“Anyway,” Trey said awkwardly. “What about you? What did you study?”
Trey knew exactly what Alex had gone to school for (was still going to school for), but I figured that by phrasing it as a question, he was giving Alex a chance to talk more about himself.
Instead, Alex took another sip and said only, “Creative writing, then literature.”
I had to sit and watch my boyfriend struggle to find an appropriate follow-up question, give up, and go back to studying the menu.
“He’s an amazing writer,” I said awkwardly, and Sarah shifted in her seat.
“He is,” she said, her tone so acidic you’d think I’d just said Alex Nilsen has an incredibly sexy body!
After dinner, we went to the party at Grandma Betty’s house and things improved a bit. Alex’s goofy brothers were all clamoring to meet Trey, bombarding him with all kinds of questions about the band and R+R and whether I snored.
“Alex would never tell us,” the youngest, David, said, “but I assume Poppy sounds like a machine gun when she sleeps.”
Trey laughed, took it all in stride. He’s never jealous. Neither of us can afford to be: we are both relentless flirts. It sounds strange, but I love that about him. I love watching him go up to the bar to order me a drink and seeing how the bartenders smile and laugh, lean across the bar to bat their eyelashes at him. I love watching him charm his way through every city we go to, and that whenever he’s next to me, he’s touching me: an arm around the shoulders, a hand on my low back, or pulling me into his lap like we’re home alone rather than dining at a five-star restaurant.
I’ve never felt so secure, so sure that I’m on the same page as someone.
At the party, he kept his hands on me at all times, and David teased us about it.
“You don’t think she’s going to make a run for it if you let go, do you?” he joked.
“Oh, she’ll definitely make a run for it,” Trey said. “This girl can’t sit still for longer than five minutes. That’s one thing I love about her.”
The party was the first time all of Alex’s brothers had been in the same place in a long time, and they were as rowdy and sweet as I remembered them being when Alex and I were nineteen, home from college and charged with driving them around in Alex’s car, since none of them had their own yet and their dad was a sweet man but also a forgetful, flaky one who was incapable of keeping track of who needed to be where and when.
While Alex had always been calm and still by default, his brothers were the kind of boys who never stopped wrestling or giving one another wet willies. Even though some of them have kids now, they were still like that at the party.
Mr. and Mrs. Nilsen had named them in alphabetical order. Alex first, then Bryce, then Cameron, then David, and weirdly they’re mostly sized like that too. With Alex the tallest and broadest, Bryce just as tall but lanky and narrow shouldered, Cameron a few inches shorter and thick. Then there’s David, who’s an inch taller than Alex with the build of a professional athlete.
They’re all handsome, with varying shades of blond hair and matching hazel eyes, but David looks like a movie star (which lately, Alex said at dinner, he’s been talking about moving to L.A. to become), with his thick, wavy hair and wide, thoughtful eyes, and his excitability, the way he lights up whenever he starts talking. He starts fifty percent of his sentences with the name of whoever he’s addressing, or whoever he thinks will be most interested.
“Poppy, Alex brought a bunch of issues of R+R home so I could read your articles,” he said at one point at Betty’s house, and that was the first time I found out Alex even read my articles. “They’re really good. They make me feel like I’m there.”
“I wish you were,” I told him. “Sometime we should all take a trip together.”
“Hell yeah,” David said, then looked over his shoulder, grinning as he checked whether his dad had heard him swear. He’s a twenty-one-year-old baby, and I love him.
At some point, Betty asked for my help in the kitchen, and I followed her in to put candles in the German chocolate cake she had baked for her son-in-law. “Your young man Trey seems like a nice one,” she told me without looking up from what she was doing.
“He’s great,” I said.
“And I like his tattoos,” she added. “They’re just beautiful!”
She wasn’t being an asshole. Betty could be sarcastic, but she could also catch you off guard with her opinions on certain things. She was changeable. I liked that about her. Even at her age, she asked questions in conversation like she didn’t already have all the answers.
“I like them too,” I said.
