The Shippers(2)

We need love to flourish—like we need air, and food, and water.

There are all kinds of ways to micro-dose love into our lives, of course—whether it’s going on walks with friends, or romping around with kids, or snuggling with pets.

But why micro-dose? Let’s macro-dose!

More is more when it comes to love. And that’s where love stories come in. Because stories exist to make us feel things.

A really well-done story of any kind makes you believe it’s real. The best stories make you forget you’re reading at all—and the boundaries between you and the characters dissolve. You empathize so hard that you step into the shoes—even climb into the skin—of those people. Their story becomes your story. It’s happening all around you—and to you.

There are studies on what happens to our bodies when we listen to stories: We synchronize with the storyteller’s words. Our brainwaves start to move at the same rhythm. Our breathing and heart rates sync up. The same for when we read stories on the page: Our brains sync up with the words. We react to what’s happening as if it’s real. Our heart rates change. Our breathing shifts. Our brains release actual chemicals.

These are physiological changes in our bodies. Biochemical changes.

And if it’s a love story? If it’s a romance? Even better.

Because now you’re syncing up with many kinds of emotions—but the main ones, the big ones, are positive. You’re syncing up with joy, and kindness, and admiration—and you’re experiencing genuine human connection.

Well-done love stories give you the feeling of being in love. Your brain makes it real—and shifts your biochemistry in warm, connected, healthy directions. You don’t have to be a scientist to know that. You don’t need a study. If you’re a romance reader, this is old news.

That’s not a spoiler, either. That’s an enhancer.

There’s a reason we love reading love stories. They’re good for us.

Don’t let anyone ridicule you away from bringing all the love into your life that you can. In every possible way.

It’s funny: One of the big lessons that the main characters in love stories learn over and over, story after story, is to choose love over fear.

And that’s what you’re doing right now, with this book. You’re your own main character, cultivating love in your own life—and by extension, the world.

Thank you for doing that.

Let’s all just keep doing that.

There’s a phrase that pops into my head a lot: If anything can save us, it’s love.

I don’t know all the answers. But I feel like we could use a lot more love in the world. If you’re reading this, maybe you feel that way, too. And I’m so happy that you’re here. And that I’m here. And that we’re all here together. Standing up for love.





One


MRS. RICHMOND’S WEDDING gown was itchy, for one thing.

The kind of itchy that eclipses everything else.

And there was no way to get out of it.

And that was nobody’s fault but my own.

The problem was: I was marrying her son, Pearce—my college boyfriend and fellow math major—at long last. Pearce Richmond: a certified Perfect Man. He was ungettable, and I got him. He was unstoppable, and I stopped him. He was untamable, and I rode him into the sunset.

So to speak.

And then, in a burst of postengagement irrational exuberance, I’d agreed to wear his mother’s wedding dress at the ceremony. I’m sure the lace that was now strangling my neck had been the forefront of polyester technology when it was formulated thirty years ago … but now, after sitting so long in storage, it had disintegrated into a prickly-pear-cactus texture that would be giving me a full-body rash, guaranteed.

A rash. On my wedding day.

I could feel the microfibers boring into my skin.

And, yes—I did just say “neck.” This atrocity of a wedding gown had a dog-collar-like choker of lace, which attached to a bib of more lace, which attached to a sweetheart neckline that held the whole thing up. And by “whole thing,” I mean the loosest, puffiest, most sad-prom, princess-fantasy, pumpkin-skirted getup in history.

It was like a parody of a wedding gown.

A parody that Pearce’s mom refused to have altered. Even with a whole handful of safety pins hidden in the pleats, it was still so loose that without the collar it might’ve slid right off. And the poofy skirt was so very poofy it was like I was wearing one of Maria von Trapp’s curtains—as a curtain.

Light a fire under me, and I could’ve floated off like a hot-air balloon. For real.

But there was no getting out of it.

Literally.

Because the zipper had caught in my hair right at the neckpiece when I zipped it up, and now it was stuck. I had cut away my hair with scissors, but now the slider was cemented in place like we’d glued it. Right at the top.

I’d be noosed in this thing until Pearce—or, really, not picky at this point: anyone at all—ripped it off me.

Hopefully sooner rather than later.

In theory, this was the biggest day of my life. In theory, I should be savoring every second. In theory, I was smack in the bull’s-eye of the pinnacle of human happiness.

In reality?

I was itching.

Not to mention stinging—from matching blisters on the backs of my heels from my new shoes.