Page 91 of Dear Ripley

He squealed, his eyes wide. “You did!”

“We absolutely did not,” I assured him. “Why would you even think that?”

He walked about the counter, stopping only when he was painfully close to me, and examined my face.

I fought the urge to lean back, worried it might add fuel to his incredibly incorrect fire. “What are you doing?”

“You totally kissed. Are you getting back together?”

My heart beat uncomfortably and I could feel the color rushing to my face. “Dude, I’m going to need you to step back and tell me what the hell you’re going on about.”

He grinned. “You’ve got this… energy about you. Something… sparkly.”

I looked down at myself. “It’s 8:45 am, I can assure you that, of all the things I am,sparklyis not one of them.”

“It absolutely is. Joel said you’d be like this. He said it was obvious when Alicia had been around you because she was…sparkly.”

“Is that right?” I asked, my tone deadpan but my insides a tumultuous swirl of emotions. I liked the idea of Alicia being different after we’d seen each other.

Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t been able to go home the last few days, I’d dread to imagine how obvious last night’s conversation might have been on her.

Maybe as obvious as it was on me right now…

Ekundayo nodded exaggeratedly, smiling like the cat who got the cream. “He said it was probably just as obvious on you, because, as far as he can remember, it was always like that with you two.”

My stomach clenched, my emotions bracing. Alicia and I were charting new territory right now, but that didn’t mean the past didn’t still hurt. “Sometimes living in a small town is the worst.”

“Because people remember you?” Ekundayo asked, laughing.

“Exactly that.” I shook my head. “Alicia got to go off and live somewhere people didn’t comment on how weused to beall the time.”

“Pretty sure people are only talking about that because it’s so clear you both want to be back together again.”

“No, we don’t,” I said, walking through to the back, knowing, as I went, what a huge lie that was.

“You so do,” he practically sang at me, following along. “So, spill. You kissed, right? I’m definitely going to tell Joel, but I won’t tell anyone else if you don’t want me to.”

I laughed. As if it made any difference how many people you told around here. Tell one person one thing and, almost undoubtedly, everyone in town was going to hear about it. The walls had ears.

“Come on, Ripley. Spill,” Ekundayo pleaded, moving to sit on top of the dining table we had in the space back here.

I sighed, turning to look at him properly. “There’s nothing to spill because nothing happened.”

“Lies.”

I rolled my eyes. I wanted to deny it, but it was a lie. We hadn’t kissed, so I supposed that part was true, but it wasn’t as though nothing at all had happened. “We talked. That’s all.”

“And this is how you look after just a conversation? Wow, Joel was right. You must be visible from space after you two kiss if you’re this lit up from a conversation.” He paused. “Unless it was a sexy conversation. Was it sexy?”

I narrowed my eyes, staring at him. “You’re barely more than a child. I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“I’m an adult.”

“Barely. As I just said. And, besides, I’m your boss, that would be an entirely inappropriate conversation for us to have.”

He laughed, leaning back on his hands. “We’re also friends and neighbors. You can totally tell me.”

“Technically, I could totally tell you anything, but I’m not going to because that would be weird.”

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