Great Big Beautiful Life

by Emily Henry

She flashes a smile. It’s both dazzling and sad. Sazzling.

Does he look like Pedro Pascal?? (I’ve had five beers.)

That’s the deal with people. They’re always more than one thing, and a lot of times they’re even a collection of contradictory traits.

“You might be the least cynical person I’ve ever met. I’m not sure I’ve ever known anyone like you.” I narrow my eyes. “You mean I’m naive.” “No, Alice,” he replies. “If that’s what I meant, then that’s what I would’ve said.”

“One,” he says. I shake my head. “One what?” The corner of his mouth tips up for just a second. “One girlfriend under five three,” he says seriously. “Oh.” I’m not sure why my ears suddenly feel so hot, but they do. “And it was like you said,” he goes on. “More room in the cave?” I say quietly. Another slight twitch of his lips. “Physically inconvenient.”

The heat spreads down my neck. It routes around my rib cage, like it’s reaching toward him, like it’s knitting us together.

“So I’m competition again?” I tease. His hand flexes at my waist, and I’m pulled snug against him, where I can feel every hard line of him. “You were always competition.” “I’m going to kiss you, Hayden,” I say, almost a warning.

His smile—wide enough to reveal teeth—dazzles me for a moment. I want to climb inside of it.

May the best writer win, and may it be enough to make up for the orgasms we forsake.

The most beautiful things never hold up on a screen.

“You’d feel it? What does pink feel like?” I think for a moment. “I think it’s, like, the giddy part of a sunrise.”

there’s a moment when everything’s just all pink. Pink-lemonade pink. And it feels almost silly. Like the sky is playing. It’s a color that I’m shocked can be in nature.

“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.

“It won’t work. I’m not afraid of humiliating myself in front of you.”

“I won’t get bitten,” I promise, and start forward again. “No, no, no.” He hurries after me, bending and sweeping me off my feet and into his arms.

“You forget,” he says, “I never do anything to be polite.”

The air feels stiff and damp. Even for me, it’s a bit much. Just not enough to keep me from drinking hot coffee.

“He had this joy in him, this softness, and it took me a long time to realize that didn’t make him dumb. In fact, he was a hell of a lot smarter than me.”

“I’ve always felt most myself when I’m alone.”

“What do you think is going to happen?” I ask. Under his breath, nearly a whisper, he says, “I think if I get this job, you’re going to break my fucking heart.”

“I can really talk,” I remind him. “If I try to recap everything, you’ll get sick of me before I’m halfway through.” He grabs my hand, yanks me into him, and kisses me there in the middle of the dark path. “That’s a pretty good strategy,” I whisper happily. At the ridge that forms in his forehead, I specify, “For when I’m talking too much.” “I’m not trying to shut you up, Alice,” he says. “It’s just that somehow, almost everything you say makes me want to kiss you.”

“Honey, there’s never been a me or a you before,” he replied. “This works however we say it works.”

“It’s yours,” he offers. I laugh. “Oh? I can have the world?” “Mine,” he says, “yeah. You can have mine.”

“You taste like coffee,” I whisper. “So do you,” he says. “Yes, but I always taste like coffee,” I point out.

“I feel like you’re mine. Like you’re mine in a way no one else ever has been.”

“When I let myself dream,” he murmurs against my ear, “or it all comes crashing down—it’s Alice, Alice on my mind. Alice all the time.”

Like I swallowed the sun. Like it’s breaking up every bit of darkness inside me.

I crack my knuckles, and then I start to write. Everything I want to tell her someday. Not just the headlines, but the whole truth. The good and bad, the magic and curses, all the blues and grays right alongside the reds and golds. I tell her the story about a love so powerful it remade the world for her. I welcome her to this great big beautiful life.