People We Meet on Vacation - Emily Henry Page 0,116

was laughing too loud. I was annoyed by how he flirted with our waitress, and he couldn’t stand how I had to browse every aisle of every identical shop we passed.

We had a week left of a trip to New Zealand when we realized we’d run our course.

“We’re just not having fun anymore,” Trey said.

I started laughing from relief. We parted ways as friends. I didn’t cry. The last six months had been a slow unbraiding of our lives. The breakup was just the snip of one last string.

When I texted Alex to tell him, he said, What happened? Are you okay?

It’ll be easier to explain in person, I wrote, heart trilling.

Fair enough, he said.

A few weeks later, also over text, he told me that he and Sarah had broken up again.

I hadn’t seen that coming: They’d moved to Linfield together when he’d finished his doctorate, were even working at the same school—a miracle so profound it seemed like the universe’s express approval of their relationship—and from everything Alex had told me, they’d been better than ever. Happier. It was all so natural for them. Unless he was keeping their issues private, which would make perfect sense.

You want to talk? I asked, feeling at once terrified and full of adrenaline.

Like you said, he wrote back, probably easier to explain in person.

I’d been waiting two and a half months to have that conversation. I missed Alex so badly, and finally there was nothing in the way of us speaking plainly, no reason to hold back or tiptoe around each other or try not to touch.

Except for Bernard.

He kayaks at sunset with us. Rides along on our tour of the family wineries gathered together a ways inland. Joins us for seafood dinners every night. Suggests a nightcap afterward. He never tires. Bernard, Alex whispers one night, might be God, and I snort into my white wine.

“Allergies?” Bernard says. “You can use my hankie.”

Then he passes me an honest-to-god embroidered hankie.

I wish Bernard would do something awful, like floss at the table, or just anything that would give me the courage to demand an hour of space and privacy.

This is the most beautiful and worst trip Alex and I have ever taken.

On our last night, the three of us get roaring drunk at a restaurant overlooking the sea, watching the pinks and golds of the sun melt across everything until the water is a sheet of light, replaced gradually by a blanket of deep purple. Back at the resort, the sky gone dark, we part ways, exhausted in more ways than one and heavy with wine.

Fifteen minutes later, I hear a light knock on my door. I answer in my pajamas and find Alex standing there, grinning and flushed. “Well, this is a surprise!” I say, slurring a little.

“Really?” Alex says. “With how you were plying Bernard with alcohol, I thought this was part of some evil plan.”

“Is he passed out?” I ask.

“Snoring so fucking loud,” Alex says, and as we both start to laugh, he presses his forefinger to my lips. “Shhh,” he warns, “I’ve tried to sneak over here the last two nights and he woke up—and came out of his bedroom—before I even made it to the door. I thought about taking up smoking just so I could have an ironclad excuse.”

More laughter bubbles through me, warming my insides, fizzing through them. “Do you really think he would’ve followed you over?” I whisper, his finger still pressed to my lips.

“I wasn’t willing to take that chance.” On the other side of the wall, we hear a wretched snore, and I start giggling so hard my legs go watery and I sink to the floor. Alex does too.

We fall into a heap, a tangle of limbs and silent, quaking laughter. I smack futilely at his arm as another horrible thunder-roll snore roars through the wall.

“I’ve missed you,” Alex says through a grin as the laughter’s subsiding.

“Me too,” I say, cheeks aching. He brushes the hair out of my face, static making a few strands dance around his hand. “But at least now I have three of you.” I grip his wrist to steady myself and close one eye to see him better.

“Too many wine?” he teases, slipping his hand around my neck.

“Nah,” I say, “just enough to knock out Bernard. The perfect amount.” My head is pleasantly swimming and my skin feels warm beneath Alex’s hand, rings of satisfying heat reverberating out from it all the way to my toes. “This