Iris Kelly Doesn't Date (Bright Falls, #3)(78)

So she opened up to the file featuring Stevie at Stella’s that Iris had been working on, clicked the iPad screen dark, and set it on Iris’s nightstand. Then she pulled on her boots and found her bag on the floor in the living room and left.





RAIN PELTED STEVIE’S car, rivers of water washing down her windshield. She’d only made it two blocks from Iris’s, but she could barely see and her anxiety had her heart sprinting against her ribs.

She pulled into a street parking space to catch her breath. She tried to think of what the hell she was going to do the next time she saw Iris. She tried to imagine everything between them going back to the way it was, which was clearly what Iris wanted, but the sheer thought of faking how she was feeling—how she’d been feeling—just made her lungs grow even tighter.

She leaned her head against the seat, wondering how long she was going to have to wait this rain out, when her phone buzzed. She dug it out of her bag, her heart swelling into her throat when she saw the notification for an email from Dr. Calloway. She tapped on it, words she wasn’t sure what to do with springing into her view.


Hi Stevie,


It was so good to see you yesterday. Attached is all the information regarding the play. I do hope you’ll consider it. Please know, I wouldn’t cast just anyone—I have a lot at stake here, a lot to prove, and I don’t gamble with my own career. I hope you won’t gamble with yours. I’d appreciate your decision by September 1st.


Best,

Thayer



Stevie tossed her phone into the passenger seat, panic already starting to rise up like the tide. Her fingertips tingled, and she squeezed her eyes closed, focusing on the feeling of the seat’s fabric under her legs, the weight of her body in the car, putting herself in the moment, using all five senses like her therapist suggested she do when she got overwhelmed.

New York City.

An actual, prestigious play in New York City.

She’d barely had time to process Dr. Calloway’s offer, everything with Iris looming to the forefront of her mind since she saw her old professor.

She could barely make sense of it now—Stevie Scott on the Delacorte Theater stage.

Stevie Scott in New York City.

Alone.

She couldn’t picture it, couldn’t even fathom leaving everything she’d known and trusted for the last ten years, everything that kept her balanced and safe.

And now there were all these feelings for Iris . . .

Feelings Iris had zero interest in pursuing.

Her eyes were just starting to sting when the rain let up just enough for her to see the sign rocking in the wind just outside her window.

River Wild Books.

She took a deep breath and got out of her car, jogging to the cobbled sidewalk and hurrying under the shop’s awning before she was completely soaked. A little bell dinged as she stepped through the door, and she was immediately hit with the smell of books, paper and glue and leather, a hint of coffee just underneath.

It was a beautiful store, all light wood shelving and soft lighting, a reading area in the center with dark brown leather chairs and a coffee table strewn with books.

“Can I help you with something?”

The voice startled Stevie and she turned around to face a young girl—no more than thirteen—smiling at her. She had golden brown hair shaved on one side and swooping past her shoulder over the other, hazel eyes, and a nametag that read Ruby.

“Oh,” Stevie said. “Hi, um . . . I was just looking.”

The girl nodded. “Let me know if you need help.”

“Thanks.”

The girl turned to head off, but then Stevie got an idea.

“Actually,” she said, “can you direct me to the romance section?”

Ruby grinned. “For sure.” She beelined through a maze of tables set with pyramids of books, until she stopped at a section of the built-in shelves full of colorful spines. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.”

“I recommend checking out our Pride display,” she said, motioning toward a nearby table full of colorful paperbacks arranged in a rainbow. “It’s July now, but read queer all year, right?”

Stevie smiled at the girl. “Yeah. Absolutely.”

Ruby beamed and left her alone to explore. Stevie focused on the Pride table, picking up a yellow paperback with an illustration of a dark-skinned man holding a Black woman with pink hair in his arms. She sank down on the floor and started to read, soon lost in the world of two characters—one of them a bisexual woman—who started fake dating. She found herself suddenly ravenous for the sex scenes, the way the man clearly adored the woman even though she was terrified of commitment, for the ending that Stevie knew would be happy.

Before she knew it, she was crying on the floor in a bookstore. Actually crying. Snot ran out of her nose, and she wiped it on her own shoulder, and she wasn’t sure if it was possible for her to be more pathetic.

“Stevie?”

She froze, snapping her head up to see Iris’s friend Claire standing there with a few books in her hands, light brown eyes wide with concern.

“Honey, are you okay?” Claire asked.

And then Stevie burst into tears all over again.

“Oh goodness,” Claire said, setting the books on the nearest table and squatting down in front of Stevie. “What happened? Can I get you something?”