People We Meet on Vacation

DESPITE THE FACT that Alex spent every spare moment of junior year picking up shifts at the library (and thus I spent every spare moment sitting on the floor behind the reference desk eating Twizzlers and teasing him whenever Sarah Torval bashfully drifted by), there isn’t money for a big summer trip this year.

His younger brother is starting community college next year, without much financial aid, and Alex, being a saint among mere men, is funneling all his income into Bryce’s tuition.

When he broke the news to me, Alex said, “I understand if you want to go to Paris without me.”

My reply was instantaneous. “Paris can wait. Let’s visit the Paris of America instead.”

He arched a brow. “Which is?”

“Duh,” I said. “Nashville.”

He laughed, delighted. I loved to delight him, lived for it. I got such a rush from making that stoic face crack, and lately there hadn’t been enough of that.

Nashville is only a four-hour drive from Linfield, and miraculously, Alex’s station wagon is still kicking. So Nashville it is.

When he picks me up the morning of our trip, I’m still packing, and Dad makes him sit and answer a series of random questions while I finish. Meanwhile, Mom slips into my room with something hidden behind her back, singing, “Hiiii, sweetie.”

I look up from the Muppet-vomit explosion of colorful clothing in my bag. “Hiii?”

She perches on my bed, hands still hidden.

“What are you doing?” I say. “Are you handcuffed right now? Are we being burglarized? Blink twice if you can’t say anything.”

She brings the box forward. I immediately yelp and slap it out of her hand onto the floor.

“Poppy!” she cries.

“Poppy?!” I demand. “Not Poppy! Mom! Why are you carrying a bulk box of condoms around behind your back?”

She bends and scoops it up. It’s unopened (luckily?), so nothing spilled out. “I just figured it’s time we talked about this.”

“Uh-uh.” I shake my head. “It’s nine twenty a.m. Not the time to talk about this.”

She sighs and sets the box atop my overfilled duffle bag. “I just want you kids to be safe. You’ve got a lot to look forward to. We want all your wildest dreams to come true, honey!”

My heart stutters. Not because my mom is implying that Alex and I are having sex—now that it’s occurred to me, of course that’s what she thinks—but because I know she’s espousing the importance of finishing college, which I still haven’t told her I don’t plan to do.

I’ve only told Alex that I’m not going back next year. I’ve been waiting to tell my parents until after the trip so no big blowup keeps it from happening.

My parents are ultrasupportive, but that’s partly because both of them wanted to go to college and neither of them had the support to do so. They’ve always assumed that any dream I could have would be aided by having a degree.

But throughout the school year, most of my dreaming and energy have been devoted to traveling: weekend trips and short stints over breaks from school—usually on my own, but sometimes with Alex (camping, because that’s what we can afford), or with my roommate, Clarissa, a rich hippie type I met in an informational meeting about study-abroad programs at the end of last year (visits to each of her parents’ separate lake houses). She’s starting next year—senior year—in Vienna, and getting art history credits for it, but the longer I considered any of those programs, the less interested I found myself.

I don’t want to go to Australia only to spend all day in a classroom, and I don’t want to rack up thousands more in debt just to have an Academic Experience in Berlin. For me, traveling is about wandering, meeting people you don’t expect, doing things you’ve never done. And aside from that, all those weekend trips have started to pay off. I’ve only been blogging for eight months, and already I have a few thousand followers on social media.

When I found out I failed my biological science general requirement, and thus it would take me an extra semester to graduate, that was the final straw.

And I’m going to tell my parents all this, and somehow, I’ll find a way to make them understand that school isn’t right for me the way it is for people like Alex. But today is not that day. Today, we’re going to Nashville, and after the last semester, all I want is to let loose.

Just not in the way my mother is implying.

“Mom,” I say. “I am not having sex with Alex.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” she replies with a cool, calm, and collected nod, though that manner goes completely out the window as she goes on: “I just need to know that you’re being responsible. Oh my goodness, I can’t believe how grown-up you are! It’s making me teary just thinking about it. But you still have to be responsible! I’m sure you are, though. You’re such a smart girl! And you’ve always known yourself. I’m so proud of you, honey.”

I’m being more responsible than she knows. While I’ve made out with a few different guys over the last year, and did more than that with one, I’ve still stayed pretty safely in the slow lane. When I tipsily admitted this to Clarissa during a trip to her mom’s lake house on the far shore of Lake Michigan, her eyes widened like she was gazing into a scrying pool, and she said in that airy way of hers, “What is it you’re waiting for?”

I just shrugged. The truth is, I’m not sure. I just figure I’ll know when I see it.

Sometimes I think I’m being too practical, which isn’t something I’ve ever been accused of, but with this, I feel at times like I’m waiting for the perfect circumstances for a First Time.

Other times I think it might have something to do with Porny Poppy. Like after all that, I’m incapable of losing myself in a moment, in a person.

