People We Meet on Vacation

“‘I work at one of the top travel magazines. I have a nice apartment. And I can take cabs without worrying too much about what the money should go to, and despite all of that’—I take a shaky breath, unsure of the words I’m about to force out even as the full weight of them hits me like a sandbag—‘I’m not happy.’” 

Poppy seems to have achieved the millennial’s dream of a creative, high-status job that enables her to have her own apartment and enough disposable income to be spontaneous. Her awareness that many of her less fortunate contemporaries would envy her makes her ashamed of being unhappy. Still, given that the weight of her words hits her with the heavy force of a sandbag, she knows what she says is true. For genuine happiness, Poppy has to look beyond material acquisitions.

“He is tall, quiet, and eager to see the library. I’m short, loud, and hoping someone comes by and invites us to a real party. By the time we part ways, I’m fairly confident we’ll never speak again.” 

Revisiting the self who met Alex 12 summers ago, Poppy dismisses him. She describes the two as complete opposites—both in size, level of extroversion, and temperament. Her confidence after the first meeting about how unimportant he will be in her life provides the maximum extent for change during the course of the novel. Henry bases Poppy and Alex’s love on getting to intimately know each other over time, as opposed to the love-at-first-sight model of other romantic novels. However, the idea of the protagonists as opposites feeds into classic romance tropes.

“‘Our summer trips. Nothing has ever topped those.’ Nothing. Even if I ever get married or have a baby, I expect the Best Day of My Life to still be something of a toss-up between that and the time Alex and I went hiking in the mist-ridden redwoods.” 

This passage reveals that despite enjoying the best moment of her life with Alex on vacation, Poppy has consigned him to a space separate from her daily life. When she imagines events that seem distant and less exciting to her, such as marriage and children, they are separate from an existence including Alex. Although Poppy is not conscious of it at this stage in the novel, she loves and cherishes Alex so much that she is afraid to make him part of her real life.

“I admit that I hate both Linfield and khakis, because why not? We both already know the measure of things: we’re two people with no business spending any time together, let alone spending an extended amount of it crammed into a tiny car. We are two fundamentally incompatible people with absolutely no need to impress each other.” 

Poppy’s carpool with Alex confirms her first impression of their being completely incompatible. However, she is also starting to realize that dismissing each other as unimportant has the advantage of being able to speak honestly about their preferences. This supposedly low stakes interaction has the unintended consequence of helping them to form a genuine connection based on their real selves, rather than an idealized version.

“‘If you need anything at all, P, I’m here. Always.’ Not that I have the note memorized or anything. Not that, in the lone shoebox’s worth of saved cards and letters and scraps of paper I allow myself to keep in my apartment, this one made the cut.” 

When Poppy’s family pet died during her college years, Alex sent her a note stating he would always be there for her. The forever-leaning intention of Alex’s note is matched by Poppy’s hoarding of it in her sole box of sentimental objects. The fact that Poppy keeps her sentimental papers in a single disposable shoebox indicates she is conscious of not becoming smothered with mementos from the past like her mother was. However, the importance of Alex’s friendship means Poppy cannot help herself from retaining every trace of him—even after (or perhaps even in spite of) their two-year estrangement.

“And it’s normal, so natural to push up on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around his waist, burrow my face into his chest, and breathe him in. Cedar, musk, lime. There is no greater creature of habit than Alex Nilsen.”

Despite their two-year estrangement, Poppy’s instinct is to embrace Alex as warmly as on previous occasions. This is one of many passages that show how Alex and Poppy’s bodies and true natures know they are meant to be together. The appeal to the sense of smell, which is more animal and closer to the body than the more distant senses of sight and sound, indicates Poppy’s primal feelings of attraction and safety around Alex.

“It gives me a surprising thrill to hold his hand. Ninety-five percent of the time, I see Alex Nilsen in a purely platonic way, and I’d guess his number hovers a bit higher. But for that other five percent of the time, there’s this what-if.” 

When Alex and Poppy join hands on a plane to combat Alex’s fear of flying, Poppy experiences an unexpected thrill. She admits to herself that while for the vast majority of time she sees Alex’s friendship as uncomplicated and platonic, there are a few ambiguous moments when she wonders what would happen if their relationship were to take a romantic turn. In this instance, the bodily contact of hand-holding initiates the “what-if” and Poppy is able to dream of less platonic possibilities before she retreats to the safety of dismissing them.

“Alex knows about my rocky years in Linfield, of course, but for the most part, I try not to revisit them. I’ve always preferred the version of me that Alex brings out to the one I was back in our hometown. This Poppy feels safe in the world, because he’s in it too, and he, deep down where it matters, is like me.” 

