Chapter Five
Iris hadn’t gone far, luckily. Barrett found her standing in front of the next building over, chest rising and falling in rapid succession and seeming barely aware of where she was.
Barrett gave her a wide berth as she walked into her line of sight, acutely aware that she’d never seen Iris like that, and murmured a soft, “Hey.”
Iris nodded. Initially, it seemed like an acknowledgment, but it went too long and she failed to blink, and Barrett knew that, whether she’d initially been nodding at Barrett or not, she definitely wasn’t anymore.
“Here.” Barrett stripped her coat off and wrapped it around Iris’ shoulders. It was bitterly cold and she was already struggling enough. Barrett didn’t need to know the whole story to know that was true.
As the warmth seemed to seep into Iris, her body relaxed minutely. Barrett was making a good show of not paying ridiculous amounts of attention to Iris, but she was. She was monitoring her posture, her breathing, the absent look in her eyes.
“Why are you here?” Iris eventually asked. She was looking in Barrett’s direction but she was seeing something else.
“My best friend’s… partner works here.” It sounded almost like a question.
Ruby hadn’t explicitly named what they were.
Had Barrett just had the conversation for them and labeled them without asking?
They were clearly heading in that direction either way, but she looked forward to checking with Ruby later.
Iris blinked, slower than anyone Barrett had ever seen, before opening her eyes and actually looking at Barrett. “Small world.”
Barrett smiled, knowing her furrowed brow hadn’t returned to normal, but grateful for a glimpse of the Iris she knew. “Honestly, we work in the area, both live in the area… I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other sooner.”
“New York’s a big city, Barrett.”
A massive grin threatened to escape and Barrett worked to transform it into a smirk. “Do you head uptown to buy groceries?”
Iris tilted her head, eyes narrowing, and the relief of seeing her, of knowing she was still in there, was blissful.
“No,” she said. “But don’t think I’m telling you where I buy groceries.”
“It would not take me long to figure it out.”
“Are you going to spend your evenings and weekends waiting endlessly in every grocery store in the West Village?”
“Maybe it would be worth it to see more of your smiling face.”
She heaved a sigh. “How you waste your time is none of my business.”
Barrett smiled again. She would not stalk Iris around the city, but at least Iris’ comment suggested running into her wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to her.
No sooner had she thought that, though, than the situation rose up in her mind. Iris had run into someone she didn’t want to.
Barrett had been watching the tension get more and more obvious in every line of Iris’ body, even across the bar.
That was why she’d approached. Ordinarily, she’d have left Iris to her night with friends.
But something about her posture had suggested they weren’t friends.
And, whatever it was, it had gotten stubborn, fearless Iris fleeing the building.
“You’re going to get cold,” Iris pointed out, making no move to return Barrett’s jacket.
Barrett laughed once. “I’m not that fragile, princess. I’ll be okay for a minute.”
Something about the flash of tension around Iris’ eyes at the nickname had Barrett regretting using it for the first time ever.
“Right,” she said, looking down as her fingers curled around the edges of the black jacket and pulled it closer.
“Sorry,” Barrett said sincerely, “I shouldn’t have called you—”
“You should get back inside.”
Barrett suppressed a sigh. Iris was pushing her away because she was hurting, but she didn’t need to. They both understood the bounds of their relationship and Barrett wasn’t going to be put off by unpleasant emotions.
“Do you want to talk about what happened in there?” she asked, watching Iris carefully.
“Ha. No.” She shook her head and sagged back against the brick wall behind her. “What I want is for none of that to have happened.”
As she nodded, not understanding the why but understanding the sentiment entirely, Barrett realized she’d never seen Iris lean against a wall before. She leaned against her desk occasionally, but, overall, Iris never seemed to relax enough to just… lean.
Iris sighed again, looking down the street. “I want to scream and throw things and ask—” She shook her head. “But that’s not helpful or useful or fair.”
“I don’t need to know the situation to know you’re allowed to have your feelings about it.”
She looked like that wasn’t remotely an option. “No. It’s silly and I shouldn’t have caused a scene and run out of there.”
