Happy After All

by Maisey Yates

My dad loves me, I think. He also doesn’t know where I fit.

People are too complicated to be sympathetic, generally speaking.

“I think it’s a thing that takes time, gray hair, wrinkles, heartbreaks, and all kinds of moments when you cared too much. Then one day you realize . . . it never got you anywhere you wanted to go. The people who only want you when you bend and twist to suit them don’t stay anyway, and the ones who want you as you are settle in, and so do you.”

This is the most he’s ever spoken to me, and he’s irritating me.

The idea that you think you could break me with, what . . . your penis? That’s hilarious. If you don’t want to sleep with me, that’s fine. Don’t pretend it’s an act of chivalry.”

“Yes,” he says. “I am a naturally insufferable asshole. It is like breathing for me.”

I don’t feel like he’s mad at me, but he’s definitely mad. Maybe at the rock. I can handle that.

“Wilma,” says Lydia. “We want to hear Amelia’s story, not about your days as the town bike of Charleston.”

It is so hard when you love somebody in good faith and they twist it because they’ll never hurt the same way you do.”

The sad truth is, you protect the wound, and it begins to protect you. So you guard it at all costs.

I’m afraid of myself. Or at least parts of me. And I would never have said that before this moment, but it’s how I feel.