Alex Nilsen and Sarah Torval

Alex Nilsen and Sarah Torval’s relationship repeatedly approaches the shape of a settled partnership, then is undermined by the unresolved place Poppy Wright occupies in Alex Nilsen’s life. Sarah Torval and Alex Nilsen reconnect, date seriously, and make plans that could carry them into a shared future. But their history includes breakups, and Alex Nilsen’s effort to preserve his closeness with Poppy Wright affects what he asks of Sarah Torval and what he is able to promise her.

A History of Breakups and Renewed Contact

Sarah Torval is described as Alex Nilsen’s unrequited college crush. Years later, while visiting friends in Chicago, Alex Nilsen runs into her by chance. They have a drink, begin texting, and soon progress to phone calls and another visit. Alex Nilsen speaks bashfully about the possibility of seeing her again. His early hope is set against a longer, less simple history: he and Sarah Torval have already been in a torturous on-and-off relationship, and Poppy Wright notes that they have broken up twice.

The possibility of Alex Nilsen and Sarah Torval getting back together becomes a source of unease for Poppy Wright. When Alex Nilsen raises the prospect of meeting Sarah Torval again, Poppy Wright recognizes that the relationship may be returning. She objects to the history of repeated breakups, but Alex Nilsen responds that dating is difficult and that he and Sarah Torval have a substantial past together. Poppy Wright’s reaction is not detached advice: her concern about Sarah Torval accompanies her awareness that Alex Nilsen’s romantic choices affect their own unusually close friendship.

Building a Life Together

By the time Poppy Wright reflects on Alex Nilsen’s relationship with Sarah Torval, they have been seriously dating for nine months. After the Chicago encounter, their communication develops quickly from texts to calls and another visit. They become serious, spend six months in a long-distance relationship, and then Sarah Torval takes a teaching job in Indiana and moves there to be with Alex Nilsen while he completes his MFA. She is content to remain there while he works toward his doctorate and is prepared to follow him wherever he settles afterward.

Those choices give the relationship a practical future as well as romantic momentum. Sarah Torval relocates for Alex Nilsen, and her willingness to continue with him beyond his studies suggests a shared life extending past the immediate circumstances of graduate school. Yet that apparent stability does not make their different expectations disappear. Poppy Wright notes that Sarah Torval feels uncomfortable about the annual summer trip she takes with Alex Nilsen. Poppy Wright understands the discomfort rather than dismissing it: from Sarah Torval’s position, the closeness between Alex Nilsen and Poppy Wright would be difficult to accept in a boyfriend’s friendship with another woman.

The Summer Trip and Its Unspoken Tension

Sarah Torval’s discomfort becomes especially visible around the trip to Vail. Alex Nilsen manages to get her to agree to it, although Poppy Wright does not know how. There is no explicit discussion of jealousy, and Poppy Wright allows that jealousy may not be the reason Sarah Torval initially dislikes the plan. Once the trip begins and Alex Nilsen and Poppy Wright are together, Poppy Wright stops worrying about the tension and feels that their friendship has returned to normal.

That return to normal is revealing because the trip is not emotionally neutral for Poppy Wright. She has previously described the possibility of Alex Nilsen and Sarah Torval reconnecting as a reason to worry, while telling herself that the romantic possibility between Alex Nilsen and herself has receded to a manageable level. The ease she feels once alone with Alex Nilsen does not resolve the question of what the trip means to Sarah Torval. Instead, it shows how readily Alex Nilsen and Poppy Wright resume their intimate two-person routine, even when that routine complicates Alex Nilsen’s relationship with Sarah Torval.

After Poppy Wright’s pneumonia, the relationships appear to settle into a more accommodating arrangement. Poppy Wright meets Trey, and Alex Nilsen and Sarah Torval get back together. Alex Nilsen says this time is better because they are on the same page. Sarah Torval also seems to have begun warming to Poppy Wright, and the few times Alex Nilsen and Trey meet, they get along. Poppy Wright is delighted that she and Alex Nilsen have never let anything happen between them, a claim that expresses her relief while also obscuring how much emotional space each has continued to reserve for the other.

The Cost of Alex Nilsen’s Choices

The later disclosures make clear that Sarah Torval’s relationship with Alex Nilsen is affected by more than ordinary friction over the summer trips. Alex Nilsen tells Poppy Wright that Sarah Torval broke up with him before the Sanibel Island trip. He spent that trip feeling guilty and worrying that Poppy Wright might find him boring. He says that when he is with Poppy Wright, no one else matters; after she leaves, life returns to normal. The account places the intensity of his bond with Poppy Wright alongside the continuing relationship he tries to maintain with Sarah Torval.

When Alex Nilsen and Sarah Torval reunite, Alex Nilsen asks Sarah Torval to go to Tuscany even though she does not want to. He tells Poppy Wright that he needed Sarah Torval to come because he was unwilling to give Poppy Wright up and thought that having the two women be friends would make that arrangement easier. The trip thus carries a purpose beyond a holiday: Alex Nilsen is trying to preserve his closeness with Poppy Wright while keeping his relationship with Sarah Torval in place. Poppy Wright later believes that the events in Tuscany left a mark on Alex Nilsen and Sarah Torval’s relationship, even though Sarah Torval never knew exactly what had happened between Poppy Wright and Alex Nilsen.

The pregnancy scare during the Tuscany trip sharpens the conflict. Alex Nilsen says that it frightened him so much that he got a vasectomy, without first asking Sarah Torval what she thought. A few days later, he sees an antique yellow-gold Art Deco ring with a pearl and thinks it would make a perfect engagement ring. He then recognizes that Sarah Torval would have hated that particular ring and, more importantly, that the vasectomy and the thought of marriage were decisions he was making for Poppy Wright. He sees those choices as unfair to Sarah Torval and ends their relationship that day.

What the Relationship Reveals

The relationship is not presented as insincere: Alex Nilsen and Sarah Torval have years of history, become serious again, and make substantial commitments to living in the same place. Its tragedy lies instead in the gap between those commitments and Alex Nilsen’s private priorities. Even while considering marriage to Sarah Torval, he measures his decisions against his attachment to Poppy Wright. David Nilsen later reveals that Alex Nilsen had a ring and was supposed to propose before Sarah Torval was gone, confirming how close the relationship came to marriage without making it a secure future.

Poppy Wright also recognizes her part in the damage. She concludes that she had kept Alex Nilsen from being able to marry Sarah Torval, and believes that the unspoken intimacy between herself and Alex Nilsen shifted his relationship with Sarah Torval for the worse. Neither Alex Nilsen nor Poppy Wright had kissed or openly named their feelings at that point, but Poppy Wright understands that their silence did not prevent consequences. Sarah Torval’s relationship with Alex Nilsen therefore becomes a measure of what their friendship has cost: a real partnership and possible marriage repeatedly coexist with Alex Nilsen’s refusal to give up Poppy Wright, until he finally ends the relationship rather than continue making decisions he knows are unfair.