Love comes with sacrifice.

After reading that crappy Parasitology book series, I needed something to cleanse my palate and I picked up some Emily Henry. She’s the new Susan Elizabeth Phillips with cosy and cheesy romances which make me smile after having some crap ingested the week before.

There’s an old saying about stories, and how there are always three versions of them: yours, mine, and the truth. The guy who first said it worked in the film business, but it holds true for journalism too.
We’re not really supposed to take sides. We’re supposed to deal in facts. Facts add up to truth.

Alice Scott, journalist, 5’7″ is about to get her summer romance.

What it was like to be born into a world of silver spoons and golden platters, of actors drunkenly swimming fully clothed through your indoor pool and politicians making handshake agreements across your antique dinner table.

She has found the motherlode, a 1950’s media princess who is now retired and living under a pseudonym on a remote island. And she has to compete with sexy, tall, grumpy Hayden for the same job – writing the memoirs of Margaret Ives.

The book splits into two narratives who blend together seamlessly – Margaret’s own life and the buddying romance between lively Alice and quiet Hayden.

I slide into the booth, across from him, our knees bumping together. I’d always wondered why it seemed like enormously tall men tend to date adorably tiny women, and now I have my answer, apparently: A man as tall as Hayden Anderson can’t comfortably sit opposite anyone over five three. I’m about six inches into the red here.

They compete for the same story, but they are getting different snippets from Margaret. An NDA is preventing them from discussing their time and interviews with her – and their approach in tackling the memoir.

As it happens, there are not a lot of places to go on this small island and they start off first as friendly neighbours leaving each other tea or coffees or croissants by the door.

I force out, keeping my eyes pointedly not on his water-speckled chest. Or the rivulets running from the dark hair tucked behind his ears down his neck. Or his stomach and hips and legs and towel and whatever’s under the towel and—“Anyway

Doesn’t help that Alice is very obviously attracted to Hayden.

I’m sure there’s something biological to it. 
My body likes his pheromones, or my legs like the feeling of his in between them.

They hit it off and end up having dinners or breakfasts together and as they are spending more and more time together, Hayden finds out that Alice is determined and lively and full of enthusiasm for Margaret’s story and Alice finds out that the burly man that Hayden appears to be hides in fact a very sensitive and thoughtful person. The island is also beautiful and chill and they kinda float into each other’s arms.

It’s surprisingly cool between my toes, though the air is already dense with humidity. The first glow of the rising sun is peeking over the gray-green waves, seagulls cutting stark silhouettes overhead as they squawk across the sky. […]

I perch atop a long, thick piece of bone-white driftwood, enjoying the stillness and the quiet, trying and failing to take a few phone pictures that might come close to capturing the feeling of energy and possibility that emanates from all around: the beach, the water, the sky.
On my phone, it’s a blur of blue-black pixels.
The most beautiful things never hold up on a screen.
That, I think, is why I became a writer instead of a photographer.

All the emotions and sensations of the moment would rise, an echo, or a kind of time travel. With writing, you could always add more. More, more, more until you got to the heart of a thing, and after that, you could chip away the excess.

I loved Margaret’s story but it reminded me too much of the book The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo * Taylor Jenkins Reid to fully enjoy it. Instead, I devoured the Alice & Hayden story. Their talks about having kids which kinda resonated in me now that I’m a fresh mom.

The rest of the time, I think, what if the polar ice caps keep melting? What if medical care keeps getting more expensive, and social security runs out, and housing prices keep rising while minimum wage doesn’t, and what if they resent me for bringing them into all of this?
“What if they just hate me? Not because of the state of the world, but just because they hate me. Or what if they’re sick? What if they join a cult, and I can’t convince them to come home? What if they start a cult? What if they get into some heinous shit, and I can’t love them anymore—or worse, I keep loving them even though I can’t change anything?
“What if there’s another world war? Or what if…what if everything else goes right, but at the end of my life, they’re sitting in hospice with me…” His voice thickens uncharacteristically, wavering just the slightest bit. “And there are things they wish they could say to me, or hear from me, but I don’t remember who I am, let alone who they are. What if they have to care for me, for years, after I’ve stopped calling them by their nicknames or telling them I love them?”

As they start realizing they got some feelings about each other, the reality sets in. They are both there to win the gig and get the memoirs published. If one wins, the other one might resent the winner, causing them to go through a bitter breakup before they are even getting started. So they decide the same thing. Keep it platonic.

I feel him growing hard, and an ache begins between my thighs, my nipples peaking against his chest. He lets out a soft hum against my ear, one of his hands running a trail up and down my spine as he buries his mouth softly in my neck, not a kiss, just an incidental touch of his parted lips to my skin. […] I let my hands climb into his hair, twist my face into his neck the way he did to mine, taking every bit of him he’ll allow.
He touched my hair, so I touch his; he dragged his mouth along my throat, so I let mine trail over his.
He tries to pull me closer again, as if there’s any room at all left between us. There’s not, other than the one unbreachable divide: the job.
And I can’t help myself any longer. I take just a little more. The smallest bit. A flick of my tongue against his skin, and he groans into me, my body shivering with the sound. The ache in me deepens. I tell myself not to roll my hips against his, but it happens anyway, and his breath hisses at my neck, his hands clenching. “I have to stop,” he murmurs roughly.

umm.that is hot. like real hot.

I move myself against him harder, but he’s right: It’s not nearly enough. I want to taste him. I tell him as much and wind up on my back on the couch, him crawling down me, yanking my sweatpants down my hips as I buck up from the couch. His hands squeeze my bare thighs, and I writhe toward him as he presses his parted lips to the inside of one leg. He licks me once through my underwear, then sits back to pull my pants the rest of the way off, settling himself between my thighs. For a few seconds, we’re mindless with hunger, my thighs wrapped around his hips, our mouths colliding, his hands clutching every bare part of me and mine scratching down the wide expanse of his back.
“These pants are about to rip,” he half laughs into my mouth.

Lady… I’m ready to go to town on my husband because of this book. Thank you!

I slip one hand into his waistband, and he groans as my fingers curl around him. The sound drags down my spine like a fingernail, and I arch into him. One of his hands smooths around my back, makes its way up to the clasp of my bra while the other brushes my skirt up my thighs and gently slides under me, the heel of his palm pressing into me.
I cry out, my free hand gripping the back of his neck, seeking something firm and steadying as I move myself against him.

So guess what, Hayden says I love you first. Alice holds back her own feelings until the promised date but he’s pretty sure.

I want to be with you. Nothing else is going to matter to me more than that. Not at the end of my life. Not even now. Nothing will matter more than who I spent my time with, and I want it to be you. I need it to be you.

So sure, that he goes to Margaret on pitch day and refuses to write her novel, making Alice the default winner. Things go south real bad as Alice doesn’t want a pity win as she sees it and wants to have been picked by merit. And also.. she realized who Hayden was in relation to Margaret, a secret she cannot share with him because of the NDA, and also a secret that’s not hers to share to begin with. With that in mind, she breaks up with him which was painful to see but I was still hoping for a happy end.

We do get a happy reunion on a doorstep and a super happy end. Thank you Emily Henry for allowing me to cleanse my mouth from the shitty aftertaste of Parasitology.

I loved you almost instantly, before I really even knew you. Before I understood it. I trusted you, and I loved you, and I still do