Page 34 of Love, Morgan

I smiled, fighting the burning need to know her better. Maybe I did deny myself some things. “What’s your favorite food when you’re at home?”

For one second, a blank, confused expression crossed her face before she could pack it away, along with whatever had made her look haunted. “Um. Soup, probably? My dad’s a great cook and I just always loved his soups. There’s something comforting and familiar about them, even when he’s experimenting with flavors. It’s… I don’t know, home, I guess? The place that makes sense when everything else doesn’t?”

I hoped the universe appreciated the level of restraint I was showing by not immediately asking her to tell me every little thing about her life ever, because I desperately wanted to. She was different in real life, I’d always expected that. What I hadn’t expected was for her to be even more interesting, intriguing, and beautiful.

I’d watched Ripley crack and fall apart. It had made our friendship stronger in many ways, made us family. But it wasn’t like this. I’d loved Ripley platonically. I’d wanted to be there for her to help her heal, to help her get back on her feet. I wanted to do that for Iona too—not that she’d been knocked off her feet—but I wanted to see the cracks. I wanted to look into the light that shone from within them so I could know who she was behind the carefully constructed facade. I’d never wanted to know a person so much in my life. I’d never felt I knew a person so well and simultaneously knew nothing about them at all.

She said I was confident and assured, but she was open. We didn’t really know each other, and she was taking risks just letting me be around her, really, but here she was. One question, and a whole stream of insight into who she was. Words that told me more than a hundred of her videos had.

I bit down on all of it—the questions, the longing, the desperate desire to lean in and know her. “You should get one of the soups, then. It sounds like soup is comforting for you, and that’s probably a good thing when someone broke into your home and forced you out to lunch with them.”

She laughed, a little of the distant look fading from her eyes. “Does it count as breaking in if I watched you do it and you followed me inside?”

“Do you live in a house or an apartment?”

She frowned, tilting her head at me. “An apartment?”

“Is that a question?” I laughed.

“No. Sorry.”

“If you watched a complete stranger scale your building and let themselves in your window, wouldn’t that still be breaking and entering?”

“I live pretty high up…”

“So added determination, then. Still breaking and entering, no?”

“Yeah, I guess, but you said they’re a stranger.” She watched me carefully.

“Right. So?”

“Well, you’re not.”

My stomach swooped in an unfamiliar way. I feared this might have been the nonsense Ripley had talked about a million times over the years—how being around Alicia made her feel. I didn’t have time or the circumstances for that.

I shrugged. “I suppose not. I’m your biggest fan. President of the fan club.”

“There isn’t a fan club,” she said, only mildly terrified by the idea that there might be.

I laughed. “Not officially, perhaps, but you have more fans than I think you realize, and people find each other on the internet.”

“And are these people aware you’re the president?”

“They should be, but I’m very busy. It’s on them if they haven’t taken the time out to realize who your real number one fan is.”

She laughed, shaking her head, and I truly loved seeing it. It wasn’t as though I didn’t like seeing other people happy—Ripley and Alicia being back together, Freddie and their husband over the flowers they bought every week at Ripley’s store, Alicia’s brother Joel with Ekundayo, the way Harlow smiled every time she looked at tiny baby Briar… I loved happiness, even if I’d never tell anyone. But this was something else.

I waited for her laughter to subside, drinking in every second of it. “So, soup?”

She nodded, amusement still lighting her face. “Soup.”

“Great. Now that’s settled…” I looked around suspiciously and leaned further over the table. “We have a mango mystery to solve.”

Whenever I said something that puzzled her, her nose twitched slightly. It was quite possibly the cutest thing I’d ever seen. I couldn’t get enough of it, especially this close. I didn’t think she was aware of it—just an automatic response to confusion—but I was. My eyes lingered on her nose before looking back up into her eyes. It was dangerous being this close to her. I knew I got lost in her videos, but that was in the privacy of my own home, late at night. I was not supposed to lose my grip on time, and space, and reality when I was having lunch with her.

“A mango mystery?” She asked, amused and doubtful.

“Yeah. What else are we going to do? Not figure out who is impersonating you and sending mangoes to unsuspecting guests?”

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