“Don’t,” Stevie said. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“What?”
“This,” Stevie said, her teeth gritting.
Good. Let her get angry. It would probably make this whole thing easier.
“The exact thing you said I was doing,” Stevie said, “trying to tell me this is nothing. You’re trying to tell me you’re not worth considering. Not worth factoring into my life. Again. Why do we always fucking come back to this?”
“Becauseyoudidn’t factor me, Stevie,” Iris yelled back. “And you know what? You shouldn’t. You were right to pick yourself. Because if you’d told me about New York a month ago, god knows what sort of mess we’d be in right now.”
“Mess? What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about us, Stevie. We’d be the mess. The ticking time bomb, trying to do long distance and burning through our savings on plane tickets, driving ourselves crazy wondering how long it would last, how long before someone else came along, how long before you realized I was just—”
A sudden swell of tears cut off her voice. She swiped them away, furious at her own emotions.
“At least this way,” she finally said, “we know you and I were nothing but brain chemicals and sex.”
It was like dropping a nuclear bomb—a huge explosion followed by... nothing. Silence. A complete lack of air and light and life.
Stevie stared at her, tears tracking silently down her cheeks. Finally, Iris managed to turn away from her, legs shaking, hoisting her bag higher onto her shoulder. She started to move, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time that would eventually get her out of this apartment and to her car, to her own home, to her bed where she could finally fall apart.
She was nearly to the door when Stevie spoke.
“Bullshit,” she said.
Iris turned. “What?”
Stevie faced her, fists clenched by her sides, her face a ruin of tears and pain. Iris’s heart broke, right there, but she knew she couldn’t take any of it back.
She wouldn’t.
“I said bullshit,” Stevie said. “You’re lying. You’re lying to protect yourself, to protect me, and it’s bullshit, Iris.”
Iris shook her head, but Stevie was already crossing the room to her. Iris braced herself for her touch, trying to work up the courage to push her away, but Stevie didn’t even try to pull her into her arms. Instead, she dipped her hands into Iris’s open bag and brought out her iPad.
“What are you doing?” Iris asked.
Stevie tapped on the screen. The home screen came to life and Stevie’s eyes scanned Iris’s icons.
“What the hell are you doing?” Iris asked.
Stevie turned the iPad to reveal a drawing of Iris and Stevie standing by Bright River the night of the summer fair. Iris had already added color to this illustration, and they were bathed in silvery starlight. In the drawing, Iris’s hands were in Stevie’s hair, Stevie’sarms around her waist, and their mouths were a centimeter from touching.
That moment right before they kissed.
Right before they fell into each other for real, all of their lessons and fake dating and Stevie’s wooing falling away, leaving nothing but them.
Iris’s heart galloped against her ribs. “How... how did you know about my drawings?”
“I saw them the day you kicked me out after Stella’s,” Stevie said.
“Stevie, I—”
“It doesn’t matter, Iris. What matters is that you drew them. And you drew them likethis.” She flipped to another drawing, and another and another—Iris and Stevie dancing in the grocery store, Iris and Stevie laughing at boozy mini-golf, Iris and Stevie tangled together in bed. “You drew us, Iris. Because you love me. You fucking love me and you have for a long time.”
Iris closed her eyes, shook her head as she took the iPad from Stevie and stared down at the image on the screen. “I...”
