Page 58 of Love, Morgan

What else was there to say, really? I didn’t need the rest of it, I just needed her to know that. There was so much we still didn’t know—about each other, about parting ways, about the next few days—but she needed to know that.

“I’m glad it was you too,” she said.

I’d watched enough of her videos to know she was happy, but underneath the happiness was sadness, worry, and dread at what came next. I wish I knew how to take it away, but it would be a lie if I claimed not to be feeling the same thing.

“As you should be,” I said in a pale imitation of my usual bravado. “I’m amazing.”

She laughed, more open than I’d seen her before. “You really are. And, uh, for the record, you’re also an excellent kisser.”

“Thanks,” I said, flipping my hair over my shoulder. “I haven’t practiced at all.”

“Just a natural, but who’s surprised?”

I loved the way she joked with me. She was right about me being amazing, but the way she matched my energy reminded me of Ripley butmore.

Ripley was one of the only people I was ever completely myself around. Not in the way that I was always myself, but in the way that I was vulnerable because it was going to be okay. Somehow, binging videos online and taking a vacation had brought me another person just like that. Only this one, I wanted to kiss, too, and that really was something.

“So, really, what now?” I asked, simultaneously hopeful and nervous.

She looked down, blushing hard. “I’m not sure. I mean, we already know what happens when we leave…”

“Right.” My chest clenched uncomfortably, making it hard to breathe.

“But, for the next few days?”

I sighed. This whole thing had come from being honest, why beat around the bush now? “Look, Iona, I like you. So much. And I know that in a few days, we won’t be together anymore, but, for those few days, I don’t want to be wanting you like this and having to pretend not to. Ripley was right, it doesn’t matter how much it hurts later, it’s going to hurt either way, I want to know I did everything I could with the time I had. I want to make the pain worth it. I mean, it’s already worth it, but…”

She smiled. “I know what you mean.” She looked over my shoulder, out at the water. The sun burned gold in her eyes. “Relationships, of any kind, aren’t like this for me. And, you know, this whole trip was me trying something. I feel like it’s changing my life in a lot of ways, and I want to look back on it knowing that I lived. Life is scary sometimes, but I want to know that when opportunities for wonderful things presented themselves, I didn’t walk away. I wasn’t too scared to go for them.”

There was something in her tone, and in the way I already knew her, that told me this was all new for her too. This trip really was changing her life. She was being real and messy, having feelings, being open to the pain. It was brave, braver than she realized she was. I figured we could be together in that. Even if that was all we ever got to be together in, we’d at least have this moment, these days, where we told each other what we wanted, where we lived and loved and enjoyed every moment, and we were brave even in the face of oncoming pain.

“Well,” I said, resolved, “we know I don’t do stuff like this ever either, but there’s you, and being honest got you to kiss me, so I’m going to stick with that, if that’s okay?”

She laughed, pressing herself into me again. “That’s definitely okay.”

“Great. You’re perfect. You’re the most perfect person I’ve ever met—and yes, that includes myself. You’re perfect in all the things you think make you imperfect, and all I want is to spend time with you and kiss you, and have these few days where I get to know what being with you is like.” I gulped. “And I want to carry that with me for the rest of my life because there’s not going to be another you.”

She blinked furiously, her breath shaky, and I found myself wondering why it had to end. Did different places really matter? Did different time zones really make a difference? Did my romance-free life in Jackson Point and her life with her dad really make it all that difficult?

She nodded. “I want that too.”

The fire inside me was extinguished. It was easy to think real life didn’t matter when we were here, but it did matter. Our families, our friends, our lives and jobs—all of it mattered. We had this trip, but trips were no measure of what real life would be like. If we only had these few days, reality would never ruin it.

Ripley and Alicia had been in the same place, they’d been married, and reality had gotten them. Sure, they figured it out in the end, but the breakdown of their marriage, the aftershocks of their divorce, those had been ugly and bitter. Iona was too precious to do that to. If we only had a couple of days, they would be perfect forever.

If we only had a couple of days, I wasn’t going to miss out on kissing her.

I pulled her in closer, feeling the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the way she felt just as panicked as I did, and pressed my lips to hers.

She melted against me, and it was every bit as perfect as the first. Maybe even better for all the things it was filled with—all the longing and the hope and pain, all the yearning yet to come, all the wishes that life could have worked out differently, that maybe one day we’d find our way back to one another, and all the ways we knew we wouldn’t.

Chapter 18

Iona

It was an odd thing to get everything you wanted while knowing you only had two days with it. It was an odd thing to realize right before you kissed someone just how much you wanted them. And it was an odd thing just how much the brain was capable of shutting out so long as you didn’t get a second alone.

All night on the deck and at dinner, it had been easy to pretend that this thing with Morgan was the start of something, that, someday maybe, we’d come back here together, that for the rest of our lives, we’d be building something together. But that wasn’t our story. We were a couple of stolen seconds. On a universal scale, gone in the blink of an eye. But, in my heart, I knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

---