Chapter Seventeen
Iris was hollow, drained. She felt like she was stumbling through her life in a different kind of way than usual.
She usually put on a good show of having it all together, of needing nothing and having only neutral, inoffensive opinions unless she knew exactly what the people around her wanted.
Then, she said what was expected of her.
Being with Barrett wasn’t like that, she was realizing. It never really had been. She’d just never let it in. Now, feeling utterly exposed as they leaned on the cold, vivid railing of the Staten Island ferry, there was no ignoring it.
The whole thing was as baffling as the first time Barrett had called her princess and a sad little part of her had balked in need. She could let Barrett call her cute little names. And she could crack open around Barrett. Somehow, it would all be okay in the end—maybe in the middle, too.
Manhattan was far away now. Picture-perfect and easier to handle.
It wasn’t even the city’s fault. She wasn’t upset with it, it was just the place that held all the pain.
She still loved it, but love was complicated.
It was nothing like the simple, fairytale thing she’d read as a child.
She often wondered whether that might make it better.
Thus far, the complication of it hadn’t been better. She hoped it could be in the future.
She glanced at Barrett, hands clasped as she leaned on the railing and amber eyes on fire in the blazing sunset.
She was such a tangle of contradictions.
Dark clothes and cool energy if you looked at her when she wasn’t smiling, someone Iris would have been afraid to approach on the street, but, under that, there was a warmth and magnetism Iris hadn’t experienced with anyone else.
There was a hurt child and the adult who was healing her.
There was someone confident and cheeky and…
frustrating, alongside someone who just cut through all the shit to see what someone was struggling with and how to help them.
Compared to how flat and one-dimensional Iris felt, it was overwhelming.
Maybe complicated could be beautiful.
“You can take a picture if you just want to gaze at me, princess,” Barrett said, a smile creeping onto her face.
Iris gulped and looked away. “Just send me the one you took.”
Barrett twisted, still leaning but facing Iris now. “I already did.”
“Oh.”
“You’re welcome,” she laughed.
“Did Ruby help you?” The question burst from her unexpectedly.
She’d been planning to thank Barrett—too late—and, of course, she’d wanted to ask Barrett about her earlier comments, about the necessity of other people helping her out, but she really hadn’t been planning to just spit it out like that.
It was a private question, a difficult topic, some tact would have been nice.
Barrett’s smile shifted. “Yes. In many ways, she was exactly what I needed. Entirely and unapologetically herself. She was this fairy-pink princess but she never needed me to be that. I’d had other friends who tried to change my style, or made comments they played off as jokes, but—”
“There was truth behind them,” Iris finished. She knew those jokes well.
“Exactly.” Barrett nodded as she studied Iris’ face, seeing far too much again. “But not Ruby. She showed up knowing exactly who she was and she didn’t want anything other than that for me. She was a safe place to fall apart.”
“Like you,” Iris breathed.
“I try.” Her smile was completely gone now, an intense look in her eyes as she held Iris’ gaze.
Iris' heart raced. She probably shouldn’t have said that, but she hadn’t been able to keep it in.
Of all the people in her life, Barrett felt the most like herself, the most like she could handle any and every version of Iris.
If having a friend like that mattered so much to Barrett, surely she deserved to know she was that person to someone too?
But the moment between them was loaded and breathless, and Iris had to hope she was simply imagining the whole thing through her emotional exhaustion.
Barrett’s gaze dropped to Iris’ lips and Iris almost exploded. The knot in her stomach and the pressure in her chest buzzed so frantically she had no idea how to breathe or speak or even function.
“Well,” Barrett said quickly, looking back at the city, “I’m happy to help.”
“I appreciate it.” Iris’ voice was distant, almost lost on the wind and coming from within it rather than from her own body. She had no idea what was going on. The intensity of the moment, of whatever was passing between them was so desperately unfamiliar she couldn’t even begin to parse it.
“And,” Barrett said, recovering remarkably smoothly, “now, you know I’m a great choice to help you architect your life.”
Iris stalled, unsure whether that statement made sense and her brain was simply too sluggish to keep up, or whether it was simply a chaotic Barrett sentiment that one could apply meaning to without expecting actual logic. “Right. Yeah.”
Barrett grinned, the only sign that anything was off was in the way she looked at Iris’ nose and cheeks rather than her eyes. “Ready for our first adventure in spontaneity?”
“You mean, outside of the fact that we’re impulsively on a boat in the middle of the New York Harbor?”
“I mean exactly that.”
She took Iris’ hand again and the suddenness of it made Iris tense and jump, but she locked her reaction down quickly. It was only Barrett. Everything was fine.
