Page 33 of Love, Morgan

I’d assumed she was just telling me she was leaving the regular way, and I wouldn’t see her again for the rest of my trip. As her invitation sunk in, though, I just stared at her.

“Hello? Iona? Food? You usually eat lunch around this time, right? And it’s been dangerously long since I last ate something.”

I flushed at the fact that she knew when I went for lunch. I hadn’t seen her, so it hadn’t occurred to me that she might have seen me. How much had she seen? Why was she even paying attention? Was the mango thing even real, or was it just a ploy to get into my bungalow?

“Come on,” she said when I didn’t answer. “It’s lunchtime, I’m sure you’re hungry, and getting lunch with me is infinitely better than sitting on the deck alone, watching movies.”

Movies. Right. Well, she didn’t know everything, it seemed. The relief was momentarily sweet, damaged only by the realization that if she knew I’d been working, she’d probably have thrown my laptop in the ocean.

“Iona,” she pleaded again when I still didn’t move.

I tried not to feel anything about how much I liked her saying my name. Being around her was like being on a rollercoaster and I had barely even done it. Was I really going to go have lunch with her?

I looked at her, the light shining on her radiantly. Was I reallynotgoing to go have lunch with her?

“Lunch. Right. Yes,” I said, and her answering smile was probably the most brilliant thing I’d ever seen.

Chapter 11

Morgan

Some days, you woke up and you chose chaos. Who was I kidding? Every day, I woke up and chose chaos. It was just that my usual brand of chaos did not include climbing over a balcony and onto the deck of a woman I hadn’t been able to get out of my head since I’d first seen her face on YouTube.

However, with her sitting across from me at lunch, nervously fidgeting with her hair and the cutlery, I found I’d happily climb as many balconies as she wanted.

Plus, it was heroic. The stuff of legendary novels and great love stories. I wasn’t foolish enough to think this was going to become a great love story—I’d been partially avoiding her for a week, she was essentially famous, and we were going our separate ways, back to our regular lives soon—but it was going to sound excellent when I told Ripley and the others about it later.

I wriggled in my seat, edging closer to the table, closer to her. The mango that was now in my pocket bumped gently against my leg. It wasn’t the weirdest thing I’d ever had in my pocket, but it wasn’t exactly regular either.

Iona sucked in a breath through her nose, watching me. Her cheeks were red and she seemed to be struggling slightly to get as much air into her lungs as she would like. I pretended not to notice.

“What do you think you’re going to get?” she asked, nodding towards the menu.

I smiled. It wasn’t a date, I hadn’t named it as such, but it felt an awful lot like I imagined dates did, and I was going to let myself have that small indulgence. “The coconut curry. Though, perhaps I should tell them not to bother sending the mango chutney out. I did bring my own mango, after all.”

Iona flushed harder than before. If I hadn’t already been certain she hadn’t sent the mango, I’d be doubting it now.

She was different in real life than she was online, which made sense, but it was still interesting to watch. Behind the camera, she seemed to know exactly who she was. On stage, she’d seemed perfectly comfortable and content. But, over dinner, one-to-one, there was something so much more shy and nervous about her, even when she was plucky. I supposed we all had work personalities we put on. Mine was just a slightly more professional version of my usual self—and they were all lucky to get that—but hers was bigger, more, a whole persona she seemed to have when she was being the person we all watched online.

“You’re very confident, aren’t you?” she asked, surprising me with how even her tone was.

I smirked. “Do you think I shouldn’t be?”

“No, no, not at all.” She looked down, fidgeting with her napkin. “I just… I don’t know. I guess I just realized that not once have you seemed remotely unsure about anything. You were certain I was working and yelled at me to stop. You invited yourself into my bungalow by climbing over the railings. You know exactly what you’re going to order. No doubt. No hesitancy.”

I watched her. This wasn’t a great love story, I wasn’t supposed to feel tender looking at her. I wasn’t supposed to be reading between the lines and seeing all the cracks she carefully papered over when she was being The Pretty Gift.

But I also wasn’t one to deny myself what I wanted. She was right about that—I was decisive.

I shrugged. “Life’s too short to doubt myself. I like what I like, I want what I want, and I go for it.”

She nodded, looking down at her menu, deep in thought.

“Do you not know what you want?” I asked.

Her breath caught and that was the moment we both realized I might have been asking a deeper question. I told myself I only meant for lunch. In reality, I wanted any and every answer she could give me to such an all-encompassing question.

The frightened look in her eyes—hidden so well only someone who watched her face as frequently as I did would even see it—told me she wasn’t ready for that question in a grander sense. As much as it made me ache to know all the things that bothered her, to ease her aches, I knew I wasn’t the person for that. So far, I was a person who’d yelled at her, invaded her vacation home, and insisted she go to lunch with me. I was a fan who was not doing a great job of not looking like a stalker.

---