Iris Kelly Doesn't Date (Bright Falls, #3)(64)

“Really?” Stevie stopped, turned to face her. “Because you’re acting like a jealous girlfriend.”

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.