Iris didn’t say anything for a few beats, long enough for Stevie to turn her head to look at her. Iris chewed on her bottom lip, eyes a little distant.
Stevie nudged her knee. “Hey. I mean all that in a good way.”
Iris’s expression cleared. “No, no, I know. But Stevie . . .” She sighed, pursed her mouth a little. “All that confidence bullshit is learned. I’m confident and loud and funny because I had to be growing up. I like sex, yeah, but it’s not like every single encounter I have is amazing. At least half are mediocre at best. Some are truly abysmal. And I will tell you right now, the first few people I slept with? I was not this radiant goddess you see before you.” She waved her hand down her body, a smile turning up one corner of her mouth. “Sex is just like anything else. Practice makes perfect. Or at least, it makes better.”
“Makes non-puking.”
Iris laughed. “Exactly.”
“But that’s the problem, I have no way to practice. How do you practice relaxing while taking off your shirt in front of a stranger, when that’s the exact thing making me anxious?”
“I don’t know,” Iris said, laughing. “Maybe there’s a gal out there in a bar somewhere with a sex lessons kink.”
Stevie laughed too but then froze, her mouth hanging wide open as an idea bloomed into her brain.
“What?” Iris asked.
Stevie snapped her mouth shut. “Nothing.”
“That was not a look that meant nothing.”
Stevie shook her head, her face as warm as an Alabama summer. “I just . . . well . . . um . . .” God, she couldn’t say it. Couldn’t ask it in a million years.
“Out with it,” Iris said. “I can tell you want to say it, so take a deep breath and do it.”
Stevie couldn’t help but smile at the firm yet gentle way Iris commanded her. Very . . . teacher-like.
“You’re sort of making my point here,” she said.
“The point you haven’t said out loud yet?” Iris asked, folding her arms.
“Yeah, that one.” Stevie tucked her frizzing hair behind her ear. “Okay, what if . . . you helped me?”
Iris canted her head. “Helped you with what?”
Stevie’s mouth worked, trying to get the words out. How do you say sexy stuff without saying, well, sexy stuff? Still, if she was really asking for this—if by some chance Iris said yes—she’d be doing a lot more than just saying the words.
Oh god.
This was a preposterous idea.
Her stomach lurched into her throat, and she swallowed hard. She wanted to be more confident. She wanted to hook up with someone, even just kiss someone, without throwing up. Her anxiety was what it was. It would always factor into everything she did. But behavioral therapy was a big part of her treatment. Her therapist, Keisha, was always giving her little challenges to help her feel more comfortable—go to a movie by herself, take a class to learn something she felt incompetent at, take a trusted friend to a bar and ask someone out.
And she’d done it. She’d met Iris, even kissed Iris, but clearly, she needed more practice beyond that first interaction. She needed to take it to the next level.
“Hey,” Iris said, nudging her knee. “Help with—”
“Sexy stuff,” Stevie blurted out before she could talk herself out of it.
Iris’s eyes rounded. “Stevie, I do not have a sex lessons kink.”
“No, yeah, I know, but hear me out.” Stevie shifted so she was sitting on her knees, then grabbed the remote and paused John and Kate’s snowy Central Park reunion. She started ticking off on her fingers, adrenaline pushing her forward. “We’ve already kissed.”
“True. Best kiss of your life.”
Stevie fought a laugh and kept going. “You’ve already seen my . . . my . . . you know.” She waved her hand around her chest.
“God, Stevie, you can’t even say boobs.”
“I can so.”
“Then say it.” Iris pursed her mouth in challenge.
“What are we, middle schoolers?”
“Boobs, boobs, boobs,” Iris chanted.
Stevie laughed. “Okay, fine, boobs, there, I said it.”
“Now say tits.”
Stevie groaned. “Why?”
“Lesson number one.”
“Really?” Stevie’s stomach fluttered. “So you’ll do it?”
Iris just lifted a brow and folded her arms.
Stevie blew out a breath, ruffling her bangs. “T-tits.”
“Okay,” Iris said slowly. “Now with gusto.”
“Tits!” Stevie yelled.
Iris laughed. “Now we’re talking. Next word: pus—”
“Oh, Jesus, baby steps, okay?” Stevie said, covering her face with her hands. Iris went silent and Stevie peeked at her from between her fingers. “So?”
Iris sighed and turned so she was facing Stevie, crisscrossing her legs. “Tell me more. What do you actually want me to do?”
Stevie dropped her hands. “I don’t know.”
“Then I can’t do it. You have to know, Stevie. Especially with this sort of thing.”
Stevie felt herself relax a little at Iris’s soft tone. Not only that, but her words too—the gentle way she was taking Stevie seriously, despite her jokes. How it was very clear that Iris, for all her bravado, took sex pretty seriously too.
Which was exactly why she was the perfect person to help Stevie.
“Okay,” Stevie said. “I want to be able to talk to potential romantic partners—”
“Romantic, or sexual?” Iris asked. “Not always the same thing.”
“Both,” Stevie said. “Yeah, both. I want to talk to them without feeling like I need a shot of tequila, which I can’t have anyway. I want to . . . kiss them as me. Not Stefania. I want to get naked with them without throwing up.”
“That would be preferable for them, yeah.”
Stevie smiled. “And I want to actually sleep with someone I haven’t spent four years pining over. I . . . well, I want to be more like you, I guess.”
Iris frowned but said nothing. She stared at Kate’s frozen face for a few seconds then turned back to Stevie. “If we do this, you’re in charge. By which I mean, you have to set the boundaries, the rules. I don’t want to accidentally do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”
Stevie nodded. “I mean, you too. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable either.”
Iris smirked. “There’s not a lot about sex that makes me uncomfortable.”
“What about romance?” Stevie asked, another idea popping into her mind. If they really were going to do this, she wanted Iris to get something from it too. The woman was risking getting vomited on again, coaching a hopeless twenty-eight-year-old in the ways of hookups. The least Stevie could do was give her a reason to persevere.
“What about it?” Iris asked.
“Romance makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it?”
Iris sighed. “Not uncomfortable so much as . . . currently uninterested.”
“But you need to be interested, right? For your book?”
“What’s your point?”
“Well, I mean, one day, when I do finally hook up with someone, I still want it to feel . . . nice.”
“Nice.”
“Romantic. Even if it’s just a one-night stand, I like music and soft lights and, shit, I don’t know. Romance.”
Iris looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Still waiting for your point, Stevie.”
“You help me with . . .”
“Showing your tits.”
“Yes. That. And I’ll make it romantic. For you. So you can, you know, have more research for your book. That’s half the point of our partnership, isn’t it?”
Iris narrowed her eyes, but then her brows lifted. “Okay, your point is valid. But let me make sure I’ve got this straight. We’re fake dating in front of your friends.”
“Yes.”
“And I now have a sex lessons kink.”
Stevie grinned. “I mean, call it what you want.”
“And you have a romance lessons kink.”
“Look how symbiotic we are.”
“It’s a beautiful thing,” Iris said dryly, then her tone softened. “Are you sure?”
“I am,” Stevie said, then stood up. Her blood sped through her body, making her fingertips tingle, her heart drum against her ribs. “And I think we should start right now.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”