People We Meet on Vacation

Poppy awakes in the middle of the night to find Alex in pain from a back spasm. He began to have stress-related back spasms in the interval of their estrangement. She offers to go to the pharmacy to get him an ice pack.

Poppy and Alex are on a trip to Northern California, celebrating his college graduation and the fact that he is going to start a Creative Writing MFA. Meanwhile, Poppy is bartending in Cincinnati and living at home while she travel blogs. At this stage, she has lost her virginity and is dating an artistic, adventurous guy called Julian who is Alex’s opposite—the typical moody artist who is unpredictable in his affection for her and states he does not want to marry or have kids. Alex disapproves of Julian, stating Poppy is too good for him. Poppy takes this hostility into account when she does not invite Julian on holiday with them.

They go to San Francisco and head on a tour to the Sonoma wine country. Alex takes Poppy’s pictures for her travel blog. They pass for newlyweds, and this earns them the perk of staying at the lovely Blue Heron Inn by Muir Woods. When Poppy confesses to Alex what Julian had told her about marriage and kids and sobs that no one will ever love her apart from her parents, he says he loves her and that “if you want, we can die alone together” (145).

They have a wonderful time on their fake honeymoon trip and Alex asks her if she is going to break up with Julian. She says she does not know. Later, a drunk Poppy asks Alex to sleep beside her in the same bed. In the morning, she awakens humiliated and decides she cannot immediately break up with Julian and she has to wait long enough not to be confused or to kid herself that her closeness with Alex prompted the decision.

When Poppy returns from the pharmacy with supplies to ease Alex’s back spasms, he is polite, but makes it clear he wants to be left alone and that Poppy should go and amuse herself. She halfheartedly goes to the Palm Springs Gallery and calls Rachel, who tells her she can come home if she wants. Poppy does not want to run away; she wants things with Alex to improve.

When Poppy returns to the room, she and Alex seriously talk. She learns his back spasms began occurring a few months after Croatia, which makes them seem related to the stress of their estrangement. While Alex is in the bathroom, he gives Poppy his laptop password and tells her to choose something from Netflix. Poppy sees that Alex has applied to teach at a place in New York. When he comes out of the bathroom, she asks him about it. He confesses he is undecided about moving to another city as he has to figure things out in Linfield. Poppy eventually learns Sarah is a factor and that they may get back together, even though they have broken up twice. Annoyed, Alex retorts that “not everyone can just not look back like you” (165). Alex believes Poppy does not want the same things as him, such as marriage, children, and domestic stability. Poppy, who does not know what she wants and is on the verge of tears, confesses she does not find those things unbearable, only that she does not want Alex to have them with Sarah, who takes him for granted. Selfishly, she also knows that she would lose Alex forever were he to marry Sarah or anyone else.

Alex and Poppy embrace and when he kisses her on the head, there is extreme sexual tension as she shoves “down the memories of everything that mouth did in Croatia” (167). Alex, however, is uncertain that he can do better than Sarah—especially given his lack of connection with girls on Tinder. Poppy asks to see his Tinder, on the pretense of being in a position of giving advice.

Alex and Poppy are on a trip to New Orleans. Poppy, who has been living in New York for five months, has gained an unprecedented boost in her social media following, thanks to her friendship with Rachel. She also has a handsome chef boyfriend named Guillermo. Guillermo is generally a good boyfriend, who gives plenty of recommendations for the New Orleans trip, although Poppy is concerned when he expresses the wish that he hopes that living in New York does not make her less sweet.

Alex has also moved on with his life. He got a place at an MFA program at the University of Indiana and is in text conversation with his college crush, Sarah.

Poppy has the uncomfortable sensation that she is happier in New Orleans with Alex than she is in the New York life of which she has long dreamed. When they clumsily dance in the street, she has such a good time that she thinks she never wants to leave. Here, and when she reads a short story he has written, she feels that she loves him. The loneliness and factors that stop her truly connecting with people dissolve and she feels that “reading this story makes me feel for the first time that I’m not in my body” (182), and that she is in a place of belonging with Alex. Poppy thinks that as long as she has Alex, she will never be alone.

On inspecting Alex’s Tinder profile, Poppy is critical of the profile picture, which makes him indistinguishable from the three other men in it. She replaces the ineffective picture with one she took on their trip to Tuscany, when Alex was thrilled on learning his story had been accepted by Tin House magazine. She also replaces his long, earnest biography with a few lines of witty repartee. Poppy comments that the reason why Alex has not much success with women is that he is intimidating. Three of Poppy’s college friends had crushes on Alex, but he unwittingly brushed them off.

