People We Meet on Vacation

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.

I’d thought he regretted what happened. Now I understood he regretted how it happened. On a drunk whim, when he couldn’t be sure of my intentions. When I wasn’t sure of my intentions. He’d been afraid it hadn’t meant anything, and then I’d pretended it hadn’t.

All this time I’d thought he’d rejected me. And he’d thought I’d been cavalier with him and his heart. It made me ache to think of how I’d hurt him, and worst of all, maybe he was right.

Because even if that kiss hadn’t meant nothing to me, I also hadn’t thought it through. Not the first time, and not this time either. Not like Alex had.

“Poppy?” Swapna says, leaning around my cubicle. “Do you have a moment?”

I’ve been at my desk, staring at this website for tourism in Siberia, for upwards of forty-five minutes. Turns out Siberia is actually sort of beautiful. Perfect for a self-imposed exile if one should have need of such a thing. I minimize the site. “Um, sure.”

Swapna glances over her shoulder, checking who else is in today, parked at their desks. “Actually, are you up for a walk?”

It’s been two weeks since I got back from Palm Springs, and it’s technically too early for fall weather, but we’ve got a random pop of it today in New York. Swapna grabs her Burberry trench and I grab my vintage herringbone one and we set off toward the coffee shop on the corner.

“So,” she says. “I can’t help but notice you’ve been in a funk.”

“Oh.” I thought I’d been doing an okay job hiding how I was feeling. For one thing, I’ve been exercising for, like, four hours a night, which means I sleep like a baby, wake up still exhausted, and trudge through my days without too much brainpower left for wondering when Alex might answer one of my phone calls or call me back.

Or why this job feels as tiring as bartending back in Ohio did. I can’t make anything add up how it should anymore. All day long, I hear myself saying this same phrase, like I’m desperate to get it out of my body even as I feel incapable: I am having a hard time.

As mild as that statement is—every bit as mild as I can’t help but notice you’ve been in a funk—it sears to my center every time I hear it.

I am having a hard time, I think desperately a thousand times a day, and when I try to probe for more information—A hard time with what?—the voice replies, Everything.

I feel insufficient as an adult. I look around at the office and see everyone typing, taking calls, making bookings, editing documents, and I know they’re all dealing with at least as much as I am, which only makes me feel worse about how hard everything feels to me.

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. Every day for the rest of my life, I’m going to have to figure out what to eat, and make it for myself, no matter how bad I feel or tired I am, or how horrible the pounding in my head is. Even if I have a one-hundred-and-two-degree fever, I will have to pull myself up and make a very mediocre meal to go on living.

I don’t say any of this to Swapna, because (a) she’s my boss, (b) I don’t know if I could translate any of these thoughts into spoken words, and (c) even if I could, it would be humiliating to admit that I feel exactly like that incapable, lost, melancholy stereotype of a millennial that the world is so fond of raging against.

“I guess I have been in a little bit of a funk,” is what I say. “I didn’t realize it was affecting my work. I’ll do better.”

Swapna stops walking, turns on her towering Louboutins, and frowns. “It’s not only about the work, Poppy. I have personally invested in mentoring you.”

“I know,” I say. “You’re an amazing boss, and I feel so lucky.”

“It’s not about that either,” Swapna says, the slightest bit impatient. “What I’m saying is that of course you’re not obligated to talk to me about what’s going on, but I do think it would help if you spoke with someone. Working toward your goals can be very lonely, and professional burnout is always a challenge. I’ve been there, trust me.”

I shift anxiously on my feet. While Swapna has been a mentor to me, we’ve never veered toward anything personal, and I’m unsure how much to say.

“I don’t know what’s going on with me,” I admit.

I know my heart is broken at the thought of not having Alex in my life.

I know that I wish I could see him every single day, and there’s no part of me that’s imagining what else could be out there, who I might miss out on knowing and loving if we were to really be together.

I know that the thought of a life in Linfield terrifies the hell out of me.

I know I worked so hard to be this person—independent, well traveled, successful—and I don’t know who I am if I let that go.

I know that there’s still no other job out there calling to me, the obvious answer to my unhappiness, and that this one, which has been amazing for a good portion of the last four and a half years, lately has only left me tired.

And all of that adds up to having no fucking clue where I go next, and thus no real right to call Alex, which is why I’ve finally stopped trying for the time being.

“Professional burnout,” I say aloud. “That’s a thing that passes, right?”

Swapna smiles. “For me, so far, it always has.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a little white business card. “But like I said, it helps to speak with someone.” I accept the card, and she tips her chin toward the coffee shop. “Why don’t you take a few minutes to yourself? Sometimes a change of scenery is all that’s needed to get a little perspective.”Exclusive content from NôvelDrama.Org.

