Happiness for Beginners

by Katherine Center

“Maybe you just decided—so long ago that you don’t even remember—that it made more sense to be alone.” “But I hate being alone,” I said. GiGi reached over to smooth my hair. “Exactly.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “the big picture is enough.”

“What is it with boys and duct tape?”

Before, what I saw were all the ways Duncan kept failing. But now, at last, I knew too much about him—and even, in fact, too much about myself—to think of him so obtusely. What I saw now were all the ways he was trying.

“You were a kid,” I said. “Kids are idiots.” “Actually,” Duncan pointed out, “adults are idiots, too.” “Agreed,” I said, pointing at him. “The entire human race is wall-to-wall idiots.”

“I think we’re trapped in this elevator,” I said. “Good,” Jake said. I frowned at him. “Not good.” “Now you’re stuck with me,”

“At first, it was ‘Proud Mary.’ But then you couldn’t really hit those high notes, so you downshifted to like, a whole medley of things. Some Dean Martin. The Beatles. Earth, Wind & Fire. At one point, were you doing Weird Al Yankovic?” I stood up a little straighter for authority. “Okay, ‘Eat It’ is a better song than ‘Beat It.’”

realized I would rather listen to you than do just about anything else in the world. I realized that even if you can’t stand me, and even if you deserve someone a thousand times better—and healthier—and even if the only decent thing to do was leave you alone, I had no choice but to come after you.

“I don’t have a problem with wanting things I can’t have. I have a problem with wanting you. In particular. You are my problem. It’s not a dopamine addiction, it’s a Helen addiction. And I cannot seem to kick it.” He paused. “I’ve had a thing for you for six years. You literally did not even know I was in the room, and you were married on top of that. There was no way I could even, like, ask you to coffee. But I made the best of it. I was fine.”

“Longing for you gave me something to hope for. Even when it was hopeless.”

“So,” Jake said, watching me. “I’ve just confessed how horribly I love you.” I nodded. “What do you think of all that?” Here, dangling above our deaths, it didn’t seem like a good idea to be coy. So I just looked into Jake’s eyes and said, in what felt like slow motion, “I love you horribly, too.”

“I thought you hated me.” “I did hate you. In that way you hate people you’re in love with.”

But the things we remember are what we hold on to, and what we hold on to becomes the story of our lives. We only get one story. And I am determined to make mine a good one.

life will hand each one of us our fair share of despair and loss and suffering—and then some. That’s certain. But just as certain: It will also give us slices of chocolate cake, and sunny, seventy-two-degree days, and breezes that rustle the trees.

Good things are so easy to overlook, but that doesn’t make t...

Maybe wanting something can’t be the same as having it. And maybe getting what you want doesn’t make you happy. But I’ll tell you something: If the emotion flooding my body in this exquisite moment isn’t happiness, I couldn’t possibly tell you what is.