Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
IRIS
D oes he actually want to kiss me?
Her heart hammered in her chest as if she’d run the race instead. His eyes were trained on her lips as he stepped closer and—mind blanking—all she could do was nod.
Yes, we should.
His hand came to her jaw. Their eyes locked as he swiped his thumb there, so subtle. Almost like a caress.
They stood at the gate separating their past and the more that’d danced between them for so long.
“Finally,” he sighed, bending down.
The sound of the crowd cheering fell away as their lips brushed, like a match igniting. Fire licked up inside of her as she opened, and he kissed her again with a moaning neediness that made her knees buckle.
His hand anchored on her hip, pulling her in, and she melted against him, as if they’d done this their entire life. His spicy cologne scent she’d always loved wrapped around her as she breathed him in, feeling the press of his lips against hers. She wanted to take and take, needing more.
He angled her head to deepen the kiss, and lust ignited like a brush fire at how he moved her possessively. Her hand grabbing the material of his shirt, she kissed him harder, her tongue caressing his bottom lip. His fingers dug into her hair, heady lust pulling at every nerve ending. Her nipples ached as they brushed against his chest, and he teased her with his tongue.
She wanted to crawl out of her skin at how much she wanted him, craved him. What was he doing to her?
Ruining her for everyone else.
Iris pulled away and gasped in a breath, coming up for air as if from the deepest depths of the ocean.
It could have been like this. It could have been like this my whole life.
The crowd still clapped. Only a few seconds had passed but the enormity of decades lost crashed down on her. She pulled away. “I…I need to go.”
You have wasted your life.
“Wait,” Sam said, grabbing her hand as he followed her off the stage. “We should?—”
She pulled away, walking backward. “No, I—I need a minute. Please.”
He stopped and she ran away as tears welled in her eyes.
All that time, and my life could have been like this.
* * *
Two hours later, three shots of tequila down and a fourth on the way, the same phrase rang again and again and again in her head.
You.
Wasted.
Your.
Time.
You wasted a decade of your life. If a kiss from a man who irritates the shit out of you can make every nerve ending in your body stand at attention…how did you spend ten years with someone who never made you feel anything in particular?
And kneecap your career at the same time?
“Because I’m a multi-tassssker,” she muttered, hearing the slur in her own voice.
Her fourth shot was placed in front of her, along with a glass of water.
“I don’t need your opinion, thankyousomuch ,” she said to the bartender who smiled as he walked away.
Benning Falls had one restaurant-slash-bar, so she’d walked down the street and plopped herself on the farthest stool, hoping she’d be left alone.
She threw back the fourth shot.
“Ten years,” she muttered. “Ten years I could have had great kisses, maybe great sex. I’ll never have a twenty-two-year-old body ever again. And yet, what was I doing with it? I was in Buffalo, covered in a parka, researching boat culture in upstate New York. Barf-ola.”
She hiccuped and sucked on the lime to make it all go away.
“I’m halfway to death, and I’ve wasted my life,” she muttered as she laid her head down on her arm, drawing a sad face in the condensation on the old, wooden bar.
That was the whole point of the schedule and the notebook. If she was ultra-prepared at all times without missing anything, she wouldn’t miss a chance at what her life was supposed to be.
I could have been in Paris. I could have had a hundred one-night stands in New York City. Maybe I’d be a one-night-stand girl if I knew kisses like that existed. “Ooh, I could have had a threesome,” she said, slapping the bar.
An older couple at the end of the bar looked over at her with surprise.
Shit. Didn’t mean to say that part out loud.
Maybe it’s time for a teensy sip of water. And a good ol’ fashioned vent.
Iris
i thught i did everting right and that I wa doing lifee perfectlyyyy
Phia the Famous
Oh, yello drunk Iris. Hon, you’ve done everything perfectly. You’re killing it.
Uggggh, why didn’t she understand?
Iris
no, with bartttttt. he wasted my seezxxxxxxxyness
Phia the Famous
I love you, but he was the equivalent of a beige wet blanket, and I told you so.
Now drink some water.
Fair. Her sister never lied to her, that was for sure.
Maybe Bart is the only person who will ever love me. She’d always been too much and too loud and too competitive.
Her lip trembled. She desperately wanted to cry, but she had too much dignity to do it in public.
She slammed three twenties down on the bar. That probably covered four shots of tequila in a tiny town in Vermont, right? Blearily marching forward, she walked to the ladies’ room where she could respectfully cry her eyes out.
She made it to the door before tears streamed down her face as she texted her sister.
Iris
thiss why I dn’t drink tequuuila….
t’s the crying juice
Phia the Famous
Want me to fly to Buffalo and belatedly punch that balding dickhead for you?
Bart wasn’t a dickhead; he just didn’t set her on fire. Another wave of tears crashed down.
I didn’t even know I could be on fire.
She yanked the roll of toilet paper in a stall so she could blow her nose. All those years, wasted. All those years, wasted. All those years, wasted , thundered through her head.
Another yank on the toilet paper roll. Aren’t your twenties supposed to be the best decade of your life? You’re supposed to be free and sexy, then settle down in your thirties.
Yank, yank, yank. And all those teenage years where I could’ve learned how to date, failing at relationships when everyone else was failing and it didn’t matter.
Wasted with Bart the Wet Beige Flag.
She’d thought kisses weren’t that special. They couldn’t make you feel that much. Apparently, one kiss from Sam proved, yet again, she was really wrong.
