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.

Meanwhile, I’m basically a walking, breathing bottle of soda into which a Mentos has been plopped, panic fizzing up, threatening to spew out between my cells.

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.

“Actually . . .” Parth walks up with a paper bag already in hand. “I picked this because the Wall Street Journal gave it such a cranky review I needed to read it myself. It’s by this married couple who usually publish separately. One of them writes literary doorstop novels and the other writes romance.”

Omg january and gus!!!

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.

“You said it felt like a Ferris wheel,” I say. “Like all your thoughts were constantly circling, and you’d reach out for one, but it was hard to stay on it for too long because they kept spinning.”

“Except with you. You’re like gravity.”

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

I sit on the edge of the bed, feeling the loneliness swell, not knowing whether it’s pressing against me from the outside or growing from within. Either way, it’s inescapable, my oldest companion.

One more deal I struck with a disinterested universe: If I’m good enough, I’ll be happy. I’ll be loved. I’ll be safe. Instead, I’ve pushed away everyone I love.

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 place I go when I feel trapped inside myself. When I’m terrified that all my happiest moments belong to the past. When my body is humming with too much of something, or aching from too little, and life stretches out ahead of me like a threat.

It’s that when I’m not here, I feel like a ghost. Like my skin isn’t solid enough to hold the sunlight, and my hair isn’t there to dance on the breeze.

“You? I’m the one who devoted the last ten years of her life, and a lot of imaginary money, to something she hates.”

“You see the best in everyone, and you make the people you love feel like even their flaws are worth appreciating. You love learning. You love sharing what you learn.

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

All my life, I’ve let other voices creep in, and they’ve drowned out my own.

I don’t want to feel like I don’t have time or energy to try anything new because everything I have is getting poured into a job I don’t even like. I don’t want to live my life like it’s a triathlon and all that matters is getting to some imaginary ribbon. 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 want a life,” I say. “I don’t love surgery enough for that to be mine. I want to sleep in sometimes. I want to stay up too late and take vacations with my friends, and I want to have energy to decorate my apartment and to try new things. I can’t do any of that when I’m this worn-out. I know that’s disappointing, but it’s my choice.”