Great Big Beautiful Life

by Emily Henry

“I’m Alice. Scott.”

Margaret Grace Ives.

Then again, I know better than most that you can rarely tell who a person really is, or what they’re going through, just from looking at the surface of things.

What if I’m too late this time?

Love isn’t something you can cup in your hands, and I have to believe that means it’s something that can’t ever be lost.

“I think you live in a world that’s more interesting than the one most people live in,” he says, and just as my heart starts to sink with disappointment, with a kind of loneliness, he adds, “and I wish I could live in it too.” I feel myself beaming. “I’ll take you sometime.” “I’d like that,” he says.

because while everyone around you takes care of you, you aren’t really sure that any of them care about you?

Years later, she told me she wanted to leave while she still loved him. For us. I think it broke her heart to do it though. I’m not sure she ever got over it.

“For the one you love? Anything. You unmake the world and build a new one. You do anything to give them what they need.”

“I think she loves me because I’m her daughter. But I’ve never felt sure she loves me because I’m me.