Funny Story

by Emily Henry

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

There was no point clinging to something that wasn’t really yours.

Until that moment, I’d carried my life like a handkerchief knapsack at the end of a broom handle, something small and containable I could pick up and move at the drop of a hat. And I never knew what it was I was running from, or to, until he said it.

and now you’re thirty-three and trying to remember how to even make friends. But who would ever find herself in that situation?”

“Does it smell like gingersnaps?”

“I’ve got stuff to do, but if you hear from your ex, tell him I said…” He holds up his middle finger. “If you hear from yours, tell her thanks for the new boyfriend.” “Gladly,” he says, and turns to go.

LOL

I’d thought we were building something permanent together. Now I realize I’d just been slotting myself into his life, leaving me without my own.

I’m nauseated by the thought that maybe she belongs there, in that home I’d thought was mine, while I belong nowhere.

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.

Like every time I dole out a kernel of my history to someone who’s not going to become a fixture in my life, a piece of me gets carried away, somewhere I can never get it back.

You can’t untell someone your secrets. You can’t unsay those delicate truths once you learn you can’t trust...

“Oooh, she needs to hydrate,” she says. “Must be juicy.”

“Getting mad never fixes anything,” he says.

“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.”