Page 82 of People We Meet on Vacation

The muscles along his jaw leap as he considers his next words, never one to blurt anything out without first weighing it. “My point is, no one really knew me before you, Poppy. And even if... things change between us, you’ll never be alone, okay? I’ll always love you.”

Tears cloud my eyes, but miraculously I blink them clear. Somehow, my voice comes out steady and light, and not like someone reached into my rib cage and held my heart inside his hand just long enough to run a thumb across a secret wound.

“I know,” I tell him, and, “I love you too.”

It’s true, but not the full truth. There aren’t words vast or specific enough to capture the ecstasy and the ache and love and fear I feel just looking at him now.

So the moment sweeps past, and the trip goes on, and nothing is different between us, except that a part of me has woken up, like a bear emerging from hibernation with a hunger it has managed to sleep through for months but can’t ignore one second longer.

The next day, the second to last of the trip, we take a hike up a mountain pass. Near the top, I step to the edge of the path to take a photo through an opening in the trees of the deep blue lake below and lose my footing. My ankle rolls, hard and fast. It feels like the bone jabs through my foot to hit the ground, and then I’m sprawled in mud and leaves, hissing out swear words.

“Stay still,” Alex says, crouching beside me.

At first I can barely breathe, so I’m not crying, just choking, “Do I have a bone sticking out of my skin?”

Alex glances down, checks my leg. “No, I think you just sprained it.”

“Fuck,” I gasp from beneath a wave of pain.

“Squeeze my hand if you need to,” he says, and I do, as tight as I can. In his giant, masculine palm, my own looks tiny, my knuckles knobby and bulbous.

The pain lets up enough that mania rushes in to replace it. Tears falling in great gushes, I ask, “Do I have slow loris hands?”

“What?” Alex asks, understandably confused. His worried expression judders. He turns a laugh into a cough. “Slow loris hands?” he repeats seriously.

“Don’t laugh at me!” I squeak out, fully regressed into an eight-year-old little sister.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “No, you don’t have slow loris hands. Not that I know what a slow loris is.”

“It’s kind of like a lemur,” I say tearfully.

“You have beautiful hands, Poppy.” He tries very, very hard—perhaps his hardest ever—not to smile, but slowly it happens anyway, and I break into a teary laugh. “Do you want to try to stand?” he asks.

“Can’t you just roll me down the mountain?”

“I’d rather not,” he says. “There might be poison ivy once we get off the trail.”

I sigh. “Okay, then.” He helps me up, but I can’t put any weight on my right foot without a lightning bolt of pain crackling up my leg. I stop shambling along, start to cry again, and bury my face in my hands to hide the snotty mess I’m crumbling into.

Alex rubs his hands slowly up and down my arms for a few seconds, which only makes me cry harder. People being nice to mewhen I’m upset always has this effect. He pulls me in against his chest and hooks his arms against my back.

“Am I going to have to, like, pay for a helicopter to get down there?” I get out.

“We’re not that far,” he says.

“I’m not kidding, I can’t put any weight on it.”

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says. “I’m going to pick you up, and I’m going to carry you—very slowly—down the trail. And I’m probably going to have to stop a lot and set you down, and you’re not allowed to call me Seabiscuit, or screamFaster! Faster!in my ear.”

I laugh into his chest, nod against him, leaving wet marks behind on his T-shirt.

“And if I find out you faked this whole thing just to see if I would carry you half a mile down a mountain,” he says, “I’m going to be really annoyed.”

“Scale of one to ten,” I say, leaning back to look into his face.

“Seven atleast,” he says.

“You are so, so nice,” I say.

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