Page 22 of People We Meet on Vacation

Within a few seconds, he replies:R+R’s okay with that? No photographer?

I unconsciously start waggling my head back and forth like the tiny angel and devil on my shoulder are taking turns tugging it from left to right. I don’t want to outright lie to him.

But theyareokay with it. I’m taking a week off, so I’m free.

Yep, I say.Everything’s all set if you’re okay with it.

Sure, he writes.Sounds good.

It does sound good. It’ll be good. I can make it good.

7

This Summer

AS SOON ASthe plane touches down, the four babies that spent the full six-hour flight screaming stop at once.

I slip my phone from my purse and turn off airplane mode, waiting out the flood of incoming text messages from Rachel, Garrett, Mom, David Nilsen, and—last but absolutely not least—Alex.

Rachel says, in three different ways, to please let her know as soon as I land that my plane didn’t crash or get sucked into the Bermuda Triangle, and that she’s both praying for and manifesting a safe landing for me.

Safe and sound and already missing you, I tell her, then I open up the message from Garrett.

Thank you SO MUCH for not taking Santorini, he writes, then, in a separate message:Also... Pretty weird decision IMHO. I hope you’re okay...

I’m fine, I tell him.I just had a wedding come up last minute and Santorini was your idea. Send me lots of pics so I can regret my life choices?

Next, I open the message from David:SO happy you’re coming with Al! Tham’s excited to meet you, and of course you are invited to EVERYTHING.

Of all of Alex’s brothers, David has always been my favorite. But it’s hard to believe he’s old enough to get married.

Then again, when I said that to Alex, he texted back,Twenty-four. I can’t imagine making a decision like that at that age but all my brothers got married young, and Tham’s great. My dad’s even on board. He got a bumper sticker that says I’M A PROUD CHRIST FOLLOWER WHO LOVES MY GAY SON.

I snorted laughter into my coffee as I read that one. It was so supremely Mr. Nilsen, and also perfectly played into Alex’s and my running joke about David being the family favorite. Alex hadn’t even been allowed to listen to secular music until he was in high school, and when he decided to go to a secular university, there had been weeping.

In the end, though, Mr. Nilsen reallydidlove his sons, and so he pretty much always came around on matters that concerned their happiness.

If you’d gotten married at twenty-four, you’d be married to Sarah, I texted Alex.

You’d be married to Guillermo, he said.

I sent him back one of his own Sad Puppy selfies.

Please tell me you’re not still carrying a torch for that dick, Alex said.

The two of them had never gotten along.

Of course not, I wrote back.But Gui and I weren’t the ones in a torturous on-and-off relationship. That was you and Sarah.

Alex typed and stopped typing so many times I started to wonder if he was doing it just to annoy me.

But that was the end of that conversation. When he next textedme, the following day, it was with a non sequitur, a picture of BeDazzled black robes that said SPA BITCH on the back.

Summer Trip Uniform?he wrote, and we’ve dodged the topic of Sarah ever since, which makes it pretty damn clear to me that there’s something going on between them. Again.

Now, sitting on the cramped and sweltering plane, taxiing toward LAX, in the post-baby-scream silence, it still makes me a little sick to think about. Sarah and I have never been each other’s biggest fans. I doubt she’d approve of Alex taking another trip with me if they were back together, and if they aren’t properly but are on theirwayto being, then this could very well be the last summer trip.

They’d get married, start having kids, take their whole family to Disney World, and she and I would never be close enough for me to be a real part of Alex’s life anymore.

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