Happy Place

by Emily Henry

“There doesn’t need to be a winner and a loser. You just have to care how the other person feels. You have to care more about them than you do about being right.”

“Good. You should be at least a fraction as proud of yourself as I am of you.” “Those,” he says quietly, smiling, “are not fighting words.” “That’s because it’s your turn,” I say. “You’re mad at me too.” “I am?” he says. “Furious,”

It wasn’t one moment when everything went wrong, when I failed him, when we lost each other. There were dozens, on either side. Missed signs. Dropped lines.

It fucking hurts to realize it. To understand that I made him think I didn’t want him.

“I was trying to be easy, Wyn,” I choke out. “You were so unhappy. And I didn’t want to rush you while you were mourning. I didn’t want to need you when you were...

“Harriet,” he says, all rough tenderness, the exact contradiction of Wyn Connor, funneled into one spoken word. “I always want you.”

You shouldn’t spend every moment second-guessing how I feel when I’ve spent eight years telling you outright.”

“You should have known that you were it for me, from the night we met. I would have done anything to fix it, but you wouldn’t fight for me. You said you would, and I believed you, Wyn. And I understand why you couldn’t. But I haven’t forgiven you for breaking my heart.”

“Good,” he says. “Don’t forgive me. Stay mad at me. Don’t get over me.”

“I couldn’t leave you alone. I’ve never been able to.”

“I miss hearing you,” he whispers against my ear. “All the little sounds you make.”

“Please don’t leave,” he says in a low grate. “When this is over, don’t go sleep in another room. Stay with me all night.”

I bow up under him, meeting his rhythm, trying not to come apart, not yet. I say his name like it’s a spell. Or a goodbye and I love you, a promise. I just know my heart agrees: You, you, you.

“Love means constantly saying you’re sorry, and then doing better.”

My body feels like melted ice cream, in the best way.

I wonder if that’s some evolutionary trait: What animal could stand attacking someone who looks so peaceful and innocent? Okay, I could, but the nice thing would be to let him sleep.

I’ve often thought that the world saves its very best weather for days when you feel like everything’s gone wrong, and today is no different.

“I never learned how to fight.” She glances sidelong at me. “Especially not with people I care about,” I say. “I mean, not with anyone. But especially not with the people I love. In fact, I specifically only know how to avoid fights. Or, usually I do.”

“I don’t know how fights are supposed to end when you love the person you’re fighting with,”

“And I guess I thought . . . if I kept us from ever fighting, then everyone would stay. I was never trying to cut anyone out. It was the exact opposite. I haven’t been fun to be around in a long time, Cleo.”

“You were in denial,” she says. “And telling us would’ve made it all feel real. And even if it is real, even if it’s what you chose, you still know it’s going to change everything, and that’s scary. Because you need us. We’re your family.”

Afraid people will take me too seriously, then be disappointed when they find out how mediocre I am at it. And somehow, nearly as afraid that they wouldn’t take it seriously, that they’d brush it off with a mild Well, everyone needs a hobby when it feels like so much more.

“I’m not going to make you do this, Wyn. I thought you wanted to.” “I do,” he says. “I’m stalling because I’m afraid I’m going to ruin it.”

I try to steel myself. I feel like Jell-O. I wish we were in the dark, on opposite sides of the kids’ room. It’s so much harder to say things in the light of day.

“Harriet,” he says softly. “Will you look at me?”

“Then what?” “It’s hard to explain.” “Will you try?” he asks. I swallow. “It’s not supposed to be about me. I’m supposed to be helping people.” “It is about you,”

There isn’t any one thing I would change. It’s that for some reason, I spend ninety percent of my time excruciatingly unhappy, and the more I try to tamp it down, the more the unhappiness grows, swells, pushes up against my edges.

The right branch of the multiverse, I think. Where you’re still so close I can touch you, taste you, smell you.

“Because I was ashamed,” I say. “You’d followed me across the country, and things were so hard, for you and for us. I was terrified of making them worse. I wanted to be who you—who everyone—thinks I am, but I can’t. I’m not. I never wanted to let you down.”

“You had bigger things going on.” “There was nothing bigger than you,” he says raggedly. “Not to me. Not ever.”

know exactly who you are.” I look up, voice shrinking. “Really? Because I don’t.” “I knew who you were before we even met,” he says. “Because everything our friends told me was true.”

“I mean that you have the weirdest laugh of anyone I’ve ever met, Harriet,” he says softly. “And it feels like taking a shot of tequila every time I hear it. Like I could get drunk on the sound of you. Or hungover when I go too long without you.

“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. You try to be fair, to see things from other people’s points of view, and sometimes that makes it hard for you to see them from your own, but you have one. And even when you’re mad at me, I want to be close to you. None of it—none of my favorite things about you, none of what makes you you—has anything to do with a job. That’s not why I love you. It’s not why anyone loves you.”

“Come here,” Wyn says. “Why?” I ask. “Because I want you to,” he says. “What happened to your Montana manners?” “Come here, please,”

Your job doesn’t have to be your identity. It can just be a place you go, that doesn’t define you or make you miserable. You deserve to be happy, Harriet.” He brushes a strand of hair away from the curve of my jaw. “Everything’s better when you’re happy.”

Forget what you think anyone else wants. What do you want?” I try to laugh. The back of my nose stings too badly to let out a full-blown snort. “Can’t you just tell me what to do?”

“Why not?” “Because you can’t keep doing what other people want,” he says, voice gravelly. “You can’t follow me, like I followed you. I won’t be enough.” “But I love you,”

“What if all I really want is you?” “Right now,” he murmurs. “What about later? When you wake up and realize I’ve let you give everything up for me. I can’t do that.”

“Sabrina didn’t run because she doesn’t want you,” I say. “She ran because she’s scared that, in the end, she won’t be worth chasing.”

“Wyn and I didn’t grow apart.” I can’t get it out any louder than a whisper. “I pushed him away the same way I did to the rest of you. And it was always about me, not you or anyone else.”

I’d never had friends like that, the kind you do everything with and talk to about everything. Honestly, I kept waiting for you both to find new people and move on.

“And then one day—it was right before fall break, and we were hugging goodbye, and I realized I’d stopped waiting. Without even realizing it.

The relationship can change shape a thousand times, but you’re always going to be in my life. Or at least, that’s what I want.”

I love you, Sabrina, and I’m so sorry I made you feel like you were just a part of my relationship with Wyn. 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.”

“You’re not us,” I say. “You are so, so, so much braver than me, Sabrina.”

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

then looked at me, his eyes sparkling and clear, no fog. Like his first instinct when he felt joy was to check whether it had hit me too, to share it.

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.

My body has always loved him without reservation or caution. It knew so long before my brain did, and it still knows.

“I love you,” he says into my mouth, and I wish I could swallow it, like that would let me keep that sound forever, this moment forever. My nose burns. My voice crackles. “Don’t say that.” “Why not?” he whispers. “Because,” I say, “those words don’t belong to me anymore.” “Of course they do,” he says. “They belonged to you before I ever saw you. They belong to you in every universe we’re in, Harriet.”