People We Meet on Vacation

She ruined everything two years ago, and Alex won't let her forget it.

Poppy and Alex shouldn't work — she's chaos in human form, he's a man who color-codes his syllabi — and for years, that's exactly what made their annual summer trips electric. Two opposites. One week. A friendship that somehow survived the tension crackling beneath every late-night conversation and accidental touch.

Then something happened. Something neither of them will name out loud.

Now they haven't spoken in two years, and Poppy is tired of pretending she's fine. She has one shot to fix what she broke: convince her former best friend — the man she's spent two years trying not to think about — to take one last trip together. He says yes. She doesn't know why. She's terrified to find out.

Told across alternating summers, *People We Meet on Vacation* unravels the slow, agonizing history between two people who were never supposed to fall in love and couldn't stop themselves anyway. Every flashback tightens the knot. Every present-day scene asks the same impossible question: can you want someone so much it poisons everything good between you?

This isn't a story about getting together. It's a story about what it costs to finally be honest — with someone else, and with yourself.

Some trips change you. Some people wreck you. Alex is both.