Maybe I just need to make a decision, choose someone from a lineup of the loosely held crushes I’m harboring on some of the guys Alex and I run into regularly at parties. People in the English department with him, or communications department with me, or any of the other regularly occurring characters in our lives.

But for now, I’m holding out hope, waiting for that magical moment when it feels right with one person in particular.

That person is not going to be Alex.

Actually, if I were to just choose someone, it probably would be. I’d be straight-up with him, explain what I wanted to do and why, and probably insist both of us sign something in blood saying it would only happen once and we would never speak of it again.

But even if it comes to that, I make a silent and solemn vow right now, I will not be using a condom from the bulk box my mom just tucked into my suitcase.

“I really, really swear to you I don’t need these,” I say.

She stands and pats the box. “Maybe not now, but why not hold on to them? Just in case. Also, are you hungry? I’ve got cookies in the oven, and—shoot, I forgot to run the dishwasher.”

She hurries from the room, and I finish packing, then drag my bag downstairs. Mom’s at the island, chopping browned bananas for banana bread while the cookies cool, and Alex is sitting in that very rigid way beside my father. “Ready?” I say, and he springs off the stool like I was born ready to not be sitting next to your very intimidating father.

“Yep.” He scrubs his hands down the fronts of his pants legs. “Yeah.” It’s right around then that he clocks the box of condoms tucked under my arm.

“This?” I say. “This is just five hundred condoms my mom gave me in case we start boning.”

Alex’s face flushes.

“Poppy!” Mom cries.

Dad looks over his shoulder, aghast. “Since when are you two romantically involved?”

“I don’t . . . We don’t . . . do that, sir,” Alex tries.

“Here, will you carry these out to the car, Dad?” I toss them over the island to him. “My arm’s getting tired from holding it. Hopefully our hotel has those big luggage carts.”

Alex is still not-quite-looking at Dad. “We really aren’t . . .”

Mom digs her hands into her hips. “That was supposed to be private. Look, you’re embarrassing him. Don’t embarrass him, Poppy. Don’t be embarrassed, Alex.”

“It was never going to be private for long,” I say. “If that box doesn’t fit in the trunk, we’re going to have to strap it to the top of the station wagon.”

Dad sets the box on the side table and starts reading the side of it with a furrow in his brow. “Are these really made out of lambskin? Are they reusable?”

Alex cannot hide his shudder.

Mom offers up, “I wasn’t sure if either of them is allergic to latex!”

“Okay, we’ve got to hit the road,” I say. “Come give us hugs goodbye. The next time you see us, you might just be grandpar—” I drop off, stop rubbing my tummy meaningfully when I see the look on Alex’s face. “Kidding! We’re just friends. Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad!”

“Oh, you’re going to have an amazing time. I can’t wait to hear all about it.” Mom comes out from behind the counter and pulls me into a hug. “Be good,” she says. “And don’t forget to call your brothers when you get down there! They’re desperate to hear from you!”

Over her shoulder I mouth at Alex, desperate, and he finally cracks a smile.

“Love you, kiddo.” Dad clambers off the stool to give me a squeeze. “You take care of my little baby, okay?” he says to Alex before pulling him into the backslap hug that startles him anew every time it happens. “Don’t let her get engaged to a country singer or break her neck on a mechanical bull.”

“Of course,” Alex says.

“We’ll see,” I say, and then they walk us outside—box of condoms left safely on the island—and wave to us as we back down the driveway, and Alex grins and waves back until we’re finally out of sight, at which point he looks at me and says flatly, “I am very mad at you.”

“How can I make it up to you?” I bat my eyelashes like a sexy cartoon cat.

He rolls his eyes, but a smirk twists up in the corner of his mouth as his eyes return to the road. “For one thing, you are definitely riding a mechanical bull.”

I kick my feet up onto the dashboard, proudly displaying the cowgirl boots I found at a thrift store a few weeks ago. “Way ahead of you.”

His eyes slide to me, move down my legs to the bright red leather. “And those are supposed to keep you on a mechanical bull how?”

I click my heels together. “They’re not. They’re just supposed to charm the handsome country singer at the bar into scraping me off the mat and into his farm-buff arms.”

“Farm buff,” Alex snorts, unimpressed by the idea.

“Says Gym-Buff,” I tease.

He frowns. “I exercise for my anxiety.”

“Yes, I’m sure you couldn’t care less about that gorgeous body. It’s incidental.”

His jaw pulses, and his eyes fix on the road again. “I like to look nice,” he says in a voice that implies an added, Is that a crime?

“I do too.” I slide one of my feet along the dash until my red boot is in his field of vision. “Obviously.”

His gaze darts over my leg down to the middle console where his aux cable sits in a neat loop. “Here.” He hands it to me. “Why don’t you get us started?”

These days we always take turns running sound in the station wagon, but Alex always gives me the first shot, because he is Alex, and he is the best.

