Stevie nodded, rubbed her forehead. “Yeah. Sorry. I just . . .” She searched for a reason that would make her sound less pathetic, but there wasn’t one. She was pathetic, and the sooner Iris knew it, the better.
Granted, she had already puked on the poor woman, so Iris was probably very aware already.
“I get nervous when I meet new people,” Stevie said. “I’m not awesome with strangers, and you were so . . .”
Beautiful.
Hypnotic.
Perfect.
The words cascaded in Stevie’s brain, but she couldn’t say any of those things.
“Confident,” she said. “So I acted like I was too. Thinking of myself as someone else helped. I mean, up to a point.”
Iris watched her, mouth slightly pursed. “Okay. I guess I get that.”
Stevie audibly exhaled, but Iris wasn’t finished.
“What I don’t get is why your friends seem to think I came here for you. That we know each other beyond a disastrous one-night stand.”
Stevie winced. “Nice word choice.”
Iris’s brows lifted. “I think disastrous is pretty apt.”
“No, yeah, it’s perfect.”
Silence spilled in between them. An awful, awkward silence.
And then, unexplainably, “I throw up when I’m really nervous” is how Stevie chose to fill it.
Iris’s mouth dropped open. “Wow.”
“Yeah. So that’s fun.”
“I’m sorry,” Iris said softly. “You could’ve just said you didn’t want to sleep with me. I’m a big girl, I can—”
“I did want to though,” Stevie said.
Iris tilted her head. More awkward silence, but this time, Stevie kept her damn mouth shut. The blush in her cheeks probably said enough anyway.
“Okay,” Iris said, pressing her fingers into her eyes. “Let’s focus on the more pressing issue.”
“My friends.”
“Yeah.”
“And Beatrice.”
Iris dropped her hands, gaze on Stevie.
“You must be really good,” Stevie said. “I’ve never seen Adri offer someone a part that fast.”
That tiny smile again. “Really?”
Stevie nodded. “And I’ve known Adri for ten years.”
Iris shook her head. “I didn’t mean to audition for Beatrice. They pretty much made me. Well, them and my friend Simon, who’s with the company somewhere.”
“Yeah, Adri can be pushy.”
“It was more the other one. Van?”
“Ah,” Stevie said.
Iris folded her arms. “Now why would she do such a thing?”
Her tone dripped sarcasm. Stevie knew she needed to get this confession over with, and it all came out in a rush. “Probably because Ren—my friend I was with at the club that night—showed them a picture of you and me dancing at Lush and they were so excited that I’d hooked up with someone so very obviously out of my league that I let them believe we’re kind of sort of maybe dating.”
Iris squinted at her like she was trying to catch up.
“So,” she said finally, “we’re dating.”
Stevie said nothing.
“Like, fake dating. In a rom-com,” Iris said.
Stevie filled her cheeks with air, blew it out slowly. “It just sort of . . . happened. Adri and I used to date, and now she and Vanessa—”
“Oh my god, wait, what?” Iris said. “This is all about getting your ex back?”
“No,” Stevie said, taking a step closer to Iris. “No, I don’t want her back, I swear. But . . .” Fuck, it all sounded so ridiculous. When she spoke again, she closed her eyes and kept them squeezed shut. “I just wanted a minute to breathe. An hour, a day, where I wasn’t the pathetic ex slash best friend everyone was worried about.”
She opened her eyes. Iris was staring at her, mouth slightly parted.
“I figured, I’d let it play out for a couple of weeks, then tell them we broke up,” Stevie said. “I didn’t expect you—the real you—to come walking into my ex’s theater.”
Iris smiled a little at that. “Well, I am full of surprises.”
“Yeah.” Stevie smiled back. “You really, really are.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IRIS COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d somehow found herself in the middle of a romantic comedy.
Fake dating.
It was ridiculous.
It was absurd.
It was . . .
She looked at Stevie, whose shaggy curls fell into her eyes, making her look like some sort of adorable lesbian pop star. She wore a fitted gray T-shirt that said I Put Reading on the Map! and featured, inexplicably, a picture of a cartoon cat holding up a copy of A Wrinkle in Time. The shirt bordered on ridiculous, but paired with Stevie’s low-hanging black jeans and boots, it worked.
Stevie was hot, there was no doubt about it.
And Iris got the distinct impression that she had no idea, which only made her hotter.
I just wanted a minute to breathe . . . where I wasn’t the pathetic ex slash best friend everyone was worried about.
Stevie’s words floated through Iris’s skull, a collection of syllables and phonemes that found their way into the middle of her chest.
She couldn’t say she didn’t understand where Stevie was coming from here.
She did.
All too well.
And, sure, Stevie’s tiny lie probably seemed harmless before Iris walked into the Empress. Empty words to take some pressure off. But now Iris was real.
Now Adri had offered Iris a lead part in the play.
And . . . Iris wanted it.
That was the real kick in the ass here. If she turned down the role, she could simply walk out the door—with a completely bonkers story to tell Simon on the drive home—and Stevie could carry on with her lie for a few weeks before relaying news of their breakup. Iris didn’t have to do a thing. She could just go back to her life in Bright Falls. She’d help Claire and Delilah plan their wedding, and she’d endure more of her mother’s random setups—hell, maybe Maeve’s gynecologist was single—and everything would be just as it had always been. She’d continue to languish over her novel, freaking out on the daily that she was going to have to send back her advance and ruin her career before it even got started, all because she was burned out on romance and couldn’t think of a decent idea, and—
She froze.
Fake dating.
It was one of Iris’s least favorite tropes—she could never really imagine a situation in real life where fake dating would be necessary—and yet . . . here she was with Stevie-whatever-her-last-name-was standing before her, asking Iris to fake date her.
This might work. Iris had no interest writing the trope into her book—Tegan McKee didn’t seem like the type, and Iris didn’t know if she could pull it off believably, if she was being honest—but spending time with Stevie in a romantic setting could break through Iris’s block. She could actually experience a little romance. A few dates. Hand holding. Get her head back in the true love game without a single messy string attached.
Because it was all fake.
Plus, she really wanted to do this play. Reading for Beatrice on stage, she’d felt excited. Passionate. It was fun, and if nothing else, Iris Kelly was all about fun.