Funny Story

by Emily Henry

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.

If a person lets you down, it’s time to reconsider what you’re asking of them.

“He told you to trust him, and that’s what you did,” he insists. “That’s what you’re supposed to be able to do with people you love. They just don’t always live up to it.”

“It’s a library, Daphne. If you can’t be a human here, where can you?”

You can’t force a person to show up, but you can learn a lesson when they don’t.

“So we tried doing date nights, and that helped. Just having dedicated time for the two of us. But something was still off. It felt like . . . like we’d reached our final form. Like, I’d ask him to take a cooking class, and he’d say, We don’t like cooking, or I’d be like, What if we moved to Portugal, and he’d be like, We don’t have jobs in Portugal.”

He was willing to be good to me, but he wasn’t willing to be any better.

“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.”

The last thing I needed was another halfhearted gesture from a man who sort of loved me.

Life isn’t a competition, and neither is love, but I’m still the loser.

I’m doing what I swore I never would: making space in my heart for someone whom experience has taught me not to trust.

In the end, it was relatively easy to let go of Peter, to accept his actions as proof of the truth: that our relationship, our life together, his feelings for me were never quite what I’d thought they were. And I stopped longing for him when I accepted this, because how could I miss someone who didn’t exist?

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 people who don’t hurry for you.

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