A change of scenery, I think as she starts back the way we came. That used to work.

I look down at the business card in my hand and can’t help but laugh.

Dr. Sandra Krohn, psychologist.

I pull out my phone and text Rachel. Is Dr. Mom accepting new patients?

Is the current Pope wildly transgressive? she texts back.

•   •   •

RACHEL’S MOTHER HAS a home office in her brownstone in Brooklyn. While Rachel’s own design aesthetic is airy and light, her mother’s decor is warm and cozy, all dark wood and stained glass, hanging leafy plants and books piled high on every surface, wind chimes twinkling outside almost every window.

In a way, it reminds me of being at home, although Dr. Krohn’s artsy, cultivated version of maximalism is a far cry from Mom and Dad’s Museum to Our Childhood.

During our first session I tell her I need help figuring out what comes next for me, but she recommends we start with the past instead.

“There’s not much to say,” I tell her, then proceed to talk for fifty-six minutes straight. About my parents, about school, about the first trip home with Guillermo.

She’s the only person I’ve shared any of this with aside from Alex, and while it feels good to get it out, I’m not sure how it’s helping with my life-exploding crisis. Rachel makes me promise to stick with it for at least a couple months. “Don’t run from this,” she says. “You won’t be doing yourself any favors.”

I know she’s right. I’ve have to run through, not away. My only hope for figuring this out is to stay, sit in the discomfort.

In my weekly therapy sessions. In my job at R+R. In my mostly empty apartment.

My blog sits unused, but I start to journal. My work trips are limited to regional weekend getaways, and during my downtime, I scour the internet for self-help books and articles, looking for something that speaks to me like that twenty-one-thousand-dollar bear statue definitely did not.

Sometimes, I look for jobs in New York; other times, I check listings near Linfield.

I buy myself a plant, a book about plants, and a small loom. I try to teach myself how to weave with YouTube videos and realize within three hours that I’m as bored by it as I am bad at it.

Still, I let the half-finished weaving sit out on my table for days, and it feels like proof that I live here. I have a life, here, a place that’s mine.

On the last day of September, I’m on my way to meet Rachel at the wine bar when my bag gets caught in the subway doors of a crowded train car.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I hiss, while on the other side, a few people work to pry them open. A balding but youngish man in a blue suit manages to get the doors apart, and when I look up to thank him, recognition flashes clear and sharp across his blue eyes.

“Poppy?” he says, pushing the doors a little further apart. “Poppy Wright?”

I’m too stunned to reply. He steps out of the train car, despite having made no effort to get out the first time the doors opened. This isn’t his stop, but he’s getting out and I have to step back to make room for him as the doors snap closed again.

And then we’re standing there on the platform, and I should say something, I know I have to—he got off the freaking train. I manage only, “Wow. Jason.”

He nods, grinning, touching his chest where a light pink tie hangs from the pressed collar of his white shirt. “Jason Stanley. East Linfield High School.”

My brain is still trying to process this. It can’t reconcile him against this backdrop. In my city, in the life I built to never touch my old one. I stammer, “Right.”

Jason Stanley has lost most of his hair. He’s put on some weight around the middle, but there’s still something of the cute boy I once had a crush on, who then ruined my life.

He laughs, elbows me. “You were my first girlfriend.”

“Well,” I say, because that doesn’t seem quite right. I’ve never thought of Jason Stanley as my first boyfriend. First-crush-turned-bully maybe.

“Are you busy right now?” He glances at his watch. “I’ve got a few minutes if you want to catch up.”

I do not want to catch up.

“I’m actually on my way to therapy,” I say, for some fucking reason. It was the first excuse that came to mind. I’d prefer to have blurted out that I was taking a metal detector to the nearest beach to look for quarters. I stride toward the steps, and Jason follows along.

“Therapy?” he says, still grinning. “Not because of that shit I pulled when I was a jealous little prick, I hope.” He winks. “I mean, you hope to make an impression, just not that sort.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie as we climb the steps.

“Really?” Jason says. “God, that’s a relief. I think about it all the time. Even tried to look you up on Facebook once so I could apologize. You don’t have Facebook, do you?”

“Not really, no,” I say.

I do have Facebook. I do not have my last name on Facebook specifically because I didn’t want people like Jason Stanley finding me. Or anyone from Linfield. I wanted to vanish that part of me and reappear fully formed in a new city, and that’s what I did.

We emerge from the subway onto the tree-lined streets. That same nip is back in the air. Fall has finally swallowed up the last bites of summer.

