Page 38 of Dear Ripley

Harlow thought it was all a normal part of being married. She didn’t need congratulations for having gotten married, she was simply happy to be married, to be with her person.

Ellie wasn’t like that, apparently. She went looking for a new thrill.

Harlow sighed. “I’d imagine because she's going through a breakup.”

I leaned back in my seat, my coffee cup hot in my hand. This wasn’t the first time Harlow and I had sat in my parents’ dining room, talking about Ellie. It was the first time we’d had this type of conversation about her, though.

I blew out a long, slow breath. “She’s calling you because she broke up with the person she cheated on you with?”

Harlow shot me a look over her cup like she wasn’t surprised by the news but that my statement was entirely true. Ellie wanted Harlow’s attention again because leaving her hadn’t gone how Ellie expected it to.

“Christ,” I said, blowing out a long breath. “That woman has some audacity.”

“You’re telling me.”

Even through the anger and annoyance I felt at Ellie, I was proud of Harlow. She’d been broken when Ellie cheated and left her, but here she was, looking more repulsed and self-assured than anything.

“So,” I said after a sip of coffee, “I’m guessing you’re not interested in getting back together with her?”

She laughed once. “Definitely not.” For a moment, she stared off into the middle distance. She was facing a watercolor of flowers on the wall, but her thoughts were somewhere else entirely. “You know, there was a time when I wished she’d come back. A time when I wanted her to still want me.”

I remembered that time. I’d hated Ellie for how she’d made Harlow feel, and for all the ways Harlow couldn’t help but still love her. Because sometimes love was like that—it was supposed to go away and it simply wouldn’t. The people we loved sometimes hurt us so badly that we never fully got over it, but love wasn’t a switch you could just turn off.

Harlow sighed. “Then, there was a time I wanted her to come back around simply so I could see that her life wasn’t better without me. Not my finest period, perhaps.”

I breathed a laugh. “When someone screws you over like Ellie did with you, I think you’re more than entitled to want to see them struggling too.”

Perhaps that wasn’t the graceful answer, but perhaps anger was every bit as complicated as love. You could still be a good person and occasionally think negative thoughts. So long as you weren’t going out of your way to hurt someone, feeling that anger with them, letting it pass through you, seemed like a perfectly normal and healthy way to be. You couldn’t help your feelings, only how you responded to them. And Harlow had responded with far more grace than I would have in the face of a cheating wife.

Especially one who was now coming crawling back.

Harlow shrugged, finishing her cup of decaf tea. “Maybe, but I still don’t like it.”

“That’s fair too.” For a moment, Ripley popped into my head. I wondered if she felt similarly about her floral outburst? I didn’t blame her. She wasn’t a bad person for having feelings. Love, anger—hell, emotions in general, were a lot sometimes. We were all just trying our best.

Except Ellie. She was absolutely not trying her best.

“And now?” I prompted, knowing Harlow had more to her thought that she wanted to share.

She took a deep breath, smiling as her hand moved to her stomach. “I’m over it. It took longer than I would have liked, but I got there in the end. Now, I don’t want her back, I don’t want her to want me, I don’t even want to see her suffering. It just seems sad now.” She shrugged. “That was a part of my life, I was hurt, I learned some things, but now, I’m happy. I’m home, I’ve got my baby on the way, I’ve got everything I ever needed, and none of that was her, you know?”

I smiled at her, my heart warming at the strength of her. I wondered whether she knew just how strong she truly was. So often, we’d been told strength meant not letting anything knock you down, but it wasn’t that. It was knowing life was going to knock you down, but getting up and facing another day again. It was pushing for, and loving, the things you got, and letting go of the things you didn’t. It was knowing life might not always look the way you thought it would, but finding yourself and your happiness within that.

It was just a little annoying sometimes that the journey was so difficult and challenging.

I pulled her in for a hug. It was a little awkward given that we were still sitting at the table, but we’d hugged in weirder situations so we both just went with it.

“I’m proud of you,” I told her, and she simply nodded, relaxing into the hug.

When we finally pulled apart, her face morphed from soft and appreciative into something mischievous. “I’m proud of you too.”

“I didn’t do anything.” I gestured towards her phone on the table. “I’m not the one whose ex is coming sniffing around.”

She stared at me. “Aren’t you?”

“No…?”

She laughed. “Okay, fair. I suppose you’re the ex that’s coming sniffing around.”

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