Happy Again (This is What Happy Looks Like #1.5)(14)

“I’m not a reporter,” Ellie reminded him. “You can be honest with me.”

He’d been absentmindedly curling the end of his tie, and now he let it drop, and they both watched it unwind again. “Sometimes it’s just a lot.”

“I can imagine,” she said, but she saw him wince and changed her mind. “No, you’re right. I can’t.”

“Lately, I’ve just been feeling kind of suffocated. Like I can’t get enough air. Which is why it’s nice to escape sometimes.”

“By driving way too fast.”

“It’s not that fast.”

“I’ve seen at least three stories about you getting pulled over.”

“I can handle it.”

Ellie gave him a hard look. “Just be careful, okay?”

“You sound like my parents,” he said, and then his face softened. But before she could ask him whether things were better now—whether he still worried over the distance between them in the aftermath of his sudden fame—he nodded.

“I’ve been seeing them a lot more lately, which is good,” he said. “My dad’s gotten completely obsessed with the landscaping at my house. I’ve got a whole crew that comes out twice a week, but whenever I’m in town, he usually just ends up dragging the mower out himself. And my mom—she thinks I eat too much takeout, so she’ll come over and spend a whole day cooking, and then my fridge ends up looking like I’m preparing for the apocalypse or something.”

Ellie smiled. This is where most guys she knew would stop, concluding the story with an eye roll. But not Graham. She knew what it meant to him, these kinds of mundane gestures, and how hard earned they were.

“And Wilbur loves having them around,” he said, leaning back against the bench, more relaxed now. “My mom even knitted him a sweater last Christmas.”

Ellie laughed. “Pig in a blanket?”

“Don’t even joke,” Graham said, giving her a stern look.

“I’m happy for you,” she said, swiveling so that they were facing each other again. “That all sounds really…normal.”

“I’m trying,” he said, pulling off his cap and ruffling his hair. “I mean…things are okay. I can’t really complain, obviously. But happy? I don’t know about that. I think maybe the last time I was truly happy was last summer.”

Ellie turned to look out at the pond. The water rippled just slightly in the breeze, and she thought again of that last night she and Graham had spent together back in Henley. Everything had felt so big then: the rough stretch of beach and the churning water and the endless night sky. And now here they were again, on a smaller stage, hemmed in on all sides by trees and bushes, buildings and people, everything stifling and somehow much too close.

What had Graham said? That it felt like suffocating, like it was hard to get enough air.

“Me too,” she said finally, and he flinched at the words.

“You’re supposed to be happier without me,” he said, looking pained. “Otherwise, what was the point of all this?”

“All what?”

“The last year,” he said, kicking at the ground with his heel. “Not talking for so long. I mean…why else did you stop writing?”

“Because you did.”

“That’s not true,” he said, jerking forward, suddenly tense. “I wrote you a bunch of times last winter, and you never wrote back.”

“Come on,” Ellie said, annoyed. “You were basically just talking about the weather at that point. It was starting to seem like a chore for you. And I didn’t want to be that. I mean…you had all these exciting things going on, and reading about my stupid high school drama while you’re busy meeting the prime minister of France—”

“It was the president, actually.”

“I just figured you’d moved on,” she said, ignoring this.

He shook his head. “You were the one who was pulling away. You stopped talking about anything that mattered. You stopped daydreaming with me about college, or telling me about the letters you were writing to your dad. You stopped sending me poems.”

“That’s because they were all about you,” she said, her face burning. “And it was embarrassing, okay? I was supposed to be over you by then.”

“Who says?”

“Well, you,” she said, glaring at him. “I had to see pictures of you with other girls pretty much every single day, while I was stuck in Henley, writing poems about you like a complete idiot.”

“Were they at least better than Wordsworth?” he asked with a smile. “That guy was a total hack.”

She laughed. “He was okay.”

“Hey,” Graham said, sliding a little bit closer to her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Honestly, it felt like you were the one who was over it. I thought you were moving on. I thought I was boring you.”

“How could you—”

“All I was doing was working,” he said with a shrug. “You were actually having a life.”

“Do you have any idea how boring Henley is?” she asked, then shook her head. “It wasn’t so bad before you showed up. But once you left…”

“Trust me, it wasn’t boring to me. There have been so many times I wished…” He trailed off, giving her a long, searching look. “I haven’t been sleeping lately, so I got this noise machine that plays ocean sounds. Now I fall asleep every night thinking of that beach, wishing I was back there again. I just didn’t know how to tell you that.”