“Anyway,” Jason says, the first signs of embarrassment kicking in. He stops, rubbing the back of his head. “I’ll leave you alone. I saw you and I couldn’t believe it. I just wanted to say hi. And sorry, I guess.”

But I stop too, because haven’t I been saying for a month that I’m done running from problems, damn it? I left Linfield, and somehow that wasn’t enough. He’s here. Like the universe is giving me a hard shove in the right direction.

I take a breath and wheel toward him, crossing my arms. “Sorry for what, Jason?”

He must see it in my face, that I was lying about not remembering, because he looks hugely embarrassed now.

He takes a stiff, stuttering breath, studies his brown dress shoes guiltily. “You remember how awful middle school was, right?” he says. “You feel so out of place—like something’s wrong with you and any second everyone else is gonna figure it out. You see it happen to other people. Kids you used to play four square with suddenly getting mean nicknames, not getting invited to birthday parties. And you know you could be next, so you turn into a little asshole. If you point at other people, no one will look too closely at you, right? I was your asshole—I mean, I was the asshole in your life, for a while.”

The sidewalk sways in front of me, a wave of dizziness crashing over me. Whatever I was expecting, that wasn’t it.

“I honestly can’t believe I’m even saying this,” he says. “I just saw you on that train platform and—I had to say something.”

Jason takes a deep breath, his frown drawing tired wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and eyes.

We’re so old, I think. When did we get so old?

Suddenly we’re not kids anymore, and it feels like it happened overnight, so fast I didn’t have time to notice, to let go of everything that used to matter so much, to see that the old wounds that once felt like gut-level lacerations have faded to small white scars, mixed in among the stretch marks and sunspots and little divots where time has grazed against my body.

I’ve put so much time and distance between myself and that lonely girl, and what does it matter? Here is a piece of my past, right in front of me, miles away from home. You can’t outrun yourself. Not your history, not your fears, not the parts of yourself you’re worried are wrong.

Jason darts another glance at his feet. “At the reunion,” he says, “someone told me you were doing great. Working at R+R. That’s amazing. I actually, um, grabbed an issue a while back and read your articles. It’s so cool, seems like you’ve seen the whole world.”

Finally, I manage to speak. “Yeah. It’s . . . it’s really cool.”

His smile widens. “And you live here?”

“Mm-hm.” I cough to clear my throat. “What about you?”

“Nah,” he says. “I’m on business. Sales stuff. I’m still back in Linfield.”

This, I realize, is what I’ve been waiting for for years. The moment when I finally know I’ve won: I got out. I made something of myself. I found a place I belonged. I proved I wasn’t broken while the person who was cruelest to me stayed stuck in crappy little Linfield.

Except that’s not how I feel. Because Jason doesn’t seem stuck, and he certainly isn’t being cruel. He’s here, in this city, in a nice white shirt, being genuinely kind.

There’s a stinging in my eyes, a hot feeling in the back of my throat.

“If you’re ever back there,” Jason says uncertainly, “and you wanna meet up . . .”

I try to make some kind of noise of assent, but nothing happens. It’s like the tiny person who sits at the control panel in my brain has just passed out. “So,” Jason goes on. “Sorry again. I hope you know it was always about me. Not you.”

The sidewalk swings again, a pendulum. Like the world as I’ve always seen it has been jostled so hard it’s rocking, might come crashing down entirely.

Obviously people grow up, a voice says in my head. You think all those people were just frozen in time, just because they stayed in Linfield?

But like he said, it’s not about them, it’s about me.

That’s exactly what I thought.

That if I didn’t get out, I’d always be that lonely girl. I would never belong anywhere.

“So if you’re in Linfield . . .” he says again.

“But you’re not hitting on me, right?” I say.

“Oh! God no!” Now he holds up his hand, showing off one of those thick black bands on his ring finger. “Married. Happily. Monogamously.”

“Cool,” I say, because it’s really the only English word I remember at present. Which is saying something since I don’t speak any other languages.

“Yep!” he says. “Well . . . see ya.”

And then Jason Stanley’s gone, as suddenly as he appeared.

By the time I get to the wine bar, I’ve started to cry. (What’s new?) When Rachel jumps up from our usual table, she looks stricken at the sight of me. “Are you okay, babe?”

“I’m going to quit my job,” I say tearily.

“Oh . . . kay.”

“I mean”—I sniff hard, wipe at my eyes—“not immediately, like in a movie. I’m not going to walk into Swapna’s office and be, like, I quit! And then walk straight out of the office in a tight red dress with my hair down my back or anything.”

“Well, that’s good. Orange is better for your complexion.”

“Either way, I have to find another job, before I can leave,” I say. “But I think I just figured out why I’ve been so unhappy.”