Chapter Sixteen
Iris looked less like she was actively dying by the time they reached the ferry terminal, and Barrett was relieved to see it, even if that haunted look hadn’t left her eyes yet. She grinned as Iris shot her a puzzled look.
“We’re going to Staten Island?” Iris asked skeptically.
“Only briefly,” Barrett replied, resisting the urge to take her hand and tow her inside. “Have you ever taken the ferry?”
Iris looked up at the building as they approached, her brown eyes wide. “No. Never. I haven’t had a reason to go to Staten Island.”
“It’s not about the destination, princess.”
“It’s the journey? That’s what you’re giving me?”
Barrett laughed and threw a wink over her shoulder at Iris.
Part of it was from knowing that you needed people to be normal around you after you’d had a breakdown in front of them, you needed to know they weren’t seeing you differently.
At least, Barrett did, and she suspected Iris was the same.
The rest of it was just the ease of being herself around Iris.
If she wanted to tease, she could. Iris got their dynamic and knew how to respond.
Usually with an exasperation Barrett knew didn’t actually go very deep.
She’d figured that out early on, though she hadn’t understood it at all.
Now, she thought she might be starting to get it—to get Iris.
They moved with the crowds towards the door, and Barrett felt like she was glittering when she looked at Iris and found her eyes already locked on Barrett. “Are you ready?”
“For what?” Iris cast her hands around, indicating the situation around them. “It’s a bit late to check if I get seasick.”
The idea flew out of Barrett’s mind as quickly as it had entered. If Iris got seasick, she wouldn’t be so flippant about it.
Barrett shook her head and held one hand out to Iris. “Not that. Are you ready to race for the best spot on the boat?”
Iris looked more concerned than anything as she glanced around at the crowd. It was rush hour and the boat was going to be busy. That wasn’t going to stop Barrett from getting Iris a fantastic view.
Eventually, Iris shrugged and hesitantly placed her hand into Barrett’s.
The impulse to squeeze reassuringly, to ensure Iris’ hand was real, buzzed through her, but Barrett resisted, simply dropping their joined hands to her side and stepping closer to Iris.
Her hand was cooler than it had been this morning over almonds. Still just as soft, though.
She leaned in towards Iris’ ear. “We’re going for the deck at the back, so we’ll see the city as we go. It’s an incredible view. Just stay close and I’ll get us there.”
Iris nodded, but she narrowed her eyes. “You’ve done this a lot?”
“A fair few times, yeah. It was one of the first things I did when I moved here, you know, fresh off being a broke-ass student, and this was a free way to see the city.” That was all true, but there was something bigger to it, to the way she’d felt standing against the railing, looking up at the big city she’d been chasing, the life she’d always wanted within grasp.
The ferry had become the place she got away to.
“I come a few times a month, now. It’s where I go when I need to think, to step back from things.
When I need to be away, I jump on a boat. ”
Iris looked like she was about to say something—something about how Barrett was giving her the away she’d requested.
She looked like she understood that Barrett had comprehended that request more than she’d realized.
But, before she could speak, the crowd around them started moving and Barrett’s head flicked in the direction of the boat. They were boarding.
“Ready?” she called to Iris.
“Ready,” Iris replied, sounding just a little apprehensive as people closed in around them.
And then they were on and, like muscle memory, Barrett was leading the way, thinking about how nice it was to do this with Iris’ hand in hers, to have someone racing with her, calling apologies to the disgruntled commuters who had no interest in running for a view they knew all too well.
They collided with the cold railing once they made it back outside, and Iris gasped and laughed.
Actually laughed. It was as though all the tension and emotion of the last hour—hell, the last few weeks—finally hit the escape valve.
She’d done something impulsive and silly and entirely out of her ordinary life, and she laughed, her eyes sparkling as she looked at Barrett.
They weren’t the first people outside, but they were plenty early, others filling in the space and claiming railing spots quickly.
Barrett wasn’t concerned about them. She was entirely focused on Iris and her laugh that sounded exactly how Barrett had imagined and nothing like she had at the same time.
It was perfectly Iris, but it was so blissfully carefree from a woman who was carrying far too much, far too many wounds she’d never deserved.
There was something so honest and hopeful about the fact that she laughed that way, as though, underneath it all, the things she’d been through hadn’t destroyed her the way she feared.
Barrett’s own laughter came easily as she stepped in closer to Iris, the sides of their hands pressing together as they clung to the railing. The people filling the space around them, squeezing in for the best view, made it a necessity, but Barrett didn’t mind.
Iris didn’t seem to, either.
“Thank you for bringing me,” she said when her laughter subsided.
“We haven’t even moved yet, princess.”
“I know, but still… thank you.” Her gaze burned into and through Barrett with its intensity, setting every part of Barrett’s body trembling in an entirely unfamiliar way.
“Of course.” She looked up at the city as they started moving. The buildings were so tall and unfathomable this close. Barrett knew they wouldn’t stay that way for long.
There were so many people around them, a buzz of excitement and conversation and people snapping photos, but the collective seemed to bend into one, into a wall of humanity that had no bearing on her and Iris.
It wasn’t dissimilar to what she usually experienced on the ferry, part of the reason she came, but it was different with Iris, of course.
“Are you happy?” Iris asked unexpectedly.
Barrett sucked in a surprised breath. “Yeah.”
Nobody ever just asked outright like that, so she’d never really thought about it, but she was.
There were things she still wanted, of course, but it was liberating to stand on that bright orange ferry, looking at her city getting smaller and smaller despite its enormity, and just knowing that she really was happy in a deep, foundational way.