When Poppy and Alex test out his new profile and start swiping, Alex rejects many girls, dismissing them as not his type. When he lands on a placid-looking strawberry blonde in a blue blazer, Poppy is furious because the girl is of the same “wannabe kindergarten teacher” type as Sarah (191). She rants about how men prefer the sweet, bland type of woman to independent types like her. Alex retorts that he chooses women who seem boring to Poppy, because “women like you think I’m boring” (192). Poppy vehemently denies that he is boring and affirms that were she to have encountered him on Tinder, he would have been one of her preferred matches. He, after inspecting her wacky, costumed Tinder picture agrees that he would have swiped right for her too and there is so much sexual tension that Poppy is grateful that Alex’s back spasm is preventing them from doing anything to release it.

The trip to Vail, Colorado almost did not happen because Poppy found herself lacking in funds when Guillermo broke up with her six weeks after she moved into his apartment, and she had to fund the cost of another house move.

While Poppy thinks she is happy in her New York life with Guillermo, when he accompanies her home on a visit to Linfield, he is polite but condescending to her parents and makes it clear that he finds them eccentric and suffocating. Poppy feels judged and rejected. A few weeks later, when Poppy shows that she knows nothing about contemporary art a dinner party, Guillermo tells her they are too different and leaves her for a restaurant hostess who has just moved to the city from Nebraska.

Meanwhile, Alex and Sarah began a committed relationship; she moved to Indiana while he finished his doctorate. Sarah does not like Poppy and will not follow her on Instagram. Alex also makes clear that Sarah is uncomfortable with the idea of him and Poppy going on vacation together. They almost leave it until Poppy gets an offer that will fund the Vail trip.

When Poppy and Alex wake up together in the center of the bed in a state of arousal, Poppy thinks they will have to do things other than lounging about the apartment in order to get their friendship back to normal. Poppy decides they should go to the zoo because Alex likes animals. Alex, who is dizzy, does not enjoy the visit. They decide that they will go somewhere air-conditioned as the air-conditioning in their apartment remains stubbornly broken.

When Sarah gives the all-clear for the Vail trip, Poppy and Alex go and have a good time. However, Poppy senses Alex’s reserve on the topic of Sarah. Poppy tries not to be upset at his divided loyalties and relishes the platonic parts of their relationship. Although Poppy and Alex do not talk as much as before, there are signs that they still care about one another: Alex emails her short stories and Poppy keeps them in her shoebox of sentimental objects.

In Vail, they get in touch with Lita, a girl they met on their first summer away to Vancouver Island. On a rafting trip, they see that a pregnant Lita in a committed relationship with another woman and is five years sober, has matured from the girl they met. When Lita makes a comment about all of humanity being connected, Poppy confides that she was a loner as a kid and that traveling and simply going to the airport makes her feel less lonely.

After, Alex tells her he is sorry that she sometimes feels lonely and that he has not been consistently available for her. She replies that she has never felt lonely since they met and that “I don’t think I’ll ever feel truly alone in this world again as long as you’re in it” (218). He replies that he did not realize he was lonely until he met Poppy and discovered a part of himself that was different from the responsible person he thought he should be. He discovered such a new part of himself that it feels “like I didn’t even exist before that. Like you invented me” (219). He affirms that no matter how things change between them, he will always love her.

The next day, Alex plays a hero role when Poppy trips and hurts her ankle on the trail they were hiking, and he carries her down a mountain. She feels that Alex is too good to be her own invention. At this stage, Poppy would rather have a part of Alex forever, rather than have the whole of him in a relationship and risk completely losing him.

While Poppy arranges a full itinerary of Palm Springs’ second-rate attractions—such as roadside dinosaur sculptures and the façades of millionaires’ homes—Alex is unenthusiastic, complaining that he is carsick. Poppy is eager to stay away from the overheated apartment with all of its temptations.

When they get a flat tire, they decide to park the car and get an Uber home. When they get fed up with the Uber driver’s car scent, they decide to walk home in the dark. Alex jokes about climbing the fence to get in the pool when they get back and Poppy likes the scheme.

It is on the journey to Sanibel Island featured in the Prologue that Alex is miserable because Sarah ended their relationship; she said it “was about as exciting as the library where they’d met” (228). Poppy and Alex share a long meaningful look, as Poppy has her first thought that she is in love with Alex.

When they reach their room again, the air conditioning has broken to the extent that the temperature has risen to ninety degrees. When Alex thinks they should check into a hotel, Poppy protests that this was not part of the plan. Alex tells her she cannot pretend that they can go back to a time before the trip to Croatia because things between them are irretrievably different. Poppy makes clear that what she wants is Alex and the two embrace and kiss.