I was attracted to Trey’s energy more than his appearance during our first work trip together (Hong Kong), and I liked that he waited to ask me out until we were home because he didn’t want to make anything weird for me if I said no.
I’d be lying, though, if I said Alex played no part in my saying yes.
He’d just told me that he and Sarah had been talking a lot more at work, that things seemed okay between them. At that point, I was still regularly waking up from dreams about him showing up at my door, looking sleepy and worried and too comforting, while I was in the throes of a fever.
It didn’t matter that he’d said nothing about getting back together with Sarah.
He would or he wouldn’t, but in the end, there would be someone, and I didn’t think my heart could take it. So I said yes to Trey that night and we went to a bar with free Skee-Ball and hot dogs, and by the end of that night, I knew I could fall in love with him.
Trey was to me what Sarah Torval was to Alex. Someone who fit.
So I kept saying yes.
“Do you love him?” Betty asked me, still not looking up from the task at hand.
I had the sense that she was giving me a level of privacy. The option to lie, without her looking straight into my eyes, if that was what I needed. But I didn’t need to lie. “I do.”
“Good, honey. That’s great.” Her hands stilled, holding two thin silver candles into the frosting like they might try to jump out. “Do you love him like you love Alex?”
I remember with vivid clarity the feeling of my heart stumbling over its next several beats. That question was more complicated, but I couldn’t lie to her.
“I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone the way I love Alex,” I said, and then I thought, But maybe I won’t ever love anyone like I love Trey either.
I should’ve said it, but I didn’t. Betty shook her head and looked me in the eye. “Wish he knew that.”
Then she walked out of the kitchen, leaving me to follow. Alex and Sarah had brought Flannery O’Connor with them, and she chose that moment to make her dramatic entrance, walking up to me with her spine arched up and eyes wide, staring into my face and meowing loudly, in a full-body expression that Alex and I call Halloween Kitty.
“Hi,” I said, and she rubbed against my legs, so I reached to pick her up, and she hissed and swung a handful of claws toward me just as Sarah walked into the kitchen with a stack of dirty dishes. She laughed and said in that sweet voice of hers, “Wow! She does not like you!”
So yes, I see where Alex is coming from with his nerves about this couples trip, but we’re making progress. With the Instagram likes and the perfectly pleasant time Trey, Alex, and I had at an arcade bar the last time Alex visited. And besides, being in the Tuscan countryside with an IV drip of incredible wine is not going to be the same as one awkward dinner in Ohio followed by a sixty-year-old teetotaler’s birthday party.
“They’re going to get along great,” I tell him now, propping my legs up on the balcony railing and adjusting the phone between my face and shoulder.
I hear his turn signal click off, and he sighs. “How can you be sure?”
“Because we love them,” I reason. “And we love each other. So they’ll love each other. And we’ll just all love each other. You and Trey. Me and Sarah.”
He laughs. “I wish you could hear how much your voice changed for that last part. It sounded like you were inhaling helium.”
“Look, I’m still working on forgiving her for dumping you the last time,” I say. “It seems like she’s figured out that was the biggest mistake of her life, though, so I’m giving her a chance.”
“Poppy,” he says. “It wasn’t like that. Things were complicated, but they’re better now.”
“I know, I know,” I say, even though, really, I don’t. He insists there are no hard feelings between them about their last breakup, but whenever I think about what she said—that their relationship was about as exciting as the school library where they’d met—I still see red for a second.
Another wave of nausea hits me, and I groan. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I really need to go to bed so I can be flight-ready tomorrow, but I’m telling you. This trip is going to be amazing.”
“Yeah,” he says stiffly. “I’m sure I’m worrying for nothing.”
Mostly, it turns out that’s true.
We’re staying in a villa. It’s hard to be in a bad mood when you’re staying in a villa, with a gleaming pool and old stone patio, an outdoor kitchen with bougainvillea dripping all over everything in soft pinks and purples.
“Wow, okay,” Sarah says when we walk in. “I’m never missing one of these trips again.”
I flash Alex a look that’s the facial equivalent of a thumbs-up, and he smiles faintly back.
“I know, right?” Trey says. “We should’ve thought to take a group trip sooner.”
