She stood up, a satin lavender robe open and revealing her lovely body. She pulled it closed and secured the tie.
“Hang on,” Stevie said, sitting up. “Iris, I—”
“I need you to go, Stevie.”
She spoke the words firmly, a slight tremor to her voice as she started roaming around the room, picking up pieces of clothing here and there and tossing them into her laundry basket.
Stevie blinked at her, willing her to stop, to look at her, but she never did.
Stevie wasn’t sure what she expected. A declaration of love? For Iris to write their love story like she was writing Tegan and Briony’s? No, Iris had made it clear, on more than one occasion, that she didn’t do love. She didn’t do relationships.
But Stevie and her stupid romantic heart thought maybe this time—maybe Stevie herself—was different. Like a tornado forming over a field, quick and swirling and devastating, she realized she’d been hoping for that all along. In her desperation to move on fromAdri—a person who controlled their whole relationship, every move in bed, every show they watched and dinner they prepared—Stevie had convinced herself what she really needed was a random hookup. Sex, pure and carnal, a show of bravery and confidence.
But she’d been wrong.
So wrong.
She didn’t want that at all.
She wanted Iris.
Maybe she’d wanted her from the moment Iris had tucked her into her bed that first night. Maybe it happened later, Stevie didn’t know, but she knew it was true. She could see everything so clearly now. And fuck, she’d wasted so much time thinking everything she and Iris had done together in the past weeks was all about getting with some stranger, about Stevie proving something to herself.
But it was always about Iris.
And now Iris was asking her to leave.
She was sayingno, and Stevie knew she had to respect it, but the panic flurried into her chest anyway.
“We’re still good, right?” Stevie asked, desperate to get Iris to stop moving around the room. Look at her. “With our... our deal?”
Iris finally paused, finally put her eyes on Stevie’s. She had her red bandanna crop top from last night in her hands. “Yeah. Of course. I wouldn’t leave you out to dry like that.”
“I know, I just... I didn’t know if last night—”
“Last night was sex, Stevie,” Iris said, all the warmth in her eyes and voice going cold again. Clinical. “And honestly, it was amazing, and I’d totally be down to fuck again.” Here she smirked, that familiar flirty expression taking over her lovely features. “But last night doesn’t change anything,” she went on. “We’re still good.”
Stevie nodded, a knot in her throat. “Right.”
“But I really need to get on with my day, so...”
Iris looked down at the shirt in her hands, cleared her throat.
“Right,” Stevie said again. She pushed back the sheets, found her T-shirt on the floor, pulled it on.
“I’m going to jump in the shower,” Iris said. “You good?”
Stevie’s eyes filled, but she focused on her shorts. One leg in, now the other. “Yeah.”
“Good. I’ll... I’ll see you at rehearsal on Monday.”
Stevie could only nod and then Iris was gone. Down the hall, Stevie heard the bathroom door click shut, the shower squeak to life. She fought tears as she finished getting dressed, refusing to let herself have the relief of crying. Iris had never promised her anything—she’d only ever been herself.
Stevie stood up and started making the bed, just for something for her hands to focus on as she took deep breath after deep breath, trying to get herself under control. She pulled up Iris’s mosaic duvet, grabbed her pillows from where they’d thrown them on the floor last night. As she reached for the last turquoise sham, her heel caught the edge of Iris’s iPad still on the floor. She picked it up, and as she placed it on the nightstand, her thumb swiped the surface, the lock screen blooming to life.
It took Stevie a few seconds to realize the image on the iPad wasn’t a wallpaper. It wasn’t the lock screen at all. It wasn’t even a background image on Iris’s home screen.
It was Stevie’s own face, a cowboy hat sitting crooked on her head, her mouth open in a laugh as she held Jenna’s hand on the dance floor at Stella’s. It was just a sketch, all black and white and rough lines, but it was definitely her.
