That’s what she expected of herself.
It was what she wanted, but now, here she was, unable to do any of that. Here she was, crying in her favorite bar, after having walked away from one of the hottest people in this whole place.
She felt a hand on her back, soothing circles. She didn’t shrug off the touch. She didn’t look up to see who it was, she simply stood there, her fingers wet from her tears, her throat raw, and she...
She...
She wanted to tell Stevie about it. She wanted to laugh-sob with Stevie. She wanted to dance with Stevie, flirt with Stevie, touch and kiss and hold Stevie. She wanted to sleep with Stevie and wake up with Stevie, and goddammit, she didn’t want to writeMake your own happily ever afterin Stevie’s book.
I am your happily ever after.
The phrase came so easily, just a simply exchange of letters and words, but it fit. It was perfect. Cheesy and ridiculous and something right out of the romance section at River Wild.
And it was true.
Goddammit, it was true, if not for Stevie—who Iris wasn’t sure would ever forgive her for being such a coward, such a selfish idiot—it was true for Iris.
Stevie was who Iris wanted.
Stevie was Iris’s HEA.
Even if everything between them went badly. Even if they broke up in six months or six years. Even if Iris sometimes doubted Stevie really wanted her.
Even if Stevie didn’t want her at all.
Maybe Iris wasn’t broken after all. She was just... different. Changed by a person who’d finally gotten under her skin, under her heart, and made her so desperate to belong to someone, she barely recognized herself anymore.
No, Iris wasn’t broken.
Iris Kelly was in love.
She lifted her head, grabbed a cocktail napkin, and wiped at her face. She felt her friends on either side of her, gentle hands on her back, waiting for her.
Loving her.
Because Iris Kelly was worth loving.
And she always had been.
She turned around, smiled at them.
“I need to go to New York.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
NEW YORK CITYlooked like fire in October.
Stevie would never cease to be amazed how much green space wove throughout the buildings and sidewalks, the florescent lights and vendors and cars. When she’d first arrived in the city last month, it had overwhelmed her, how New York could feel so vast, like a country in and of itself, but so small at the same time. In the beginning, she could barely step out of her Brooklyn building—an apartment for which she paid Thayer and her wife a pittance—without having difficulty breathing. She lived on the subway app, talked to both her mother and Ren every single day so they could in turn talk her out of coming home, and cried herself to sleep for a solid seven nights.
Now, though, a few weeks into her new life, she felt a bit more settled. She still lived on the subway app. She still talked to Ren every day. And she still cried herself to sleep sometimes. But she also loved it here—the way her neighborhood smelled like bread and coffee and earth in the mornings; the bustle of the theater district, the city streets full of so many people, each with different dreams andfears and loves; the trees lining her street, the leaves like flames licking at the branches, a bit of purple shining through here and there.
It felt right, being here in the fall, when everything was dying so it could be reborn. Every day she felt stronger. Every day, she took her medication, prepared herself for what lay outside her door as best she could, and was still lambasted by a brusque stranger here, an attempted grope in the subway there. The mere fact of simply walking down the street still overwhelmed her, stole her breath.
But she handled it.
She freaked out sometimes, but she got through it, so even when tears did soak her pillow a little, she still felt... proud. That’s what it was. She was proud of herself, for leaping, for jumping, for taking the plunge, and every other cliché saying she could think of for how she’d changed her life.
How she’d chosen herself.