“You didn’t cause a scene.”
“Objectively, I did.”
Barrett wished she understood what was going on.
Iris’ version of a scene was a million miles away from her own—something that probably would involve throwing things around the room, or screaming—but she didn’t want to invalidate Iris’ read on the situation.
She had no idea who the people inside were, what the dynamics were amongst Iris’ friends.
Perhaps stepping out to get some air was a scene in their circle.
Finally, Iris looked back at her, and Barrett didn’t need daylight to see the war that was raging in her brown eyes.
She’d always found the combination of dark brown eyes and blonde hair fascinating on Iris.
It was an unusual natural combination. She’d looked it up once.
Now, those eyes just seemed sad, defeated.
“The two people I was talking to when you came over?” She waited for Barrett to nod before sucking in a deep breath and continuing, eyes distant as she watched a couple hop into the back of a cab. “One of them is supposed to be my friend. And the other… is my ex.”
Barrett studied her face. People she knew dated women she’d slept with. It wasn’t a big deal. This was not a situation like that. She didn’t need an explanation to know that the breakup had been less than amicable. “I see…”
Iris’ eyes snapped back to Barrett’s as she shook her head. “It was… she… I… it…”
As she watched Iris struggle to find the words—something she seldom seemed to have trouble doing—the pieces of the puzzle dropped into place. Barrett sucked in a sharp breath. “It was an abusive relationship.”
Iris winced hard. “That might be a strong word for it.”
It wasn’t. Barrett could tell. But she also knew it wasn’t always easy for the victims of relationships like that to acknowledge the abuse.
And, shit, her friend was dating the ex? Who did that?
Barrett stepped closer to her, still leaving space between them. “What do you need right now?”
Iris blinked. “Why are you being nice to me?”
Barrett grinned. “I’m always nice to you, pr—Iris.”
“Oh, god,” she groaned. “I don’t need handling with kid gloves. You can call me… what you always call me.”
A tiny spark of warmth ignited inside of Barrett. She knew this situation was heavy and hard and she wanted to help, but there was something about Iris wanting Barrett to call her princess that just felt warm.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Iris said, eyes narrowed, before her expression shifted and became troubled again. “I don’t know what I need. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“You can join me and my friend. She’d love meeting you.”
Something curious flickered across Iris’ face before she refused. “I can’t. It’s my friend’s birthday. I can’t just ditch.”
There were so many ways Barrett wanted to tell her to fuck the friend who’d betrayed her, but Iris didn’t need to navigate someone else’s big emotions right now. This was about her, not Barrett. She’d go more gently.
“If,” she said slowly, “your friend chose their birthday to force your unpleasant ex upon you—”
“Oh, no. Not that friend.”
Barrett fought the revulsion shuddering through her.
One of Iris’ friends had chosen someone else’s birthday to bring her shitty ex around?
And it was clear it was new, that Iris hadn’t been aware before.
She was so… contained and controlled. If she’d known to expect the ex, she wouldn’t have been caught like a deer in headlights.
She needed better friends.
“Did the birthday friend sign off on the ex coming around?” Barrett asked.
It was there again, Iris’ curiosity, confusion, almost frustration at something she didn’t understand. It reminded Barrett of how she’d look at work projects sometimes, filled with so much determination, so many questions.
Barrett wasn’t used to being the one she looked at like that, but she didn’t hate it.
“No,” Iris said firmly. “She definitely did not.”
“We could just team up and throw the two of them out?”
Iris cracked a smile. Tiny, weak, but absolutely there. “I think that might create more problems in the long run. Like knocking out a load-bearing wall.”
Barrett smiled back—at Iris’ smile, at the analogy, at finally getting a full conversation with her—but she didn’t like the sentiment.
Iris thought she’d lose everything if she rejected one friend?
One who was dating her abusive ex, too. Was her friend group really so precariously cobbled together?
Did they need her to be around her abuser to keep her in their lives?
That wasn’t the kind of structure that needed to remain standing.
Barrett wanted to kick it all out and build her something new.
