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.

“Are you slut-shaming me, Harriet?” “Not at all,” I say. “I love sluts! Some of my best friends are sluts. I’ve dabbled in sluttery myself.”

The point is, some people live the bulk of their lives in their minds (me), and some are highly physical beings (Wyn).

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

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.

From the loneliness, from the fear that I would never escape it. Because feelings were changeable, and people were unpredictable. You couldn’t hold on to them through the force of will.

We’re here, they promised. And the loneliness never found such a foothold again. No matter what, I’d always have the two of them. At least I used to think that.

“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.

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

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.

My parents aren’t people of words, but they sacrificed so much. That’s love, and I hate that I want more from them.

The tracks of our lives split little by little, but the moments we’re together, my love still feels so big and violent it could consume me.

I would never be enough to make him happy, that I couldn’t give him the kind of love his parents had when my only education on the subject had been the one my parents had.

“When I’d have to cancel a visit, you didn’t care. When I missed a phone call, you didn’t care. You were never mad at me. You never fought with me. It felt like you didn’t even miss me.”

You were never mad at me. You never fought with me. It felt like you didn’t even miss me.

I kept so much of what I was feeling from him, thinking the weight of my emotions would only drive him further from me, push him back behind a door I couldn’t open. And even after he told me that tonight, I felt trapped inside myself, unable to get the words out.

“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.

The relationship can change shape a thousand times, but you’re always going to be in my life.

You’re a part of me. You’re so deep in my heart that I couldn’t get you out if I tried, and I don’t want to. I know how lucky I am to have you. To have people who love me enough to hold on even when I’m scared to let them close.”

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

This is how I used to think of love. As something so delicate it couldn’t be caught without being snuffed out. Now I know better. I know the flame may gutter and flare with the wind, but it will always be there.

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