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.

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.

I lived for those rare nights when everything clicked and we were all happy together, when they weren’t worried about anything and could just have fun.

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.

Because feelings were changeable, and people were unpredictable. You couldn’t hold on to them through the force of will.

“Is the point that all parents invariably fuck up their children for life, and there’s no avoiding it, so we should really stop procreating rather than continuing to make one another miserable?”

“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.

“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.

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