Page 101 of Dear Ripley

“Hi,” she said, her voice wispy and breathless. “Thanks for coming.”

I nodded. We were both shaking with nerves.

“Thanks for asking,” I said, waving my hand, and only then realizing I was still holding the zinnia she’d sent.

She smiled softly at it. “What happened?”

I looked down at it as she cringed, inspecting it for damage. “I’m not sure—”

“Sorry. I meant with us.” She shook her head hard. “I was really planning to be more eloquent than that. To build up to it or something. Jesus. I guess you just make me nervous.”

I laughed a little hysterically. “You’re one to talk.”

“Great, so, both nervous. Great. Great start.” She took a steadying breath. “Look, I think we both know that we’re…”

“Still in love with each other, scared of what happened, and nervous about how to move forward.”

She stared at me with wide eyes for a moment. If it were possible, I would be looking at myself the exact same way.

I didn’t know where the sudden eloquent, matter-of-factness came from. Probably the same place her blurted question did. Perhaps it was a good thing we’d both suddenly lost our filter. It did make honesty rather easy to come by, and we had promised each other that.

Maybe we’d finally done it—found our way back to the place where we weren't afraid to be honest with each other. Maybe that was why it came so easily. This was where we’d always wanted to be, where we always should have been.

“Uh, yeah. That.” She shook her head, looking amused. “So, with… allthaton the table, what happened? Eight years ago?”

She wasn’t asking about eight years ago, not really. She was asking about the time before that. She was asking where it all went wrong.

Two months ago, I wouldn’t have had an answer for her. Now, I knew it was time. I’d spent so much time reminiscing and remembering with her around, that I’d finally figured it out. I’d finally let it in. And she deserved to know.

I took a deep breath, clutching the zinnia tightly. “Something happened at work. I got given an assignment I wasn’t ready for, didn’t have the skills for, but, you know, I’d been doing well, clients liked me, so they thought it would be fine. I wasn’t making the progress I’d have liked, but I was getting through it. Slowly. And somebody else started criticizing, someone whose department shouldn’t have been handling it either, but who thought they could do a better job. Things got messy and dirty.”

She nodded, watching me closely, even as my eyes darted to and from her face. “That’s when you started working more?”

“Yes. Putting in every hour I could, desperate to prove I could do it. Desperate to be good enough.” Shame burned, thick and hot. I hated thinking about that time. I hated who I’d become. I hated what it had cost me. So, for eight years, I’d done my best not to think of it.

It hadn’t helped. Now, it was a monster, huge and looming—the thing that stole everything, and I allowed it to.

I swallowed against the burning, metallic lump in my throat. “I know it’s silly, but I didn’t know how to tell you. You’d always looked at me like I could do anything. You believed in me. You thought there was nothing I couldn’t do. And I was letting you down. I couldn’t handle it. I hated disgracing myself, but I hated disgracing you more. It wasn’t your fault, of course. It was mine, but I couldn’t handle it. So, I shut it away. I tried to keep it inside. I tried to beat the system, tried to beat the shame. But…”

“When you keep shame inside, it’s the one that wins,” she finished softly, looking at me with more love and support than I deserved. I’d cost us everything because I was too proud to admit I’d failed at something. She’d always deserved better than me.

I nodded, pressure building in my chest. “Yeah. That. So it ate away at me, made me doubt myself in every area, made me too afraid to say anything for fear of ruining everything, not realizing I was already doing that by shutting you out.”

“And I responded by shutting down too. Being too afraid to be vulnerable and brave when you needed me to.”

I shook my head, holding her gaze. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It wasn’t yours either.”

I laughed bitterly. “Of course it was. You were right there. I could have told you, could have reached out, and I didn’t.”

She took a step towards me, her head tilted. She was kind to almost everyone, but she wasn’t soft like this with them. It was special, reserved. You had to truly know her to get this. And I’d given it all up for nothing. In the end, that job, that task, had meant nothing. But its price was everything.

“I’ve had a lot of therapy since we broke up, dealt with a lot of things—not just you and me, but stuff from my past too. I’ve learned a lot about activation and the things that cause us to fall into certain patterns we’ve been taught, often without realizing it.” She took another step towards me. “I’m not saying your response was healthy, but I don’t think it was your fault.”

“I wish I could have done it differently,” I whispered, my voice cracking uncomfortably.

“I wish it had been different for you. I wish we’d handled things differently—sought therapy together and individually, but, you know,together. And I wish I’d done a better job letting you know that you were always going to be the most incredible thing in the universe to me, even if you failed at something.”

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