Funny Story

by Emily Henry

I’m joking, but Miles draws back enough to peer into my face. “You’d be a great mom.”

He smiles faintly, tucking my hair behind my

“Everything,” I say. His mouth curls. “Fascinating.”

His smile parts, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

He tips his head toward the buggy. “I promise to go slow for you.”

Downside: every time we hit a bump, I accidentally grab his right thigh with both hands, until finally, he slows to a crawl and sets one palm over mine, murmuring, “It’s okay. I’ve got you,”

I open my eyes. Because, as it turns out, I had closed them and also moaned a little. He’s fighting a grin as he bites into his own artichoke slice.

“The signature Daphne moan,”

“But we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about us.”

“Maybe right now,” I say, because I need somewhere else to look, something else to think about. He flashes a smile. “Maybe right now.”

Without warning, he grabs my ankles and yanks me down the couch, draping my legs across his lap, my butt resting against the side of his thigh so that his face hangs over me.

At the sarcasm, his grin spreads. He takes hold of my wrists. “No, don’t be self-conscious,” he says. “It’s so fucking cute.”

“I’m serious.” He lifts my wrists, planting my limp hands on the sides of his face, a grown and bearded version of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. “I never would’ve said anything about it if I didn’t think it was cute.”

When he slips it free, a shiver passes through me. “Always so buttoned up,” he murmurs softly, teasingly.

“You’re so sexy,” he rasps. Heat flushes from my hairline down to my thighs.

“I love the sounds you make,” he rasps.

He chances a glance at me, his voice a teasing scrape: “I’m sure Daphne would love that.” A whisper shivers down my backbone: I love the sounds you make.

“For starters,” he says. “Also I would’ve wanted to impress you.”

“Different Peter!” I cry, laughing as we struggle against each other for a minute. “Different Peter!”

SENIOR PROM,

A REUNION ??

We’re probably one of three couples here who don’t remember the day of the first lunar landing.

Oh

He turns toward me, smiling through the twinkling lights, and taps a lime-green macaron in between my lips. “Anytime,” he says.

“Yeah, I’ve always had a thing about that,”

“Hot librarians,” he says, looking down at me with a faint grin that hits my heart like the first shock of a defibrillator.

“No,” I say firmly, turning in to Miles. I loop my own arms around his waist, basically propping my boobs up on his chest, and gazing into his eyes as I say, “But the roommate thing is pretty hot.”

Miles’s pupils flare as he takes the cue, one hand cupping my jaw, and kisses me.

“She always thought I was reading too much into it,” he says. “But I think they were worried I couldn’t give Petra everything they want for her.”

WHATS UP W EMILY HENRY GIVING HED MEN A PTHETIC INFERIORITY ARC LATELY

I’m going to turn you ninety degrees and kiss you again, and when I stop, I want you to look to your left and see his face. Then you can tell me if he thinks his new life, without you, is something better.”

“You kissed me.”

“I don’t want to play that game anymore,” I say. “I don’t want you to say things you don’t mean and do things you don’t want to do. It’s confusing.”

“You only want to kiss me when they’re there to see it. And I know I started it, but things are different now.”

ill start crying right here rn

Then he looks back up, takes my face in both hands, and kisses me again. Rough, deep, messy, breathless. With no one to see it.

“I want to kiss you every time I walk past your bedroom and hear your laugh through the door,”

“I want to kiss you every time I hear the shower turn on and know that you’re in there,” he rasps.

“What are we doing?” he murmurs against my skin.

His mouth drags back up my throat, his breath hot. “I want,” he says raggedly, “to undress you. And taste you. I want to hear you come again, and feel it too.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” I pant out. “I want to undress you. I want to taste you. I want to feel you come.”

“Our feelings—mine, Julia’s, my dad’s—those didn’t matter much.”

“That’s the thing, though,” he scratches out. “I need it to be okay. Because I need to be okay. As a kid, I just felt so fucking scared and powerless, all the time, and now I just need to be okay.”

“That’s the problem, though. Whenever any of us had a negative emotion, it only made things worse. She turned it around on us, and we’d end up apologizing for being hurt or angry or sad, and I never knew what was right or normal. I mean, everyone who met my mom loved her. Teachers, the other parents, my friends.

That’s what my childhood did to me. Made my brain into a fucking fun house where I might think I’m standing on the floor, but really I’m stuck to a wall. I never know if I’m feeling the right thing, and I’m tired of fucking things up for the people I care about.”

“That was my complaint. What have you got?”

44 DAYS UNTIL I COULD LEAVE (IF I STILL WANT TO)

he texts me live updates as he listens to the audiobook of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, things like i want to live w the beavers and wat is turkish delight and edmund needs 2 chill.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

The dress was three thousand dollars,

Im so fucking sorry ??

I turn and stop short. So does Miles.

THIS WAS A SETUP

“Can you lean over the dresser?” he asks.

Homie wtf

My forehead hits his collarbone as the giggles double me over. His hand slides up my back, goose bumps trailing along behind his touch, to rest at the base of my neck. His laugh hums through me too.

“I just think,” I say to Miles, “you like people almost as much as they like you. And it makes being around you feel like—like standing in sunlight.”