Page 45 of Love, Morgan

I gestured to our bungalows, suddenly glad the first one we’d tried knocking at was empty. The very last thing we needed was to be dragging some other poor souls who were just looking to have a nice vacation into this. “I just need to go check something. I’ll meet you back here soon.”

I set off back down the path towards the main building, waving Morgan off as she yelled after me. I knew I wasn’t being fair to her, but, as soon as I had confirmation that Thalia was responsible for the mango, I was going to tell her. And, really, it was just a mango. Just a silly little thing. It wasn’t meant to be this serious.

Thalia grinned at me as I crossed the lobby towards her. “Hey, how’s it going? Where’s Morgan?”

I gestured her to the empty end of the counter. “You sent Morgan a mango.”

She laughed. “I might have.”

“You sent her a mango signed with my name.”

“Maybe.” She only seemed amused by the whole thing and it made me wonder what was wrong with me that I was more panicked than amused.

Of course, the answer to that was buried in the undeniable crush I was developing on Morgan and the reality of the situation we found ourselves in. We’d be leaving in a few days, I still didn’t really know her, and I got far too invested in people and struggled to let them go.

This was about more than a mango.

But Thalia wasn’t to know that.

“Why?” I asked her, my voice too strained and pleading.

Her smile faltered. “Iona? Is everything okay?”

My heart pounded in my chest. One day, I was going to look back on this and be so physically embarrassed by myself that I’d need to lock the memory away in a box and try never to think of it again. As it was, though, I couldn’t stop myself from being so invested in the whole thing.

“Iona?” she prompted again, reaching across the smooth, wooden counter to squeeze my upper arm.

“I’m fine. Sorry.” My face was already burning with shame. I tried again, more casually this time. “Why the mango? Why Morgan?”

She watched me, concern still present in her features, but more relaxed than before. “You wanted to talk to her. You’d spent a whole week desperately looking for her at every turn. She’d sent you a gift, and it had led to a conversation. I figured, if you reciprocated, the same might be true.”

I sagged against the counter. “She sent me a gift certificate for the spa, Thalia. You sent her amango.”

She laughed. “I know. If you sent her the same thing she sent you, you might have ended up in a weird back and forth of buying each other spa procedures but never actually talking to each other. A mango is weird, it invites a lot of questions. It was going to force her to talk to you. Then you’d get everything you wanted. And you deserve that.”

“But…” Butwhat?What was there to say to that? She actually had thought it out. It was a weird plan, but it had come from a sweet place.

“And it worked,” she continued triumphantly. “She frickin’ Romeo and Julieted you. That’s even better than I expected.”

From the outside, I’m sure it looked a lot better than it felt on the inside. I didn’t know what the problem was, but I knew it was definitely mine and mine alone.

I sighed. “I’m pretty sure she only did that because she’s Morgan and that’s kind of how she operates. She just dives in, does weird stuff, and goes for what she wants.”

“Right. And you were struggling to go for what you wanted, so I just helped you along a little.”

She was right. That is exactly what she’d done. She’d been exactly the kind of friend I’d always wanted—someone who saw through what I said to what I actually wanted, and helped me go after that. I just hadn’t realized that meant sending mangoes to women I liked and getting me caught up in nonsense mango mystery investigations.

I smiled weakly. “I appreciate it. I really do. A mango, though? That’s such a weird choice.”

She laughed. “It’s not that weird. You get mango every day at breakfast, you obviously love it, and it’s just weird enough that it would force her to talk to you to figure out why you sent it.”

“I also get pineapple. I’m surprised you didn’t send her a whole fruit salad.”

“You mostly get that for me, though, let’s be honest.”

I laughed. It hadn’t started that way, but I suppose it had become that. Initially, I got pineapple because I wanted to eat it, but, over the last week, I had been picking it up assuming Thalia was going to eat it.

Was that our friendship? I got her pineapple and she got me… Morgan?

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