Page 61 of Dear Ripley

I’m sorry for how it must have scared you after my—somewhat rude—yellow carnation. I could have chosen a different color envelope, I suppose, but there’s something comforting about yellow and what it usually means. And, you know, if I’m being honest, maybe I want a different memory associated with you, and me, and yellow—something… better.

Something better? Something good? Not a rejection?

“Alicia,” Joel yelled, more impatient than before. “Get in here, or we’re starting the movie without you.”

I laughed, fighting the wave of emotion. I wanted to read the rest of the letter, but I could stop here for now. At least I knew now that the whole thing wasn’t going to be awful—complicated, I imagined, but not an outright message to never contact her again.

Perhaps that would have been the better, smarter route for both of us, but I was glad it wasn’t that. I was glad she’d chosen me, and her, and something better in yellow.

I pushed the note back inside the envelope, slipped it into my back pocket, grabbed my slowly melting ice cream, and headed into the living room. I was going to spend the next two hours third wheeling for my brother and another florist a Burton kid had fallen for.

Chapter 20

Ripley

Jackson Point was an especially great place to live because you could show up to work, find an envelope balanced on the door handle, and know it could have been there all day and nobody would have taken it. Perhaps people didn’t steal the mail of others outside of Jackson Point either, but that wasn’t really the point. The point was that the envelope was there, waiting for me, and my momentary joy at the sweetness of Jackson Point quickly descended into the terror I’d come to associate with those soft, cream envelopes.

Despite my insistence with Genevieve that the correspondence meant nothing, that I needed to end it, and that, no, the feelings I had for Alicia did not mean I should be pursuing anything there, in the face of the letter, I couldn’t help but question what it did mean. At this point, we really were just corresponding, like two people in different towns, back in the heyday of snail mail.

The part of me that thought letter writing was inherently romantic riled against what was going on. People didn’t write letters these days, they emailed, DMed, or some other form of brief, electronic communication. They did not sit down to write pages-long letters. But that was what we were doing, and, despite the terror associated with it, I found myself enjoying it. There was something soothing about taking the time to sit and handwrite the feelings I needed to share with Alicia. Of course, it was weird she was the one I was processing and sharing emotions with—that was the kind of thing that, ordinarily, ended when breakups happened—but it was undeniably therapeutic.

Plus, any notion that it was romantic or intimate went away when I remembered that we didn’t actually know each other, we didn’t talk to each other, and we could barely even be in the same space together without the whole building sensing the tension. So, really, there was nothing to worry about beyond what was inside the letter.

The fact that she’d written back implied she must have made it past the yellow envelope, which meant she was still every bit as brave as I imagined. Something inside me softened at the thought and I tried to shake it off. Alicia and I could work at finding some kind of middle ground where we were able to be around one another—for Harlow’s sake—but I wasn’t supposed to be feeling soft at Alicia still being the person I remembered. Regardless of what Genevieve had to say about the situation at the end of an hour of me ranting about Alicia.

Maybe it wasn’t simply affection for Alicia, though. For the longest time, I’d worried I’d broken her—something I’d barely admitted to myself, let alone to anyone else. As we marched slowly towards our end, she’d been different. Sure, people changed, but this was something else. It had been a dimming of the person she was, and, as the one closest to her, and the one messing something in her life up, deep down, I’d worried I’d broken her. For months—years, probably—I’d ruminated on things I could have done differently, ways I could have been different, just to prevent the way she’d shut down. Genevieve had told me, more than once, that we can’t put ourselves away to build others up. Life wasn’t about sacrificing ourselves to give someone else everything they wanted. Relationships needed to serve both people in meeting needs, compromising in healthy ways, and building each other up, together. She was right, of course, but, oh, how many nights I’d spent wishing she didn’t have to be, thinking that maybe I could have done it, even if it felt like I was losing everything I was.

It would have been no way to live. Such sacrifices build resentments, which take down the relationship eventually anyway, but, sometimes, when you loved someone so much it hurt, you wished it could have been enough.

Maybe you wishedyoucould have been enough.

I breathed awkwardly around the sudden rush of emotions, grateful I was alone in the shop. I had never held anything against Alicia, we just weren’t what we each needed. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, or I didn’t wish things could have been different. Nobody stood at the altar on their wedding day, vowing to love someone forever, thinking it would end that way. Even when the end came, sometimes you were still left wishing it wasn’t ending that way.

I brewed myself a chamomile tea, needing something soft and soothing, and went to sit in the chair in the corner of the store, hidden amongst the flowers.

While the tea cooled, I balanced the envelope on my knee, willing myself to open it. I couldn’t help but wonder whether it took Alicia this long to open my letters. Was she braver and bolder than I was? People had always thought I was the outgoing one, and maybe I was in some ways, but, when it came down to the things that really mattered, she’d always been the braver one.

I smiled down at the envelope, remembering the past. I’d bought an engagement ring relatively early on in our relationship—we’d been friends for so long beforehand, I didn’t think I needed to wait in order to know. Now, that seemed foolish, but, back then, I’d been so sure. However, I’d ended up carrying it around with me for months, too scared to actually ask. I went back and forth on the right location, right moment, right words—as if any of it really mattered. She’d bought a ring later but asked sooner.

For all of my worrying, she’d seen to the core of the issue. She’d realized she wanted to marry me, spent some time finding the perfect ring, taken me out to the pier, late one night, and, under a full moon in a clear sky, proposed. She’d said the perfect words at the perfect time, and she’d beaten me to the punch. It was only then that I realized that the words and the place and the time didn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that we both wanted to marry each other. I’d have said yes if she’d asked me with an onion ring in the vegetable section of the grocery store.

Though, admittedly, the pier made for a much better story.

Halfway through my tea, and farther down memory lane than I should have been, I was finally ready.

She’d changed pens partway through the letter. Had the original one simply run out? Or had she needed time to come back to it? I wouldn’t blame her either way, but the curiosity burned hot and bright. As it turned out, eight years did nothing to quench the curiosity I’d always felt around Alicia.

Maybe I was the only one still surprised by that.

I’m a big enough person to admit that the yellow envelope did throw me for a minute, but even the subtly implied threat of yellow carnations can’t scare me away. Apparently.

I laughed out loud. Of all the things I’d been expecting, her to be honest and amusing hadn’t been high on the list. Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure why. She’d always been funny, and, so far at least, our letters had been scarily honest. What point was there in lying when you were talking to someone who’d seen you at your worst—who’d lived through the worst moment of your life with you and was, somehow, still talking to you?

She was still every bit as brave as I remembered—even when it came to honesty—and I was glad to have it confirmed again. I’d done her a disservice in my mind.

I like the sunflowers more, though. Perhaps that’s unfair. Carnations, even yellow ones, are lovely to look at. A better sentiment would be that I like what sunflowers represent more.

Yes, I had to look it up. I wonder if you ever told me that one. I can’t seem to place it if you did, but I apologize if I’ve forgotten. My memory isn’t as good as it once was. And, no, we’re not going to talk about how curious I am that sunflowers are what you went with. I’m going to assume it was exclusively because you thought of yellow flowers and sunflowers were the obvious first thought.

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