Page 49 of Love, Morgan

“Iona didn’t send you a mango, so you decided to investigate a mango? Morgan, you’ve done some weird shit over the years, but this might take the cake.Whyare you investigating a mango?”

“Ugh. Do we have to do this?”

“Yes, because I’m your best friend, and you only clam up like this when something’s bothering you really deep down, so spill.”

“Fine. I received a mango that was signed from Iona, but it was in a gift bag.”

“Okay. And?”

“Have you learned nothing?” I shook my head. How many of Iona’s videos had I shown her? The answer should be perfectly obvious. “Iona wouldn’t put a mango in a gift bag. She’d put it in a box. Beautifully and sensibly wrapped.”

“Of course she would.” She sounded amused, but I was choosing to ignore that.

“And the handwriting wasn’t a match, either. So, we’ve been investigating who sent it.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight, someone pretended to be Iona to send you a mango?”

“Yes.”

“That’s so weird.”

“So you see the problem.”

She laughed again. “I see that’s a weird thing to do, but it still doesn’t quite explain the reason you’re positively simmering.”

“It’s hot here.”

“I’m sure it is.” Her tone perfectly communicated she wasn’t letting me get away with that being my answer. The expectation, her waiting for the real answer, hung heavy in the quiet between us.

“Fine,” I snapped, giving up. If I couldn’t tell Ripley, I couldn’t tell anyone, and I couldn’t keep having this spinning around in my brain with nowhere to go. “We were investigating, Iona got this bad look on her face and ran away. I don’t know if I did something wrong, or whether she’s coming back, or whether I ruined everything.”

“Oh.” Her tone softened so much it made my chest hurt and my cheeks redden with shame. “I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t you always have a policy that you’re perfect and don’t do anything wrong? Everyone else just needs to get on your wavelength?”

“Of course I do.”

“But this is Iona.”

I wanted to deny it, to brush her off, to find my usual energy and snap out of whatever was happening to me, but I couldn’t find the strength to do so. Why had Iona run off? Where had she gone to? What had I done wrong?

I’d worked hard over the years to get over my family. It hadn’t occurred to me that the minute I found someone I liked, it’d feel like them all over again the minute anything went remotely wrong.

“Yes,” I admitted, reluctantly.

“Iona’s different because you like her,” Ripley said quietly.

“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “How do I stop liking her?”

She breathed a quiet laugh. It wasn’t cruel, more knowing and understanding. “If it were that easy, you’d have told me the way to do that when I was still pining over my ex-wife.”

“That was different. You two are back together.”

“And you and Iona couldbetogether.”

“Impossible.”

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