“Definitely,” Sarah says, though obviously with her schedule at a high school and Alex’s teaching course load at the university, it’s not like they’ve got much time to jet-set around, even for steeply discounted Tuscan villas.
“There are, like, ten Michelin-starred restaurants within twenty miles of here—and I figured Alex would want to cook one night at least.”
“That’d be amazing,” Alex agrees.
Sure, it’s a little stiff and awkward that first day at the villa, as the four of us meander around between jet-lagged naps in our rooms and quick dips in the pool. Trey shoots some test photos, and I go into town to grab snacks: aged cheeses and meats, fresh bread, and a variety of jams in tiny jars. And wine, plenty of wine.
By the end of the first night sitting outside on the terrace, and drinking the first two bottles of wine, everyone has softened, loosened. Sarah’s become downright chatty, telling stories about her students, about Flannery O’Connor and life in Indiana, and Alex offers quiet, dry asides that make me laugh so hard wine spews out of my nose, twice.
It feels like the four of us are friends, real friends.
When Trey pulls me into his lap and rests his chin on my shoulder, Sarah touches her chest and awws. “You two are so sweet,” she says, looking to Alex. “Aren’t they sweet?”
“And buttery,” Alex says, just barely glancing my way.
“What?” Sarah says. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He shrugs, and she goes on: “I wish Alex liked PDA. We barely even hug in public.”
“I’m not a big hugger,” Alex says, embarrassed. “I didn’t grow up hugging.”
“Yeah, but it’s me,” Sarah says. “I’m not some girl you met at a bar, babe.”
Now that I think of it, I’m not sure I’ve seen him and Sarah touch. But it’s not like he’s touched me all that much in public either, unless you count dancing in the streets of New Orleans, or that time in Vail (and there was a fair amount of alcohol involved in both).
“It just feels . . . rude or something,” Alex tries to explain.
“Rude?” Trey lights a cigarette. “We’re all adults, man. Hold on to your girl if you want.”
Sarah snorts. “Don’t bother. This has been a years-long conversation. I’ve accepted my lot. I’m going to marry a man who hates holding hands.”
My chest jolts at the word marry. Is it really that serious between them? I mean, obviously it’s serious, but they haven’t been back together that long. Trey and I talk about marriage occasionally, but in a lofty, far-off, maybe-who-knows-let’s-not-put-pressure-on-this way.
“Now, that I can understand,” Trey says, blowing his cigarette smoke away from us. “Hand-holding sucks. It’s not comfortable, and it limits movement, and in a crowd it’s inconvenient. Like, you might as well just handcuff your ankles together.”
“Not to mention your hands get all sweaty,” Alex says. “It’s all-around uncomfortable.”
“I love holding hands!” I chime in, tucking the word marry deep inside my brain to puzzle over later. “Especially in a crowd. It makes me feel safe.”
“Well, it looks like if we go into Florence before this trip is over,” Sarah says, “it’s gonna be me and Poppy holding hands, and you two lone wolves getting utterly lost in the masses.”
Sarah holds her wineglass out to me and I clink mine to hers, and we both laugh, and that might be the first moment that I like her. That I realize maybe I could’ve liked her all along, if I hadn’t been holding so tight to Alex that there was no room for her.
I have to stop doing that. I decide I will, and from then on, the wine takes over, and all four of us are talking, joking, laughing, and this night sets the tone for the rest of the trip.
Long, sunny days wandering every old town spread out around us. Driving to vineyards and swirling glasses of wine with our mouths held ajar to inhale their deep, fruity scent. Late lunches in ancient stone buildings with world-renowned chefs. Alex leaving bright and early each morning to run, Trey dipping out not much later to scout locations or capture photos he’s already planned. Sarah and I sleeping in most days, then meeting for a long swim (or to float on rafts with plastic cups full of limoncello and vodka), talking about nothing too important but with far more ease than that day at Linfield’s lone Mediterranean restaurant.
At night, we go out for late dinners—and wine—then come back to our villa’s patio and talk and drink until it’s nearly morning.