Now, here she was: thirty, making up for fifteen years of lost time.
With a basketball-sized wad of toilet paper.
Iris sat on the toilet and sobbed into her ball.
A few minutes later, the door of the bathroom opened. Two women walked in, chatting.
“When he said that about you and the baby, oh my gosh, I swooned,” said a sprightly voice. “You go first. You’re peeing for two.”
“Thanks, though I hate peeing with this belly in these tiny stalls.”
“Oh shit.” Iris had, without thinking, set up camp in the larger accessible stall.
“Here,” Iris said through a stuffed up nose as she opened the stall door. “You can go in here. I was, um… pondering.” Seemed like the best way to describe the life crisis she was in.
“Oh, honey. Are you okay?” the nice pregnant woman asked. She had a kind face that was full of concern.
Her friend immediately came to Iris’s other side. “Oh my gosh, are you okay?” She wore a bright cardigan and 40s-style wide-leg pants with a fabulously high waist.
The women looked…familiar.
“Oh, I’m fine.” Iris waved them off with an embarrassed grin. “Just a lot of feelings and tequila.”
“Tequila can have its upsides.” The pregnant woman laughed as she walked into the stall. “It’s entirely responsible for the beginning of my relationship.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? Do we need to call anybody? Oooo, or fight anybody?” The other woman stood with her hands on her hips, ready to throw down. She cocked her head. “Wait, weren’t you at the race earlier?”
That’s why they looked familiar. They’d been waiting with her while their partners competed. “Uh, yeah, I was.”
“And you had that swoony kiss. I’m Becca,” said the woman standing across from her. “And that’s Josie in there.”
“Hi!” a happy voice called from the stall.
“I’m Iris,” she said in a watery voice.
Everything felt a little less overwhelming now for some reason. If heaven was real, it was probably a women’s bathroom at a dingy bar.
Becca rubbed a comforting hand on Iris’s back. “Are you okay? I mean, I don’t know you…but I will fight him if you need me to.”
“Ooh, me too! Well, as much as I can with a stowaway in my uterus.” A flush sounded, and Josie walked out of the stall. “Do you need help?”
“Not like that. It’s only…” Iris’s lip wobbled. “I was with this other guy for, like, ten years. Then we were engaged, but he didn’t want to get married. I thought maybe there was something wrong with me and I tried dating, but…” She sucked in a shaky breath. “...but nothing was as good as that kiss.”
“Ooh!” Josie clapped her soapy hands at the sink. “So go get him, girl!”
“But we can’t really be together.”
“Says who?” Becca said as she walked into a stall. “You?”
“Um,” Iris realized. “I guess. We’ve been rivals and sort of friends for so long…wouldn’t it be weird?”
“Look.” Josie leaned against the sink, pressing a fist into her lower back. “I know a thing or two about mooning over somebody for a long-ass time. Too long, and I know what it feels like to have wasted all that time. The next best time is right now. Trust me,” she said, patting her rounded stomach with a smile.
Becca looked at her smartwatch as she walked out of the stall and to the sink. “Max just asked if you fell in.”
“He’s very protective,” Josie said with a smile as she pointed to her stomach again. “Don’t overthink it, and go after what you want, okay? He’s lucky to have you.” She waved at Iris as she walked toward the door.
“Good luck!” Becca waved as they walked out of the bathroom.
You could always count on the women’s bathroom to have your back.
Iris wiped mascara from underneath her eyes. She was still pretty drunk. Four tequila shots when normally she drank a grand total of a glass of wine a week had her reeling.
The next best thing is right now.
Like she’d unknowingly put her career on hold, she’d apparently done the same thing to her love life.
“Now I need to do something about it.” Throwing her shoulders back, she swung the bathroom door open and ran into Sam’s chest. “Wait. Oh, shit.”
“There you are!” Sam said at the exact same time. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just…” She almost played it off. She almost said, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
She stood up and stared at his handsome face, swaying slightly on her feet. He looked frustrated and worried and hot .
Right now. She wiped her puffy eyes again, still worried she had makeup everywhere. “That was a good kiss.”
Someone tried to get around them in the narrow hallway, and they scrunched to the side into one another. She moved against the wall, and Sam turned toward her. She shamelessly reveled in being close to him for that split second. Bury my face in his chest and make everything go away.
Sam started to respond, but old habits died hard, and she had to keep talking. He couldn’t tease her if she kept talking.
“And I know it was for the thing and there’s some chemical reaction because we’ve spent so much time together. But it made me so sad,” she said, her voice breaking as she wiped a tear away from her eye with irritation. “That kiss made me realize I wasted my time with Bart. So thank you, I guess.”
Sam stood there with his mouth open, blinking for a solid two seconds.
Iris bit her lip. “It’s a lot easier to talk about your feelings”—she grimaced through squinted eyes—“when the room spins a little bit.”
A ghost of a smile flirted onto Sam’s lips. “How many drinks have you had?”
“Enough,” Iris said.
“Enough for what?” he said, moving closer to her as two more people came through the hallway with trays.
“For being brave,” she said with a big sigh as her eyes fixed on his mouth. He leaned against the wall in the hallway facing her, almost nose to nose. Just a few inches.
He looked so fucking good that morning, and this afternoon, and right now. Large muscles wrapped in flannel—which was a very slutty thing for him to do, to look that good in all that flannel.
“I was thinking we should try that kiss again,” she said, swaying toward him.