Chapter Thirty-Five
Iris breathed in the soothing space of Phoebe’s office. It was like existing on an alternate plane, one that was far from the brutality of real life. Perhaps that was what any therapist was hoping to create for their clients. Barrett had said something similar about Orion’s office.
“Did the experience help?” Phoebe asked, something cautiously optimistic in her tone.
Iris nodded. “I don’t know that I’d recommend it as a replacement for therapy, but, for what I needed in that moment, it was perfect.”
Phoebe smiled. “Well, Barrett was correct that feeling your anger is often a necessary part of healing.”
“I get the feeling it originally came from her therapist.”
“Smart therapist.”
Iris breathed a laugh. Phoebe had tried to integrate Iris’ anger before, with mixed results in sessions and Iris always pushing it back down and away the second she left the office.
To survive living with Natasha, she couldn’t have anger.
Somewhere along the way, her body had learned that to survive she couldn’t have anger.
But she’d been angry in front of Barrett.
She’d smashed an old TV set up. And Barrett had stuck around, held her, and told her it was okay.
She’d let Iris scream and cry it out until she was exhausted.
And then, she’d walked Iris home, hugged her tight, and met her for breakfast before work.
Like nothing had changed at all. Like Iris’ anger had cost her nothing.
“And how did it feel expressing that in front of Barrett?” Phoebe knew there was something deeper than just friendship there, it was clear in the way she spoke, despite the fact that Iris hadn’t said it in so many words yet.
Of course, she’d probably think Phoebe wasn’t a particularly good therapist if she couldn’t read between those lines.
She huffed. “Bad. Good. Confusing. Exhausting.”
“When your body has been holding all of that internally for such a long time, letting it out and feeling it is often complicated.”
“Good word for it.” Iris thought about Barrett’s smile when they met up that morning. Dimples in full effect. There was concern in her expression, sure, but she’d still just been… happy to see Iris. “She’s so…”
“Yes?”
“Understanding, maybe? Like, I spent so long trying to keep her at arm’s length, but here she is, just… getting it. Showing up, caring. And it doesn’t really make sense because she’s so good even outside of that. She could—”
“Could what?”
Iris knew exactly what she wanted to say, but she was afraid Phoebe would tell her this wasn’t a good time to be developing feelings for someone.
The fact that it felt like that was deeply indicative of where Iris stood on the whole thing, but she didn’t want her therapist telling her it was a bad idea.
Still, she was paying for help. She wouldn’t get it if she started concealing things.
She straightened. “She could spend her time caring about someone else—being with someone else.”
“What if she doesn’t want someone else?”
Iris opened and shut her mouth. She definitely hadn’t been expecting that. “I… don’t know. I guess it just doesn’t really make sense to me. She could do better.”
“Barrett might not agree. And that could simply be negative self-talk taking over because Natasha has thrown up a lot of old thought processes.” She held a hand out placatingly.
“That’s not anything to be ashamed of, but we do have to trust that the people who choose to spend time with us want to be there. ”
Iris sniffed distastefully. “There are better versions of me to spend time with than whatever I’ve been lately.”
Phoebe smiled sympathetically. “Do you love the people you care about less when they’re having a difficult time?”
“Of course not.”
“Would you hold it against Barrett if she was going through something like this, or would you still want her anyway?”
Iris didn’t miss the way answering that question would be the first explicit confirmation that she was with Barrett. “I’d still want her anyway.”
That was true. Barrett had her past and, whenever she talked about it, all Iris wanted was to wrap up the version of her that went through that and save her from every little thing that hurt. If anything, it made her care more about Barrett, understand her better, know her more intimately.
“Do you think Barrett might feel the same way about you?”
“Intellectually? Potentially. Emotionally?” She shook her head, looking up at the ceiling. “I don’t really know how to believe that. There’s no part of her that just… wants to hurt me, and that feels unfamiliar.”
That was one of the more bleak things she’d ever felt, but it was one of the truest, too.
