Page 70 of Love, Morgan

“Hey, Harlow,” Ripley said into the phone, her voice not giving away even a hint that anything was wrong. I was going to need to learn that from her. “You’ll never guess who just swanned in here, five hours early.”

I breathed a weak laugh. This was normal, this was my life, and there was something comforting about it. I just needed to find my way through the haze in my brain and settle back into it. Everything would be fine once that happened.

“Oh, would you look at that, you guessed on the first try,” she said after a moment of letting Harlow guess that it was me. “Yeah, she’s here now, but massively jetlagged, so we were wondering whether you could… Ha. Yes. Exactly that. Thanks, Harlow.”

She hung up and grinned at me. “Harlow will be here with doughnuts in a few minutes.”

“Best news I’ve heard all day.”

I hated how flat I sounded. It had been a long time since I’d felt so low. If I ever saw Iona again, I was going to murder her for making me feel this way. I didn’t know what she was thinking, coming in being all cute and sweet and opening up to me. Ridiculous.

Ripley pulled up a wooden block that she used as a stool sometimes and looked at me seriously. “Which gives us time to have this conversation.”

“No, thank you,” I said, forcing a smile that I knew didn’t even begin to touch my eyes.

“Morgan, come on. You need to talk about it. If you don’t, it’s going to stew inside you and make you sick.”

“Don’t worry, if I need to be sick, I’ll just start chewing on the poisonous flowers you’ve got in here.”

“Morgan.” She looked at me so seriously that it reminded me of a parent. I’d never really had one who looked at me like that. There was something nice in knowing that she cared that much, that someone was going to be there if I fucked myself up so much that I needed help.

“Ripley.”

She sighed. “You’re really just calling it quits on this?”

“Yes. We had a plan. We’re sticking to the plan. Everything will be fine so long as we stick to the plan.”

“You sound every bit as heartbroken as you did when you called from the airport.” She took one of my hands between hers, feeling so warm it burned. “Not every plan goes to plan, you know?”

“This one will. I just have to get through this part, remember who I am, and what I want from life, and everything will be fine.”

She watched me doubtfully. “And what about Iona?”

“What about her? She has a life she’s getting back to. She has her dad. He needs her. It’s all very simple, and right there in the plan.” We both heard the rising emotion in my voice, but Ripley didn’t call it out, which I was grateful for.

“And what if she wants you in it?”

I hated Ripley and I loved her. I knew she was only doing this to help, but I didn’t need her saying things like that. I needed her to act like nothing had happened, like I didn’t even know who Iona was. And maybe that would be worse in the long run, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was how much this hurt and how much I didn’t want it to.

“She doesn’t,” I said, glaring at Ripley. “Once upon a time, you and Alicia made an adult choice to break up because you couldn’t be what you each needed. Your lives were on very different tracks. Iona and I did the same thing. We looked at the situation around us, and we made the adult choice.”

She sighed heavily and I knew it was a terrible comparison. Leaving Alicia had almost broken her, and she’d never stopped loving her. I’d been at the very front of the line telling her they belonged together when they were finally in the same place again.

Sure, they had made a decision together, but they could have made a better decision by actually talking to each other back then.

But this wasn’t the same thing. Iona and I had talked. We’d looked at the options, I’d been honest about my need to live outside the spouse and kids experience I’d already lived as a child. This was the right decision for us. Even if the comparison implied I was going to love Iona for the rest of my life.

Maybe I would. Maybe that was okay.

“So, no more Iona ever?” Ripley asked, and I knew what she was thinking. Iona had been part of my personality for over a year now. To think of me without her… To think of me with her, knowing what it felt like to see the light in her eyes when she talked…

“I’m still going to watch her videos,” I said quietly. “I told her I’d be watching, and I meant it. I might just need some time before I watch any new ones.”

Ripley nodded and I knew she got a sense for the heartbreak that came with the idea of seeing Iona—myIona—on screen. Any new videos would be filmed after we met, after everything. She’d changed so much this last week, opened up so much. I’d see all the places she was open, all the places she was closed and hurting. I’d see me in her. And I needed time to prepare for that.

I needed time to prepare for the idea that she might be wearing the necklace. And for the idea that she might not.

Ripley sighed, squeezing my hand. “Okay. If this is what you’re set on doing…”

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