Stevie laughed bitterly. “Yeah, and promptly threw up all over you.”
Iris winced. “Okay, I see your point.”
“I get that what we’re doing is fake or for research or whatever, but...” She shook her head, cheeks flaming.
“But what?” Iris asked, nudging her knee. “Come on, tell me.”
Stevie pressed her hands to her face. “It’s so embarrassing.”
“More embarrassing than vomiting on your date?”
“No, exactly that embarrassing.” She leaned her head back on the sofa as John’s fiancée gave him a wedding present on the screen. Maybe she could say it more clearly if she wasn’t looking at Iris, Sex Goddess of Bright Falls. “I’ve only ever slept with Adri. And that took me four years of flirting and freaking out in private. It took four years of getting to know her and really understanding that she loved me and wouldn’t judge me or leave me. Well... at least not right away.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” Stevie felt Iris shift, but she didn’t glance her way. She focused on patterns in the plastered ceiling. “But I don’thavefour years now—I mean, after you and I fake break up or whatever. I don’twant to take that long. I actually do want a real girlfriend eventually. And until that happens, Iwantto hook up and have sex. It’s been... well, never mind how long it’s been, but you saw firsthand the results when I try to sleep with someone I don’t know very well.”
“Not everyone’s into casual sex, Stevie. My best friend, Claire, is now engaged to the only person she’s ever tried to have a purely sexual relationship with.”
Stevie smiled. “That’s sweet.”
“Nauseatingly so,” Iris said, rolling her eyes, but then she grew serious again. “Plus, have you, I don’t know, considered another alternative? Like, do you think you’re demisexual? Or on the ace spectrum somewhere?”
Stevie tucked her legs to her chest, mirroring Iris’s position. Iris was looking at her so patiently, so... tenderly, Stevie felt herself relax more and more by the second.
“I’ve considered that, yeah,” she said. “But I do feel sexual attraction to people I don’t have an emotional connection with. Like I told you back at the Empress, I really did want to sleep with you.”
“Well,” Iris said, grinning and flipping her hair. “Who wouldn’t?”
Stevie laughed, but noticed Iris’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Anyway,” Stevie said, “It’s less about attraction and more about my brain. When I was with you the other night, I couldn’t slow it down. I kept worrying I’d do something wrong, or I’d be bad at something, or how my boobs are a lot smaller than yours, or how the idea of being naked with you made me feel like I needed to—”
“Puke?” Iris deadpanned.
Stevie groaned and covered her eyes. “Not very flattering, I know, but it’s not you, I promise. If anything, I wish I could be more like you.”
“Me?”
“You were so fucking suave the night we met. A pro.”
“A pro at sex.”
Stevie laughed. “I mean... yeah? Like you knew exactly what you wanted. You were relaxed. Cool. Sexy. I wish I had half that confidence.”
Iris didn’t say anything for a few beats, long enough for Stevie to turn her head to look at her. Iris chewed on her bottom lip, eyes a little distant.
Stevie nudged her knee. “Hey. I mean all that in a good way.”
Iris’s expression cleared. “No, no, I know. But Stevie...” She sighed, pursed her mouth a little. “All that confidence bullshit islearned. I’m confident and loud and funny because I had to be growing up. I like sex, yeah, but it’s not like every single encounter I have is amazing. At least half are mediocre at best. Some are truly abysmal. And I will tell you right now, the first few people I slept with? I wasnotthis radiant goddess you see before you.” She waved her hand down her body, a smile turning up one corner of her mouth. “Sex is just like anything else. Practice makes perfect. Or at least, it makes better.”
“Makes non-puking.”
Iris laughed. “Exactly.”
“But that’s the problem, I have no way to practice. How do you practice relaxing while taking off your shirt in front of a stranger, when that’s the exact thing making me anxious?”
“I don’t know,” Iris said, laughing. “Maybe there’s a gal out there in a bar somewhere with a sex lessons kink.”
