People We Meet on Vacation

ALEX!” I SHRIEK at the sight of his Tinder profile. “No!”

“What? What?” he says. “There’s no way you’ve read everything by now!”

“Um, first of all,” I say, brandishing his phone out in front of us, “don’t you think that’s a problem? Your bio looks like the cover letter to a résumé. I didn’t even know Tinder bios could be this long! Isn’t there some kind of character limit? No one is going to read this whole thing.”

“If they’re really interested, they will,” he says, slipping the phone out of my hand.

“Maybe if they’re interested in harvesting your organs, they’ll skim to the bottom just to make sure you don’t mention your blood type—do you?”

“No,” he says, sounding hurt, then adds, “just my weight, height, BMI, and social security number. Is what I wrote good at least?”

“Oh, we’re not talking about that just yet.” I pluck his phone from his hand again, angle the screen toward him, and zoom in on his profile picture. “First we have to talk about this.”

He frowns. “I like that picture.”

“Alex . . .” I say calmly. “There are four people in this picture.”

“So?”

“So we have found the first and largest problem.”

“That I have friends? I thought that would help.”

“You poor innocent baby creature, freshly arrived to earth,” I coo.

“Women don’t want to date men who have friends?” he says dryly, disbelieving.

“Of course they do,” I say. “They just don’t want to play Dating App Roulette. How are they supposed to know which one of these guys is you? That guy on the left is, like, eighty.”

“Biology teacher,” he says. His frown deepens. “I don’t really take pictures by myself.”

“You sent me those Sad Puppy selfies,” I point out.

“That’s different,” he says. “That was for you . . . You think I should use one of those?”

“God, no,” I say. “But you could take a new picture where you’re not making that face, or you could crop one that’s you and three biology teachers of a certain age so that it’s just you.”

“I’m making a weird face in that picture,” he says. “I’m always making a weird face in pictures.”

I laugh, but really, warm affection is growing in my belly. “You have a face for movies, not photographs,” I say.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you’re extremely handsome in real life, when your face is moving how it does, but when one millisecond is captured, yes, sometimes you’re making a weird face.”

“So basically I should delete Tinder and throw my phone into the sea.”

“Wait!” I jump out of bed and snatch my phone off the counter where I left it, then climb back up beside Alex, tucking my legs underneath me. “I know what you should use.”

He dubiously watches me scroll through my photos. I’m looking for a picture from our Tuscany trip, the last trip before Croatia. We’d been sitting outside on the patio, eating a late dinner, and he slipped away without a word. I figured he’d gone to the bathroom, but when I went inside to get dessert, he was in the kitchen, biting his lip and reading an email on his phone.

He looked worried, didn’t seem to notice I was there until I touched his arm and said his name. When he looked up, his face went slack.

“What is it?” I asked, and the first thing that jumped into my mind was Grandma Betty! She was getting old. Actually, as long as I’d known her she’d been old, but the last time we’d gone to her house together, she’d barely gotten up from the chair she did her knitting in. Until then, she’d always been a bustler. Bustling to the kitchen to get us lemonade. Bustling over to the sofa to fluff the cushions before we sat down.

But the thought didn’t have time to gestate because Alex’s tiny, ever-suppressed smile appeared.

“Tin House,” he said. “They’re publishing one of my stories.”

He gave a surprised laugh after he said it, and I threw my arms around him, let him draw me up and in against him tight. I kissed his cheek without thinking, and if it had felt any less natural to him than it did to me, he didn’t show it. He turned me in half a circle, set me down grinning, went back to staring at his phone. He forgot to hide his emotions. He let them run wild over his face. I tugged my phone out of my pocket, pulled up the camera, and said, “Alex.”

When he looked up, I captured my favorite picture of Alex Nilsen.

Unfiltered happiness. Naked Alex.

“Here,” I say, and show him the picture. Him, standing in a warm golden kitchen in Tuscany, his hair sticking up like it always did, his phone loose in his hand, and his eyes locked onto the camera, his mouth smiling but ajar. “You should use this one.”

He turns from the phone to me, our faces close though, as ever, his hangs over mine, his mouth soft with a trace of smile. “I forgot about that,” he says.

“It’s my favorite.” For a while neither of us moves. We linger in this moment of close silence. “I’ll send it to you,” I say weakly, and break eye contact, pulling up our text thread and dropping the picture into it.

Alex’s phone buzzes in his lap where I must’ve dropped it. He picks it up, does his half-cough tic. “Thanks.”

“So,” I say. “About that bio.”

“Should we print it out and find a red pen?” he jokes.

“No way, man. This planet is dying. No way I’m wasting that much paper.”

“Ha ha ha,” he says. “I was trying to be thorough.”

“As thorough as Dostoyevsky.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Shh,” I say. “Reading.”

