Iris smirked. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be?”
Stevie just stared at her for a moment, arms folded, her eyes like shovels trying to dig underneath Iris’s cool expression.
“What?” Iris asked, starting to squirm. She’d lose in a staring contest against Stevie, every single time.
“Why don’t you actually date, Iris?” Stevie asked softly.
“What? That was out of left field.”
Stevie’s gaze stayed with her. “I’m just curious. I know you write romance and you’re a middle child and your friends love you a lot, but I don’t know anything else about you. Not really. I’m just trying to understand.”
Iris’s heart sped up, a too-tender nudging under her ribs. “Why? It’s not like we’re—”
“Real, god, I know.” Stevie lifted her arms, then let them slap against her side. “But a lot about this is real. My life. This play. Your book. Adri and me. You and me affect real shit, Iris, whether you want to admit it or not. And I just . . . I want to understand why you’re picking fights with my ex and why you’re even here with me at all. Why aren’t you with someone else?”
Iris’s clenched her jaw, looked away. It wasn’t like her friends hadn’t asked her this very question multiple times in the past year. Why don’t you try dating, Iris? You’re so amazing, Iris. Anyone would be lucky to have you, Iris. It’s their loss, Iris.
But was it? When every romantic step Iris had ever taken left her alone and wondering what the hell she did wrong? Why she couldn’t be different?
“Are you aromantic?” Stevie asked. “It’s great if you are, I just want to—”
“No,” Iris said. That would be so easy, wouldn’t it? Especially with Stevie, who barely knew her, but no way in hell was she going to co-opt someone’s actual identity. And she knew that wasn’t it. “I like romance, okay? I’m interested in it. I just . . .”
Stevie waited, her eyes all soft and patient.
“I really wish you wouldn’t look at me like that,” Iris said.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m some sad sack because I’ve made a logical decision.”
“Logical . . . decision,” Stevie said slowly.
Iris nodded. “Look, I’m not going to get into my sad romantic history again. You already know about Jillian and Grant.”
Stevie frowned. “So one asshole and a guy who really loved you but wanted different things means . . . what?”
“It’s not just them, okay?” Iris said.
Her throat went a little thick, but she swallowed hard, kept talking. If she said just enough, Stevie would get it. She’d understand, agree with Iris even, and they could move the fuck on.
“It’s my whole goddamn life,” she said. “It’s my blissfully-in-love parents constantly telling me to get serious, my mother’s setups because she knows I can’t be trusted to find someone decent on my own. It’s every guy in high school making me feel like a toy to be passed around the soccer team. And I let them do it, because yeah, even back then, I liked sex, okay? Sue me.”
“Iris, I—”
“And then, once I came out as bi in college?” Iris plowed ahead, eyes stinging. “Suddenly the fact that I liked sex became a huge moral failing. I was greedy. And, Jesus, the threesome requests. Not jokes, mind you, actual requests from guys who approached me in the student center, in the gym, in the middle of a fucking lecture hall, like I was nothing more than a business opportunity. And don’t you dare tell me everyone who’s bisexual deals with that—my best friend, Claire, came out in high school and never once got propositioned. Not once. And why? Because she’s sweet. She’s relationship material. I’m not serious, Stevie. I’m just the girl you fuck.”
Iris’s lungs ached and she looked away—she didn’t want to see Stevie’s expression, whatever it was. She swiped at the moisture leaking from her eyes. Fucking wind.
“And Jillian?” she said, folding her arms and gazing at the waves. “Jillian was just the icing on a really big-ass cake.”
For a good while—felt like forever—Stevie didn’t say anything. She was quiet for so long, Iris glanced at her to make sure she was still there, but she was, gazing out at the waves too.
“Was that enough information about me?” Iris asked. “Did I shock you good and proper?”
Stevie looked at her, smiled softly. “I think I owe you a romantic outing.”
Iris frowned. “What?”
“You heard me. So far, we’ve only had one romance lesson.”
Iris’s cheeks warmed, the memory of slow-dancing with Stevie in her living room rushing back like a gust of wind. “You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s part of our deal,” Stevie said.
Iris had a sudden, inexplicable desire to say fuck the deal, but pressed her mouth closed.
Stevie gestured around them. “Plus, we are on a beach.”
It was cloudy, and the ocean’s waves were wild, roiling and peaking with foam.
“Like . . . a Wuthering Heights kind of beach, maybe,” Iris said.
Stevie laughed. “Fair. But, okay, if you were Heathcliff and I was Catherine, what would you do right now?”
“Um, leave you the hell alone? Heathcliff was a horrible person. Have you even read Wuthering Heights?”
“You brought it up!”
“Yeah, as an antithesis to romance.”
Stevie swiped a hand through her hair. “Okay, well, narcissistic heroes notwithstanding, we should walk.”
“Walk.”
“Hand in hand.”
“Lazily, while we search for shells to leave on each other’s pillows?”
Stevie held out her hand. “Now you’re getting it.”
Iris eyed Stevie’s hand, hesitating only a second before slipping her fingers into Stevie’s palm. The contact zinged up her arm, causing an eruption of goose bumps, which was ridiculous.
Romance was nothing but brain chemicals and some pretty words, a nice setting. That’s all it was. A fiction brains told to hearts.
Still, Iris gave in to it, if just for Stevie’s sake. They walked along the shore for a while, swinging their hands between them. They searched for shells, scooping up the unbroken pink-and-white treasures in the sand and slipping them into their pockets. They talked about nothing, about everything. Iris learned that Stevie was allergic to strawberries, a tragedy in her mind, and she told Stevie about Paper Wishes and how she had to close it down last year.
“Tell me about your book,” Stevie asked. “The one you’re writing. I already read up on Until We Meet Again.”
Iris smiled. “You did?”
Stevie gave her a look. “Of course I did.”
“Well,” Iris said, her cheeks warming, “this new one is about . . .”
She hesitated, feeling suddenly shy about the turn her book had taken.
“What?” Stevie asked. “What’s it about?”
Iris squeezed Stevie’s fingers. “It’s about a vintner and a wine critic.”
Stevie’s eyes went wide, and she stopped, twirling Iris around to face her, a grin on her mouth. “Like, your idea from the other night in your apartment?”
Iris nodded. “It was a good idea. And you really did help make it feel . . . real.”
Stevie beamed, her amber eyes bright even under the darkening clouds. “I’m so glad. It was a good idea. I can’t wait to read it.”
Iris grinned back, but it fell away as the first drops fell from the sky. The shower quickly turned into a steady rain, soaking both of them within seconds.
“Oh my god,” Stevie said, wiping her hair from her face. “I guess we should head back.”
Iris nodded and started to turn back toward the house, then froze.
“Hang on,” she said, taking Stevie’s hand.
“You okay?” Stevie asked.
Iris nodded, rain sluicing down her face. She watched beads of water gather on Stevie’s mouth, had the sudden urge to lick them away.
Instead, she pulled Stevie close.
“This feels like something we should do,” she said. “Dance in the rain on the beach.”
Stevie’s mouth opened a little, but then she smiled. “Look at you.”
“I’m a fast learner.”
“I see that,” Stevie said softly. “Is that going to be our thing—or your characters’ thing? They dance all over the city, finding super weird and unique situations to dance?”