We play every game we recognize from the closet full of them. Lawn games like bocce and badminton, and board games like Clue and Scrabble and Monopoly (which I happen to know Alex hates, though he doesn’t admit that when Trey suggests we play).
We stay up later and later each night. We scribble celebrities’ names onto pieces of paper, mix them up, and stick them to our foreheads for a game of twenty questions in which we guess who’s on our heads, with the added obstacle of every question asked requiring another drink.
It quickly becomes obvious that none of us has the same celebrity references, which makes the game two hundred times harder, but also funnier. When I ask if my celebrity is a reality TV star, Sarah pretends to gag.
“Really?” I say. “I love reality TV.”
It’s not like I’m unused to this reaction. But part of me feels like her disapproval equals Alex’s disapproval, and a sore spot appears along with an urge to press on it.
“I don’t know how you can watch that stuff,” Sarah says.
“I know,” Trey says lightly. “I’ve never understood her interest either. It’s at odds with every other thing about her, but P’s all about The Bachelor.”
“Not all about it,” I say, defensive. I started watching a couple seasons ago with Rachel when a girl from her art program was a contestant, and within three or four episodes, I was hooked. “I just think it’s, like, this incredible experiment,” I explain. “And you get to watch hours of the footage compiled in it. You learn so much about people.”
Sarah’s eyebrows flick up. “Like what narcissists are willing to do for fame?”
Trey laughs. “Dead-on.”
I force out a laugh, take another sip of my wine. “Not what I was talking about.” I shift uncomfortably, trying to figure out how to explain myself. “I mean, there’s a lot that I like. But one thing . . . I like how in the end, it seems like it’s actually a hard decision for some people. There will be two or three contestants they feel a strong connection with, and it doesn’t just come down to choosing the strongest one. Instead, it’s like . . . you’re watching them choose a life.”
And that’s how it is in real life too. You can love someone and still know the future you’d have with them wouldn’t work for you, or for them, or maybe even for both of you.
“But do any of those relationships really work out?” Sarah asks.
“Most don’t,” I admit. “But that’s not the point. You watch someone date all these people, and you see how different they are with each of them, and then you watch them choose. Some people choose the person they have the best chemistry with, or that they have the most fun with, and some choose the one they think will make an amazing father, or who they’ve felt the safest opening up to. It’s fascinating. How so much of love is about who you are with someone.”
I love who I am with Trey. I’m confident and independent, flexible and coolheaded. I’m at ease. I’m the person I always dreamed I would be.
“Fair,” Sarah allows. “It’s the part about making out with, like, thirty guys then getting engaged to someone you’ve met five times that’s harder for me to swallow.”
Trey tips his head back, laughing. “You’d totally sign up for that show if we broke up. Wouldn’t you, P?”
“Now, that I would watch,” Sarah says, giggling.
I know he’s joking around, but it irks me, feeling like they’re united against me.
I think about saying, Why do you think that? Because I’m a narcissist who’s willing to do anything to get famous?
Alex bumps his leg into mine under the table, and when I glance at him, he’s not even looking my way. He’s just reminding me that he’s here, that nothing can really hurt me.
I bite down on my words and let it go. “More wine?”
The next night, we eat a long, late dinner out on the terrace. When I go inside to dish up gelato for dessert, I find Alex standing in the kitchen, reading an email.
He has just gotten word that Tin House accepted one of his stories. He looks so happy, so brilliantly himself, that I sneak a picture of him. I love it so much I would probably set it as my background if both of us were single and that wasn’t extremely weird for both Sarah and Trey.
We decide we have to celebrate (as if that isn’t what this whole trip has been), and Trey makes us mojitos and we sit out on the chaise lounges overlooking the valley, listening to the soft, twinkly sounds of nighttime in the countryside.
I barely sip on my drink. I’ve been nauseated all night, and for the first time, I excuse myself to go to sleep long before the others. Trey climbs into bed hours later, tipsy and kissing on my neck, pulling on me, and after we have sex, he falls asleep immediately, and my nausea comes back.
That’s when it occurs to me.
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