Page 104 of Dear Ripley

“Couldn’t it?” I laughed, relaxing back into my seat as she pulled up to the Burton house.

Alicia and Harlow immediately made their way towards the car and I couldn’t decide whether their arrival was actually distracting, or just the thing Morgan needed to pretend she hadn’t heard me speak.

Harlow lowered herself gingerly into the passenger seat, moving slowly as she tended to do these days. I wasn’t sure there was any other way to move when she was carrying a fully grown, and overdue, baby inside of her.

Alicia slid in next to me, her eyes finding the Tupperware immediately. “Hello. What’s that?”

“Hello,” I replied, leaning in to kiss her, and ignoring Morgan’s pretend complaints from the front of the car. “I brought you a cupcake to show you how proud I am of you. How was therapy?”

She smiled softly. I knew I’d missed that smile, but after five months with it, I still couldn’t get enough of it—of her. “It was good. Exhausting, but good. You know how my sessions with Rory are.”

I nodded sympathetically. I did know how they were. Therapy in general could be exhausting, but the kind of work she was doing with Rory really took it out of you.

Rewiring your brain took a huge amount of effort, plumbed depths you hadn’t realized were there, and showed better than most things just how much your body remembered, even if your brain had repressed it. As such, their sessions left her mentally and physically exhausted, and there were no words for how proud I was of her. How proud I was of both of us for the work we’d been doing over the last five months, and how much it had helped us. We’d never been happier. The whole world, and everything in it, felt more beautiful and secure and unbearably sweet, and I loved every bit of it.

“All right,” Harlow called, clapping her hands together just like her mother did. I couldn’t wait to see how long it took the baby to pick that up. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Yeah, I want to make sure we get there nice and early, get parking, and make it to the venue in plenty of time,” Morgan said, pulling away and leading us out of town.

“I’m sure you do,” I teased, waggling a finger at Morgan in the rearview mirror.

“Are we sure you should be going when you’re this pregnant?” she immediately asked Harlow, and, given that she hadn’t shown any concern about Harlow’s advancing pregnancy up to this point, I was certain it was simply a tactic to avoid discussing where we were all going and why. A week ago, she’d been insisting Harlow keep the baby inside precisely so she could come along.

I laughed, lacing my fingers with Alicia’s, and sinking back in my seat as she ate her cupcake with her other hand.

Harlow looked at Morgan. “What, do you think it’s going to get rowdy at a gift-wrapping show?”

Alicia and I both laughed. I loved the sound of it so much. She was so ridiculously perfect, I wanted to drink every little bit of her in.

“No. I do not think that. I just think, at this stage of the show, there’s bound to be a risk, isn’t there?” Morgan’s blush was intense, much like when she’d initially asked the three of us to attend the show with her. Or, rather, insisted that we were going with her.

Honestly, if she hadn’t told me about it, I never would have imagined someone who wrapped gifts on YouTube would have live shows, but here we were. The Pretty Gift was in town and Morgan wanted—nay,needed—to go. And, partly because we all loved her, and partly because we all wanted to watch her go absolutely wild over a gift wrapper, we’d happily agreed to attend, with Harlow deeming it her last big night out before the baby came. She’d really been counting on the baby being late.

I couldn’t wait to tell the little one all about the night they went to watch Auntie Morgan’s crush wrap gifts on a big stage. And, maybe, if Morgan one day decided to muster up the courage, Iona from The Pretty Gift might be someone the baby knew in real life too.

Or, maybe I was just too much of a romantic these days, believing love would win out in even the most unlikely situations.

“I promise I’ll be just fine,” Harlow promised. “But, if the baby does come tonight, I’ll just have to call them Iona, won’t I?”

“Even if it’s a boy?” Morgan asked, mulling the idea over.

“Yeah, why not? I can start a new trend.”

“Well, I do love starting new trends…”

“And, you know, when you finally get around to asking her out, we can tell her all about how baby Iona got their name.”

“Okay, I take it back. You can’t name the baby that.”

Harlow laughed. “Do you own the name?”

“Well, no. But still.”

I leaned forward. “But still… it would be awkward explaining the story to her? Does that mean you’re actually going to go for it?”

“Absolutely not,” Morgan barked, killing my excitement. Between her and Iona, and Ekundayo and Joel somehow still dancing around each other, I was finally beginning to understand how frustrated everyone had been with me and Alicia. And how obvious we had always been.

Though, in Ekundayo’s case, I was giving him grace. The night everything had changed for me and Alicia, and he’d taken Freddie’s chocolate pie around to Joel’s, he’d tried, he really had. Joel, unfortunately, had misunderstood it as a friendly thing and promptly invited three other friends to their supposed date. Ekundayo, understandably, still hadn’t gotten over that, but I had faith they’d get there soon.

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