Page 17 of Dear Ripley

Alicia Burton. The one and only woman I’d ever loved. Back in Jackson Point.

Chapter 7

Alicia

Ripley Stone. Fire that burned hot, ferocious, and forever, like I was nothing but kindling under her gaze. A gaze that still felt like a physical touch, even after all these years. I’d never known how she’d done that. How every time she looked at me, it felt as though her fingers were caressing my skin and my soul.

After eight years, shouldn’t that sensation have gone away? We didn’t know each other anymore. If we did, I’d have known this was her store, and I’d have avoided coming in.

How could she be here? How could she be working here?

Petal and Pebble… She must own the place. It felt like exactly the kind of name she’d choose. A play on her last name and the flowers she, apparently, worked with. I loved it and I hated it. Of course she’d curated a place that was so beautiful it hurt. A place that had drawn my attention and taken root, demanded I return immediately. Holding off for the few hours I had was something of a miracle in itself.

It seemed so obvious now that she would be here.

Our eyes met. My head swam. I was running out of oxygen, and my lungs still couldn’t figure out the mechanics of breathing—wasn’t that supposed to be fairly automatic? Only Ripley Stone could stop a person’s biological functions from, well… functioning. She defied logic and science.

Her brown eyes swirled with a million emotions, too shiny to not have tears building in them. And I couldn’t take it.

I turned on my heel, saying nothing at all, and bolted from the store.

I walked without thinking, not stopping until I made it back to my parents’ house.

Sweet relief at the fact that there was nobody in the living room as I passed by, heading straight for the stairs. This was no time for a conversation. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to talk even if I’d tried.

The lock on my former bedroom door sounded loud in the vast openness of my mind, a marker of something. I wasn’t sure whether it was good or bad, but it locked me away from the world, away from Ripley, and that had to be good.

I sank to the floor, my whole body shivering. It had probably started the minute I’d heard her voice, but I hadn’t registered it until I was feeling myself shaking the door behind me.

What was wrong with me? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Ripley and I had been eight years ago. She’d always hold a special place in my heart and my life, and being around her was always going to be difficult—there were reasons I stayed away from Jackson Point—but it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be an adult. An adult who was over her. None of this felt like I was.

No. I was over her. In the ways it was possible to be. We’d been on different paths, heading in different directions, needing different things. And we’d been falling apart longer than either of us wanted to admit. We’d both agreed we needed to break up. And, sure, I’d still loved her when we split up, and seeing her stirred up a lot of the questions and unresolved parts of our relationship, but we’d made our choice, and I was over her, over all of it.

I dragged the blanket off the foot of the bed, wrapping it tightly around myself. A memory hit hard of doing the same thing when she and I had officially called it quits and I’d cried for days, still existing in the same apartment together, grieving together and apart, needing each other, but knowing we weren’t supposed to be the ones there for each other anymore, confused about how to move forward, how to let each other go, and knowing that we had to. I’d fled back home when it became too much, snuck up to my former bedroom, not caring that my parents had long since given it a guest room makeover, and pressed myself into the corner of the room, wrapped in a blanket, and wishing I’d cease existing.

I hadn’t known how to live without her. I knew we were making the right decision, but I didn’t know how to actually live with it. She was part of me. I hadn’t lived an adult life without her. She was my best friend, the one I was supposed to spend my life with, the one I’d had so many plans with. And then, everything was in tatters on the floor around me.

But this wasn’t that. This was eight years later. I’d grown, healed, started and ended a whole other relationship since then. I could handle this. It was just the shock of seeing her again, so soon after I arrived, and so unexpectedly. That was all it was. I’d handle it better next time we ran into each other. I was an adult. I could handle this.

I took deep, purposeful breaths, willing them into every part of my body, begging them to calm my heart and stop the panicked tingling in my face and hands. And somewhere along the way, it worked. I felt myself slipping down the door, lying on the floor, exhaustion weighing heavily on me and beckoning me to sleep, to a land where I hadn’t just run into Ripley and immediately ran away from her.

???

I woke to my mom calling my name up the stairs, yelling that dinner was ready. I felt like a teenager again—in turmoil over Ripley and being called down for dinner by my mom. It was exactly this stuff that kept me away from Jackson Point. I’d lived too much life here, had too much love story here. Jackson Point was part of me, just as Ripley was, and being back here took me to places I didn’t want to be.

Standing up was difficult. Sleeping on the floor might have been fine back when I was a kid in Jackson Point, but, at thirty-eight, the time for doing so was long gone. My muscles protested hard as I stretched them out and insisted on them supporting my weight, moving me forwards.

I was so distracted by the pain and focusing on not letting my mind slip back into the memory of seeing Ripley, that it didn’t even occur to me to check my face before I stumbled down the stairs to the dining table.

Joel laughed as he looked at me. “Who beat you up?”

I frowned, confused. “What?”

“Your face,” my dad clarified, gesturing unnecessarily. “Looks like you got dragged through a carwash.”

“Is that a thing?” I asked, certain I’d never heard that saying before.

“Not usually.” He laughed. “But it’s an accurate description of how you look.”

---