Page 39 of Dear Ripley

“What?” I stared at her in confusion, no clue at all what she was talking about. “How are you even—oh. Very funny. That’s not at all the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?” She watched me skeptically.

I stared her down, confident that it absolutely was not the same thing. Nothing about my relationship with Ripley had been anything like hers and Ellie’s. “No. Firstly, I’m not trying to get back with Ripley—”

“You’d be interested if she wanted to though, right?” She smirked like she’d hit on the world’s biggest, prize-winning secret.

I continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Nor is Ripley trying to get back with me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I absolutely do.” I shook my head, curious at how she was being so very obtuse. “Secondly, neither Ripley nor I are currently pregnant.”

“How is that even relevant?” she laughed.

“Thirdly, we broke up because we knew it was the right thing for both of us, not because one of us couldn’t handle the reality of life, and decided cheating on our miscarrying spouse was the way to go.”

Harlow huffed. “Fine. I guess I’ll give you that one. But that’s just a sign that you two are destined to get back together.”

I stared at her. “How, exactly?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” She rolled her eyes like she thought it was.

“Absolutely not.”

“If I got back with Ellie, especially now, everyone would worry about me. They’d be thinking about how she was going to cheat again, how else she might betray me, how I couldn’t rely on her, and how she might only be with me for the baby. And, even if it wasn’t just the baby, everyone would know she couldn’t stick it out when things got tough, so how is she ever going to handle a baby?”

“Okay, fair. Yeah, I would be thinking that.”

“But, with you and Ripley, everyone still thinks you’re destined to be together. You were always a really great couple, and even your breakup was very mature and amicable. Sure, it might not have been the right time for you, but that’s not because you aren’t meant to be together.”

I sipped my coffee slowly as she spoke, and, when she paused, asked, “I thought you didn’t believe in destiny?”

“I don’t,” she replied instantly, waving me off as if that was irrelevant to the conversation. “But everyone wants you and Ripley back together.”

“Except me and Ripley, arguably the two most important voices in that conversation.”

“Pfft.” She crossed her arms, sulking slightly as she sank back in her chair. “Are you seriously telling me you don’t ever think about getting back together?”

I took a deep breath. No, I wasn’t saying that. I wouldn’t have been able to say that for even one day since the divorce. But that wasn’t the conversation we were having.

Besides, I was certain it was perfectly normal to wonder about the ‘what ifs’ after a divorce. Part of you was always going to wonder if you could have tried harder, if things would have gone better if you’d met later in life, or what things would be like if you were still together and had managed to work through the problems. People didn’t like defeat, so of course those thoughts came up, even when divorce was the right option. It didn’t mean anything, though.

“Occasional errant wonderings do not a relationship make,” I told her pointedly.

She lit up like a Christmas tree. “So you do think about it?”

“No. Not in any real way. We had our time, and this is not that. People from your past sometimes come up in your mind, sure, but that doesn’t mean anything real.”

“Not even if she happened to be interested?”

“I don’t know which rock you’ve been living under since we got back here, but I think the signs have been pretty clear that she’s not.”

“Tosh,” she said, waving me away again before she leaned over the table towards me. “But that wasn’t a denial. If Ripley happened to be interested, you’d be down, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know where you got that from, and it continues to be irrelevant because—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ripley’s not interested, blah, blah, blah.”

---