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.

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.

“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.”

“I will always love you,” he says fiercely. “That’s the point, Harriet. It’s the only thing that’s ever come naturally to me. The thing I don’t have to work at. I loved you all the way across the fucking country, and at my darkest, on my worst days, I still love you more than I’ve ever loved anything else.

“Everything’s different and nothing’s changed, Harriet,” he says. “I tried so fucking hard to let you go, to let you be happy, and when I see you, I still feel like—like you’re mine. Like I’m yours. I got rid of every single piece of you, like that would make a difference, like I could cut you out of me, and instead, I just see everywhere you’re supposed to be.”

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.

Want is a kind of thief. It’s a door in your heart, and once you know it’s there, you’ll spend your life longing for whatever’s behind it.