Hell, she’d give Iris all her own friends just to know she had good people in her life.
But, again, this was about Iris and what Iris needed.
And, if she needed to stick with them right now, Barrett wasn’t going to try stopping her.
She also wasn’t going to leave her alone in it.
“They heard me call you princess,” she said cautiously.
“What does that matter?”
“Do you have a way to explain it to them all?”
“Maybe you should be the one explaining it,” Iris shot back, those sparks of their usual dynamic returning. “I wasn’t the one who walked over and announced it to a group of people I don’t know.”
“Oh, princess,” she replied with a smirk. “I don’t think you want them hearing my explanation.”
“And what might that be?”
Something illicit shot through Barrett. It wasn’t the time or the place, but there was no controlling wild and ridiculous feelings. “That we’re dating, obviously.”
Barrett had been expecting outrage, or surprise, or disgust, or something explosive. She wasn’t upset to find Iris surprising her when she simply raised her eyebrows and stared at Barrett.
“You want me to march back in there and tell all my friends that I’m dating you and hadn’t mentioned it?” she asked, deeply skeptical.
Barrett shrugged but refrained from pointing out that it wasn’t nearly as bad as one of them dating her abusive ex and not mentioning it. “I’m not going to make you go anywhere or do anything. I’m just saying, if you do want to go back in there, we could do it together.”
“As… fake girlfriends?”
“I’ve been worse things than your fake girlfriend.”
“How comforting.” She shook her head. “I’m not telling them that. I’m not telling them anything.”
“Do you want to leave? I can walk you home. If you want?”
That ghost of a smile flickered across her face again and Barrett was really becoming a sucker for it. “I’m perfectly capable of finding my own home.”
“I know that.”
“And I’m not allowing you to narrow down the grocery stores where I might shop.”
Barrett laughed in surprise. She wished she understood why Iris disliked her, because this didn’t feel like dislike. “Okay. Tell me what you want.”
She scowled over her shoulder at the door to the bar. “Going back in and not explaining anything?”
The way her jaw was set told Barrett just how hard doing that was going to be for her, just how much she really did want to run away and leave this whole night behind.
But that wasn’t Iris. She was terrified, but she faced things head-on.
And, if she didn’t want to talk about something, she didn’t. Barrett knew that from experience.
“Okay,” she agreed easily. “Anything you want.”
Iris looked pointedly away as she said quietly, “For you to come with me.” She cleared her throat.
“It would look odd for us to leave together and come back separately. And I’m not trying to keep you from your friend all night, I just, you know, for the situation, think it would be better to at least reappear together. If you don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind.” Barrett watched the anxious way Iris’ fingers played with the zipper on her jacket in her peripheral vision. She didn’t want to look directly and draw attention to it, that might scare her off. “Ruby will be fine with her partner for a good while.”
“Ruby’s your best friend?”
“Yeah.” Barrett couldn’t help but smile as she answered. Ruby was her best friend in the world. She was happiness incarnate. What other way was there to speak of her? “I can introduce you two, if you like?”
“Huh. Well, it seems getting through the evening without that might be difficult and bizarre. Given the situation.”
“Right,” Barrett laughed. “It’s just practical.”
“Rather. And polite.”
“She’s really gonna like you.”
Iris gulped the air like she wasn’t sure what to do with that sentiment, and she nodded, moving to hand Barrett’s jacket back.
“Oh, no,” Barrett said, shooting her a mischievous look. “You should keep that on for now.”
Whether she understood or not that it would play up the idea of an intimate connection between them, she didn’t say.
The slight flush across her cheeks suggested she hadn’t missed the implication, and Barrett was glad of that.
They weren’t going to claim to be together, but there was protection for her in letting her ex and her terrible friend believe she was with someone else.
Barrett would rather she do things like that while understanding the implications.
She nodded, avoiding Barrett’s gaze, and settled the jacket back on her shoulders. It looked good on her. Not her usual style, but that helped it make a point. And the way she turned back to the building said she wanted to make that point. Barrett would be by her side while she did.