People We Meet on Vacation

DID YOU THINK about it?” Rachel asks. She’s pounding away on the stationary bike beside me, sweat droplets flying off her, though her breathing is even, as if we were moseying through Sephora. As usual, we found two bikes at the back of spin class, where we can keep up a conversation without being scolded for distracting other cyclists.

“Think about what?” I pant back.

“What makes you happy.” She lifts herself to pedal faster at the teacher’s command. For my part, I’m basically slumped over the handlebars, forcing my feet down like I’m biking through molasses. I hate exercise; I love the feeling of having exercised.

“Silence,” I gasp, heart throbbing. “Makes. Me. Happy.”

“And?” she prompts.

“Those raspberry vanilla cream bars from Trader Joe’s,” I get out.

“And?”

“Sometimes you do!” I’m trying to sound cutting. The panting undermines it.

“And rest!” the instructor screams into her microphone; thirty-some gasps of relief go up around the room. People fall slack at bikes or slide off them into a puddle on the floor, but Rachel dismounts like an Olympic gymnast finishing her floor routine. She hands me her water bottle, and I follow her into the locker room, then out into the blazing light of midday.

“I won’t pry it out of you,” she says. “Maybe it’s private, what makes you happy.”

“It’s Alex,” I blurt out.

She stops walking, gripping my arm so that I’m held captive, the foot traffic ballooning around us on the sidewalk. “What.”

“Not like that,” I say. “Our summer trips. Nothing has ever topped those.”

Nothing.

Even if I ever get married or have a baby, I expect the Best Day of My Life to still be something of a toss-up between that and the time Alex and I went hiking in the mist-ridden redwoods. As we were pulling into the park, it started to pour, and the trails cleared out. We had the forest to ourselves, and we slipped a bottle of wine into our backpack and set off.

When we were sure we were alone, we popped the cork and passed the bottle back and forth, drinking as we trudged through the stillness of the woods.

I wish we could sleep here, I remember him saying. Like just lie down and nap.

And then we came to one of those big, hollowed-out trunks along the trail, the kind that’s cracked open to form a woody cave, its two sides like giant cupped palms.

We slipped inside and curled up on the dry, needly earth. We didn’t nap, but we rested. Like, instead of absorbing energy through sleep, we drew it into our bodies through the centuries of sunshine and rain that had cooperated to grow this massive tree protecting us.

“Well, you obviously have to call him,” Rachel says, effectively lassoing me and yanking me out of the memory. “I’ve never understood why you didn’t just confront him about everything. Seems silly to lose such an important friendship over one fight.”

I shake my head. “I already texted him. He’s not looking to rekindle our friendship, and he definitely doesn’t want to go on a spontaneous vacation with me.” I fall into step again beside her, jogging my gym bag higher on my sweaty shoulder. “Maybe you should come with me. That’d be fun, wouldn’t it? We haven’t gone anywhere together in months.”

“You know I get anxious when I leave New York,” Rachel says.

“And what would your therapist say about that?” I tease.

“She’d say, ‘What do they have in Paris that they don’t have in Manhattan, sweetie?’”

“Um, the Eiffel Tower?” I say.

“She gets anxious when I leave New York too,” Rachel says. “New Jersey is about as far as the umbilical cord stretches for us. Now let’s get some juice. That cheese board has basically formed a cork in my butthole and everything’s just piling up behind it.”

•   •   •

AT TEN THIRTY on Sunday night, I’m sitting in bed, my soft pink duvet piled up on my feet and my laptop burning against my thighs. Half a dozen windows sit open in my web browser, and in my notes app I’ve started a list of possible destinations that only goes to three.

1. Newfoundland

2. AustriaText © 2024 NôvelDrama.Org.

3. Costa Rica

I’ve just started compiling notes on the major cities and natural landmarks of each when my phone buzzes on my side table. Rachel’s been texting me, swearing off dairy, all day, but when I reach for my phone, the top of the message alert reads ALEXANDER THE GREATEST.

