Book Lovers

by Emily Henry

That’s the thing about women. There’s no good way to be one. Wear your emotions on your sleeve and you’re hysterical. Keep them tucked away where your boyfriend doesn’t have to tend to them and you’re a heartless bitch.

“Birth is a kind of death,” she says, rubbing her tummy. “Death of the self. Death of sleep. Death of your ability not to pee yourself a little when you laugh.

“And what, just because I don’t want kids, I would supposedly punish a pregnant woman for making a different decision than me? My favorite person’s a pregnant woman! And I’m obsessed with my nieces. Not every decision a woman makes is some grand indictment on other women’s lives.”

<3. Felt this one. Can't say "I don't want children" without people hearing "I hate children."

I snort into my glass, which makes him crack a real, human smile. It lives, I think. “Stephens,” he says, tone dry once more, “if you’re the villain in someone else’s love story, then I’m the devil.”

I never dreamed of having my own kids, but the way I felt during Libby’s first pregnancy really sealed the deal. There are just too many things that can go wrong, too many ways to fail.

I don’t trail off so much as just outright cut myself off. I’m not ashamed of my upbringing, but the more you tell a person about yourself, the more power you hand over. And I particularly avoid sharing Mom with strangers, like the memory of her is a newspaper clipping and every time I take it out, she fades and creases a little more. Charlie’s thumb slides over my wrist absently. “Stephens?”

There is a spot in my foot I can’t feel. I stepped on a piece of glass and the nerves there are dead now. The doctor said they’d grow back, but it’s been years and that place is still numb. That was how my heart had felt for years. Like all the cracks callused over.

I watched my friends in relationships make compromise after compromise, shrinking into themselves until they were nothing but a piece of a whole, until all their stories came from the past, and their career aspirations, their friends, and their apartments were replaced by our aspirations, our friends, our apartment. Half lives that could be taken from them without any warning.

I knew which red flags to watch for, the questions to ask. I’d seen my friends, coworkers, colleagues get ghosted, cheated on, bored in their relationships, and rudely awakened when partners turned out to be married or have gambling problems or be chronically unemployed. I saw casual hookups turn into miserably complicated half relationships. I had standards and a life, and I wasn’t about to let some man destroy it like it was merely the paper banner he was meant to crash through as he entered the field.

Honestly, all newborns look more or less the same to me, but knowing he came from someone I like is enough to make my heart swell.

“A good bookstore,” Charlie says, “is like an airport where you don’t have to take your shoes off.”

“I thought I did,” Charlie says. “In college, I realized I liked workshopping other people’s stories more. I like the puzzle of it. Looking at all the pieces and figuring out what something’s trying to be, and how to get it there.”

“Is it possible you don’t have any pain receptors?” he hisses. “Not only possible but probable,” I reply. “I’ve been told I feel nothing.” Charlie frowns. “Whoever said that clearly only met Professional Nora.” “Most people do.” “Poor

“Sorry, it’s been awhile since I’ve been . . .” I stop short of saying on a date—which this is definitely not—and finish with the far more tragic “anywhere.” He grins, like it hasn’t even occurred to him that I might have recently escaped a doomsday hatch in the ground after years of little to no socialization. “Well then, Nora from New York, I know exactly where I’m taking you.”

I open Dusty’s pages and picture myself in a submarine, sinking into them, urging the world around me to dull. It’s never taken effort—that’s what made me fall in love with reading: the instant floating sensation, the dissolution of real-world problems, every worry suddenly safely on the other side of some metaphysical surface.

That’s why I put my career first. Not because I have no life, but because I can’t bear to let the one Mom wanted for us slip away. Because I need to know Libby and Brendan and the girls and I will all be okay no matter what, because I want to carve out a piece of the city and its magic, just for us. But carving turns you into a knife. Cold, hard, sharp, at least on the outside.

“You’re in books. Of course you don’t have a life. None of us do. There’s always something too good to read.”

“I think you work that hard because you care ten times more than the average person.” “About work,” I say. “About everything.” His arms tighten around me. “Your sister. Your clients. Their books. You don’t do anything you’re not going to do one hundred percent. You don’t start anything you can’t finish. “You’re not the person who buys the stationary bike as part of a New Year’s resolution, then uses it as a coatrack for three years. You’re not the kind of woman who only works hard when it feels good, or only shows up when it’s convenient.

craves complete honesty, the realist who doesn’t always understand when he’s not seeing realism. Charlie, who wants to understand the world but has learned not to trust

“My point is, being that ‘magic free spirit’ you think is this mythical perfect woman? It comes with its own problems. Just because not everyone gets you doesn’t mean you’re wrong. You’re someone people can count on. Really count on. And that doesn’t make you cold or boring. It makes you the most . . .” He

You are the person who pulls things apart and figures out how they work instead of simply accepting them. You’re someone who would rather have the truth than a convenient lie.

Libby was wrong when she told Sally I am just like Mom. Mom worked nonstop to chase something she wanted. For me, it’s running endlessly trying to escape the past.

“I hated being a kid.” He folds his arm beneath his head and looks almost furtively in my direction. “I’d have no idea how to get someone else through it, and I definitely wouldn’t enjoy it. I like them, but I don’t want to be responsible for any.”

“I love my nieces more than anything on the planet, but every time Tala falls asleep in my lap, her dad gets all teary-eyed and is like, Doesn’t it just make you want to have some of your own, Nora? But when you have kids, they count on you. Forever. Any mistake you make, any failure—and if something happens to you . . .” My throat twists.

childhood as all magic and no responsibilities, but that’s not really how it is. You have absolutely no control over your environment. It all comes down to the adults in your life, and . . . I don’t know. Every time Libby has a new kid, it’s like there’s this ma...

Sometimes. After a moment, he sends another message. There are full series I love whose last chapter I’ve never read. I hate the feeling of something ending. Instantly,

I read once that not everyone thinks in words. I was shocked, imagining these other people who don’t use language to make sense of everyone and everything, who don’t automatically organize the world into chapters, pages, sentences.

Who doesn't think in words??

to have more than one home. Maybe it’s possible to belong in a hundred different ways to a hundred different people and places.

Busy doesn’t scare me, Charlie says. This, I think, is what it is to dream, and I finally understand why Mom could never give it up, why my authors can’t give it up, and I’m happy for them, because this wanting, it feels good, like a bruise you need to press on, a reminder that there are things in life so valuable that you must risk the pain of losing them for the joy of briefly having them.

That’s life. You’re always making decisions, taking paths that lead you away from the rest before you can see where they end. Maybe that’s why we as a species love stories so much. All those chances for do-overs, opportunities to live the lives we’ll never have.

you and I—we go out to dinner. “Wherever you want, whenever you want. We have a lot of fun being city people, and we’re happy. You let me love you as much as I know I can, for as long as I know I can, and you have it fucking all.

“For anyone who wants it all,” she begins, “may you find something that is more than enough.” She wonders whether what comes next could ever live up to the expectations. She doesn’t know. You never can. She turns the page anyway.