Funny Story

by Emily Henry

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.

“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.”

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.

“Barn?” I say. “As in…a building on a farm?” “As in a bar, in a barn,” Miles says. “On a farm.”

Feelings are like weather. They just happen, and then they pass.”

it’s like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud,

believe in you. I believe you should and will have everything you’ve ever wanted, if you’re not too scared to go after it.”

And it makes being around you feel like—like standing in sunlight.”

When I pass the taffy-green fairy-tale cottage, the morning glories vining around the picket fence are in full bloom, little birds cheeping from the branches like one more good omen.

To picture myself in a place like that. Hosting dinners and watching action movies. Grabbing chai from the café up the street and filling vases with fresh-cut lavender. Drinking wine out back with friends during lightning bug season.

feel a twinge. Of guilt? Like I’m betraying Mom if I let Dad back in? Or maybe just fear. That I’m doing what I swore I never would: making space in my heart for someone whom experience has taught me not to trust. People change, I think. I can. Dad can.

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.

“It’s easy to be around people who don’t know you. But as soon as someone starts to figure you out—as soon as you can’t be perfect—it’s easier to move on. Find someone new to be the cool, fun, laid-back one

hook. I freaked out, Daphne, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

“You’ve always been my mom and my dad. And my best friend. You’ve always been absolutely everything for me.”

“You’re here,” I say. “Whenever it counts, you’re here. When I grow up, I want to be you.”

that I forgot about all the beautiful little pieces of it I’ve been acquiring like sea glass these last few months. Things that no one can take from me.

feel a pang of longing. Nostalgia, I guess, for every library I’ve ever loved, and the little girl who dreamed of this: being the first person in and the last out of a building brimming with books. And feeling like it belonged to me in a way, and I to it.

home, when nowhere else felt right.

To me, libraries have always represented the best of humanity. The way we all share knowledge and space, and…and how we find ways to look after each other. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s powerful. I know there are a lot of other places you could be on a Saturday night.”

This is how time works. The things you wait months for blink past, like the flash of a strobe, huge swaths lost in the dark beats between.

You’re wonderful. You’re the reason for the word wonderful. It really shouldn’t be used for anything else. You make me want to see the best in everyone.

“You’re the most generous person I’ve ever met, even to people who’ve given you no reason to be generous, and you always come through for the people you care about. I honestly can’t totally figure out why someone as good as you would love me, when I can be kind of a pessimistic asshole. But I do feel like the luckiest person in the world, to be who you want. Because I want you too. I love you too. I love you in a way that feels brand-new. You make every single thing that went wrong feel like it was just a step in the right direction, and it—it makes me excited. For life to keep surprising me.