Iris Kelly Doesn't Date (Bright Falls, #3)(108)

Iris shook her off.

Of course she hadn’t talked to her. She couldn’t. What the hell would she say? Iris didn’t even know how to explain what had happened between her and Stevie to her best friends, to her own heart, how could she offer an apology for it?

If she even wanted to apologize at all.

Which she didn’t.

She and Stevie were over. Stevie had left and Iris hadn’t gone after her and that was that.

Make your own happily ever after.

“I’m going to dance,” she said, pushing off the bar and plunging into the sea of writhing bodies before her friends could stop her. She closed her eyes, lifted her hands and moved. She spun and twirled until everything was a blur.

Until she felt a hand on her shoulder.

She opened her eyes to see a dark-haired woman, all hips and ass, a total goddess, standing in front of her.

“Hi,” the woman said. She had on a dark purple dress, which clung to every curve perfectly.

Iris smiled. “Hi.”

“My name’s—”

“I don’t care,” Iris said, hooking her arms around the woman’s hips and pulling her close.

The woman laughed, revealing lovely white teeth, gold earrings dangling with her movement. “Fair enough.”

Iris pulled her closer, the woman wrapping her arms around Iris’s shoulders, hip-to-hip. She looked Iris in the eyes, smiled. She was so— “Pretty,” Iris said.

“You . . . you too.”

Iris laughed. Fucking. Adorable. “I meant your name, but I’ll take that compliment.”

Iris closed her eyes, felt the curve of the woman’s waist, moving them to the music, a frantic beat that felt like the entire room was building to climax.

This was what Iris needed.

This was what she wanted.

“You’re good at this,” the woman said.

Stefania rubbed her forehead. “God. I’m terrible at this.”

“Maybe,” Iris said. “But it’s working for me.”

Iris said nothing. She pulled the woman closer, grazed her mouth along her bare shoulder, breathed her in. Flowers and vanilla and sweat. Lovely and . . . different.

“Do you live nearby?” the woman asked.

Iris pulled back, met with a pair of ice-blue eyes. “I don’t.”

“I do. Very close, in fact.”

Iris knew her next line. A flirty Interesting. Or maybe just a smirk, followed by a slow lean-in for a kiss. Even a coquettish That’s very good to know.

But she couldn’t get anything off of her tongue. She couldn’t get her face to even move. She simply stared at the woman—this gorgeous person who wanted Iris, wanted to give Iris everything Iris had come here to find.

The woman’s smile faltered. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Iris said. Maybe a name would help. Make it a little more personable. “I’m Iris.”

Her partner smiled. “Beatrice.”

Iris’s heart beat everywhere—her throat, her fingertips, her stomach.

By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me!

Iris shook her head, whispered, “I don’t.”

Beatrice—the real one, the flesh-and-blood one—frowned. “What?”

“I . . .” Iris dropped her hands, backed up. “I’m sorry . . . you’re perfect, but . . . I’m sorry, I just . . .”

She turned and headed back toward the bar without another word, leaving Beatrice behind. Her friends all watched her, parting to make room for her in between them. She rested her hands on the smooth lacquered surface of the bar, knocked back the rest of her martini.

Then she laughed.

It started as a snort, an incredulous, sarcastic sound, but it soon turned into something more. Something bone-deep and raw, so forceful her stomach muscles ached, tears springing into her eyes. She dropped her head into her hands and laughed and laughed until she couldn’t tell if she was actually laughing or crying.

“Um . . . honey?” Claire said.

Iris just shook her head, kept laugh-sobbing. “I’m broken,” she said between hiccups. “I’m fucking broken. She broke me.”

This was what Iris did. She hooked up. She had fun. She flirted and danced and fucked and that was what everyone expected of her.

That’s what she expected of herself.

It was what she wanted, but now, here she was, unable to do any of that. Here she was, crying in her favorite bar, after having walked away from one of the hottest people in this whole place.

She felt a hand on her back, soothing circles. She didn’t shrug off the touch. She didn’t look up to see who it was, she simply stood there, her fingers wet from her tears, her throat raw, and she . . .

She . . .

She wanted to tell Stevie about it. She wanted to laugh-sob with Stevie. She wanted to dance with Stevie, flirt with Stevie, touch and kiss and hold Stevie. She wanted to sleep with Stevie and wake up with Stevie, and goddammit, she didn’t want to write Make your own happily ever after in Stevie’s book.

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.