Page 93 of Dear Ripley

He laughed again, but the noise was a little shaky and unsure. “We’ll see about that. I’m going to beat you to it.”

“Joel’s really not my type,” I quipped, shooting him a smug grin.

“Hilarious.” He rolled his eyes and shook his head like he was a parent, disappointed in my childish antics. It only amused me more. “No, I’m going to ask Joel out before you ask Alicia out, and then I’ll have bragging rights forever.”

“Power to you, kid. I won’t be asking her out, so you’re already winning.”

I took my laptop to the chair in the corner, wondering how true that statement was. It was true in the sense that I wasn’tcurrentlyplanning to ask her out. Sure, we’d had that conversation last night, and the letter I’d now slipped into my pants pocket was still burning a hole in my heart, but it wasn’t like Ekundayo and Joel. They had their whole future ahead of them. Entering any kind of race with them would be both insulting and foolish. If I ever did ask Alicia out again, it wasn’t going to be for some silly bet, and it seemed deeply unlikely anyway.

I was hopeful for Ekundayo and Joel, though. And, if a little healthy competition—with someone who definitely wasn’t in the race—was what Ekundayo needed to give him the push to ask Joel out, I was all for it. They needed something to get them out of their ridiculous stalemate, and I was happy to provide the impetus.

It was obvious Ekundayo was thinking about it because he set about work, but his gaze and his mind seemed miles away. I smiled, my hand finding Alicia’s letter again. If Joel was anything like Alicia, Ekundayo was in for a hell of a ride—hopefully one that ended better than mine and Alicia’s did.

Although, as I slipped her latest letter onto the keyboard of my laptop, keeping it hidden from Ekundayo, I had to admit, this part of the ride wasn’t so bad after all. It had been soothing, exciting, and wonderful whispering to her in the darkness last night. Finding her letter, and the hope that she was going to further address my question without Morgan interrupting, was both terrifying and thrilling in equal measure.

I shook my head. How easy it was to slip into sounding like her again, even in my own head.

Perhaps I should have been warning Ekundayo rather than encouraging him, for, once the Burton kids got in your head and your heart, they never really left. Although, from the look on his face, it was already too late for a warning. By the time I looked like he did, I was already a goner. One marriage, a divorce, and eight years later, nothing had really changed.

I opened the letter as quietly as I could, my heart pounding so loudly I wasn’t sure I’d hear Ekundayo if he spoke aloud.

The first few lines were crossed out. An attempt at writing the letter gone awry, I assumed—confirmed in the first few lines once she started again. There was something about the fact that she’d left them there, that she hadn’t gotten a clean sheet. It felt personal and private. It felt familiar. It felt like being let in again.

Alicia was put together, always. That was how the world had seen her since she was a teenager. There was just something in the way she held herself—I’d seen it in all of the Burtons, watched Joel somehow learning it the longer he was home with them—that was so self-possessed and confident that there was no way else to perceive her. But, I’d been allowed under all of that, once upon a time. I’d been invited in, been allowed to see the messy parts. They were some of my favorite parts. I liked being one of the very few who ever saw them. I liked being the one person she didn’t feel a need to be perfect around. Of course, she was still elegant and focused and composed, but it was so much better seeing that when you knew she also cried at kids’ cartoons.

I loved that she was letting me in there again—more than I should, and more than I realized I’d missed. It was always the small things that got you.

For the first month of living alone, doing the dishes had devastated me. One set of dirty things, nobody talking to me as I washed them, no music she’d put on blaring in the background. I had to wash and dry. Nobody else was coming. We’d lost the big things, but it was the small things that lodged deep inside and hurt, probably because I hadn’t been expecting them. Like a million tiny paper cuts across my soul, and life was the lemon juice burning them.

I hadn’t realized how much they’d never truly healed, not until I held those secrets in my hands again, not until she placed this trust in me.

Tears welled up inside of me. We’d meandered apart and trust had been the first thing we’d lost. I didn’t need to know exactly how it happened to know that it was true. To have some of that trust back felt unspeakably sweet. Knowing I wanted to give her the same honesty and openness, to trust her with the tiny things again, was a gift I hadn’t anticipated needing or wanting. Now, I knew I wanted nothing more.

Except maybe her. Justher. All of her.

I still wanted her. I’d always wanted her. I would always want her. And maybe we could trust each other with the little things until we were ready to trust each other with the big ones—our hearts. It was, after all, the little things that made a life. The little things had torn me apart, maybe they could put me back together again.

My breathing came faster, tears burning my eyes and slipping down my cheeks as I read on. I forgot the time and the place and the fact that I wasn’t alone. It was just me and Alicia, and the distant knowledge that I’d lied to Ekundayo. Something had happened with Alicia, and, in all the ways that mattered, it was something so much bigger than a kiss.

I gasped when I read her confession—it felt whispered, like our secrets in the dark, like her strangled, beautiful answer right before Morgan’s interruption, but it was daytime now. It was real. She was saying it out loud, in the daylight, for me to see. She was promising something so much more than friendship and doing so in the harsh light of day.

I didn’t think we’d ever really beenjust friends.

I didn’t think we ever would be.

The door tinkled as someone entered the store, jolting me back to reality. I looked around, bewildered. The foolish, romantic, Alicia-focused part of me wondered whether there could have possibly been a better place to read that letter. Sat snuggled amongst beautiful flowers and plants felt like the most gorgeous, glorious, idyllic place to read such a letter.

It was only when Ellie stepped up towards the counter that the moment shattered and reality set in again.

Chapter 33

Alicia

I’d been anticipating Ripley being gone when I woke up—along with the letter I’d written her—but I hadn’t been anticipating Harlow being gone too. However, when Morgan began aggressively shaking me, the fact that Harlow was out became quickly apparent.

“Wake up, you lazy lump,” Morgan said, her voice right above me as she shook me.

“What’s your problem? I was up half the night, as I’m sure you remember.” Only sheer exhaustion from my time with Ripley and being unable to fall asleep afterwards could stem the embarrassment of having Morgan catch us like two troublesome kids.

---