I am your happily ever after.
The phrase came so easily, just a simply exchange of letters and words, but it fit. It was perfect. Cheesy and ridiculous and something right out of the romance section at River Wild.
And it was true.
Goddammit, it was true, if not for Stevie—who Iris wasn’t sure would ever forgive her for being such a coward, such a selfish idiot—it was true for Iris.
Stevie was who Iris wanted.
Stevie was Iris’s HEA.
Even if everything between them went badly. Even if they broke up in six months or six years. Even if Iris sometimes doubted Stevie really wanted her.
Even if Stevie didn’t want her at all.
Maybe Iris wasn’t broken after all. She was just . . . different. Changed by a person who’d finally gotten under her skin, under her heart, and made her so desperate to belong to someone, she barely recognized herself anymore.
No, Iris wasn’t broken.
Iris Kelly was in love.
She lifted her head, grabbed a cocktail napkin, and wiped at her face. She felt her friends on either side of her, gentle hands on her back, waiting for her.
Loving her.
Because Iris Kelly was worth loving.
And she always had been.
She turned around, smiled at them.
“I need to go to New York.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
NEW YORK CITY looked like fire in October.
Stevie would never cease to be amazed how much green space wove throughout the buildings and sidewalks, the florescent lights and vendors and cars. When she’d first arrived in the city last month, it had overwhelmed her, how New York could feel so vast, like a country in and of itself, but so small at the same time. In the beginning, she could barely step out of her Brooklyn building—an apartment for which she paid Thayer and her wife a pittance—without having difficulty breathing. She lived on the subway app, talked to both her mother and Ren every single day so they could in turn talk her out of coming home, and cried herself to sleep for a solid seven nights.
Now, though, a few weeks into her new life, she felt a bit more settled. She still lived on the subway app. She still talked to Ren every day. And she still cried herself to sleep sometimes. But she also loved it here—the way her neighborhood smelled like bread and coffee and earth in the mornings; the bustle of the theater district, the city streets full of so many people, each with different dreams and fears and loves; the trees lining her street, the leaves like flames licking at the branches, a bit of purple shining through here and there.
It felt right, being here in the fall, when everything was dying so it could be reborn. Every day she felt stronger. Every day, she took her medication, prepared herself for what lay outside her door as best she could, and was still lambasted by a brusque stranger here, an attempted grope in the subway there. The mere fact of simply walking down the street still overwhelmed her, stole her breath.
But she handled it.
She freaked out sometimes, but she got through it, so even when tears did soak her pillow a little, she still felt . . . proud. That’s what it was. She was proud of herself, for leaping, for jumping, for taking the plunge, and every other cliché saying she could think of for how she’d changed her life.
How she’d chosen herself.
I chose me, but I choose you too.
Stevie stared down at her script as she sat in Devoción, her favorite coffee shop on Grand. She sipped a flat white, tried to focus on Rosalind’s motivations, reasons, fears, but suddenly all she could think about was that drawing Iris did the morning they broke up.
Stevie. Alone. In New York City.
Turns out, Iris was a bit of a psychic. Stevie was alone. She was in New York City.
And . . . Stevie was okay.
If there was one thing that drawing emanated—Stevie’s arms spread, head tipped up to the sky—it was that. Stevie was okay.
“Hey, hey, sorry I’m late,” a voice said.
Stevie looked up to see a young white woman with shoulder-length pink hair and blunt bangs skirting around the café’s greenery then plopping down on the tufted brown leather couch where Stevie sat.
“The Q was down again,” Olivia said, huffing out a breath that ruffled her fringe. She wore gray leggings and a heavily patterned sweater that looked like it might have belonged to her dad in the seventies, but that she somehow made work.
Stevie waved a hand. “No worries.”
Olivia smiled at her, and Stevie smiled back. Olivia was young—twenty-five, though that was only three years younger than Stevie herself, but Olivia had such a hopeful, innocent air about her, she felt younger. She was an actual graduate of Juilliard, so she was a ridiculously talented actress and was playing Celia, Rosalind’s cousin and dear friend in As You Like It. She and Stevie had met during the auditions Thayer had invited Stevie to attend her first week in New York. Olivia was there too—she knew Thayer from some off-Broadway play they had both worked on last year—and her naturally open and bubbly personality made it easy for Stevie to relax around her.
She was also pansexual, and Stevie always felt safer, more herself, around other queer people anyway.
“What scene are you on?” Olivia asked, scooting close to Stevie and peering down at her script.
“Did you forget your copy again?” Stevie asked.
Olivia laughed, her clearly-false-but-still-gorgeous lashes fluttering against her cheek. “You know me. Last week, I lost my keys. Guess where I found them?”
“Let me guess. Your cat’s litter box?”
“Nope, that was last month. In the oven.” Olivia made a face. “Like, I don’t even use my oven. I keep my emergency stash of dark chocolate–covered almonds in there and—oh, oh, I see what I did now.”
Stevie smiled and shook her head. “You need a key hook. Right by your door.”
“I have one.”
Stevie laughed, then moved her already heavily marked-up script so it rested between them. “Act 1, scene 3.”
Olivia scooted close, her slim leg pressing against Stevie’s, and soon they were lost in the scene, whispering the lines to each other so they didn’t bother the other patrons, pausing so Stevie could mark something in her script or Olivia could tap out a note on her phone. It was exciting work, Stevie’s heart beating faster at the idea of performing this at the Delacorte under a July sky, the crowd happy and summer-soaked and beautiful.
“You’re really good,” Olivia said when they’d finished the scene, nudging Stevie’s shoulder.
Stevie smiled. She was learning not to brush off compliments—especially coming from someone like Olivia, someone who’d already been a part of New York’s theater scene for a few years. Stevie knew her words weren’t empty.
“Thanks,” Stevie said. “You too.”
Olivia smiled, fluttered her fingers down her face. “I know.”
Stevie laughed, then flipped through the script for another scene between Rosalind and Celia. Olivia waited patiently, her arm still warm against Stevie’s.
“You know,” Olivia said, “we should go out sometime.”
Stevie’s fingers froze on a page. She glanced at Olivia, who was looking at her with softly narrowed eyes, head tilted as though the idea had just occurred to her.
“Like . . .” Stevie said but trailed off.
Olivia just grinned. “Yeah, like . . .”
Stevie forced herself to keep eye contact. God, Olivia was pretty. Sweet. She understood theater life, had already helped Stevie navigate so much in New York, from where to get the most delicious bagels to the best little-known indie bookstores in Brooklyn.
She checked in with herself, gauged her breathing, her thought process, felt her legs pressing into the couch’s worn leather, all things her therapist encouraged her to do when faced with a new situation.
She wasn’t nervous—or at least, not in a way that crippled her, made her feel helpless and paralyzed. Her stomach fluttered a bit, but that was normal for Stevie, as was the warmth rushing into her cheeks right now.