Happy Place

by Emily Henry

The most important friendships in my life all came down to a decision made by strangers, chance.

Think of your happy place, the cool voice in my ear instructs. Picture it. Glimmering blue washes across the backs of my eyes. How does it smell? Wet rock, brine, butter sizzling in a deep fryer, and a spritz of lemon on the tip of my tongue. What do you hear? Laughter, the slap of water against the bluffs, the hiss of the tide drawing back over sand and stone. What can you feel? Sunlight, everywhere. Not just on my bare shoulders or the crown of my head but inside me too, the irresistible warmth that comes only from being in the exact right place with the exact right people.

Kimmy doesn’t cackle; she guffaws. Like every one of her laughs is Heimliched out of her. Like she’s constantly being caught off guard by her own joy.

“You’re not slow-release hot.”

“Actually…” Parth walks up with a paper bag already in hand. “I picked this because the Wall Street Journal gave it such a cranky review I needed to read it myself. It’s by this married couple who usually publish separately. One of them writes literary doorstop novels and the other writes romance.” “What!” Kimmy snatches the book. “I know them!” “Seriously?” Parth asks. “I went to college with them in Michigan,” she says. “They weren’t together yet, though. Her books are really horny. Is this one horny?”

“I thought I made you.” He tips his head so that my hand slides back toward his ear. “Just by wishing.” “Wishing for things doesn’t make them happen, Wyn,” I say.

“In every universe, it’s you for me. Even if it’s not me for you.”

I don’t know how it happens: I’m confident I don’t trip into his mouth, but that’s how it feels, because I’m positive he didn’t initiate it—Wyn would never—and it makes no sense that I would do this, but I have. I am. My hands are twisted into his shirt, and his are flat against my back, and we’re kissing, hard, hurried, like this is a timed activity and we’re in our final seconds.

Sometimes when he comes back, and he thinks I’m asleep, he’ll finally let himself cry, and I think, though I don’t know to whom or what, Please, please help. Please help him stop hurting this much. I’ll make bargains with the universe: If I make the apartment cozier. If I don’t complain about work. If I make the most of the constant rain. If I need nothing from him, he’ll be okay.

“I have this gaping wound, and no idea how it got there. It’s killing me hearing how happy you are, without even understanding how I—how I—” My voice quavers, my breath coming in spurts. “I don’t know what I did to make you so miserable.”

I wasn’t afraid they’d be mad at me, exactly, for how things ended with Wyn. I was afraid of their sadness. I was afraid of ruining this trip that meant so much to them. I was afraid of ruining this place where they’ve always been happy. I was afraid they would resent me and never say it, afraid they wouldn’t like me as much without Wyn, because I didn’t like me as much without him.

“There was nothing bigger than you,” he says raggedly. “Not to me. Not ever.”

The world’s always going to need surgeons, but it’s going to need bowls too.

She smiles. Like when she looks back at it, all she sees is the happiness of that day she spent here with her parents, rather than the pain of what came after. Like even when something beautiful breaks, the making of it still matters.

“it’s not home unless you’re there.”

“I love you,” I tell him. “In every universe.”

“Because it makes me happy,” I say. “And I don’t consider anything that does that a waste of time.”

No one else’s happiness is yours to grant, Mom, I tell her. You need to find yours.