People We Meet on Vacation

Alex and Poppy’s kiss leads to sex. They admit they both wanted to do this for so long and that they love each other.

Both Poppy and Alex confess that sex has never been so good and intimate for either of them. Nikolai interrupts and agrees to issue them a refund. They also receive a Groupon voucher from a couple they met at the airport who ended up at the same motel, and check into a spa.

Poppy and Alex check into the luxurious and comfortable spa. Although Poppy would like to sleep next to Alex, she does not want to assume that it will be okay with him. She falls asleep in her own bed, remembering that in the aftermath of what happened between them in Croatia, “there was just chaos” (265).

During the Summer Trip of three years earlier, Alex and Poppy are both in committed relationships. Alex has gotten back together with Sarah, and Poppy is dating Trey, a photographer at Rest + Relaxation magazine.

Poppy feels happy and confident with Trey, especially after their relationship survives his visit to Linfield and an initial meeting with Alex and Sarah. At a party for Alex’s father’s 60th birthday, Alex’s grandmother Betty asks Poppy whether she loves Trey the way she loves Alex. Poppy replies that “I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone the way I love Alex” (273). She is still thinking about the time when she was sick and Alex came to take care of her.

Alex and Poppy include their partners on the Summer Trip, which is a Rest + Relaxation funded vacation to Tuscany. Although they have a good time, there is tension when Sarah complains about Alex’s dislike of handholding and Sarah and Trey make fun of Poppy’s love of the reality TV show The Bachelor. Sarah also makes the offhand comment that she and Alex are thinking of getting married, which makes Poppy feel terrible.

When Poppy suspects she might be pregnant and sneaks out of the house to buy pregnancy tests, Alex finds her at the moment when she is about to take them and tells her he will be there for her whatever the result. Poppy is frightened because she thinks Trey does not want children and she is not sure of her own desires. She admits she has no idea what she wants.

Alex is also frightened, as his mother died due to childbirth-related complications and he thinks that pregnancy might cause him to lose Poppy, which he could not bear. Poppy’s test comes out negative. They are both in tears, when they admit they need each other, and Poppy wishes that they were on vacation without their partners. Poppy thinks, “I have to stop getting in the way” (283), to give Alex the chance for stability with Sarah. Still, she goes on loving him.

When Alex does not mention what happened between them, Poppy worries for a while, although she promises herself things will not turn weird in the way they did after the Croatia episode. However, Alex affirms he is happy about what happened and they have sex again. They attend Alex’s brother David’s bachelor party. There, David is pleased to see them holding hands.

In a private conversation with Poppy, David tells her he is pleased Alex has found someone after years of being the family nurturer. David did not like to think of Alex all alone in Ohio, looking after their elderly father. David mentions that Alex was so close to marrying Sarah that he bought her a ring. Poppy is surprised to learn how close they came to marriage, even though the idea was floated in Tuscany. When Poppy recollects that trip, she considers how “even if we never kissed, never said the words outright, we were keeping whole parts of our hearts for each other only” (295). Poppy feels directly responsible for costing Alex the woman he wanted to marry as she recalls Sarah broke up with Alex a second time after the Tuscany trip. She feels guilty and ashamed, worrying she would just be “some other woman, whose needs he’d always put first to the detriment of his own wants and happiness” (296).

Back at their hotel, Poppy confronts Alex about his near proposal to Sarah. She begs him to tell her she is not the reason he and Sarah are not together. He says he could never get Poppy out of the picture enough to satisfy Sarah because Poppy’s friendship meant so much to him. During the Tuscany trip, Alex realized the depth of his feelings for Poppy. When he got back from Tuscany, he saw an art deco pearl ring and thought about buying it to propose to Sarah. However, he realized Sarah would hate that ring and when he saw it, he was thinking of Poppy. He knew that this was not fair and he broke up with Sarah. The love he has for Poppy is so enormous that it terrifies him, unlike the love he had for Sarah which he could understand and justify because they had so much in common. Poppy returns the feelings of love and says it is not Alex’s job to make her happy and she is content he exists in the world for her to love. She also confirms she wants him to only hold her hand in public when he wants to and that she will not pressure him to do so.

At the rehearsal dinner, Poppy is reunited with Alex’s father and tells him she is sorry for his loss of Betty. When Alex’s father begins to go on about the grievances of having lost people and how difficult it will be to manage without them, Poppy says he will manage because his son is getting married and needs him to be strong. Alex appreciates her firmness with his father, and that she is encouraging Mr. Nilsen to rely on his own strengths rather than falling back on him—the eldest son.

The rehearsal dinner and wedding are joyous; Alex and Poppy behave like the perfect couple. However, after the wedding, Alex and Poppy have to leave the fantasyland of vacation and figure out what to do with their real lives.