Although Poppy knows Alex’s presence makes her feel safe, he also makes her feel as though he’s bringing out a “version” of her. This indicates that Poppy is straddling several versions of self, and is repressing the part of her that was hurt during her troubled adolescence in Linfield. In the course of the novel, she will have to revisit this part before she can enjoy a full, mature relationship with Alex.

“Before Alex, my family was the only place I belonged, but even with them, I was something of a loose part, that baffling extra bolt IKEA packs with your bookcase, just to make you sweat. Everything I’d done since high school had been to escape that feeling, that person.” 

The metaphor of Poppy’s position in her family as the “baffling extra bolt” in an IKEA delivery explains how she has felt both lonely and superfluous. These feelings of isolation and non-belonging have been so difficult to bear that she has repressed them for over a decade. They also explain her difficulties with properly settling in any place and her preference for travel and change over stability. Ironically, as Poppy is continually running away from her past and refusing to look at it, no real change can happen.

“This is what I want for the rest of my life. To see new places. To meet new people. To try new things. I don’t feel lost or out of place here. There’s no Linfield to escape or long, boring classes to dread going to. I’m anchored only in this moment.” 

Poppy catches the travel bug while on vacation with Alex. Being on vacation and continually confronted with the stimulus of novelties takes away her cares and even her sense of the less flattering parts of her such as the bullied teenager and the bored college student. While traveling, she can be in the moment rather than ruminating on the past and dreading the future. Though this view of life and vision of the future may have suited a 20-year-old Poppy, a 30-year-old version who has achieved this feels unsatisfied with her lifestyle.

“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.”

Poppy likes being the person who can inspire guarded, melancholic Alex to spontaneous emotion—both because it allows her to connect with him in a way that others cannot and because it reinforces the fun version of herself with which she is most comfortable. While she tries to resurrect fun Poppy on the Palm Springs trip, her efforts are in vain as she has to accept that the nature of their relationship has fundamentally changed.

“He shook his head and pulled me into his chest, squeezing me, lifting me up into him like he planned to absorb me. ‘I love you,’ he said, and kissed my head. ‘And if you want, we can die alone together.’” 

When Poppy is upset at her artsy, noncommittal boyfriend Julian’s attitude and declares she will die alone, Alex responds that he loves her and will prevent her from dying alone by dying alone with her. The truth of his love is conveyed in the absorbing embrace, where he holds Poppy as though he doesn’t not want to let her go. However, at this stage, their love can only thrive in the ephemeral context of their vacations and does not inform their daily lives. This is one of many moments in their vacations as friends when the depth and truth of their connection is revealed.

“I want to get married and have kids and grandkids and get really fucking old with my wife, and to live in our house for so long that it smells like us. Like, I want to pick out fucking furniture and paint colors and do all that Linfield stuff you think is so unbearable, okay? […] And I don’t want to wait. No one knows how long they get, and I don’t want ten more years to go by and to find out I have fucking dick cancer or something and it’s too late for me.” 

Alex’s passionate wish for marriage, family and stability is atypical amongst the millennial men Poppy dates. Alex often values that which has been traditionally gendered feminine, whereas a desire to explore and achieve, like Poppy’s is gendered more masculine. By giving more traditionally feminine values to her hero and more masculine ones to her heroine, Henry challenges and updates the gender reinforcing genre of the romance novel. However, she also shows that Alex’s prioritization of family and stability stems from an acute fear of sickness and death and the fearful notion that disaster can strike and paralyze a person at any moment.

“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.”

When Poppy oversees Alex’s perusal of Tinder, she is angry to find that he dismisses all of the attractive women who do not conform to the “cute kindergarten teacher” type to which he believes himself suited. Poppy extends this rant to include men who are not Alex, as she indirectly states that more eccentric girls like her are overlooked. Despite promising that she would be a neutral judge of Alex’s Tinder habits, Poppy cannot help taking them personally, as she compares herself to any other girl Alex might desire.

“Teasing has always been a big part of our dynamic, and it’s felt like our thing. But there are things he won’t do in front of me now, parts of him he doesn’t trust with me, and I don’t like how that feels.” 

Following the start of his relationship with Sarah, Poppy is discontented with the changes in her dynamic with Alex as she feels her greatest companion is putting distance between them. She senses that Alex is putting up boundaries to keep her from entering into the flirtatious, intimate zone he ought to solely inhabit with Sarah. Whereas previously, the teasing that characterized their playful friendship seemed innocuous and so did not have to be policed, now Alex is seeing that it could have implications making him seem less faithful to his girlfriend.

