I fell in love with my best friend when I was in middle school. He came to my birthday parties. We worked together for a while. We knew each other’s families, each other’s tells, each other’s moods. And just like Poppy in People We Meet on Vacation, I always found myself running away. Metaphorically. Literally. Emotionally.

I didn’t put this movie on because I was craving a flashback or because I was dying for a romance movie to take me to another place and time. I put it on because it was convenient, and the trailer on Netflix gave me a good giggle thanks to Molly Shannon vigorously shaking what looks like a Costco-sized pack of condoms. It felt light. Harmless. Something to have on in the background while I answered emails or half-scrolled through my phone.

And People We Meet on Vacation takes you on quite the journey, even if you already know the road ahead. Directed by Brett Haley and based on Emily Henry’s novel, the Netflix adaptation stars Emily Bader as Poppy and Tom Blyth as Alex. What unfolds is a layered timeline of summers past and present, of glances held too long, of almosts and maybes.

But what the movie reminded me of kept me awake long after it was over. To the point that I had to write this review on my phone, in the dark, before I forgot all the pithy lines. Not because it was unbearably charming, though it was, but because it took me back to being helplessly in love with a boy, who was once the only person who could make me feel truly loved. It also reminded me that, unlike Poppy, most of us don’t get those kinds of “happy endings.”

In the film, Poppy and her best friend Alex take annual summer vacations. Her parents joke about them getting together, but it doesn’t ever happen. Until it does. The years they spend orbiting each other, loving each other safe and contained ways, do something much more interesting than a quick romance ever could. It solidifies a bond. It deepens a love they are not ready to admit or sink into until they finally are.

It’s deliciously sweet and a little too much for someone like me to bear. Someone who spent most of her life running away because, like Poppy says, “I was afraid people would see I’m too much.”

That line hit harder than it had any right to.

I would often go home and see my former best friend and leave crying after we said goodbye. For many painful years, I thought he was the one. I envisioned the same ending that Poppy and Alex get. The confession. The realization. The choice. I imagined that one day the timing would align, that the universe would stop playing games, that we would finally step into the thing that had been humming between us since adolescence.

But that isn’t what happened.

Life did what life does. We dated other people. We made other plans. We became adults with responsibilities and histories that did not include each other in the way I once thought they would. The love never became the grand romantic arc I had scripted in my head. Instead, it became a story without a cinematic swell.

Now listen, don’t pretend I’m spoiling this for you. We all know how movies like this end. That’s why we watch them. We watch to get a short glimpse of the fairy tale, that closure that’s so rare in real life. Because sometimes we want to believe that if two people love each other long enough, the universe will reward them for their patience.

At first, I didn’t think that would be the ending for these two – not because I’m completely jaded and full of bitterness, but because I thought maybe Poppy and I could share in the same feeling. Being left behind.

I am happy now. My life did not end because that love did not materialize. I built something else, something beautiful and real and grounded. I have learned that love can take many forms and still be valid, still be sacred.

But you always wonder.

People We Meet on Vacation reminded me that love is something to be cherished, the film beautifully capturing the tension in their eyes. The silent scream of, “I’ve loved you since always.” Even when they are not willing to say it out loud until it is almost too late. That tension is believable. The flights across the world every year might stretch reality, but the ache in a lingering look does not.

Watching it felt like reopening a sealed letter I had tucked away in a drawer years ago. Not to reread it and spiral, but to acknowledge that it once existed. To honor the girl who loved so fiercely she thought it would be enough. To forgive the woman who ran.

The movie ends the way we expect it to. With a choice. With clarity. With two people finally stepping into the thing that has been waiting for them all along.

But we all know that fairy tales are tidy because they end at the confession, not ten years later when dishes need washing and careers need balancing. Real life is messier. It does not always hand you the perfectly timed declaration. Sometimes it hands you growth instead. Or distance. Or a different kind of happiness that does not look like the one you once imagined.

Still, as the credits rolled and the room went quiet, I found myself staring at the ceiling, thinking about a middle school girl at her birthday party, laughing too loud, hoping the boy across the room would notice. Thinking about how love can be both the softest landing and the sharpest lesson.

I am glad Poppy and Alex get their ending.

I am also glad that I got mine, too.

And somewhere between those two truths lives the tender, complicated, enduring fact that first love, especially when it is wrapped in friendship, never really leaves you. It just changes shape.