At the airport, Poppy confesses to Alex that she funded the trip—not Rest + Relaxation. She says she lied in order to get him to come so they could talk after their two-year estrangement. When she admits she also needed a break from her real life, Alex does not take it well. He dislikes hearing that Poppy came on vacation and became romantically involved with him for a change of scene from reality. He does not want to be some fallback guy she hooks up with while she is escaping reality.

Poppy tries to reassure Alex that she wants to be with him, but also admits she still does not know what she wants. He says that the fact that they love each other is not enough and suggests they do not speak until Poppy figures out what she wants. He wants her to be sure that she wants the same things as him—marriage, kids, and a life in Ohio. They part, and Poppy feels that airports are the loneliest places in the world.

By the time they go on the Rest + Relaxation-sponsored trip to Croatia, both Alex and Poppy have broken up with their partners. Poppy and Trey broke up because they found that despite their life of exotic travels, they stopped having fun together. Alex’s breakup with Sarah comes as a surprise to Poppy, especially as she knew they had moved together to Linfield. During the past year, Alex and Poppy have not spoken much.

On the vacation, Alex and Poppy barely get a moment alone, as they are accompanied by a lonely, widowed photographer called Bernard. Alex ends up sharing a room with Bernard, even though Poppy meant for him to share a room with her. One night, the three of them get very drunk and Alex knocks on Poppy’s door. They make out and almost have sex, but Alex thinks going all the way is a bad idea because they are drunk. Poppy says she agrees with him and tries to pretend nothing has happened, although she enjoyed the experience. Alex, who is less good at pretending, seems uncertain he can forget what happened.

At the airport, things are awkward with Bernard hovering around, and while Poppy wants things to be the same, they are not. Alex and Poppy put off contacting each other; Alex makes excuses that he is busy, and Poppy feels she flushed “ten years of friendship […] down the drain just so I could know what Alex Nilsen tastes like” (326).

When she returns to New York after the Palm Springs vacation, Poppy keeps thinking of the kiss she and Alex shared in Croatia. She now realizes he did not regret what happened so much as the drunken manner in which it happened.

She determines, “he’d been afraid it hadn’t meant anything, and then I’d pretended it hadn’t” (327). She feels helpless—equally terrified of a life without Alex and of a life in Linfield, where she will be haunted by memories of her lonely high-school experience.

Swapna, Poppy’s boss, notices her unhappiness and encourages her to try therapy. Poppy goes to see Rachel’s mother, Dr. Sandra Krohn. She shares secrets she has only shared with Alex and learns to sit in the discomfort of her feelings rather than running away from them.

One day when she is on her way to therapy, she encounters Jason Stanley—the boy who made up the rumor that she had given him a blow job in middle school. He apologizes to her for what he did. She sees the encounter with Jason as the universe telling her that she cannot outrun her problems.

When Poppy sees Rachel, she tells her she thinks she has figured out why she is so unhappy and that she might quit her job.

Poppy goes to Linfield to find Alex. When she looks for him at the school, she runs into Sarah Torval. When Sarah is icy with her at first, Poppy apologizes, saying “everything I expected from him while you were together […] wasn’t fair to you” (341). Sarah admits her relationship with Alex did not improve after Poppy was out of the picture; however, if Poppy and Alex had been honest about their feelings for each other, it would have spared Sarah a lot of pain. The encounter positively ends; Sarah wishes Poppy good luck and points her in the direction of Birdies Bar where Alex is likely drinking with the other teachers.

Poppy goes to Birdies and finds Alex. She tells him the reason she enjoyed traveling so much was that he came with her. She said she was so afraid of her love for Alex and being rejected by him that she put as much distance between them as she could. The career of traveling was part of this process. Finally, she tells him that she would be willing to give up her New York life for him and move back to Linfield. While Alex replies that he loves her, he says the two of them “don’t make sense” (350). He does not want her to give anything up for him. When Poppy understands that she has been rejected, she goes out to the parking lot and cries.

Alex comes to find Poppy in the parking lot. He has also started therapy and discovered that his chief issue is his fear of happiness. He knows he would be happy in New York with Poppy but is afraid of what comes after. He is afraid of her falling out of love with him, or meeting someone else, or dying. Poppy is unsure of how to comfort him but tells him she is also terrified. They are reconciled and enter a relationship.

Poppy is living in New York with Alex and is the happiest she has ever been. She has left Rest + Relaxation magazine has a column called People You Meet in New York, exploring her own city as though it is a travel destination. The couple will however, go to Sweden and Norway in summer. They will go back to Linfield and test out living there. Poppy knows that wherever Alex is will be her favorite place forever.