arcticblast against our wet clothes as he pulls out of our parking space and turns toward our rental house.

“I just realized,” he says, “we didn’t take any pictures at the bar for your blog.”

I start to laugh, then realize he’s not kidding. “Alex, none of my readers want to see pictures of BAR. They don’t even want to read about BAR.”

He shrugs. “I didn’t think BAR was that bad.”

“You said it smelled like salmonella.”

“Other than that.” He ticks the turn signal on and guides the car down our narrow, palm-tree-lined street.

“Actually, I haven’t really gottenanyusable pictures this week.”

Alex frowns and rubs at his eyebrow as he slows toward the gravel driveway ahead.

“Other than the ones you took,” I add quickly. The pictures Alex volunteered to take for my social media are truly terrible. But I love him so much for being willing to take them that I already picked out the least atrocious one and posted it. I’m making one of those awful midword faces, shriek-laughing something at him as he tries—badly—to give me direction, and the storm clouds are visibly forming over me, as if I’m summoning the apocalypse to Sanibel Island myself. But at least you can tell I’m happy in it.

When I look at that photo, I don’t remember what Alex said to me to elicit that face, or what I yelled back at him. But I feel that same rush of warmth I get when I think about any of our past summer trips.

That crush of happiness, that feeling thatthisis what life’s about: being somewhere beautiful, with someone you love.

I tried to write something about that in the caption, but it was hard to explain.

Usually my posts are all about how to travel on a budget, makethe most of the least, but when you’ve got a hundred thousand people following your beach vacation, it’s ideal to show them... a beach vacation.

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