Happy Again (This is What Happy Looks Like #1.5)(4)

But this wasn’t a movie. And things like that didn’t happen in real life.

Their lives had intersected briefly, here in this small corner of Maine, and maybe that was it.

Six

After a while, the spaces between e-mails grew longer—not so much because it wasn’t the same as it used to be, but because it wasn’t enough anymore.

They knew now what it could be like when they were together. And so being apart—even when connected by the thin thread of an e-mail chain—just wasn’t good enough.

Besides, they were both busy. Ellie was applying to colleges, and Graham’s tour meant long days filled with press junkets and photo calls, followed by long plane rides to do the whole thing over again in the next city. Ellie read about all of it in Quinn’s magazines as they sat together in the ice-cream shop where they both worked after school.

“It’s not like we promised each other anything,” she said one day, tossing a magazine aside. It slid along the counter, then fell onto the floor in a heap of crinkled pages. Neither of them moved to pick it up. It was a cold, rainy day in October, which was the off-season for tourists. Nobody was coming in for ice cream.

“Stop being so sensible,” Quinn said, leaning against the counter. “You’re allowed to be frustrated.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” Ellie asked. “Hop on a plane to Sydney or London or Vancouver? Tag along like some kind of weird groupie while he gets interviewed and goes to parties and hangs out with Olivia Brooks?”

“Now you’re just being dramatic.”

“I can’t be too sensible and too dramatic at the same time,” she pointed out with a sigh. “All I’m saying is that it was probably doomed from the start, right?”

“Still overly dramatic,” Quinn said, raising one eyebrow. “But I take your point. It’s admittedly a little easier when your boyfriend sits behind you in physics.”

“You sit behind him,” Ellie said, laughing in spite of herself, “so you can look at his answers.”

“Yeah, well,” Quinn said, flushing a little, as she did whenever the subject of Devon came up, “that’s not the point.”

But more weeks slipped by, and the fewer e-mails that passed between Ellie and Graham, the more ordinary they became. Instead of their sharing secrets, trading intimate thoughts and feelings, the correspondence started to feel like an activity log, nothing more than a generic report on what they were each doing from day to day.

The week before Christmas, Ellie learned she didn’t get into Harvard after applying early action. She couldn’t have known then that she’d be accepted only a few short months later; at the time, it felt like the worst kind of failure, and she was absolutely crushed. Her first instinct, of course, was to write to Graham, who was traveling back to L.A. for the holidays. But when she sat down to e-mail him, she found she couldn’t.

Google had just helpfully alerted her about an award he’d been nominated for and a big role in an action movie he’d won over two other popular young actors. Compared to those things, this seemed minor.

With all his success, it was harder to share her own failure.

And so she didn’t.

Instead, she waited another week and then sent him an e-mail wishing him a merry Christmas.

By the time he wrote back, it was January, and his e-mail said only this: Hi, stranger. Sorry it’s taken me so long. Things have been crazy. How are you?

It could have been written to an old friend from fourth grade, or a girl he’d once met at a party, or even his dentist.

It could have been written to anyone.

Ellie didn’t even bother to reply.

It seemed to her that there was nothing more to be said.

Seven

As they walked toward the theater, Ellie’s heart was so loud in her ears that she could hardly hear the excited murmurs of her friends.

“Do you think he’ll be there?”

“Is it supposed to be good?”

“Is he still dating Olivia Brooks?”

“Was he ever?”

Beyond the crowd, they could see a row of black town cars pulled to the curb on one side of the street, and on the other, a wall of photographers and reporters and screaming fans. A long red carpet had been rolled out over the sidewalk in front of the theater, and the crowds were pressed up against the metal barricades that surrounded it, straining to get a better look.

Ellie trailed blindly after the other girls, feeling numb and weak-kneed and a little bit dizzy. She was still shocked to have stumbled across this of all movie premieres. She’d known the film was coming out soon; back home, everyone was giddy about it. Last summer, they’d spent a month shooting at various locations around town: the harbor and the beach, the main street and the shops, even the one shady-looking bar in the middle of all those postcard-perfect storefronts. And because of this, the movie seemed to belong as much to the town of Henley as it did to anyone else.

There was supposed to be a special screening on the village green at some point, in the same spot where she and Graham had watched the fireworks that Fourth of July, the explosions overhead not nearly bright enough to make them look away from each other.

“Everyone’s been asking if you’ll come back for it,” her mom had said the last time they talked. “But I told them you’re a very busy and important college student now, and you don’t have time to be jetting in for small-town celebrations anymore—”