It was the thing the teenage version of her had always been chasing.
Standing beside Iris on the ferry, she was pretty sure it was up there with all the happiest moments of her life in New York.
Of her whole life.
“Are you?” Her voice was barely audible over the noise of the boat and the people, but Iris heard her.
She looked away from Barrett and up at New York, her blonde hair whipping around her. “I’m really trying to be.”
“Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”
Iris shrugged. “Maybe. I feel like—” She blew out a heavy breath, like she was reconsidering whatever she was about to admit.
“You can tell me,” Barrett promised. “Whatever it is, it's just between you, me, and the waves.”
Iris nodded, a sad little smile on her face. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Because I know what it feels like to need to be away, and I know this helps me.”
“And?” she prompted, apparently hearing the incomplete thought in Barrett’s words.
“And… you told me about that bridge at Cambridge, about punters on the river. This isn’t quite the idyllic British image that conjures, but I got the sense water might calm you too.”
Iris nodded, shivering in the fading light as she looked at where Lady Liberty had come into view.
Around them, cameras clicked and flashed.
But it wasn’t having seen the Statue a hundred times before that made Barrett uninterested in her.
It could have been her first sighting and she’d still have been hanging on Iris’ every word, in watching the way the evening light landed on the curve of her cheek.
Resolutely, Iris looked back at her. “I feel like I don’t really know who I am or how to be happy.”
Her cheeks flushed but she held steady, not giving into the shame she was obviously feeling, and Barrett’s heart ached for her, even as another rod of spite shot through her. She wanted to murder Natasha all over again.
“Do you remember who you were before?” Barrett asked carefully.
“I don’t know. Maybe? Kind of? But there’s no going back. Too much has happened to be her again.” She chewed her bottom lip for several long seconds. “She wasn’t good enough.”
“I beg to differ,” Barrett said too quickly. She hadn’t meant to. She’d been planning to stay quiet and careful, to let Iris feel her feelings and have her space. Barrett knew all too well how complicated trauma was and what it did to your sense of self.
But she was only human, and she couldn’t be another person who stood by and let Iris tell herself and the world that she wasn’t good enough.
Iris shot her a look. “You didn’t even know that version of me.”
“I’m aware.”
Iris leaned her elbows on the railing, looking down at the water.
“I’ve got everything she wanted—that version of me that Natasha was dating.
She dreamed of things like this—the freedom to just…
make choices. To hang out with friends without needing permission, to spontaneously take a boat across the harbor for no reason at all.
” She hesitated. “Or, I’ve got most things she wanted, at least. But I feel like I’m wasting it, like I can’t enjoy it. I feel like I don’t deserve it.”
Barrett understood that as though she’d spoken the words herself, like Iris had reached into the deepest, darkest, most bruised parts of her and taken the sentiment straight from her soul. She’d worked through those exact feelings on this very boat time and time again over the last decade.
“It takes time,” she told Iris, not bothering to hold up the walls she usually did when she talked about this stuff with her friends.
She’d done the work, was doing the work, and the past was the past, but people wanted you to talk about it like it didn’t still hurt, like you weren’t still able to fall apart under the weight of it.
Iris didn’t need those walls, the false pretense that every part of Barrett was healed and better and beyond the things that hurt her.
“And it takes other people helping us. That was the hardest lesson I had to learn.”
“Yeah?”
Barrett laughed once. “Yes. I mean, it’s me, princess. Do you really think that stubborn, independent version of me felt good having to let people in, letting them see my most vulnerable parts?”
Iris studied her for so long the air between them felt loaded, the rest of the passengers disappearing around them. “No. I do not think that. But you did it anyway.”
Barrett waved one hand. “Eventually. It takes a lot of conscious effort.”
“You’re doing it with me right now.”
“That’s… Yeah.”
“Is it difficult?”
“No.” After too long of a pause, she added, “I’ve, uh, had a lot of practice at this point.”
“Of course.”
Barrett cleared her throat. “So, that means you can get there, too.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely. Especially with me helping you.”
“I don’t remember asking.”
Barrett slapped a hand to her chest. “You wound me, princess. You don’t have to ask. I already know you want my help. Why wouldn’t you? Everyone loves my help. You can check Burrow’s reviews for confirmation.”
“Good god,” Iris despaired, her head in her hands. “I’m not looking to remodel my apartment.”
“Correct. You’re looking to remodel your life. To do things like this.” Barrett spread her arms as best she could, indicating the boat and the crowd and the city—the life around them. “And it looks like I’m great at that.”
“I suppose there’s no point denying that,” Iris conceded. “But I’m not looking to take over your whole life just so I can learn to be a normal person again.”
“What about me is making you think I don’t love spending time with my friends?”
“Nothing. It’s that… Well. Are we friends?”
Barrett smirked at her. “Pretty sure you’ll find you just stated we are, princess.”
“What?” She scrunched her face up, obviously running through her previous comments to locate what Barrett was referencing. It was obvious when she did. “Oh. I didn’t mean—you don’t have to—I only—”
“Too late. We’re officially friends now. You’re stuck with me.”
“We work together. I was already stuck with you.”
“Try not to sound too excited about it.” Barrett laughed as she pulled her phone out, and held it in a way that caught the two of them and the softly glowing city behind them. “Let’s commemorate the moment with a photo.”
“Jesus Christ,” Iris muttered under her breath. But she leaned in with Barrett, a smile on her face for the photo, and Barrett snapped the very first one of them together.