Funny Story

by Emily Henry

What about you? Do you want a big family? Dating in my late twenties had been hell. This was the kind of question I’d usually ask right before the guy on the other end of the phone ghosted me. As if it had been a formal proposition: Should we skip grabbing a drink and maybe freeze some embryos, just in case?

My first shift working alongside her, a middle-aged guy with a wad of dip in his cheek walked up, stared at her boobs, and said, “I’ve always had a thing for exotic girls.” Without even looking up from her computer, Ashleigh replied, “That’s inappropriate, and if you speak to me like that again, we’ll have to ban you. Would it be helpful if I printed you some literature about sexual harassment?” All that to say, I admire and fear her in equal measure.

“Things go smoother if you don’t let people get a rise out of you,” he says. “If you give them control over how you feel, they’ll always use it.” “Finally, I see your cynical side,” I say. He smiles, but his jaw is tight, and the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s not cynical. If you don’t give other people responsibility for your feelings, you can have a decent relationship with most of them.”

“I’m cutting back,” he says. At that precise moment, I bury my hands in the sweatshirt pockets and am met with a prerolled joint. I pull it out with a laugh. “I’ve been looking for that.” Miles plucks the joint from my fingers and pops it between his lips. “You gotta light.” “Sadly, no,” I say. “No, I mean, you’ve got a light,” he says. “Other pocket.” “Ah.” I withdraw the neon-orange plastic lighter and snap it open, blocking the wind until the flame catches.

“Anything you need a helmet to do,” I say, “you probably simply shouldn’t do.” He steps closer, the breeze ruffling his hair, and pulls the helmet down over my head. “Or maybe,” he says, eyes crinkled against the sun, “everything worth doing comes with some risk.”

Miles’s gaze drops on a hoarse laugh, a shake of his head. He steps in closer, our hips brushing. 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. Nothing to stop us.

On Sunday, Miles surprised me and (a less than thrilled) Julia with a drive down to a little town called North Bear Shores for a bookstore event with a romance writer Sadie had turned me on to years ago. After the signing, the shop owner and her geology professor wife ended up falling in love with Miles (obviously) and making a donation toward the Read-a-thon.

“Honey.” She laughs. “I’m a cynic. And a cynic is a romantic who’s too scared to hope.”

No part of me is itching to read it, but I’m also thinking about what Mom said, about not wasting time talking ourselves out of hope, and avoiding anything that might hurt.

I’d tempered my expectations, packed them tight into bricks, built a fortress to protect me. But keeping every glimmer of hope out has isolated me too, and I want to be seen. I want to be loved. I want to live with the hope that things can get better, even if, in the end, they don’t.

A surprise, it turns out, is different when it comes from someone who knows and loves you.

The same universe that dispassionately takes things away can bring you things you weren’t imaginative enough to dream up.