Beach Read

by Emily Henry

when the world felt dark and scary, love could whisk you off to go dancing; laughter could take some of the pain away; beauty could punch holes in your fear.

There would be purpose. There would be beauty. There would be candlelight and Fleetwood Mac playing softly in the background.

And I hid the complicated feelings that came with trying to memorize someone you loved, just in case.

I know feeling small gets to some people, he had once told me, but I kind of like it. Takes the pressure off when you’re just one life of six billion at any given moment. And when you’re going through something hard—at the time, Mom was doing chemo—it’s nice to know you’re not even close to the only one.

Again and again he told me I wasn’t myself. But he was wrong. I was the same me I’d always been. I’d just stopped trying to glow in the dark for him, or anyone else.

He fit so perfectly into the love story I’d imagined for myself that I mistook him for the love of my life.

I’d needed to say them all year—or maybe they were just

Precocious. Room full of books, organized in a way that only you understood.

A secret overachiever, who had to be the best at something even if no one else knew.

Happy. Not giddy or overjoyed, but that low, steady level of happiness that, in the best periods of life, rides underneath everything else, a buffer between you and the world you are walking over.

I always liked that thought, the way two people really did seem to grow into one. Or at least two overlapping parts, trees with tangled roots.

I had set myself up for heartbreak and now I suspected there was nothing I could do but brace myself and wait for it to hit.