Emily Henry

ON VACATION, YOU can be anyone you want.

Like a good book or an incredible outfit, being on vacation transports you into another version of yourself.

In your day-to-day life, maybe you can’t even bob your head to the radio without being embarrassed, but on the right twinkly-light-strung patio, with the right steel drum band, you’ll find yourself whirling and twirling with the best of them

The world is your oyster.”

I always liked that thought, the way two people really did seem to grow into one. Or at least two overlapping parts, trees with tangled roots.

When it came down to it, I knew exactly who Gus Everett was,
and it didn’t change a thing. Because even though he would probably never learn to dance in the rain, it was Gus I wanted. Only Gus. Exactly Gus

And that was the moment I realized: when the world felt dark and scary, love could whisk you off to go dancing; laughter could take some of the pain away; beauty could punch holes in your fear. I decided then that my life would be full of all three. Not just for my own benefit, but for Mom’s, and for everyone else around me.

I know feeling small gets to some people, he had once told me, but I kind of like it. Takes the pressure off when you’re just one life of six billion at any given moment. And when you’re going through something hard—at the
time, Mom was doing chemo—it’s nice to know you’re not even close to the only one.

He fit so perfectly into the love story I’d imagined for myself that I mistook him for the love of my life.

“Oh, honey,” Sonya said quietly. “We can never fully know the people we love. When we lose them, there will always be more we could have seen

I felt so lost again. Every time I started to find my way, I seemed to slip further down. How could I trust what Gus and I had? How could I trust my own feelings? People were complicated. They weren’t math problems; they were collections of feelings and decisions and dumb luck. The world was complicated too, not a beautifully hazy French film, but a disastrous, horrible mess, speckled with brilliance and love and meaning.

January, you are twenty-eight, and today I am your father.