People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry (best story books to read .TXT) 📕

The word lands like a firework in the middle of my chest. I try to keep my face placid but have no idea how I’m faring. He, for his part, shows no sign of discomfort. “Do you know why?” I recover.

“I hunch a lot?” he says. “Especially when I’m reading or on my computer. A massage therapist told me my hip muscles were probably shortening, pulling on my back. I don’t know. My doctor just prescribed me muscle relaxants, then left before I could think of any questions.”

“And it happens a lot?” I say.

“Not a lot,” he says. “This is the fourth or fifth time. It happens less when I’m exercising regularly. I guess sitting on the plane and in the car and all that . . . and then the chair bed.”

“Makes sense.”

After a moment, he asks, “You okay?”

“I guess I just . . .” I trail off, unsure how much I want to say. “I feel like I missed a lot.”

His head tilts back against the pillows, and his eyes wander down my face. “Me too.”

A half-hearted laugh rises out of me. “No, you didn’t. My life’s exactly the same.”

“That’s not true,” he says. “You cut your hair.”

This time, the laugh is more genuine, and a contained smile curves over Alex’s lips. “Yeah, well,” I say, fighting a blush as I feel his gaze move over my bare shoulder, down the length of my arm to where my hand rests on the bed near his knee. “I didn’t get a house or buy my own dishwasher or anything. I doubt I’ll ever be able to.”

His eyebrow arches, and his eyes retrain on my face. “You don’t want to,” he says quietly.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I say, but honestly I’m unsure. That’s the problem. I haven’t wanted the things I used to want, the things I wanted when I made just about every big life decision I’ve made. I’m still paying off student loans for a degree I didn’t finish, and even if I saved myself another year-and-a-half’s worth of tuition, lately I find myself wondering if that was the right choice.

I fled Linfield. I fled the University of Chicago, and if I’m being honest, I sort of fled Alex when everything happened. He fled me too, but I can’t place all the blame on him.

I was terrified. I ran. And I left it up to him to fix it.

“Remember when we went to San Francisco, and we kept saying ‘when in Rome’ whenever we wanted to buy something?” I ask.

“Maybe,” he says, sounding uncertain. I’m guessing my expression must be something along the lines of crushed, because he apologetically adds, “I don’t have a great memory.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That makes sense.”

He coughs. “Do you want to watch something, or are you going back out?”

“No,” I say, “let’s watch something. If I go back to the Palm Springs Art Museum, I think the FBI will be waiting for me.”

“Why, did you steal something priceless?” Alex asks.

“I won’t know until I have it appraised,” I joke. “Hopefully this Claude Moan-ay guy turns out to be a big deal.”

Alex laughs and shakes his head, and even that small gesture seems to cost him a shock of pain. “Shit,” he says. “You have to stop making me laugh.”

“You have to stop assuming I’m joking when I’m talking about robbing art museums.”

He closes his eyes and presses his mouth into a straight line, smothering any more laughter. After a second he opens his eyes. “Okay, I’m going to go pee for—hopefully—the last time today and take another pill. You can grab my laptop from the bag and pull up Netflix, if you want.” He cautiously turns, sets his feet on the ground, and stands.

“Got it,” I say. “And do you want me to leave the nudie mags in there or get those out too?”

“Poppy,” he groans without looking back. “No joking.”

I push off the bed and tug Alex’s laptop bag onto the chair as I sort through it for the computer, then carry it back to the bed with me, opening it as I go.

He hasn’t shut it down, and when I brush the mousepad, the screen flares to life, demanding that I log in. “Password?” I call toward the bathroom.

“Flannery O’Connor,” he calls back, then flushes the toilet and turns on the sink.

I don’t ask about spaces, capitalization, or punctuation. Alex is a purist. I type it in and the log-in screen vanishes, replaced by an open web browser. Before I’ve realized it, I’m inadvertently snooping.

My heart is racing.

The water turns off. The door opens. Alex steps out, and while it might be better to pretend I didn’t see the job posting Alex had pulled up, something’s come over me, yanked out the part of my brain that—at least occasionally—filters out things I shouldn’t say.

“You’re applying to teach at Berkeley Carroll?”

The confusion on his face quickly transforms into something akin to guilt. “Oh, that.”

“That’s in New York,” I say.

“So the website suggested,” Alex says.

“New York City,” I clarify.

“Wait, that New York?” he deadpans.

“You’re moving to New York?” I say, and I’m sure I’m talking loud, but the adrenaline has me feeling like the whole world is stuffed with cotton, deadening all sound to a muffled hum.

“Probably not,” he says. “I just saw the posting.”

“But you would love New York,” I say. “I mean, think about the bookstores.”

Now he gives a smile that seems both amused and sad. He comes back to the bed and slowly lowers himself down next to me. “I don’t know,” he says. “I was just looking.”

“I won’t bother you,” I say. “If you’re worried I’ll, like, show up on your doorstep every time I have a crisis, I promise I won’t.”

His eyebrow lifts skeptically. “And if you find out I have a back spasm, will you break into my apartment with donuts and Icy Hot?”

“No?” I say, pitch lifting guiltily. His smile widens, but still, there’s something vaguely sad about it. “What is it?”

He holds my eyes for a while, like