Already knowing Alex, I do find the bio kind of charming. Mostly in that it speaks to that lovable grandpa side of him. But if I didn’t know him, and one of my friends read me this bio, I would suggest that perhaps this man was a serial killer.

Unfair? Probably.

But that doesn’t change things. He lists where he went to school, when he graduated, talks in depth about what he studied, the last few jobs he had, his strengths at said jobs, the fact that he hopes to get married and have kids, and that he is “close with [his] three brothers and their spouses and children” and “enjoys teaching literature to gifted high school students.”

I must be making a face, because he sighs and says, “It’s really that bad?”

“No?” I say.

“Is that a question?” he asks.

“No!” I say. “I mean, no, it’s not bad. It’s kind of cute, but, Alex, what are you supposed to talk about when you go out with a girl who’s already read all this?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably I’d just ask them questions about themselves.”

“That feels like a job interview,” I say. “I mean, yes, it is a rare and wonderful thing when your Tinder date asks you a single question about yourself, but you can’t just not talk about yourself at all.”

He rubs at the line in his forehead. “God, I really hate having to do this. Why’s it so hard to meet people in real life?”

“It might be easier . . . in another city,” I say pointedly.

He glances askance at me and rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Okay, what would you write, if you were a guy, trying to woo yourself?”

“Well, I’m different,” I say. “What you’ve got here would totally work on me.”

He laughs. “Don’t be mean.”

“I’m not,” I say. “You sound like a sexy, child-rearing robot. Like the maid from The Jetsons but with abs.”

“Poppyyyyy,” he groan-laughs, throwing his forearm over his face.

“Okay, okay. I’ll take a crack at it.” I take his phone again and erase what he wrote, committing it to memory as well as I can in case he wants to restore it. I think for a minute, then type and pass the phone back to him.

He studies the screen for a long time, then reads aloud, “‘I have a full-time job and an actual bed frame. My house isn’t full of Tarantino posters, and I text back within a couple hours. Also I hate the saxophone’?”

“Oh, did I put a question mark?” I ask, leaning over his shoulder to see. “That’s supposed to be a period.”

“It’s a period,” he says. “I just wasn’t sure if you were serious.”

“Of course I’m serious!”

“‘I have an actual bed frame’?” he says again.

“It shows that you’re responsible,” I say, “and that you’re funny.”

“It actually shows that you’re funny,” Alex says.

“But you’re funny too,” I say. “You’re just overthinking this.”

“You really think women will want to go out with me based on a picture and the fact that I have a bed frame.”

“Oh, Alex,” I say. “I thought you said you knew how grim it was out there.”

“All I’m saying is, I walk around all day with this face and a job and a bed frame, and none of that has gotten me very far.”

“Yeah, that’s because you’re intimidating,” I say, saving the bio and going back to the slideshow of women’s accounts.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Alex says, and I look up at him.

“Yes, Alex,” I say. “That is it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Remember Clarissa? My roommate at U of Chicago?”

“The trust-fund hippie?” he says.

“What about Isabel, my sophomore-year roommate? Or my friend Jaclyn from the communications department?”

“Yes, Poppy, I remember your friends. It wasn’t twenty years ago.”

“You know what those three people had in common?” I say. “They all had crushes on you. All of them.”

He blushes. “You’re full of shit.”

“No,” I say. “I’m not. Clarissa and Isabel were both constantly trying to flirt with you, and Jaclyn’s ‘communication skills’ just utterly failed whenever you were in the room.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know that?” he demands.

“Body language, prolonged eye contact,” I say, “finding every excuse to touch you, making overt sexual innuendos, asking you for help with papers.”

“We always did that over email,” Alex says, like he’s found a hole in my logic.

“Alex,” I say calmly. “Whose idea was that?”

The look of victory leaches from his face. “Wait. Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I say. “So with that in mind, would you like to take your new photo and bio for a spin?”

He looks aghast. “I’m not going to go on a date during our trip, Poppy.”

“Damn right, you’re not!” I say. “But you can at least try it out. Besides, I want to see what kinds of girls you swipe right for.”

“Nuns,” he says, “and aid workers.”Belonging to NôvelDrama.Org.

“Wow, you’re such a good person,” I say in a breathy Marilyn Monroe voice. “Please allow me to show my appreciation with a—”

“Okay, okay,” he says. “Don’t give yourself an asthma attack. I’ll swipe, just go gently on me, Poppy.”

I bump my shoulder lightly against his. “Always.”

“Never,” he says.

I frown. “Please call me on it if I ever make you feel bad.”

“You don’t,” he says. “It’s fine.”

“I know I joke rough sometimes. But I never want to hurt you. Not ever.”

He doesn’t smile, just gazes back steadily like he’s taking the time to let the words soak in. “I know that.”

