“Okay,” Iris said, feeling suddenly and strangely shy. “I just wanted to check, because—”
“I’m fine,” Stevie said, her tone snappish. She sighed and pressed her fingers into her eyes. “Sorry. I’m just . . . Adri has me on edge.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Iris asked, then immediately wished she could swallow the question down. She wasn’t sure what she would do if the source of Stevie’s worry was something else.
If it was Iris.
“I’m sure,” Stevie said, but her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. She played with the hem of her shirt, a white fitted tee with a picture of Ruth Bader Ginsburg printed on the front.
“What can I do to help?” Iris asked.
Stevie shook her head, but then froze. She met Iris’s gaze and inhaled slowly. “Take me out when we get back to Oregon?”
Iris frowned. “Take you out? Like on a date, or—”
“No. I mean, yeah, we can do that too for you. For your book. But I mean, I need to go out. Somewhere safe. A place where I can meet someone and try to . . . I don’t know.” Stevie’s lower lip trembled just a little. She bit down on it and shrugged. “Try.”
“Hey,” Iris said, taking a step closer to her. “You don’t have to rush this, you know.”
“No, I know, but I do.” Stevie shook her head. “I have to prove it to myself. Because no one else is going to see me as anything other than my anxiety until I do. Until I see myself that way.”
Her voice was rising again, just like it had last night when she’d come into their room shaking.
“Okay,” Iris took both of her hands in hers. “We can do that. We’ll go to Stella’s in Bright Falls next week. I know every queer person in town, and they all come out for line dancing night. Totally safe space.”
“Line dancing?” Stevie asked.
“What, it’s fun,” Iris said. “I’ll be with you the whole time. Plus, you don’t have to dance that much if you don’t want.”
Stevie nodded, laughing, even as a tear slipped down her cheek. Iris couldn’t resist swiping it way with her thumb, then pressing her forehead to Stevie’s. It was an intimate gesture, but it felt so natural, so . . . easy. Stevie gripped Iris’s waist, rubbing the jumpsuit’s material between her fingers, and Iris felt herself relax. She breathed Stevie in, all clean cotton and sea salt, and her eyes had just drifted closed when Stevie lifted her head away.
“You’re really good at this,” Stevie said.
Iris frowned. “At what?”
“At being a fake girlfriend.”
Stevie’s voice was soft, almost like a question. Her eyes searched Iris’s, and Iris searched right back because for a split second there, she’d forgotten.
Maybe she’d been forgetting for a while now.
Her throat went a little tight, her breath suddenly elusive. All the reasons she stopped Stevie this morning in bed came rushing back at her, clearer than ever, and every single one was terrifying.
Every single one represented everything that Iris Kelly was not.
She shook her head and laughed, dropped Stevie’s hands and did a little twirl, followed by a dramatic bow. This was the Iris she knew. This was the Iris she understood.
The Iris everyone understood.
“Well, I am a fucking great actress,” she said, “as you’re about to find out in full.”
Stevie didn’t laugh. She just offered a half smile and nodded, then took Iris’s hand and led her outside to join the rest of the cast.
AS IT TURNED out, Iris loved acting.
The cast sat around the pool under the morning clouds, bare legs dipping into the water, Adri tucked into a chair with her iPad, and they made a wild and unlikely love story come alive. Iris felt drunk with the feeling of slipping into someone else’s psyche, thinking through their motivations and emotions. It was like writing, but in full color, swelling with all the flavors and sounds and feelings of real life.
The rest of the cast was talented as hell—Iris could see why Adri had cast each one of them as she did—and she especially enjoyed watching Peter and Jasper act out the young Hero and Claudio, with their innocent love and trusting personas. Shakespeare was brilliant, sure, but seeing his characters played out as queer, as identities the world had so often tried to stifle and beat down . . . well, it was powerful.
It was beautiful.
And then there was Stevie.
Iris had known she was good—like Stevie had said, Adri didn’t cast anyone who wasn’t—but she’d been unprepared for Stevie in full throttle. She approached Benedick in a way Iris never would’ve imagined—arrogant, for sure, but tender. Even shy. A woman—in their version, at least—who wore a mask for the world to hide a deeper fear of being seen.
Of being loved . . . and left.
Of course, the lines Stevie read didn’t say any of that, but Iris felt it. She knew everyone else felt it too, a distinct hush falling over them all whenever Benedick had a longer speech.
As for Iris, she read Beatrice on instinct, a feeling that had started with that strange audition with Adri. Iris’s Beatrice was angry, yes. Annoyed and a little bitter, but more than anything, exhaustion encapsulated her Beatrice, a bone-deep weariness from living in a world that constantly asked her to be someone she simply wasn’t.
But love changed her.
“And Benedick,” Iris read from act 3, scene 1. “Love on; I will requite thee, taming my wild heart to thy loving hand.”
She glanced at Stevie then, who was sitting across from her near the shallow end, watching her with her mouth slightly open. Iris felt triumphant at first—she’d read the line softly, but a little angrily, a bullet wrapped in a feather. It felt right, perfect even, but then Adri interrupted the moment.
“Let’s add a little more wistfulness there, Iris,” she said, scribbling something on her iPad with her stylus. “Okay, on to scene 2. I think—”
“I disagree,” Iris said.
Adri lifted a brow. “Oh?”
Iris cleared her throat. “I just think Beatrice isn’t really sure about loving Benedick. Not yet. She says she’ll give him her heart, but that scares her, even pisses her off that she’s caught feelings, so she says it with a little . . . I don’t know.”
“Oomph,” Zayn said.
“Yeah,” Iris said, smiling at them. “Oomph.”
Adri pursed her mouth. “This is Beatrice’s first realization of love, Iris. It’s important that it’s infused with care. With a little bit of awe.”
“I get that,” Iris said. “But I don’t think Beatrice is in awe here. I think she’s fucking terrified.”
“She says I will requite thee,” Adri said.
“Because deep down she does crave love,” Iris said, “not because she’s not scared. She’s talking to herself here. She knows what her heart wants, but she also knows her heart is wild, and she—”
“She wants to love Benedick, so she will,” Adri said.
“It’s really that simple for you?” Iris said. “I would think as a director, you’d press for a little more nuance in these characters, particularly as the play is queer and we’re all—”