Chapter 9
Iris
The first thing I think when I wake up is that I need to pee.
The second is that Paula Delgado is asleep next to me.
The third is that I smell a little bad, and she's asleep next to me.
I don't move, because if I do, she wakes up, and if she wakes up, I can't watch her sleep, which for some reason I love.
She looks like an entirely different person. Someone who isn't scanning for emergency exits or checking locks. It's the first time I've seen her like this. No control. No armor.
I should stop staring. It's a little creepy, even for me, but she has a mole on her collarbone that I've never noticed before, and her eyelashes are longer than I thought.
After a while, I'm afraid I'm crossing the line from observation into stalking, so I look away.
On the nightstand, there's a note.
A page torn from the notebook Paula always carries. Small handwriting, tilted slightly to the right, blue ink.
“Checked the entrances. All clear. P.”
She got up in the middle of the night to check the apartment, wrote it down, and came back to bed. Who crawls out of a warm bed at night to make sure everything's fine and then climbs back in?
I put the note in the drawer. Next to my headphones, the charger, and a granola bar that's probably expired and I should throw out. I don't know why I keep the note. I don't know why I don't throw out the bar either.
“Hi,” I whisper when I see her open her eyes.
She just smiles, and it's so pretty I want to see it every morning.
“Your hair is terrible,” she says.
“Jesus, Paula. Is that how you say good morning?” I groan.
“Good morning, Iris.”
I lie back down, facing each other, a foot apart.
“Thanks for staying,” I murmur, taking her hand and squeezing it.
“I told you I'd spend the night.”
“Yeah, but I figured you'd leave before I woke up. That's what I would've done,” I admit. “You know, to dodge the awkward part.”
“The awkward part?” she repeats, eyebrows up.
“Yeah… Like… how to wake up next to your bodyguard after a kiss the night before. A beginner's guide or something.”
“I think I'd better make coffee,” she says, rolling her eyes before she gets up.
I watch her walk out of my room in a T-shirt and underwear. She's got long legs, and I shouldn't be looking at them, but I can't help it.
I need to brush my teeth. And wash my face. And probably rethink my entire life. But teeth first.
***
When I come out of the bathroom, the kitchen smells like coffee. She's put on yesterday's pants, so I can stop staring at her legs.
“Are we going to talk about last night?” I ask, sitting on the stool.
“Do you want to?”
“I asked first. But yeah, I think we should have a conversation already.”
“Okay. It happened. I don't regret it. And I don't want you to regret it either. But I need some time to figure out what this means for my job, your safety, everything else,” she says with a sigh.
“How much time?”
“I don't know.”
“Come on, Paula… Days? Weeks? Months? Give me something!” I slam my palm on the kitchen counter and only manage to hurt myself.
“A day or two, probably.”
“Okay, that's something, I guess,” I say, taking a sip of coffee that's too hot. “And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime, nothing changes in public. The cover stays the same. The protocol stays the same. Last night stays between us.”
“Last night was already between us. I'm not going to post it on Instagram, like 'kissed my bodyguard last night after a stalker sent me a psycho message, hashtag romance, hashtag get yourself a bodyguard.'”
Paula looks at me, raises her eyebrows, and smiles. For her, that's probably equal to a full laugh. Progress.
“No, don't post that on Instagram,” she says, shaking her head.
“See? We already agree on something.”
***
At the club, breakfast with the team is safe ground. People around. Conversation. Good noise.
When I reach back to fix my ponytail, Paula stands up and does it for me. A simple gesture. Nobody thinks twice about it.
I feel electricity shoot through my whole body.
Wesley arrives in Zoe's arms, cheeks flushed, a crushed cookie in his fist. He sees me and reaches out.
“Iwis!”
“Boss.” I take him. Smell his head. Close my eyes. “Oh my God, this kid smells like magic. What do you wash his hair with, Zoe? Unicorn tears?”
“It's three-dollar baby shampoo.”
“Pola!” the kid says, pointing at my bodyguard.
Paula blinks, caught off guard.
“Pola!” Wesley repeats, thrilled with his discovery.
“Hey, boss,” Paula says, offering her hand, though Wes just grabs one finger and pulls.
***
The days that follow shift a little. I can't pinpoint when it starts. Or how. But I'm sure something has changed.