“Okay, good.” I nod, train my eyes on his phone screen. “Ooh, what about her?”

The girl on-screen is tanned and pretty, bending at the knee and blowing a kiss at the camera. “No kissy faces,” he says, and swipes her off the screen.

“Fair enough.”

A girl with a lip ring and dark eye makeup appears in her place. Her bio reads, All metal, all the time.

“That’s a lot of metal,” Alex says, and swipes her away too.

Next up, a girl in a green leprechaun hat, grinning in a green tank top, holding up a green beer. She has big boobs and a bigger smile.

“Oh, a nice Irish girl,” I joke.

Alex vanishes that one without comment.

“Hey, what’s wrong with her?” I ask. “She was gorgeous.”

“Not my type,” he says.

“Hokay. Moving on.”

He rejects a rock climber, a Hooters waitress, a painter, and a hip-hop dancer with a body to rival Alex’s own.

“Alex,” I say. “I’m beginning to think the problem lies not with the bio but with the biographer.”

“They’re just not my type,” he says. “And I’m definitely not theirs.”

“How do you know that?”

“Look,” he says. “Here. She’s cute.”

“Oh my god, you’ve got to be kidding me!”

“What?” he says. “You don’t think she’s pretty?”

The strawberry blonde smiles up at me from behind a polished mahogany desk. Her hair is clipped back into a half ponytail and she’s wearing a navy blue blazer. According to her bio, she’s a graphic designer who loves yoga, sunshine, and cupcakes. “Alex,” I say. “She’s Sarah.”

He rears back. “This girl looks nothing like Sarah.”

I snort. “I didn’t say she looks like Sarah”—though she does—“I said she is Sarah.”

“Sarah’s a teacher, not a graphic designer,” Alex says. “She’s taller than this girl and her hair is darker and her favorite dessert is cheesecake, not cupcakes.”

“They dress exactly the same. They smile exactly the same. Why do all guys want girls who look like they’re carved out of soap?”

“What are you talking about?” Alex says.

“I mean, you had no interest in all those cool, sexy girls and then you see this wannabe kindergarten teacher and she’s the first person you even consider. It’s just . . . typical.”

“She’s not a kindergarten teacher,” he says. “What do you have against this girl?”

“Nothing!” I say, but it doesn’t sound like it’s true, even to me. I sound annoyed. I open my mouth, hoping to walk my reaction back a little, but that’s not what happens at all. “It’s not the girl. It’s—it’s guys. You all think you want a sexy, independent hip-hop dancer, but when that person appears in front of you, when she’s a real person, she’s too much and you’re not interested and you’ll go for the cute kindergarten teacher in the turtleneck every time.”

“Why do you keep saying she’s a kindergarten teacher?” Alex cries.

“Because she’s Sarah,” I blurt out.

“I don’t want to date Sarah, okay?” he says. “And also Sarah teaches ninth grade, not kindergarten. And also,” he goes on, picking up steam, “you talk a big game, Poppy, but I guarantee that when you’re on Tinder, you’re swiping right for firefighters and ER surgeons and professional fucking skateboarders, so no, I don’t feel bad for homing in on women who look like they’re probably sweet—and to you, yes, maybe a little bit boring—because it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that maybe women like you think I’m boring.”

“Fuck that,” I say.

“What?” he says.

“I said, fuck that!” I repeat. “I don’t think you’re boring, so that whole argument fails.”

“We’re friends,” he says. “You wouldn’t swipe right on me.”

“I would too,” I say.

“You would not,” he argues.

And here’s my chance to let it go, but I’m still too fired up, too annoyed to let him think he’s right about this.

“I. Would.”

“Well, I would for you too,” he retorts, like somehow this is all some sort of argument.

“Don’t say something you don’t mean,” I warn. “I wouldn’t be wearing a blazer or sitting behind a desk, smiling.”

His lips press closed. His jaw muscles bounce as he swallows. “Okay, show me.”

I open my own Tinder app and hand my phone over so he can see the picture. I’m smiling sleepily, dressed like an alien in a silver dress and face paint with aluminum antennae hot-glued to my headband. Halloween, obviously. Or wait, was it Rachel’s X-Files-themed birthday party?

Alex considers the photo seriously, then scrolls down to read my bio. After a minute, he hands my phone back to me and looks me dead in the eye. “I would.”

My whole body tingles with pins and needles. “Oh,” I say, then manage a small “okay.”

“So,” he says, “are you done being mad at me?”

I try to say something, but my tongue feels too heavy. My whole body feels heavy, especially where my hip is touching his. So I just nod.

Thank God for his back spasm, I think. Otherwise I’m not sure what would happen next.

Alex studies me for a few seconds, then reaches for the forgotten laptop. His voice comes out thick. “What do you want to watch?”