I insist on an all-country playlist for the length of the drive. Mine is populated by Shania Twain, Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, and Dolly Parton. His is all Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson, Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash, and a helping of Tammy Wynette and Hank Williams.

We found the hotel on Groupon months ago, and it’s one of those kitschy, one-off places with a neon-pink sign (cartoon cowboy hat balanced atop the word VACANCY) that makes the nickname “Nashvegas” finally make sense to me.

We check in and take our stuff inside. Each room is vaguely themed after a famous Nashville musician. Meaning there are framed pictures of them all over the room, and then the same hideous floral comforters and dense tan fleeces on all the beds. I tried to request the Kitty Wells room, but apparently when you book through Groupon, you don’t get to pick.

We are in the Billy Ray Cyrus room.

“Do you think he gets paid for this?” I ask Alex, who’s pulling up the bedding to check for bedbugs along the bottom of the mattresses.Owned by NôvelDrama.Org.

“Doubtful,” he says. “Maybe they throw him the occasional frozen yogurt Groupon or something.” He pushes back the drapes and gazes out at the flashing neon sign. “Do they do rooms by the hour here?” he says skeptically.

“Doesn’t really matter,” I say, “since I left the condom crate at home.”

He shudders and drops onto one of the beds, satisfied that it’s bug free. “If I hadn’t had to witness that, it would actually be pretty sweet.”

“I would have still had to witness it, Alex. Don’t I matter?”

“Yeah, but you’re her daughter. The closest my dad ever came to giving us a sex talk was leaving a book about purity on each of our beds around the time we turned thirteen. I thought masturbating caused cancer until I was, like, sixteen.”

My chest squeezes tight. Sometimes I forget how hard Alex has had it. His mom died from complications during David’s birth, and Mr. Nilsen and the four Nilsen boys have been wife- and motherless since. His dad finally dated a woman from their church last year, but they broke up after three months, and even though Mr. Nilsen was the one to end it, he was still so torn up that Alex had to drive home from school in the middle of the week to get him through it.

Alex is the one his brothers call too, when something goes wrong. The emotional rock.

Sometimes I think that’s why we’re so drawn to each other. Because he’s used to being the steadfast big brother and I’m used to being the annoying little sister. It’s a dynamic we understand: I lovingly tease him; he makes the entire world feel safer for me.

This week, though, I’m not going to need anything from him. It’s my mission to help Alex let loose, to bring Silly Alex back out of Overworked, Hyperfocused Alex.

“You know,” I say, sitting on the bed, “if you ever want to borrow some overbearing parents, mine are obsessed with you. I mean, clearly. My mom wants you to take my virginity.”

He leans back on his hands, his head tipping. “Your mom thinks you haven’t had sex?”

I balk. “I haven’t had sex. I thought you knew that.” It seems like we talk about everything, but I guess there are still a few places we haven’t gone.

“No.” Alex coughs. “I mean, I don’t know. You left a few parties with people.”

“Yeah, but nothing serious ever happens. It’s not like I dated any of them.”

“I thought that was just because you didn’t, like, want to date.”

“I guess I don’t,” I say. Or at least so far I haven’t. “I don’t know. I guess I just want it to be special. Not like it has to be a full moon and we’re in a rose garden or anything.”

Alex winces. “Outside sex isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

“You little minx!” I cry. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

He shrugs, ears reddening. “I just don’t really talk about this. With anyone. Like even just saying that made me feel guilty, like I’m wronging her somehow.”

“It’s not like you said her name.” I lean forward and drop my voice. “Sarah Torval?”

He bumps his knee into mine, smiling faintly. “You’re obsessed with Sarah Torval.”

“No, dude,” I say. “You are.”

“It wasn’t her,” he says. “It was another girl from the library. Lydia.”

“Oh . . . my . . . god,” I say, giddy. “The one with the big doll eyes and the same exact haircut as Sarah Torval?”

“Stoooop,” Alex groans, pink spreading over his cheeks. He grabs a pillow and hurls it at me. “Stop embarrassing me.”

“But it’s so fun!”

He forces his face to relax into the On-the-Verge-of-Crying Puppy Face and I scream and fling myself backward on the bed, my whole body going limp with laughter as I drag the pillow over my eyes. The bed dips under his weight as he sits beside me and tugs the pillow off my face, leaning over me, hands braced on either side of my head, insinuating his Sad Puppy Face into my line of sight.

“Oh my god,” I gasp through a mix of tears and laughter. “Why does this have such a confusing effect on me?”

“I don’t know, Poppy,” he says, the expression deepening sorrowfully.

“It speaks to me!” I cry out through laughter, and his mouth pulls into a grin.

And right then. That.

That is the first moment I want to kiss Alex Nilsen.

I feel it all the way to my toes for two breathless seconds. Then I pack those seconds into a tight knot, tucking them deep in my chest where I promise myself they will live in secret forever.

“Come on,” he says softly. “Let’s go get you on a mechanical bull.”