All at once, that giddy feeling is back, swelling so fast in me I feel like my body might pop.

It’s a picture message, and when I tap it open, I find a shot of my hilariously bad senior photo, complete with the quote I chose for them to print beneath it: BYE.

Ohhhhhhh nooooo, I type through laughter, shoving my laptop aside and flopping down on my back. Where did you find this?

East Linfield library, Alex says. I was setting up my classroom and I remembered they have yearbooks.

You have defied my trust, I joke. I’m texting your brothers for baby pictures right now.

Right away, he sends back that same Sad Puppy shot from Friday, his face blurry and washed out, the hazy orange glow of a streetlight visible over his shoulder. Mean, he writes.

Is that a stock photo that you keep saved for occasions such as these? I ask.

No, he says. Took it Friday.

You were out pretty late for Linfield, I say. What’s open apart from Frisch’s Big Boy at that hour?

It turns out that once you’re 21 there’s plenty to do after dark in Linfield, he says. I was at Birdies.

Birdies, the golf-themed dive bar “and grill” across the street from my high school.

Birdies? I say. Ew, that’s where all the teachers drink!

Alex fires off another Sad Puppy Face shot, but at least this one’s new: him in a soft gray T-shirt, his hair sticking up all over the place and a plain wooden headboard visible behind him.

He’s sitting in bed too. Texting me. And over the weekend, when he was working on his classroom, he not only thought about me, but took the time to go find my old yearbook shot.

I’m grinning hugely now, and buzzing too. It’s surreal how much this feels like the early days of our friendship, when every new text seemed so sparkly and funny and perfect, when every quick phone call accidentally turned into an hour and a half of talking nonstop, even when we’d seen each other a few days before. I remember how, during one of the first of these—before I would’ve considered him my best friend—I had to ask him if I could call him back in a second so I could go pee. When we got back on the phone, we talked another hour and then he asked me the same thing.

By then it seemed silly to get off the phone just to avoid hearing pee hitting a toilet bowl, so I told him he could stay on the phone if he wanted. He did not take me up on it, then or ever, though from then on, I often peed mid–phone call. With his permission, of course.

Now I’m doing this humiliating thing, touching the picture of his face like I can somehow feel the essence of him that way, like it will bring him closer to me than he has been for two years. There’s no one to see it, and still I feel embarrassed.

Kidding! I reply. Next time I’m home, we should go get sloppy with Mrs. Lautzenheiser.

I send it without thinking, and almost immediately my mouth goes dry at the sight of the words on-screen.

Next time I’m home.

We.

Was that too far? Suggesting we should hang out?

If it was, he doesn’t let on. He just writes back, Lautzenheiser’s sober now. She’s also Buddhist.

But now that I haven’t gotten a direct reply to the suggestion, positive or negative, I feel an intense desire to push the matter. Then I guess we’ll have to go get enlightened with her instead, I write.

Alex types for way too long, and the whole time I’m crossing my fingers, trying to forcefully will away any tension.

Oh, god.

I thought I’d been doing fine, that I’d gotten over our friend breakup, but the more we talk, the more I miss him.

My phone vibrates in my hand. Two words: Guess so.

It’s noncommittal, but it’s something.

And now I’m on a high. From the yearbook photos, from the selfies, from the idea of Alex sitting up in bed texting me out of the blue. Maybe it’s pushing too hard or asking too much, but I can’t help myself.

For two years, I’ve wanted to ask Alex to give our friendship another shot, and I’ve been so afraid of the answer that I’ve never gotten the question out. But not asking hasn’t brought us back together either, and I miss him, and I miss how we were together, and I miss the Summer Trip, and finally, I know that there is one thing in my life that I still really want, and there’s only one way to find out if I can have it.

Any chance you’re free until school starts? I type out, shaking so much my teeth have started to chatter. I’m thinking about taking a trip.

I stare at the words for the span of three deep breaths, and then I hit send.