I don’t have to be asked twice. I follow her out of Grizzly’s. I don’t even glance over my shoulder to wave goodbye to my friends—my friends who have all made the trip to Colorado for me. All I can think about is Iris.
THIRTEEN
Iris
I reverse out of my parking spot outside Grizzly’s and turn right onto the main road. I don’t know where I’m headed. If I was thinking straight, I wouldn’t have come out tonight. I knew Jack would be at Grizzly’s. He was waiting for me, I just knew it. Stephanie and I could have stayed on the farm and drunk moonshine and caught up. We didn’t need to go out.
Except I did. I had to.
I couldn’t know where Jack was going to be and not be there too.
I’m hoping that under the Colorado sky, he’s going to hit different. I’ve convinced myself that if I can just see him again, the intensity I feel when I’m with him will fade. The way I can feel his gaze on me like he’s skimming my body with his fingertips will disappear. I’m desperate to confirm that it all ebbs away when I’m not thousands of miles away from real life. In Star Falls, it has to be impossible for me to having feelings for a guy I barely know.
It has to be.
Because I can’t let myself fall for a man like Jack.
“Where do you want to go?” I ask from the driver’s seat.
“Let’s go up the mountain,” he says. “To the Club.”
As soon as he says it, I know I should say no. The Colorado Club isn’t home. It’s too easy to believe I’m still in a fantasy if I’m not down in Star Falls.
Maybe that’s where I want to stay for now. Anything to be with Jack.
I don’t understand the pull I feel to him. All I can do is act on it.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” Jack says.
“I didn’t think so either.”
“We came because my friends thought I needed a change of scene,” he says. “Back in New York, I keep thinking I see you—the back of your head, the curve of your neck. Of course, it never is you.”
I snap my head to glance at him while he talks. “That’s what used to happen to me when my mom died. I kept thinking I saw her places.”
He sighs. “I know for sure you’re not dead.”
“Different but not dead,” I say.
“Different how?” he asks.
I sigh. The muscles that have been tense since I laid eyes on him in Grizzly’s finally relent, and my body sinks back into the seat of the car. “Different because this is real-life Iris. Iris who doesn’t go to the ballet or walk for hours with strangers in Central Park.”
“You’re just describing where you are. Not who you are.”
“Maybe,” I say. But it doesn’t feel like I’m the same person as the one who’s in New York. The one who steals away for the weekend is full of hope. Full of excitement for what she’s going to do, what she’s going to experience. Star Falls Iris knows exactly what each day brings.
“You look beautiful with your hair down.”
Despite my attempts not to feel the flattery, it curls under the collar of my shirt and covers my entire body. I flush with embarrassment. “You prefer it?”
“I like it both ways,” he says.
“I never wear it in a bun when I’m in Star Falls.”
He nods. “I figured.”
We pull up to the gates of the Club and we get let through. Jack directs me through the network of tiny roads and I pull up in front of one of the lodges.
