People We Meet on Vacation

AN OLDER GENTLEMAN travels with us to Croatia as the official R+R photographer.

Bernard. He’s a loud talker, always wearing a fleece vest, often standing between Alex and me without noticing the funny looks we exchange over Bernard’s bald head. (He’s shorter than me, though throughout the trip, he often tells us he was five six back in his prime.)

Together, the three of us see the ancient city of Dubrovnik, Old Town, with its high stone walls and winding streets, and further out, the rocky beaches and pristine turquoise water of the Adriatic.

The other photographers I’ve traveled with have all been fairly independent, but Bernard’s a recent widower, unused to living alone. He’s a nice guy, but endlessly social and talkative, and throughout our time in the city, I watch him wear Alex down, until all Bernard’s questions are answered in monosyllables. Bernard doesn’t notice; usually his questions are mere springboards for stories he’d like to share.

The stories involve a lot of names and dates, and he takes plenty of time ensuring he’s getting each right, sometimes going back and forth four or five times until he’s positive this event happened on a Wednesday and not, as he first thought, a Thursday.

From the city, we take a crammed ferry to Korčula, an island off the coast. R+R has booked us two apartment-style hotel rooms overlooking the water. Somehow Bernard gets it in his head that he and Alex will be sharing one of these, which makes no sense since he is an R+R employee, who should obviously get his own accommodations, while Alex is my guest.

We try to tell him this.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” he says. “Besides, I got two bedrooms by accident.”

It’s a lost cause trying to convince him that that room was supposed to be Alex’s and mine, thus the two bedrooms, and honestly, I think we both feel too much sympathy for Bernard to push the matter. The apartments themselves are sleek and modern, all whites and stainless steels with balconies overlooking the glittering water, but the walls are paper-thin, and I wake every morning to the sounds of three tiny children running around and screaming in the apartment above mine. Furthermore, something has died in the wall behind the dryer in the laundry closet, and every day that I call down to the desk to tell them this, they send up a teenage boy to do something about the smell while I’m out. I’m fairly sure he just opens all the windows and sprays Lysol all over the place, because the sweet lemony scent I return to fades each night as the dead animal smell swells back to replace it.

I expected this to be the best vacation of any we’ve ever taken.

But even aside from the death smell and the shrieking-at-dawn babies, there’s the fact of Bernard. After Tuscany, without talking about it, Alex and I both took a step back from our friendship. Instead of daily texts, we started catching up every couple weeks. It would’ve been too easy to go back to how things were then, but I couldn’t do that, to him or to Trey.

Instead I threw myself into work, taking every trip that came up, sometimes back to back. At first Trey and I were happier than ever—this was where we thrived: on horseback and camelback, hiking volcanoes and cliff-jumping off waterfalls. But eventually our never-ending vacation started to feel like running, like we were two bank robbers making the best of a bad situation while we waited for the FBI to close in.

We started arguing. He’d want to get up early, and I’d oversleep. I was walking too slowly, and he 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 must be how it feels to be a cat,” I hum.

He laughs. “How so?”

“You know.” I rock my head side to side, nestling my neck against his palm. “Just . . .” I trail off, too contented to go on. His fingers scratch in and out against my skin, tugging lightly on my hair, and I sigh with pleasure as I sink against him, my hand settling on his chest as my forehead rests against his.

He sets his hand on mine, and I lace my fingers into it as I tip my face up to his, our noses grazing. His chin lifts, fingers graze my jaw. Next thing I know, he’s kissing me.

I’m kissing Alex Nilsen.

A warm, slow drink of a kiss. Both of us are almost laughing at first, like this whole thing is a very funny joke. Then, his tongue sweeps over my bottom lip, a brush of fiery heat. His teeth catch it briefly next, and there’s no more laughing.

My hands slip into his hair and he pulls me across his lap, his hands running up my back and down again to squeeze my hips. My breaths are shuddering and quick as his mouth teases mine open again, his tongue sweeping deeper, his taste sweet and clean and intoxicating.

We’re frantic hands and sharp teeth, fabric peeled away from skin, and fingernails digging into muscles. Probably Bernard is still snoring, but I can’t hear him over Alex’s deliciously shallow breath or his voice in my ear, saying my name like a swear word, or my heartbeat raging through my eardrums as I rock my hips against his.