Natasha showing back up, Jemma dating her, almost all of her friends picking Natasha made sense because Iris spent her life waiting for the moments people hurt her.
She’d never wanted to be the cliché, she wanted to believe it was just Natasha who had fucked her up, but, hearing about Barrett’s past, sitting with her feelings lately, she had to admit she’d never known love that just felt safe.
She’d spent her life running, trying to tell herself that if she was geographically distanced from her family, she could pretend that caused the emotional distance.
Then, there’d been Natasha. Geographically close but determined to hurt her.
And she’d been running from that for the last few years too.
But now, there was Barrett. A woman who couldn’t find it in herself to think a single negative thing about Iris. She’d never asked, of course, but it was there in every interaction, every look and touch, every word, every tiny gesture, and every shared silence.
And all of that existed in a world that had Natasha, too.
“I don’t know how to hold it all at the same time and feel okay,” she admitted quietly, like it was a shameful weakness she should have figured out a million years ago.
“As frustrating as it is, that’s to be expected,” Phoebe replied, almost as quietly. “You’ve been used to the dysfunction for so long. Your system doesn’t really know how to function in the safety yet. But, the good news is, you can get there. You just need to give yourself time.”
It felt like an unbelievable flaw in humanity that people went through horrific things but kept showing up hoping to be loved.
Maybe it was the opposite of a flaw, maybe it was incredible.
Barrett was spectacular, and she’d been hurt but was still showing up, opening up.
She was revealing so many things to Iris that, in the wrong hands, could be used to hurt her.
Iris never would, and Barrett’s mind and heart somehow believed that. The thought made Iris want to cry.
“We can work on tolerating the feelings associated with it,” Phoebe assured her.
Iris nodded. “It just feels weird to have something good happening when I feel—” She cut off like she’d been winded as her mind caught up with what she was feeling, what she was about to say. She gulped and tried again, eyes watering. “When I feel so desperately sad a lot of the time.”
“You’re working through a past, abusive relationship resurfacing and it being the cause of many of your friendships breaking up. It is entirely to be expected that you’d be grieving.”
Iris barked a bitter laugh through the tears, accepting the tissues Phoebe pushed towards her. “Is there a way not to be grieving? It feels silly. Nobody died.”
“There are a million different types of grief, Iris. Friendship breakups are one of them and the grief can be debilitating. While nobody has died, a friendship has, the idea of who that person was and what life looked like with them in it has. You have to let yourself grieve all of that so you can move past it.”
“It doesn’t feel fair to make Barrett deal with all of that. She’s been through enough without me putting that on her.”
“Are you making her responsible for fixing it?”
“Of course not.”
Phoebe nodded like she’d been expecting that response.
“Then you can’t decide what Barrett wants to help you with.
There’s never a perfect point in life where everything is good and always will be.
The best and strongest partnerships know that and they’re committed to working through the bad times together. ”
Iris had heard it a million times—in conversations, in wedding vows and speeches, in the media. Some part of her had, apparently, took it to be one of those saccharine things people just said. The ideal that was actually unreachable. Now, it felt real, but like she specifically didn’t deserve it.
Barrett was incandescent. Every single part of her was something beautiful and bewitching. Iris didn’t know how to be worthy of that when she’d been worthy of so little in the past.
Though, of course, Phoebe had told her time and time again in this very room that what Natasha had done to her wasn’t something she deserved, that she was worthy of better things.
And Barrett had told her she was still worthy of love when she was angry. Then, she’d proved it by holding Iris through the anger.
Iris just wanted to make her happy, to make her life better and more beautiful.
If she felt that way, it had to be possible for other people to feel it too, even about her. She didn’t think herself so unique as to be having an entirely different human experience than every other person on Earth.
Perhaps there were people like Natasha and people like Barrett. And perhaps Iris got to be one of the people like Barrett—the people who deserved love and loved so loudly it lit up the whole world. Wouldn’t that be a wondrous thing?