Page 87 of Dear Ripley

I rolled over, tired of staring at the wall, not expecting anyone else to still be awake. However, Alicia still was. It was borderline annoying how in sync we were, especially when I was trying to convince my brain we were different people, with different lives, and nothing left between us on which to build a relationship.

Her eyes grew wide when she looked at me and realized I was awake, fumbling her phone as she jumped slightly. She frantically tried to grab it before it clattered to the ground, stifling the light she was using it for.

“Sorry,” she whispered, turning the flashlight off. “I was just… I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I shook my head, feeling the pillow mussing up my hair. “You didn’t. I didn’t actually know anyone else was still awake.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, that’s… good, I guess.” She winced and I couldn’t help but smirk. The whole time I’d known her, Alicia had been almost painfully self-composed. As far as I’d witnessed, I was the only thing that ever shook that composure. I shouldn’t have wanted that still to be true, but I did, and the sight of it rushed through me in the most delightful way.

“Couldn't sleep?” I asked, attempting to sound casual and unconcerned.

She coughed, seeming an awful lot like she’d just choked on her own breath. We both tensed, freezing, and checking whether either of the other two had stirred.

As we waited, my heartbeat pounded in my ears. I felt like a kid again, sneaking around, doing things I shouldn’t. It was nice to feel so alive again, honestly. I hadn’t realized that I’d been missing anything over the last eight years, but Alicia brought something nobody else ever had into my life, and it was unbelievably nice to have that spark back.Just friendswasn’t all I ever wanted to be with her, not really, but, if it was all we could have, I needed to do everything in my power to make it possible, because I didn’t want to know this kind of spark existed only to lose it all over again.

When neither of the others moved, we both slowly relaxed and I shifted in my little nest to sit upright with her. It was then that I noticed the piece of paper in her lap. The same kind of paper she’d been writing to me on. My heart pounded again. I’d never noticed before the different types of pounding a heart could do, but Alicia was giving me a crash course in them all.

She must have seen me looking, despite the low light, because she rearranged herself, slipping the paper to the side of her legs, out of sight. “Just… um, catching up on my correspondence.”

I laughed. The whole conversation had been spoken in whispers to avoid disturbing the others, but there was something about laughing in whispers, surrounded by a cloak of darkness, in the late night hours that felt magical and illicit and unbearably romantic. It wasn’t the first time we’d done this.

I pressed my lips together, stifling another giggle. “Do you have a lot of midnight correspondences to keep up with?”

She cringed slightly. I didn’t know if she was aware that the way the light from the window framed her made it easy to see every little movement she made.

I hoped she wouldn’t realize and stop. I’d missed the way she moved. I’d missed the way she spoke and the way she looked. I’d missed being around her, and I’d happily take every second of it I could, even if that meant missing out on sleep.

“Not really.” She paused for so long that, if it were anyone else, I’d have been convinced that was all they were going to say. But I knew Alicia, apparently, and I knew there was something more she was gearing up to say. “Just this one letter that I’m trying to reply to.”

I worried my heart might give out with the amount of racing it was doing tonight.

It was obvious she meant my letter. Surely, she wouldn’t bring it up if she’d been looking for a way out of it, if she didn’t want to have the implied conversations? I’d been distressed by her lack of reply, but it was the only one that made sense if she didn’t want to work on things with me.

Or maybe I hadn’t given her much choice, and she was looking for a way out, but I kept pushing. I was, after all, the one who had essentially cornered her in the dark and asked about it.

I pushed down the panic and quietly cleared my throat. “Oh, yeah?”

I was going to murder myself. Eight years of absence, a marriage, and possible lingering feelings of love between us, and that was the best I could manage? I was the actual worst.

She breathed a laugh, so at least we both knew I was the worst. “Yeah…”

I wasn’t sure if it was Morgan’s plan, the Ellie thing, the darkness, or whether we’d both just grown enough to face things better, but I felt the way the moment was giving her strength. It was the same for me, a boldness I shouldn’t have had—wouldn’t have had with her before now—coursing through me and driving me onwards.

She sighed. “It’s interesting, isn’t it, the way things feel somehow safer in the darkness? Like, anything you say here might be forgotten or forgiven come morning, but, if you said it in the harsh light of day, it might burn you.”

My head was swimming. I didn’t know if that meant she wanted to pull me closer or push me away. I couldn’t decipher whether her response to my letter was positive or negative. Maybe I didn’t know her all that well, because I couldn’t read the emotions in her voice.

I didn’t think I’d be forgetting what she said in this darkness anytime soon, though.

“Yeah,” I whispered back, my voice sounding strangled and croaky.

She tilted her head, so, even without being able to make out her expression properly, I was certain she’d heard it. “The fear that holds us back in the daytime, the worry that we’ve misunderstood, that we need to minimize ourselves… they’re all a little less strong at night.”

“Something about the peace of nighttime and the secrecy of the darkness,” I said, feeling simultaneously hollow and on fire.

“Right,” she said slowly. “And yet…”

I felt like I might explode. Like, if she didn’t tell me what theyetwas, I’d never find peace again. Even if it ended up being something I didn’t want to hear, surely that was better than not knowing? This aching torture of being held on the precipice of knowing what she really wanted was no place to live.

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