When she drives me to practice, we talk. Nothing important. Soccer, Wesley, the girls on the team, the songs we play in the locker room. Everything and nothing, but the thing is, we talk. Before, she drove in silence most of the time.
We still haven't had the conversation we should be having, but things are moving. Or at least, that's what I want to believe.
***
On Friday, Tina screws up.
I hear about it from Zoe in the locker room.
“Tina went out last night. With fans. Posted photos on Instagram. Showed up to practice with a brutal hangover, and Hades is furious,” she tells me, voice down to a whisper.
“Shit.”
“Yeah, that's what I said. Hades tore her apart. Biggest chewing-out I've seen all year.”
“Where is she?”
“In the auxiliary locker room. Crying.”
I find her sitting on the bench in the small locker room. Red eyes, messy hair. A bottle of water in her hand she hasn't even opened.
I sit next to her and wait. Don't say a word.
“I know,” she says, staring at the floor. “I know, okay? You don't need to come in here and yell at me too. I've already had enough with Hades and the looks from half the team, which is even worse. Besides, you're not exactly in a position to lecture me about partying before practice,” she adds.
“I'm not here to yell at you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To see how you're doing.”
“I'm terrible. I showed up late. I showed up half-drunk. I disrespected the team,” she swallows. “But you do it all the time, and nothing happens.”
The words hit me like a knife.
You do it all the time, and nothing happens.
I don't know what to say. I look at my hands. My sneakers. The locker room floor.
Tina didn't say it to hurt me. She just told the truth.
The simplest, most obvious truth. Iris Vance shows up late, goes out partying, and nothing much happens.
Tina does it once and gets the worst chewing-out of the year.
And the difference isn't that I'm better.
The difference is I score over twenty goals a season and that buys me credit I don't deserve.
“You're right,” I sigh.
Tina looks at me. Stunned.
“What?”
“You're right. I do it all the time. And yes, something does happen.
Of course something happens. Every time I show up late, deep down, I'm telling everyone on this team that my fun matters more than they do.
Every time I post a drunk photo, I'm handing ammunition to the people who want to tear us down.
And you see it and you think it's okay, but it's not okay, Tina. Not when I do it, and not when you do it.”
Tina opens her mouth. Closes it. Her chin trembles.
“But you're Iris Vance,” she says, like that explains everything.
“Yeah. And I'm a goddamn mess. Having a million followers or scoring goals doesn't make me a good example for anyone,” I say, scratching the back of my neck.
“And I should be, or at least try, because there are a lot of young players watching everything I do.
But you know what the worst part is? It's not because I love partying that much.
I mean, okay, I do, but it's because if I stay home, I have to sit with myself, and that…
shit, it's really hard, Tina. Showing up late?
It's because if I get there on time, I have to sit still and wait, and the quiet eats me alive. The constant jokes? So nobody looks too close at who I really am.”
I stop. I've said too much. I've said it to a twenty-two-year-old player who's crying in a locker room because she showed up half-drunk to practice.
Tina stares at me, eyes wide.
“Are you okay, Iris?”
“I'm better than I've been in a long time, which is weird given everything I just said. But yeah. I'm… working on it.”
“On what?”
“On being myself.”
Tina keeps staring, not knowing what to say.
“Man, I'm getting way too deep. I sound like some kind of philosopher,” I joke, shaking my head. “Don't tell anyone about this, okay? It'd ruin my tough girl reputation.”
“You're not a tough girl. Deep down, we all know that.”
“Excuse me?”
“You're the softest person I know. You smell a kid's head fifteen times a day, and he isn't even yours.
You know every maintenance worker at the club by name.
You bought a birthday present for the cleaning lady's son.
You're loud. That's very different. And a really good person,” she says, leaning her head on my shoulder.
We sit still. She's only twenty-two and she just told me something close to what Paula said in the car that night after the gala. “I see that Iris.” And now Tina, with red eyes and a wrinkled shirt, sees the same thing.
“Tina.”
“Yeah?”
“You are not allowed to go out partying before a practice again. And neither am I. Both of us. Deal?”
“Deal,” she says.
“But if you ever really need a night out, you call me. We go together. And I make sure we both show up to practice in one piece. Okay?”
Tina smiles and shakes my hand like we're closing a business deal.