Beach Read

by Emily Henry

Maybe, for example, you didn’t have much control over your life as a kid. So, to avoid disappointment,

And that was the moment I realized: 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.

Here’s the thing about writing Happily Ever Afters: it helps if you believe in them.

“I know how to tell a story, Gus, and I know how to string a sentence together. If you swapped out all my Jessicas for Johns, do you know what you’d get? Fiction. Just fiction. Ready and willing to be read by anyone, but somehow by being a woman who writes about women, I’ve eliminated half the Earth’s population from my potential readers, and you know what? I don’t feel ashamed of that. I feel pissed. That people like you will assume my books couldn’t possibly be worth your time, while meanwhile you could shart on live TV and the New York Times would praise your bold display of humanity.”

And then, without any true plans, I started writing one, and that feeling, that feeling of falling head over heels in love with a story and its characters as they sprang out of me, was unlike anything else.

The more I worked on my love story, the less powerless I felt in the world.

I’d probably spent more than 10,000 hours typing novels (those published as well as those cast aside), and I still wasn’t an expert at typing, let alone an expert on writing books. Because even when you’d spent 10,000 hours writing feel-good fiction and another 10,000 reading it, it didn’t make you an expert at writing any other kind of book.

But whether or not I was actually succeeding at this book, I was writing it.

I could plot all day, but it didn’t matter if I didn’t fall into the story headfirst, if the story itself didn’t spin like a cyclone, pulling me wholly into itself. That was what I’d always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you and you couldn’t move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.

I was particularly fond of writing a mechanic named Nick. I loved knowing that no one except me would ever recognize the skeleton of Augustus Everett I’d built the character around.

“See,” Gus said. “It’s shit like this that makes it impossible for me to believe in happy endings. You never get the paper umbrellas you were promised in this world.” “Gus,” I said. “You must be the paper umbrellas you wish to see in this world.” “Gandhi was a wise man.”

He was always leaning on something, like he couldn’t bear to hold all his own weight upright for more than a second or two. He lounged, he sprawled, he hunched and reclined. He never simply stood or sat. In college, I’d thought

he was lazy about everything except writing. Now I wondered if he was simply tired, if life had beaten him into a permanent slouch, folded him over himself so no one could get at that soft center, the kid who dreamed of running away on trains and living in the branches of a redwood.

My stomach bottomed out. My throat clenched. Pain stabbed through my chest. It all made sense at once: the hesitancy and deflection, the mistrust of people, the fear of commitment. No one had chosen Gus. From the time he was a kid, no one had chosen him, and he was embarrassed by that, like it meant something about him. I wanted to tell him it didn’t. That it wasn’t because he was broken, but because everyone else was. But I couldn’t get any words out.

“I thought—think it’s brave to believe in love. I mean, the lasting kind. To try for that, even knowing it can hurt you.”

The nights spent writing until the sun came up and my back hurt from needing to pee but not wanting to stop working because nothing felt more important than the book, than giving these fictional lovers the ending they deserved, giving my readers the ending they deserved. People clinging to whatever steadfast thing they could find? Yes. Yes, that made sense. It made perfect sense.

He coughed out a laugh. “Because you’re the bright light! Don’t you get it?” He shook his head. “It’s not about what’s happened. It’s about how you cope with things, who you are. You’ve always been this fierce fucking light, and even when you’re at your worst, when you feel angry and broken, you still know how to be a person. How to tell people you—you love them.” “Stop it,” I said. He started to walk away, but I grabbed him by the elbows and held him in front of me. “You’re not going to break me, Gus.”

That was how it always was. He never looked away from any of it. Maybe he thought someone had to bear witness to the dark, or maybe he hoped that if he stared into the pitch-black long enough, his eyes would adjust and he’d see answers hiding in it. This is why bad things happen, the dark would say. This is how it all makes sense.

Why do bad things happen? I thought. How will it all make sense? But no great truth appeared to me. There was no good reason this horrible thing had happened, and no reason Gus’s life had been what it was either. Dammit, R.E.M. was right: Every single person on the planet had to take turns hurting. Sometimes all you could do was hold on to each other tight until the dark spat you back out.

“When you love someone,” he said haltingly, “. . . you want to make this world look different for them. To give all the ugly stuff meaning, and amplify the good. That’s what you do. For your readers. For me. You make beautiful things, because you love the world, and maybe the world doesn’t always look how it does in your books, but . . . I think putting them out there, that changes the world a little bit. And the world can’t afford to lose that.”

“I’ve always admired that. The way your writing always makes the world seem brighter, and the people in it a little braver.”

I spent all last summer thinking I’d never be happy again, and now, a year later, I still feel sick and worried and angry, but at moments, I’m also happy. Bad things don’t dig down through your life until the pit’s so deep that nothing good will ever be big enough to make you happy again. No matter how much shit, there will always be wildflowers. There will always be Petes and Maggies and rainstorms in forests and sun on waves.”

We felt so bad. Sometimes, January, being a parent feels like being a kid who someone has mistakenly handed another kid. “Good luck!” this unwise stranger cries before turning his back on you forever. We will always make mistakes, I’m afraid. I hope they will get smaller and smaller as we get bigger and bigger. Older, really; we’re rather done growing.

“Hey,” she said finally. “I think it was time.” “What was?” I asked. “I think it was time for you to fall in love,” she said. “All this time I’ve known you and I’ve never gotten to see it. I think it was time.”

“Falling’s the part that takes your breath away. It’s the part when you can’t believe the person standing in front of you both exists and happened to wander into your path. It’s supposed to make you feel lucky to be alive, exactly when and where you are.”

The world looks different than I ever thought it could be, and I don’t want to look for what’s broken or what could go wrong. I don’t want to brace myself for the worst and miss out on being with you.

“I want to be the one who gives you what you deserve, and I want to sleep next to you every night and to be the one you complain about book stuff to, and I don’t think I ever could deserve any of that, and I know this thing between us isn’t a sure thing, but that’s what I want to aim for with you. Because I know no matter how long I get to love you, it will be worth whatever comes after.”

“When I watch you sleep,” he said shakily, “I feel overwhelmed that you exist.”

The tears rushed full force into my eyes again. “What if we don’t get a happy ending, Gus?” I whispered. He thought it over, his hands still sliding and tightening and pushing against me like they couldn’t sit still. His dark eyes homed in on mine. As I looked up at him, his gaze was doing the Sexy, Evil thing, but now it seemed less Sexy, Evil and more . . . just Gus. “Then maybe we should enjoy our Happy for Now,” Gus said. “Happy for Now.”

Angry that these characters had deserved better than they’d gotten and somehow comforted by their experience. Yes, I thought. That is how life feels too often. Like you’re doing everything you can to survive only to be sabotaged by something beyond your control, maybe even some darker part of yourself. Sometimes, it was your body. Your cells turning into poison and fighting against you. Or chronic pain sprouting up your neck and wrapping around the outsides of your scalp until it felt like fingernails sinking into your brain.