Happy Place

by Emily Henry

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.

“It’s dating, Wyn, not an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet,” I say. “Although, from what I’ve heard, maybe for you they’re the same thing.” He looks at me through his lashes and tuts. “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.”

I feel the moment his gaze lifts off me and returns to the windshield, but he’s left a mark: from now on, dark cliffs, wind racing through hair, cinnamon paired with clove and pine—all of it will only mean Wyn Connor to me. A door has opened, and I know I’ll never get it shut again. Regency era or not, in a lot of ways, he ruins me.

I was more scared of marrying someone who couldn’t bring himself to leave me or to keep loving me. It was why I hadn’t let myself cry when Wyn dumped me, or ask for answers or a second chance. I knew the only thing more painful than being without him would be being together knowing I no longer truly had him.

I hate how entangled we still feel on a quantum level. Like my body will never stop trying to find its way back to his.

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.

“I think I love you, Harriet,” he says. Love, I think. That’s new. And I’ll never be happy without it again. Without any forethought, any worry, I tell him the truth. “I know I love you, Wyn.”

“Everything keeps spinning,” he says in a low, hoarse voice. “But my mind’s always got one hand on you.”

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

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.

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.