Happy Again by Jennifer E. Smith Read Free Book Online

so that he managed to look both utterly intimidating and completely clownish at the same time.
    Ellie was trying not to laugh. “I’m not sure that will help me much in Early Plays of Shakespeare.”
    “You don’t have to actually do the face,” he said, his features relaxing again. “I mean, it definitely helps if you need to get psyched up. But it’s more about the way it makes you feel. The idea is to sort of pretend you’re as tough as you look just then.”
    “Even if you’re not.”
    He nodded. “Even if you’re not.”
    Ellie thought about that moment in class when she’d sat numbly beneath the heavy gaze of the other students. She thought about the way she’d been trailing Lauren and Kara and Sprague all day, and how her first instinct when she realized Graham would be showing up on the red carpet had been to flee.
    “ Though she be but little, she is fierce ,” she said, and Graham—who had been swirling a fry into the pool of ketchup on his plate—looked up.
    “What?”
    “That was the answer. In my Shakespeare class. The thing I couldn’t say.” The thing I want to be , she almost added, but didn’t. “It’s from A Midsummer Night’s Dream .”
    “Shakespeare, huh?” he said, sitting back and slinging one arm over the top of the booth. “Not the first person who comes to mind when you think tough .”
    “ The pen ,” Ellie told him, picking up one of the triangular halves of her grilled cheese, “ is mightier than the sword .”
    “Okay, Hamlet,” he said with a grin. “Let’s see it, then.”
    “See what?”
    “Your game face.”
    Ellie was about to say no. She was about to scoff at the very idea. But then she realized that was her reaction to pretty much everything lately, and she thought better of it. Instead, she set down her grilled cheese and licked her fingers, and then she leaned across the table so that her face was very close to Graham’s.
    “Ready?” she asked, and he nodded, though she could tell he was trying not to smile. She ignored him, forcing her mouth into a straight line, and then into a frown, scrunching up her forehead, thinking of what Lauren had said earlier— be more aggressive —and what Graham had just told her— bigger, braver, bolder —all the while glaring at him with as menacing a look as she could possibly muster.
    But to her surprise, he began to laugh, the kind of laugh that’s helpless and impossible to stop, that starts in your belly and works its way right up to your eyes.
    “Come on,” she said, breaking character as she slumped back in the seat. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”
    Graham’s eyes were watering, and he reached for one of the extra napkins, dabbing at them theatrically. “I can honestly say that was the least intimidating thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
    This only made her glower at him for real this time, and he waved the napkin, as if in surrender, still laughing.
    “Now that,” he admitted, “is a step in the right direction.”

Thirteen
    By the time they finished eating, it was fully dark and a little bit chilly, the kind of night that’s caught somewhere between summer and fall, old and new.
    Outside the restaurant, Ellie bounced up and down on her toes a few times, glancing reluctantly in the direction of the theater. She didn’t feel ready to let go of Graham just yet, to return him to the throngs of screaming fans and hyperefficient handlers who were tasked with moving him around from city to city, film to film, as if he were a piece on a game board.
    Ellie looked over at him, and her stomach fluttered.
    They’d only just found each other again. And for the first time in a long time, there was still so much to say.
    Graham pulled his phone from his pocket, and Ellie could see that there were several new texts and messages, no doubt many of them from Harry.
    “We still have a little time,” he said, shoving it back into his jacket without reading them. “Should we take the long way