Happy Place

by Emily Henry

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

My best friends taught me a new kind of quiet, the peaceful stillness of knowing one another so well you don’t need to fill the space. And a new kind of loud: noise as a celebration, as the overflow of joy at being alive, here, now.

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.

Sabrina cackles, a sound so at odds with her composed exterior that the whole first week we lived together, I jumped every time I heard it. Now all her rough edges are my favorite parts of her.

I knew the only thing more painful than being without him would be being together knowing I no longer truly had him.

All the quiet made me strain for hints and clues until I became an expert in my parents’ moods.

He’s become my best friend the way the others did: bit by bit, sand passing through an hourglass so slowly, it’s impossible to pin down the moment it happens. When suddenly more of my heart belongs to him than doesn’t, and I know I’ll never get a single grain back. He’s a golden boy. I’m a girl whose life has been drawn in shades of gray. I try not to love him. I really try.

And what can I say? That I’m not happy? That I’ve tried dating someone else and it was the emotional equivalent of bingeing on saltines when all I wanted was a real meal? Or that there are whole parts of the city I avoid because they remind me of those first few months in California, when he still lived with me. That when I wake up too early to my screaming alarm, I still reach toward his side of the bed, like if I can hold on to him for a minute, it won’t be so hard to make it through another grueling day at the hospital, in a never-ending series of grueling days. That I still wake from dreams of his head between my thighs, and reach for my phone whenever something particularly ridiculous happens in the cozy mystery I’m reading, only to remember I can’t tell him. That I spend more time trying not to think about him than actually thinking about anything.

“Some things never change, and the best thing is to stop hoping they will.”

After a pause, he says, “How’d you get into it?” “Ceramics?” He nods. I let out a breath. “It was about a week after we broke up.

All I wanted was to be wrapped up in Wyn’s arms, and I knew if I walked into our apartment, there’d be shadows of him everywhere but no trace of the real thing.

Softly, he says, “And you liked it.” “I really liked it,” I admit. “You’re good at it,” he says. “Not really,” I say. “But that’s the thing. Nothing’s riding on it. If I mess it up, it doesn’t matter. I can start over, and honestly, I don’t even mind. Because when I’m working on it, I feel good. I’m not muscling through to see how it turns out. I like doing it. I don’t have to stay hyperfocused. I don’t have to do anything but stick my hands in some mud and be. I zone out and let my mind wander.”

“Is there one that looks like us?” he asks. They all do, I think. You are in all of my happiest places. You are where my mind goes when it needs to be soothed.

And it doesn’t get boring, just the two of us. Every bit of Wyn he gives me is something to treasure, to examine from every angle.

His love is steady, constant. Easier than breathing, because breathing is something you can overthink, to the point that you forget how your lungs work and get yourself into a panic. I could never forget how to love Wyn.

“No,” he says quietly. “In every universe, it’s you for me. Even if it’s not me for you.”

It doesn’t matter how busy life’s been, how long the five of us have gone without seeing one another: meeting at the cottage is like pulling on a favorite sweatshirt, worn to perfection. Time doesn’t move the same way when we’re there. Things change, but we stretch and grow and make room for one another. Our love is a place we can always come back to, and it will be waiting, the same as it ever was. You belong here.

We’d barely speak, but they were nice memories all the same, having her tip my chin back and forth as she dusted bronzer on my cheeks and taught me how to use shadow to make my small almond eyes pop.

“Sometimes when things go wrong, it’s easy to blame someone else. Because it simplifies things. It takes any responsibility out of your hands. And I don’t know if your parents did that to you and your sister or if somewhere along the way you took that blame on yourself, but it’s not your fault. None of it. Your parents made their decisions, and I’m not saying their situation was easy, or that they didn’t do the best they could. But it wasn’t enough, Harriet. If you could even think that, if you could ever even fucking wonder if they regretted you, then they didn’t do enough.”

My parents aren’t people of words, but they sacrificed so much. That’s love, and I hate that I want more from them. That I can’t just feel grateful for all they’ve given me, because at all times I’m aware of what it cost them.

The only way I can bear loving anyone this much is knowing it will never turn to poison. Knowing we’ll give each other up before we can destroy each other.

“Please, Wyn.” I touch the muscles along his jaw. “I need to know we’re never going to hurt each other like this.” His eyes travel back and forth across my face. “I’m not going to stop fighting for you, Harriet.” My vision blurs behind tears. He pulls me in, holds me tight. “I’m not going to stop loving you.” It’s not the answer I asked for. It’s the one I desperately want. Years later, when it’s late and I can’t sleep for the phantom ache in my chest, I pull this memory out and turn it over. I think, We did the right thing. We let each other go. That too is a kind of comfort.

“Love means constantly saying you’re sorry, and then doing better.”

Everything is changing. It has to. You can’t stop time. All you can do is point yourself in a direction and hope the wind will let you get there.

Throwing makes my mind feel like the sea on a clear day, all my thoughts pleasantly diffused beneath light, rolling along over the back of an ever-moving swell.

At the wheel, I never have to try. I become a body, a sequence of organs and veins and muscles working in concert.

This is my favorite part: when I’ve worked the clay into a stable cylinder, when the slightest touch can shift and shape it. I love the way that everything can so easily fall apart, and the ecstasy of finding a groove in which I know it won’t, without understanding the physics, the why. The clay becomes an extension of me, like it and I are working together.

“I think what’s hard about it,” I say, “is that you need to do less than you realize. And overthinking it and trying too hard to control it messes it up. At least in my experience.” He gives a half-hearted smile. “Life.”

Your job doesn’t have to be your identity. It can just be a place you go, that doesn’t define you or make you miserable.

Like even when something beautiful breaks, the making of it still matters.

My body has always loved him without reservation or caution. It knew so long before my brain did, and it still knows.

Through the gauzy layers of sleep, I hear myself murmur, “You.”

I want my life to be like—like making pottery. I want to enjoy it while it’s happening, not just for where it might get me eventually.

I hope Harriet and Wyn’s story will remind you to ask yourself what your happy place is, and encourage you to find more ways to bring it into your day-to-day life.