Chapter 7
Iris
Turns out Paula Delgado can dance, and I never would've guessed.
It's the only thing in my head right now. Not the charity gala the whole team had to attend, or how uncomfortable this dress is. None of that. The only thing my brain registers is the warmth of her hand on my hip and how she leads me like we've been dancing together our entire lives.
But let me rewind, because before the dancing, other things happened.
We've been acting for four weeks, and the problem is I no longer know where the act ends and the real thing starts.
It's all getting too natural. My hand reaches for hers when cameras are around, and occasionally when they're not.
She places her hand on the small of my back when people are nearby.
I lean into her ear to say things that don't need whispering, but it means I get to feel the heat of her neck an inch from my lips.
When someone asks about our relationship, I improvise.
And I'm getting better at it. The coffee story has grown: now it includes a second coffee, a dinner, and a made-up story about Paula burning toast that makes everyone smile, because imagining her doing something wrong is almost funny.
Plus, people love hearing everyday details about famous people.
“I never burned any toast,” she told me the first time she heard the story, the second we were alone.
“You don't exist. You're a fictional character. The toast doesn't exist either,” was my apology.
Little by little, we're finding our rhythm. She says something dry. I turn it into a joke. Paula doesn't laugh, but the corner of her mouth moves a millimeter. I'm learning to read that millimeter.
The problem is I'm also noticing plenty of other things.
She puts her left hand on the back of her neck when she's tired.
She reads before bed every night. The book she's reading now has a blue cover, and the pages are marked with little strips of paper.
When something worries her, she rubs the scar on her hand with her right thumb, a gesture that lasts half a second and that she probably doesn't even know she does.
And I notice that when she puts her hand on my back, her fingers spread like she's trying to cover as much ground as possible. To protect me.
***
For the charity gala, I bought a new dress. Black, long, open back, a neckline that Zoe described as “holy shit, Iris” and that made Hades roll her eyes. A little uncomfortable, but spectacular.
Paula is wearing a suit. White shirt, no tie, two buttons undone. Her hair down for the first time, no bun.
The players do what we always do at these things. We smile. We shake hands. A sponsor introduces me to his wife. A league rep congratulates me on last season. Alex Drummond shows up with a glass in her hand and winks at me.
“Very convincing,” she murmurs as she walks past us.
I'd rather not tell her that it gets easier to act every time.
Lucía appears with a drink and raises an eyebrow.
“I like your girl,” she says. “She's a little weird, but I like her.”
At ten, the music changes. The string quartet packs up and a DJ takes over. The dance floor is half empty.
“Dance with me?” I ask, holding out my hand.
“It's not necessary.”
“I didn't ask if it was necessary. I asked if you'd dance with me.”
Paula looks at me. Calculates. Weighs it. Decides.
We walk to the floor. I put my hand on her shoulder. I expect her to put hers on my waist with that stiff professionalism she's built from. I'm expecting something mechanical, a functional sway, movements that check a box, and nothing more.
But Paula Delgado can dance.
She leads with the slightest pressure on my hip, a shift in her fingers, a weight change that my body follows without thinking. It's salsa folded into a slow dance. Rhythm hidden underneath a woman who's too serious.
“Where'd you learn to dance?” I ask.
“My grandma.”
“You're leading me,” I whisper near her ear.
“Does that bother you?”
“No. It surprises me. Nobody leads me. Not in dancing, not in anything.”
“That's because you don't let them.”
“Or because nobody knows how,” I shoot back.
“I think we should stop right now,” she says out of nowhere.
“What?”
“I need to get my head straight, or I'm going to do something unprofessional. I'm sorry,” she insists, and walks off the dance floor while I stand there staring.
The car is waiting at the hotel entrance. When we get in, Seattle's lights slide past the window, rain-soaked, blurred, like watercolors somebody left unfinished.
We don't talk. But I feel a pull low in my stomach that I can't ignore.
Paula looks out her window. I look out mine. There's three feet of seat between us, and it feels like a mile.
“Paula.”
“Yeah?”
“This is killing me,” I say, and I raise the partition so the driver can't hear.
She turns. Slow.
“What's killing you?”
“You.”
The word comes out on its own. No thought behind it. One syllable. I hear it and I want to grab it back, but it's already out. I already said it.
The silence stretches forever. Just the rain on the roof of the car.
“The dance. Your hand. The last few weeks I don't know what's real and what's fake anymore,” I say, since she's not talking.
She just looks at me, poker face, and I want to strangle her.
“Forget it, okay? I didn't say anything. I'm an idiot,” I mutter through my teeth, rolling my eyes and shaking my head.
“I can't,” she says at last, so quiet it could pass for engine noise.
“Try.”
“I don't want to.”
She says it looking me straight in the eyes, and I stop breathing.
“Everyone sees the girl who scores goals. The viral Instagram videos. Shows up late to practice and cracks jokes. And they give that Iris a like or a comment and move on with their day, because it's easy… it's what they want to see.”
The car passes under a streetlight. The light crosses her face. Then shadow again.
“But they don't see the one who stays up until three in the morning with the TV on because the quiet scares her. I see that Iris,” she breathes.
I don't know how much time passes. Ten seconds. Twenty. The car rolls through wet streets, but my throat has closed shut and my hands are shaking in my lap.
“How do you do that?” I ask finally.
“Do what?”
“Leave me with nothing to say. Nobody does that.”
Paula doesn't smile. But the corner. The millimeter. There it is.
“So now what?” I ask, because if it were up to me, I'd teleport us both to my bedroom right now.
“Now we get home. Each of us to our own room. And tomorrow we talk.”
“Talk for real, or talk professional?” I push.
“Talk for real.”
“Promise me. Because if you wake up tomorrow and act like this conversation never happened, if you leave me shaking and then pretend none of it was real, I—”
“I'm not going to do that,” she tells me.
The car stops in front of our building. Rain hammers the roof. Paula gets out, walks around, and opens my door.
“I already told you I can open my own doors,” I grumble, even though I secretly love that she does it.
At my apartment door, she doesn't kiss me. She doesn't touch me. She doesn't do anything that crosses a single line.
And that's precisely why I'm shaking.
I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling.
I don't turn on the TV.
I don't put on a podcast.
I don't look for noise.
I stay in the silence.