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

still here! Hope you’re well and that Tofino is still the most beautiful place on this whole entire planet.

By the time we’ve finished eating, Buck has written back.

Damn, girl, he says. Is this sexy little Poppy? Took you long enough to use those digits. Guess I shouldn’t have kicked you out of my room.

I snort-laugh, and Alex leans over the table to read the message upside down. He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you fucking think, pal?”

No, no, no worries about that, I tell him. It was a great night. We had an amazing time.

Sweet, he says. I haven’t talked to Lita in years but I’ll shoot u her contact info if u want.

That would be amazing, I tell him.

If you ever make it back to the island r u gonna tell me? he asks.

Obviously, I say. I have no idea how to operate a water taxi. You’ll be invaluable.

Lol, he says, ur such a freak I love it.

By that night, we’ve booked a rafting trip with Lita, who does not remember us but insists on the phone that she’s sure we had a great time together.

“To be fair, I was on, like, a ton of drugs back then,” she says. “I was always having a great time, and I remember almost none of it.”

Alex, overhearing this, pulls a face that reads as anxiety with a side of unanswered questions. I know exactly what he wants me to find out.

“So,” I say, as casually as I can, “do you still . . . use . . . drugs?”

“Three years sober, mama,” she replies. “But if you’re looking to buy something, I can send you my old dude’s number.”

“No, no,” I say. “That’s okay. We’ll just . . . do . . . the stuff . . . we brought . . . from home.”

Looking beleaguered, Alex shakes his head.

“All right, then. See you two bright and early.”

When I hang up, Alex says, “Do you think Buck was on drugs when he drove our water taxi?”

I shrug. “We never did find out what he was ranting to no one about. Maybe he thought Jim Morrison was hovering on the water just in front of him.”

“I am so glad we’re still alive,” Alex says.

The next morning we meet Lita at the raft rental place, and she looks almost exactly as I remember her, but with a wedding band tattoo and a small baby bump.

“Four months,” she says, jogging it in her hands.

“And it’s . . . safe? To do this?” Alex asks.

“Baby number one did just fine,” Lita assures us. “You know, in Norway, they stick their babies outside to take naps.”

“Oh . . . kay,” Alex says.

“I would love to go to Norway,” I say.

“Oh, you’ve got to!” she says. “My wife’s twin sister lives there—she married a Norwegian. Gail sometimes talks about legally divorcing me and offering to pay a couple nice Norwegians to marry us so we can both get citizenship and move there. Call me old-fashioned, but I just don’t feel right about paying for my sham marriage.”

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to survive on Norwegian vacations, then,” I say.

“Guess so.”

Out of an abundance of caution, we opt for the beginner route, and we soon discover that this means that our “rafting trip” consists largely of sunbathing and floating with the current, sticking out our oars to shove off of rocks when we get too close, and amping up our rowing whenever a rapid crops up.

Lita, it turns out, remembers a lot more than she let on about Buck and the other people she lived with in the Tofino house, and she regales us with stories of people jumping off the roof onto a trampoline, and drunkenly giving each other stick-and-poke tattoos with red ink pens.

“Turns out some people are allergic to red ink,” she says. “Who knew?”

Every story she tells is more ludicrous than the last, and by the time we drag the raft onto the riverbank at the end of our route, my abs ache from laughing.

She wipes laugh-tears away from the just-starting-to-wrinkle corners of her eyes and heaves a contented sigh. “I can laugh because I survived it. Makes me happy knowing Buck did too.” She rubs her tummy. “Makes me so happy every time you find out how small the world is, you know? Like, we were in that place at the same time and now here we are. At different points in our lives but still connected. Like quantum entanglement or some shit.”

“I think about that every time I’m in an airport,” I tell her. “It’s one reason I love traveling so much.” I hesitate, searching for how to pour this long-steeping soupy thought into concrete words. “As a kid, I was a loner,” I explain, “and I always figured that when I grew up, I’d leave my hometown and discover other people like me somewhere else. Which I have, you know? But everyone gets lonely sometimes, and whenever that happens, I buy a plane ticket and go to the airport and—I don’t know. I don’t feel lonely anymore. Because no matter what makes all those people different, they’re all just trying to get somewhere, waiting to reach someone.”

Alex gives me an odd look whose meaning I can’t interpret.

“Ah, shit,” Lita says. “You’re gonna make me cry. These damn pregnancy hormones. I react worse to them than I did to ayahuasca.”

Before we part ways, Lita pulls each of us into a long hug. “If you’re ever in New York . . .” I say.

“If you ever feel like taking a real rafting trip,” she answers with a wink.

Several silent minutes into our drive back to the resort, with worried creases shooting up from the insides of his eyebrows, Alex says, “I hate thinking about you being lonely.”

I must look confused, because he clarifies: “The thing about how you go to the airport. When you feel like you’re alone.”

“I’m not really that lonely anymore,” I say.

I have the group text with Parker and Prince—we’ve been planning out a no-budget Jaws musical. Then there are the weekly calls with both my parents on speakerphone. Plus there’s Rachel, who’s really come through for