“I’m glad you’re here,” she said instead, except her voice was soft, her tone very... Jesus, veryeager, and her cheeks grew warm with embarrassment at her admission.
Jordan canted her head, considering Astrid for a second. Her eyes traveled from Astrid’s black espadrilles and up her legs to her black shorts, pausing on her chest and her sleeveless sky-blue blouse before trailing up to her face and settling on her eyes. Astrid’s breath was locked in her lungs—no way she could breathe right now. Not with this unbearably sexy woman looking at her like she wanted to eat her for dessert.
But then Jordan’s expression evened out, placid and totally neutral. She nodded and said, “Yeah, me too.” But her voice wasn’t soft or eager. It was normal. Unaffected. And Astrid felt the sudden urge to cry like a kid who just found out their birthday party was canceled.
“Hey, sweetie!” Claire’s voice sounded from the bottom of the stairs, and Astrid shook her head to clear it. Claire and Delilah started up the stairs, grocery bags in their arms, Simon coming up behind them.
“Hey,” Astrid said back, then turned and headed back toward Iris’s apartment before her best friends could see how red her cheeks were.
THANKFULLY, IRIS ANDJillian were fully clothed and acting normal by the time the whole group arrived at her door, though Iris’s face was a little flushed. Still, she poured wine and set out taco fixings on her tiny kitchen’s island, opened up her turquoise cabinets to find this and that, all while chattering a mile a minute about a new planner she was designing, about Claire and Delilah’s party this weekend, about how it wasn’t really a housewarming since Claire already lived there, and on and on.
Astrid wondered how one recovered so quickly from what seemed to be mind-blowing sex. Granted, she’d never really had mind-blowing sex, but she felt like it would lay her out for a good hour.
She stood in the kitchen, filling mustard-colored bowls with lettuce, salsa, and guacamole, while Claire browned a skillet full of ground beef. Everyone else was in the living room with Jillian, who was, apparently, showing Simon the hundred-dollars-a-bottle bourbon she’d brought from Portland just that morning.
Jordan was with Delilah.
Astrid watched them as they sat on Iris’s red couch, Jordan with a beer and Delilah with a few fingers of Jillian’s bourbon, legs tucked up and chatting easily, as though they’d known each other for a long time.
“Do you think she’s divulging all your deep, dark secrets?” Iris asked, hip bumping Astrid’s at the sink.
“What?” Astrid said, freezing while she rinsed a bunch of cilantro. “Who?”
“Delilah and your mortal enemy,” Iris said.
“She’s not my mortal enemy,” Astrid said, shaking the herbs dry and laying them on the cutting board. “Plus, I don’t...”
She was about to say she didn’t have any secrets, but that wasn’taltogether true. She hadn’t told Claire or Iris about her attraction to Jordan, and while Delilah knew about the sex dream, she didn’t know Astrid had pretty much tried to make out with Jordan, only to be rejected.
No one knew that.
She had a sudden urge to spill everything to her friends, the need to get advice, or even some simple comfort, nearly overwhelming. But with Jordan a mere ten feet away, there was no way Iris Kelly finding out that Astrid had been experiencing extremely queer feelings was going to be a quiet affair.
“You don’t what?” Iris asked.
Astrid shook her head as she chopped up the cilantro, making quick work of the small bunch. “Nothing. I... I don’t think Delilah would say anything mean.”
Iris scoffed. “Are we talking about the same woman? Tattoos? New York City attitude for days? A general disdain for clothes in any shade lighter than the ninth circle of hell?”
Claire wacked Iris’s butt with a towel. “That’s my girlfriend you’re insulting.”
“I’m not insulting her,” Iris said. “I’m making simple observations.”
“I can hear you, you know!” Delilah called from the living room. She lifted her bourbon in a mock toast. “And I like my black clothes, fuck you very much.”
Iris flipped her off and Delilah laughed, and even Astrid couldn’t help but smile at the comfortable—if a bit biting—way her friends and Delilah interacted. But when she caught Jordan’s eye, her smile dipped.
Shit, she was a mess.
“I’m going to look for some books to borrow,” she said, drying her hands on a towel and grabbing her wine. She just needed a second to get herself together, a moment of peace. Which, with this crowd, was hard to come by.
“Sure thing,” Iris said. “Be sure to pick something really dirty.”
Claire laughed, but Astrid just shook her head as she headed for the library, the only room in Iris’s open-plan apartment that was separated by a couple of walls. She turned toward the spread of shelves spanning the entire back wall, spines arranged by color, which was such an Iris thing to do.
Astrid let her eyes scan the rainbow of books, wondering how the hell Iris ever found anything with this aesthetic system. It was a pulse-calming distraction, though, the pleasing swell of red to orange to yellow.
“This is the queerest bookshelf I’ve ever seen.”
