Happy Place

by Emily Henry

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.

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.

So many of his details are slightly different, but my heart still sees him and whispers into my veins, You.

Hearts can be so stupid.

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

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.