As Barrett turned them and started carving a path through the assembled bodies, Iris gripped tighter to her hand, staying close so the crowd didn’t have the opportunity to surge back in and cut her off from Barrett.
She realized as they moved that they were getting close now, the journey almost over.
Barrett led them to a door where a few others were starting to gather. “How do you feel about some more running, princess?”
“Terrible. Hate it.”
Barrett shot her an amused look that turned into an awfully intimate glance down her body.
Iris was sure she didn’t mean anything by it, simply checking whether Iris looked like she could run, but, given the last few minutes, their proximity, and their clasped hands, it felt like something, and Iris tried inexplicably hard to prevent her palm from sweating.
“I can run,” she clarified. “I’m just not good at it and have never actually enjoyed it.”
Barrett’s expression was teasingly challenging as she said, “Let’s change that, shall we?”
The boat docked, the crowd by the door growing exponentially as they waited for the doors to open, and Iris was pressed tighter into Barrett’s side.
She almost adjusted her grip, intertwining their fingers to ensure there was less chance of them being separated, before realizing how inappropriate that would be.
At least panicking about her reaction to Barrett was better than panicking about feeling trapped.
Her mind murmured constant reassurances that the door would open soon, that nothing bad was going to happen to her, that if she needed to escape the push, Barrett would get her out.
And then the doors were open and they were moving, and Iris breathed again.
They’d barely made it to solid ground before Barrett took off running, Iris with her, no choice to do anything but follow.
Barrett laughed loud and free as she watched Iris, who was certain she must have looked wild and confused. Still, it was easy to smile with her.
There was something about just running that helped. She was away, but she still got to run, to feel like she was escaping all the things that felt impossible to carry.
Several other people—mostly tourists—were running too, laughing, squealing, racing.
A jolt struck Iris’ heart. There was something so beautiful about the chaos, about holding Barrett’s hand and running for her life, not knowing where they were running to.
Something healing in being part of this moment with a bunch of people they didn’t know.
Iris had known a guy in the UK who had a whole thing about being a tourist in your hometown.
He philosophized on how much you missed when home was simply the place you slept, worked, and waited to die.
It had worked out well for them in Cambridge.
She’d seen so much, with so many people, at his insistence that they didn’t let the opportunity slip by.
She’d lived like she wasn’t waiting to die. She’d lived like she relished doing it.
The past few years hadn’t been like that. She didn’t want to think she’d been waiting to die, nobody wanted their life to filter down to that, but she feared she might have been all the things that guy had tried to save them from.
“Doing okay?” Barrett called as they rounded a corner.
“Yes,” Iris called back, a little breathless, but she was. “Where are we going?”
“The boat!” Barrett pointed with her free hand, and Iris saw it.
They were running through the terminal to jump back on the return journey. And they weren’t the only ones.
The whole thing was ridiculous and hilarious, and perfect.
She gasped, laughing as they came to a stop to walk onto the boat at a normal speed with all the others who had taken the ferry for the journey, not the destination. Barrett didn’t let go of her hand, simply steadying Iris when the momentum of their run had them colliding.
“Again, again!” a toddler screamed delightedly behind them.
Iris glanced back to see her clapping her hands enthusiastically as her dad held her tight in his arms, laughing with his partner, as she held their younger child.
Iris’ heart thudded, her entire system being flooded with an aching gratitude for Barrett, and the moment, and this family that loved each other so much.
She didn’t even know them, but anxiety crashes made her emotional even without Barrett and a boat.
Barrett nudged her as they walked onto the ferry. “We won’t have quite as good seats for the return journey, sorry.”
Iris shook her head. “We weren’t sitting down on the way here.”
Even if they had been, and the run had lost them their seats, Iris would still have done it. She felt more alive than she had in months.
“Maybe next time,” Barrett said, leading the way through the boat.
“No. Next time, I want to stand at the rail again.”
She stopped immediately, turning to look at Iris. “Next time?”
The uncertainty in her tone, the nervousness creeping into her expression, felt like they reached straight into Iris’ soul. She’d been flippant with her comment. Iris hadn’t.
“Oh, you don’t want to go ‘again, again’?” She gestured over her shoulder in the vague direction of the family that had run with them.
Barrett laughed, but there was something triumphant underneath, like she was getting a prize she hadn’t dared to wish for. “I do. Just glad to know you do, too, princess.”
“I do.” She smiled shyly, and looked around the boat instead of reading whatever emotions she’d find on Barrett’s face. “Come on. Let’s find a place to stand.”
“We can sit in here, if you want?”
“No,” Iris said, confident in her choice. “I want to see the city again.”