Page 8 of Love, Morgan

“Goodbye, Morgan. Safe travels.”

“Ugh. Tell Freddie to bring lemon squares to bridge when I get back.”

“Will do. Now, goodbye.” And she was gone.

I pulled my phone away from my ear, continuing to eat one of my doughnuts, looking forward to Freddie’s lemon squares when I got home, and hoping that the resort I was heading to would have great baked goods too. The pictures of the food online seemed impressive, they just had to live up to the visuals, and I had faith that they would. I didn’t want to be disappointed.

Without really considering it much, I clicked on the YouTube app on my phone, heading straight for Iona’s page. It was habit now. If I had my phone in my hand, I was inevitably going to end up on her page. I wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but there was no point pretending to myself. Much like when Ripley had first started accusing me of having a crush on Iona. I’d denied it furiously to her face, but, to myself, I’d known that was what it was. How could it be anything else? I was giving up sleep for the woman—and I loved sleep.

But it was embarrassing. I didn’t get crushes, and she was a YouTuber. Loads of people probably had crushes on her. She was basically a celebrity. And I didn’t want to be a weird fan, stalking her online.

But it was a crush, and it hadn’t gone away. And that was fine. Ripley could tease me as much as she liked, it wasn’t like I didn’t tease her about Alicia and whatever was going on with the pair of them when they were writing letters and getting back together. The only difference here was that Iona and I didn’t actually know each other and we weren’t going to get together. Sure, I went to her show, but I wasn’t going to sit around waiting to run into her so I could hit on her. She probably wouldn’t date fans anyway. That was probably a line celebrities had to keep themselves safe.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to keep watching her videos, though.

I flicked from the home tab to the videos tab and, at the exact moment I did, a new video appeared, uploaded only seconds ago. I was there before I could even get the push notification about it.

My heart stalled when I saw the title:An Announcement.

As I fought for the headphones in my bag, my head swirled. Was it bad? Could the announcement be that she was quitting The Pretty Gift? Would she do that? It was her primary source of income, and she was oddly popular with it—the woman was big enough to do live shows. That washuge.

But, maybe it wasn’t enough? Or maybe she’d had enough? Maybe she’d hit the wall where she didn’t want to wrap another gift ever again. That would be totally understandable.

As I finally grabbed my headphones and worked on getting them onto my ears, another thought occurred to me, and I wasn’t sure which one I liked less.

She didn’t share much about her life on her channel, but she did share a few things. One of the things that had come up a long time ago was that she was single. I hadn’t mentioned to anyone—not even Ripley—how excited I’d been about that news, ridiculous as I was.

It shouldn’t have made any difference. We didn’t know each other, nor were we going to. But I hadn’t been able to suppress the way my heart and my stomach had clenched at the news, or how I’d felt myself blushing.

I was genuinely ridiculous.

But, what if, now, she was finally sharing some personal news? What if it was that she’d gotten engaged and was getting married?

I’d be happy for her, of course. I only wanted her to be happy. But I’d also be just the tiniest bit jealous. Just a little bit. A teeny, tiny little bit.

I took a deep breath and hit play on the video.

“Hi, everyone,” Iona said, smiling out at the audience in that way she did. “Thanks for joining me in another video.”

She was so pretty it was ridiculous. I could count on one hand the number of people I’d thought were attractive in my life—crushes really weren’t something I did—and none of them had been like this. None of them had felt this consuming or all-encompassing.

What was it about her? And how was it that the one person in the world who seemed to be completely my type was someone I only knew a snippet of from the internet?

Maybe I didn’t want the answer to that. It was probably the kind of thing that needed dissecting in therapy…

“I’ve got something a little different for you today,” Iona continued. She was sitting at her crafting table as always, looking beautiful and warm and happy as always, and all I wanted was to explode with not knowing whether the announcement was good or bad. “A quick little announcement about life!”

Oh, god, it’s going to be bad. She’s quitting and never coming back…

“Since I started The Pretty Gift several years ago, I haven’t really taken a break. I haven’t been willing to take time off or go on a vacation because I was worried it wouldn’t be here when I got back. It felt fragile and risky to leave it.” She smiled so softly, like she was proud of herself and her channel. “But now, things are going well. We’ve created an incredible community here, I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of you during live shows, and, also, my family and friends are worried about me.”

I watched as she laughed self-deprecatingly, chewing my lip. If the people closest to her were worried about her, I was worried about her too. I got it, I made my own schedule and I didn’t take a lot of breaks, but she needed to look after herself.

“So,” she continued, pausing to take a deep breath, “I’m taking a vacation. Two weeks. No work. No social media. Time to look after myself and reset. And, hopefully, you’ll all still be here when I get back, refreshed and ready to give you even better content.”

My heart stuttered uncomfortably. I wasn't sure whether I was relieved she was okay, happy she was looking after herself, or secretly wishing we’d end up at the same resort. The chances were slim-to-none, but my heart was a fool.

I opened the comments. I was early, but there were already people commenting—some wondering what the announcement was before watching, while others started adding their promises that they’d still be here when she got back, that they supported her looking after herself.

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