“You asked me who I was, and—it was like the answer came out of nowhere. Sometimes it feels like I didn’t even exist before that. Like you invented me.” 

Since his mother’s death, Alex was the chief caretaker in his family and lived a life of duty before he met Poppy. Poppy encouraged him to explore life as an individual, and to discover new aspects of himself. Given that he was unaware of these aspects, he credits Poppy with having invented him.

“But this, this is the moment I first think it. I am in love with you. The thought is terrifying, probably not even true. A dangerous idea to entertain. I release my hold on it, watch it slip away. But there are points in the center of my palms that burn, scorched, proof I once held it there.” 

On the summer at Sanibel Island, Poppy finds that she is “in love” with Alex. This is different to the other times when she has felt that she loves him— it is a more charged sense that they should be together as romantic partners. She finds the thought so terrifying and dangerous to the status quo of Alex being just her friend that she forces herself to release hold of it. However, the metaphor of scorched palms indicate that the feeling has affected and changed her on a visceral level.

“We tell each other everything, but there are some things that can’t be unsaid, just like there are things that couldn’t be undone.” 

Here, Poppy finally accepts that she cannot return to a purely platonic relationship with Alex given what happened in Croatia and their ongoing physical attraction. While she is about to give in and kiss Alex, she still feels the enormity of what she has to lose when she contemplates what cannot be unsaid or undone.

“‘I don’t know how to love someone as much as I love you,’ he says. ‘It’s terrifying. And I get these bursts of thinking I can handle it and then I think about what it will do to me if I lose you, and I panic and pull away, and—I’ve never known if I’ll be able to make you happy.”’ 

Alex admits that his love for Poppy is terrifying. He fears relaxing into happiness with her and something happening to pull it all away. Given how he was deeply affected by his mother’s loss, Alex does not feel he can bear another loss of someone he loves so much. He also fears his and Poppy’s ideas of happiness are incompatible, and he dreads disappointing her. These issues arise again near the end of the novel when Alex’s final obstacle to their being together is his fear of happiness.

“I can’t be a break from your real life, and I won’t be the thing that keeps you from having what you want.”

At the LAX Airport when Poppy states that she saw her vacation with Alex as a departure from her real life, Alex takes it badly and says he wants time apart from her; he insists they will only be reconciled on the terms of a stable relationship wherein Poppy does not feel she is sacrificing her personal dreams to go along with his plans. Here, Alex—who is afraid of happiness—is subconsciously searching for reasons that prove he and Poppy are incompatible in order to make the relationship impossible.

“I can’t stop thinking about that first kiss. Not our first kiss on Nikolai’s balcony but the one two years ago, in Croatia. All this time, that memory has looked one way in my mind, but now it looks entirely different.” 

When Poppy returns from Palm Springs to New York after another physical encounter in her and Alex’s relationship, she begins to differently see the past. While she was previously certain that the drunken kiss in Croatia made Alex feel awkward because he did not want to be romantically involved with her, she sees the incident with new eyes. Being able to see the past more clearly is part of Poppy’s maturation process as she internally prepares herself to enter into a committed relationship with Alex. When she was wrongly reading the past, things could not go well between her and Alex.

“Living, being responsible for myself, seems like an insurmountable challenge lately. Sometimes I scrape myself off my sofa, stuff a frozen meal in the microwave, and as I wait for the timer to go off, I just think, I will have to do this again tomorrow and the next day and the next day.”

While Poppy was bored and unhappy in her life prior to the Palm Springs trip, following her return and another implosion of her relationship with Alex, she experiences a sense of dread. Henry conveys this in how Poppy finds normal tasks of fending for herself and performing like a responsible adult arduous. She gloomily looks on a future where she performs the same repetitive, endless daily cycle. The motif of cycle also corresponds with the repetition of things getting weird between her and Alex every time they are physically intimate.

“When he looks back at me, there are tears in his eyes, but I know right away he won’t let them fall. That’s the kind of self-restraint Alex Nilsen has. He could be starving in a desert, and if the wrong person held out a glass of water to him, he’d nod politely and say no, thanks.” 

This passage illustrates the final obstacle to the happy ending: Alex’s stubborn defense against being happy. It precedes the moment before he makes multiple excuses about why he and Poppy cannot be together. Alex’s refusal to cry indicates an attempt at self-control and the metaphor of refusing water from the wrong person even as he is wasting away in the desert indicates he only selectively trusts people. However, Poppy is able to read him this time and does not mistake the defense for a lack of caring. This indicates she is the right partner for him because she understands him so well.