“Okay,” I tell him. “I made out with Buck.”
His eyes widen for a second before shrinking back to sleepy slivers of hazel. “Wow,” he croaks, then tries to swallow down a spark of sleepy laughter. “Did the curtains match the very troubling drapes?”
Laughing, I give his leg a shove with my foot. “I didn’t tell you so you could mock me.”
“Did he tell you what he was saying that whole time on the water taxi?” Alex asks through another rattle of laughter. “How many people were in the hammock with you?”
I start to laugh so hard there are tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. “He . . . kicked . . .” It’s hard to get words out between wheezes of laughter, but eventually I manage, “. . . kicked me out when I told him I didn’t want to have sex.”
“Oh my god,” Alex says, sitting up on his elbow, the sleeping bag falling down from his bare chest and his hair dancing with static. “What a dick.”
“No,” I say. “It was fine. He just wanted to get some, and if not from me, there are easily four hundred more girls on this half acre of sinking woods.”
Alex flops back down on his pillow. “Yeah, well, I still think that’s kind of shitty.”
“Speaking of girls,” I say, smirking.
“We . . . weren’t?” Alex says.
“Did you hook up with Daisy?”
He rolls his eyes. “Do you think I hooked up with Daisy?”
“Until you said it like that, yes.”
Alex adjusts his arm under his pillow. “Daisy isn’t my type.”
“True,” I say. “She’s nothing like Sarah Torval.”
Alex rolls his eyes again then closes them entirely. “Go to sleep, weirdo.”
Through a yawn, I say, “Sleep speaks to me.”
11
This Summer
THERE ARE PLENTY of empty chaise lounges available at the Desert Rose complex pool—everyone’s in the water—so Alex and I take our towels over to two in the corner.
He winces as he lowers himself to sitting. “The plastic’s hot.”
“Everything’s hot.” I plop down beside him and peel off my cover-up. “What percentage of that pool do you think is pee by now?” I ask, tipping my head to the gaggle of sunhat-wearing babies splashing on the steps with their parents.
Alex grimaces. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s so hot I’m going to get in the water anyway, and I don’t want to think about it.” He glances away as he draws his white T-shirt over his head, then folds it and twists to set it on the ground behind him, the muscles pulling taut along his chest and stomach in the process.
“How have you gotten more ripped?” I ask.
“I haven’t.” He pulls the sunblock from my beach bag and pumps some into his hand.
I look down at my own stomach, hanging over the tight highlighter orange of my bikini bottoms.
In the last few years my lifestyle of airplane cocktails and late-night burritos, gyros, and noodles has started to fill me out and soften me.
“Fine,” I say to Alex, “then you look exactly the same, while the rest of us are starting to droop in the eyes and the boobs and the neck, and get more and more stretch marks and pockmarks and scars.”
“Do you really want to look like your eighteen-year-old self?” he asks, and starts to smear big globs of sunblock onto his arms and chest.
“Yes.” I pick up the bottle of Banana Boat and work some of it onto my shoulders. “But I’d settle for twenty-five.”
Alex shakes his head, then bows it as he slathers more sunblock onto his neck. “You look better than you did back then, Poppy.”
“Really? Because the comments section on my Instagram would disagree,” I say.
“That’s all bullshit,” he says. “Half the people on Instagram have never lived in a world where every picture wasn’t edited. If they saw you in real life, they’d pass out. My students are all obsessed with this ‘Instagram model’ who’s completely CGI. This animated girl. Literally looks like a video game character and every time the account posts, they all freak out about how beautiful she is.”
“Oh, yeah, I know that girl,” I say. “I mean, I don’t know her. She’s not real. But I know the account. Sometimes I go down deep rabbit holes reading the comments. She has a rivalry(competition) with another CGI model—do you want me to get your back?”
“What?” He looks up, confused.
I lift the bottle of sunblock up. “Your back? It’s facing the sun right now.”
“Oh. Yeah. Thanks.” He turns around and ducks his head, but he’s still tall enough that I have to sit up on my knees to get the spot between his shoulder blades. “Anyway.” He clears his throat. “The kids know I get seriously repulsed by the uncanny valley so they always try to trick me into looking at pictures of that fake girl, just to watch me writhe. It kind of makes me feel bad for doing that Sad Puppy Face at you all these years.”
My hands go still on his warm, sun-freckled shoulders, my stomach pinching. “I’d be sad if you stopped doing that.”
《People We Meet on Vacation》
by Emily Henry 从朋友到恋人
只是搬运工加个人笔记。