Beach Read

by Emily Henry

These days, my reactions always felt outsized, and there was no easy way to explain them when strangers had the bad fortune of witnessing them.

Even silhouetted as he was, I could tell he went rigid. I’d learned it wasn’t uncommon for people to do that when they intuited a woman was on the verge of emotional collapse.

If I’d spent a month solid with nothing but a blood-drenched volleyball, I imagined I too would be crying as the tide swept it out to sea.

I was a wound, half-healed-over and scraped raw again.

My Happily Ever After was a strand of strung-together happy-for-nows, extending back not just to a year ago, but to thirty years before.