Adri pursed her mouth, a muscle jumping in her jaw. Finally, she stood up too, and left out the back door just like Stevie.
Iris sat there, her pulse galloping against her ribs more than she’d like to admit. She wasn’t one to back away from conflict, but this . . . she wasn’t sure what role she played here among this group of people who had known one another for a decade. She didn’t know if she should go after Stevie or give her time to cool off. Because the truth was, she didn’t really know Stevie at all.
Ren scrubbed a hand over their face, then lifted their glass in a toast. “Welcome to the fam, Iris.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WHILE IN PORTLAND, Stevie always forgot how much she loved the ocean. The vastness of it. She spent her days fighting huge emotions and thoughts, constantly working to keep herself from spilling over. But here, in front of the Pacific at twilight, with nothing around except water and rocks and sky, she remembered just how small she was, how insignificant in the scheme of the universe.
It was a good reminder, healthy perspective and all that, particularly as she sat in the sand, tears on a free-for-all down her cheeks. She’d barely set them loose, her chest opening up in relief, when she caught a shadow to her right. Wiping at her face, she glanced over, expecting to see a redhead walking toward her, but instead saw her ex.
Her heart did something funny in her chest—a leap, a flutter, she wasn’t sure—and she had no idea what it meant. She turned back to the ocean, focused on all that power, that mystery.
Adri, of course, was undeterred by Stevie’s silence. She settled next to her, and Stevie was momentarily overwhelmed by familiarity—Adri’s rosewater scent, the familiar way a sigh slipped from her throat.
The way she pressed her shoulder into Stevie’s. That touch was like a fingerprint—she’d know Adri blindfolded.
“I’m sorry,” Adri said.
“Are you?” Stevie asked, still not looking at her. Ocean. Water. Waves.
“Yeah. I am.”
“For what exactly?”
Adri didn’t answer for a while, but it was a fair question. She wrapped her arms around her knees, leaned forward a little, and the wind whipped her hair into the sky, the fading light turning the color a dark green.
“For being an ass to Iris?” Adri finally said.
“Is that a question? Because you were definitely an ass to Iris. Have been, actually, since the audition.”
Adri nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry for being an ass to Iris.”
“Okay. That’s a start.”
Adri sighed and shook her head. “Look, I guess I wasn’t exactly prepared for this.”
“You offered her the role. You knew she would be here.”
“Not Iris here. Iris and you.”
Stevie felt the words like a shove to the chest. She must’ve heard wrong. Adri was with Vanessa. Vanessa, who was sweet and smart and beautiful and not a fucking mess all the time. Adri was the one who started the entire conversation that led to her and Stevie’s breakup, brought it up in bed one night back in January, after they’d already brushed their teeth and turned out the lights and said good night.
I think we should talk about breaking up.
That’s what Adri said, her exact words, and Stevie had felt them like a bomb finally detonating, a bomb she’d been watching falling from the sky for months. Of course Stevie had agreed—she always agreed with Adri, with everyone—and once your partner says something like that, something so final and shattering, there was no going back anyway.
So they’d broken up.
And Stevie had been lost for months, wondering if she’d ever have had the courage to end things if Adri hadn’t spoken up first, which had brought on a spiral of self-pity and hatred that pretty much locked Stevie into place until very recently.
She knew she and Adri didn’t have what she wanted, didn’t have what Adri wanted either, but she also craved familiarity.
Safety.
And she and Adri had been so, so safe. Even now, that safety was like a clear eye in a hurricane—wide open and calm. No one-night stands, no nervous puking, no lessons.
No wild redhead who made Stevie—
She squeezed her eyes shut, stopping the thought. This wasn’t about Iris. Not at its core. Couldn’t be. She and Iris weren’t even real.
“You wanted this,” Stevie finally said. “You’re the one who put this whole thing into motion. You’re with Van. You’re living with Van.”
“I know,” Adri said. “And I . . . I’m not saying that I . . . fuck.” She rubbed her forehead, sent her fingers through her wavy hair.
“What? You’re not saying what?”
Adri dropped her hands. “I’m not saying I want to get back together, okay?”
Stevie shook her head. “This conversation is making me feel like shit, Adri.”
“I’m sorry. Dammit.” Adri turned so she was facing Stevie, took one of her hands in hers. “I don’t mean to do that. Really. I just . . . look, we were together a long time. That doesn’t just go away, does it?”
Stevie’s throat went tight. Too tight, but she managed a raspy, “No.”
“And I miss you. I do.”
Tears welled into Stevie’s eyes. “Fuck, Adri.”
“I know.”
“You’re with Van,” Stevie said again.
“And you’re with Iris.”
Stevie swallowed. “I am.”
Adri leaned closer, rested her chin on Stevie’s shoulder. She was so close. So . . . familiar.
“See?” Adri said softly. “A lot of different things can be true at once.”
Stevie leaned her head against Adri’s—so easy, so normal, even as her mind whirled like the ocean wind.
“I worry about you,” Adri said after a while. “I don’t want you to get hurt. And Iris seems like a lot.”
“So . . . what? You want me to break up with her?” Stevie asked. “Are you breaking up with Van?”
Adri said nothing. Stevie wasn’t even sure what she wanted that answer to be—she loved Vanessa. And Stevie didn’t want to get back with Adri, but god, she had to admit the thought was intoxicating. Sinking back into something she knew, something she understood, even if it was somewhat lackluster as far as great love stories went.
But maybe Iris was right.
Maybe those kinds of stories were simply that—stories. Myths humanity wove to thread hope through the meaningless chaos of life.
Still, that hope of a great love was there, fanned into an even stronger flame since she and Adri separated, and Stevie didn’t think she could ignore it now.
And she didn’t think Adri wanted to ignore it either.
Stevie pulled back to look at her ex. “You’re not breaking up with her.”
It wasn’t a question.
Adri’s teeth closed over her lower lip, and she shook her head. “I love Van. I do. But I love you too.”
Clarity glimmered on the edge of Stevie’s thoughts, a glimmer of light in the middle of a storm. Adri’s attitude with Iris. The way she was all over Vanessa at the pool. This conversation right here, which felt like tentacles reaching out to lock Stevie back into place, back into Adri.
Tears spilled over and raced down Stevie’s cheeks, but she forced herself to stand up. She knew she needed to say more. Needed to tell Adri to stop, to let her go, but she couldn’t get the words together in her head. They jumbled together, a mishmash of things she knew were true and things that terrified her, that illusive clarity still hovering out of reach. But she knew she couldn’t stay here, and those words were, at least, easier to say.
“I need to go.”
“Stevie—”
But Stevie kept walking, and the wind and waves swallowed up whatever Adri was going to say to stop her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IRIS WATCHED STEVIE lean her head against Adri’s.
She hadn’t meant to see. She’d come up to the room to grab a hair tie so she could go out on the beach to find Stevie. As she secured her still-damp hair into a low ponytail, she’d stepped out onto the balcony to look for her fake girlfriend, glancing left and right so she knew which way to head.
And there she was, sitting in the sand and staring at the waves, a tiny shape a few hundred yards down the beach. But just as Iris was about to turn away to head downstairs and outside, she’d seen Adri.
She’d seen Adri sit down next to Stevie.