Funny Story

by Emily Henry

I wouldn’t have become a librarian if I didn’t love stories, but I’ve never been great at telling my own.

If I had a penny for every time I interrupted my own anecdote to debate whether this actually had happened on a Tuesday, or if it had in fact been Thursday, then I’d have at least forty cents, and that’s way too big a chunk of my life wasted for way too small of a payout.

Daphne Vincent, the librarian that Peter plucked out of the trash, nearly married, then dumped the morning after his bachelor party for his “platonic” “best” “friend,” Petra Comer.

Then again, it’s not like he had many options. His girlfriend had just moved out. Into my apartment. With my fiancé.

Petra is also a stoner without a college degree, but I guess it’s different when you’re a perfect ten with a picturesque family and well-padded bank account. Then you’re not a stoner; you’re a free spirit.

Life, I’d learned, is a revolving door. Most things that come into it only stay awhile.

Hell, I’m old enough to have a daughter named Renesmee on one of those U-5 soccer teams where the kids take turns kicking the ball the wrong way, then sitting down midfield to take off their shoes.

“They,” I say, “suck.” “She’s the love of my life,” he says. “The love of your life sucks,” I tell him.

Miles is the other kind. The kind that’s disarming enough that you don’t feel nervous talking to him, or like you need to show your best angle, until—wham! Suddenly, he’s smiling at you with his messy hair and impish smirk, and you realize his hotness has been boiling around you so slowly you missed it.

This is my problem. I don’t know how to talk along the surface of things, but I also don’t want to unearth the ugly stuff, over and over again, for people who are just passing through my life. It’s depleting.

You can’t untell someone your secrets. You can’t unsay those delicate truths once you learn you can’t trust the person you handed them to.

“All we have to do is get married, and then stay together until they split up. And if they have kids, just have one more than them. If they get a dog, we get a cuter dog. If they buy a new house, we get a mansion.”

“Soulmates?” She laughs. “No. I’m saying your ex is the little boy looking over someone else’s shoulder, trying to figure out if the kid next to him has a better lunch. Only, the lunch box is shut, so even though he knows what his parents packed for him is pretty good, he’d still trade it just to open up that rusty little Batman lunch box.”

“So you haven’t moved on to the anger phase yet,” I say. He shrugs. “I don’t know if I have that phase in me.” “Really?” I say, surprised. “I’ve been camped out in mine for weeks . . .” “Getting mad never fixes anything,”

The few times I’ve smoked weed, this has always been the primary effect: a feeling that the cord between my brain and mouth has been snipped, and I have no control over what I’m saying.

“Sometimes complaining about stuff, just having someone to empathize with you, takes the sting out of it.”

“What do you like about it,” he says. “Everything,” I say. His mouth curls. “Fascinating.” “I like that it feels like I can live as many lives as I want,” I say. “What’s wrong with this one?”

I pick up my phone and text Ashleigh: Do you know of a good beginners’ yoga class? She sends back nothing but an ellipsis. I reply with a question mark. She says, I don’t believe in organized exercise.

If he’s a Labrador, she’s more of a clumsy pit bull, thwacking into corners and swinging her head into coffee tables without batting an eye, completely unselfconscious. I like her immediately.

You can’t force a person to show up, but you can learn a lesson when they don’t. Trust people’s actions, not their words. Don’t love anyone who isn’t ready to love you back. Let go of the people who don’t hold on to you. Don’t wait on anyone who’s in no rush to get to you.

“Nah, cool, laid-back girls never face consequences for their spontaneity. It’s how they’re able to keep being cool and laid-back. They’re genetically predisposed to health. They’re not allergic to poison ivy or shellfish, and they never get migraines, even if they only sleep for three hours in a cold tent, and they never burn in the sun.”

“What?” I ask, right as I spot Julia in line at the food truck, waving us over. “I just realized I’m a cool, laid-back girl,” Miles says.

“There’s steadiness and dependability, and those are great. But settling? Just deciding you already know everything you like and dislike on the entire planet, everything you’re good at, every friend you’re going to make, and every food you’re ever going to eat? The guy wouldn’t even let me repaint our bedroom! I wanted to know new parts of him, and I wanted to find new parts of myself.

But how can I teach my kid not to settle if I’m not willing to fight for the life I want?

“You’re not a tagalong,” she says. “You’re a we-girl.” “Like a wee lass?” I ask. “No, like, We love that restaurant. We always vacation there. We don’t really like scary movies. A woman who’s more comfortable being a part of a whole, who never goes anywhere without a partner.”

“But you’re not so delicate, Vincent.” “I’m not.” It feels true, at least right now. I’m not so delicate. Lonely, hurt, angry, a little bit whiny? Sure. But not delicate.

For reasons I don’t completely understand, I feel like I could cry.

from the way Petra is gawking at us, you’d think we’d just performed a handstanding sixty-nine in front of God and everyone.

“I want to kiss you all the time, Daphne,” he says. “Sometimes it’s just easier to find an excuse.”

“I don’t think there’s a right way to feel,” I say. “And you can’t control it, anyway. Feelings are like weather. They just happen, and then they pass.”

“You should talk to your sister about all of this,” I tell him. “Because I know you think you failed her, but from the outside, what I see is, something’s going on with your sister, and she got on a plane straight to you. Didn’t even ask first, because she knew you’d make space. You’re where she ran when she needed to feel safe.”

“Maybe she just didn’t have anywhere else to go,” he murmurs. “Maybe,” I allow. “But neither did I, and you took care of me too. That’s who you are. If I had to be marooned, I’m glad it was with you.”

“Thank you,” he says. “For what?” I ask. “Just, thank you.”

Kissing him is so different now that I know him. Now I understand that the breezy, carefree Miles I first met is only his topmost layer, that his nonchalant way of moving through the world is a product of self-control, but beneath that surface, he wants.

The last bite of cheesecake. The final sip of wine. The bracing cool of the lake. To be kissed. To be held. To be protected. He wants it all, even the things he’d never let himself ask for, or won’t let himself have.

“I’m used to keeping all of this separate. And nothing is, with you. You’re my roommate and my best friend and the woman I just slept with.”

“A part of me is just waiting,” I rasp, “for the moment when you see whatever it is that drives people away. And I don’t want that. I don’t want you to stop wanting me around. I think it might break my heart to be someone you don’t like.”

It’s easy to be loved by the ones who’ve never seen you fuck up. The ones you’ve never had to apologize to, and who still think all your ‘quirks’ are charming.

“You make the people you care about feel like . . .” He pauses. “Like you want all of them. Not just the good parts. And that’s terrifying to someone who’s spent a lifetime avoiding those other pieces of themselves.” “I don’t want to scare people off,” I say, throat aching. He shakes his head. “It’s worth being scared. Trust me. You’re worth it.”

In the night I get up to pee, and when I come back, Miles is splayed out in the middle of the bed, arm outstretched like he’d been reaching for me in his sleep. Seeing him there, lit by the moon, sends a crushing tenderness through me. I tiptoe through the chilly room, climb into bed as gracefully as I can, but he still wakes enough to sleepily drape an arm around my waist and haul me into the warm nook of his body. “You were gone,” he murmurs. “Now I’m back,” I whisper. With a low, drowsy hum, he kisses my shoulder, and drifts back to sleep.