All those things we didn’t get to say no longer matter because, really, this is what we needed. I need more of him. I reach for his belt—because he’s wearing a belt, of course he’s wearing a belt—but he catches my wrist and draws back, his lips bee-stung and hair mussed, all of him rumpled in a completely unfamiliar and extremely appealing way.

“We can’t do this,” he says, voice thick.

“We can’t?” Stopping feels like running into a wall. Like there are little cartoon birds twirling dazedly around my head as I try to make sense of what he’s saying.

“We shouldn’t,” Alex amends. “We’re drunk.”

“Not too drunk to make out but too drunk to sleep together?” I say, almost laughing from the absurdity, or from the disappointment.

Alex’s mouth twists. “No,” he says, “I mean, it shouldn’t have happened at all. We’ve both been drinking, and we’re not thinking clearly—”

“Mm-hm.” I scoot away from him, smoothing my pajama shirt back down. My embarrassment is the total-body kind, a gut punch that makes my eyes water. I shove myself off the floor, Alex following my lead. “You’re right,” I say. “It was a bad idea.”

Alex looks miserable. “I just mean . . .”

“I get it,” I say quickly, trying to patch the hole before the boat can take on more water. It was a mistake to go there, to risk this. But I need to convince him everything’s fine, that we didn’t just pour gasoline onto our friendship and light a match. “Let’s not make this a big deal—it’s not,” I go on, my conviction building. “It’s like you said: we each had, like, three bottles of wine. We weren’t thinking clearly. We’ll pretend it never happened, okay?”

He stares at me hard, a tense expression I can’t quite read. “You think you can do that?”

“Alex, of course,” I say. “We’ve got way more history than just one drunken night.”

“Okay.” He nods. “Okay.” After a beat of silence, he says, “I should get to bed.” He studies me for another beat, then mumbles, “Good night,” and slips out the door.

After a few minutes of mortified pacing, I drag myself to bed, where every time I start drifting off, the whole encounter plays over in my mind: the unbearable excitement of kissing him and the even more unbearable humiliation of our conversation.

In the morning, when I wake, there’s one blissful moment when I think I dreamed the whole thing. Then I stumble to the bathroom mirror and see a good old-fashioned hickey on my neck, and the cycle of memories starts anew.

I decide not to bring it up when I see him. The best thing I can do is pretend to truly have forgotten what happened. To prove I’m okay and nothing has to change between us.

When we get to the airport—Bernard, Alex, and I—and Bernard wanders off to use the bathroom, we have our first minute alone of the day.

Alex coughs. “I’m sorry about last night. I know I started it all and—it shouldn’t have happened like that.”

“Seriously,” I say. “It’s not a big deal.”

“I know you’re not over Trey,” he murmurs, looking away. “I shouldn’t have . . .”This belongs to NôvelDrama.Org.

Would it make things better or worse to admit how little Trey crossed my mind for weeks before this trip? That last night I hadn’t been thinking about anyone but Alex?

“It’s not your fault,” I promise. “We both let it happen, and it doesn’t have to mean anything, Alex. We’re just two friends who kissed once while drunk.”

He studies me for a few seconds. “All right.” He doesn’t look like he’s all right. He looks like he’d rather be at a saxophone convention with any number of serial killers right now.

My heart squeezes painfully. “So we’re good?” I say, willing it to be so.

Bernard reappears then with a story about a heavily toilet-papered airport bathroom he once visited—on the Sunday of Mother’s Day, for those who want the exact date—and Alex and I barely look at each other.

When I get home, something keeps me from texting him.

He’ll text me, I think. Then I’ll know we’re okay.

After a week of silence, I send him a casual text about a funny T-shirt I see on the subway, and he writes back ha but nothing else. Two weeks later, when I ask, Are you okay? he just replies, Sorry. Been really busy. You okay?

For sure, I say.

Alex stays busy. I get busy too, and that’s it.

I always knew there was a reason we kept a boundary up. We’d let our libidos get the best of us and now he couldn’t even look at me, text me back.

Ten years of friendship flushed down the drain just so I could know what Alex Nilsen tastes like.