Chapter 37
The bar was warm in the way old neighborhood joints always are—walls scuffed with history, a jukebox that still worked was tucked near the back, and couples crowded the dance floor, swaying lazily to songs that hadn’t been popular in two decades.
The lights were low enough to blur imperfections, but unfortunately not dark enough to hide you from your own reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
It was very obvious that I didn’t belong here, but Iris insisted that I needed a night out at a bar for my next life experience.
Everyone here seemed to know each other.
At least the bartenders greeted every patron like they did.
The people on the dance floor moved like nobody was watching—and maybe nobody was at least not in the way I was watching Iris.
She looked so good tonight. Not just in a she’s a really talented life-coach way.
She looked good in a way that had my childhood softening at the edges and giving me false bravery and hope that maybe I could be normal.
For her. Her hair was loose, falling around her shoulders in soft waves that caught the yellow light.
Her laugh came even easier than it usually did, like she wasn’t carrying anyone else’s pain tonight. Not even mine.
She ordered something pink and frothy. I ordered a whiskey. Then another. I lost count after the third.
“You okay?” she asked after I knocked the last one back a little too quickly.
“Yeah,” I lied, waving off the wince as the liquid slid down my throat in a sharp burn. I hid a cough behind my hand. “Just trying to keep up with your cotton-candy cocktail.”
“It’s called a Paloma,” she said, amused. “It’s grapefruit.”
“Still sounds like something a grandmother would drink.”
She laughed and leaned in, her elbow brushed mine where it rested on the bar. “Maybe me and the grandmas just like sweet things.”
I looked at her then. Really looked. God, she was beautiful.
Not fake, filtered, or curated. But real.
So real. And warm. I hated how much I wanted to press my forehead to hers and whisper something reckless.
I hated how much I didn’t hate being here with her.
Another song came on—one I only half recognized—but Iris lit up like it was her favorite.
“Oh my god, I haven’t heard this in years,” she said. “Come dance with me.”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. You survived alligator-infested waters. You can survive two minutes of Stevie Wonder.”
“I’ll survive it from here.”
“You’re scared,” she teased, tilting her head. “Of dancing.”
“I’m not scared. I just have a strict no-dignity-lost policy.”
“Too late,” she grinned, grabbing my hand. “You’re already here with me. I’m afraid all dignity has been left at the door tonight.”
She pulled me to the floor, and I didn’t resist. I couldn’t, not when she was smiling at me like that.
Or maybe it was the whiskey. Maybe it was the song.
Maybe it was the way her fingers had laced through mine.
We didn’t really dance, not in any coordinated way.
We swayed. We moved. We existed in a little bubble of light and sound, making memories.
Her hair brushed my cheek at one point, and it felt like a lightning strike against my skin.
I wanted to wrap myself in it. I wanted to disappear in it.
“You’re beautiful. You know that?” I said, slurring the words a little. My body jolted with shock as I said it, but I didn’t regret it. It needed to be said. She needed to know.
She blinked. “You’ve been drinking.”
“Doesn’t make it less true.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Thank you.”
I laughed, but it wasn’t joyful. It was cracked. “I don’t say that kind of thing. Ever. But don’t make a big deal out of it. Don’t write about it in your notebook.”
“I won’t.” She blinked at me, finally looking like I’d rattled her with my words.
“I mean it, Iris. You’re really—” I gestured toward her vaguely. “You glow or something. Not like, in a spiritual way. Just… like a person who’s never been broken.”
That made her spine stiffen. I leaned closer. “I don’t get people like you. You’re not scared all the time. You smile for real. You wear soft sweaters and make pancakes, and you actually mean it when you say you want to help people.”
She opened her mouth, but I wasn’t done.
“I’m scared all the time,” I whispered. “I don’t even know of what anymore. Everything. Nothing. The second I start to feel happy; I panic. Like I don’t deserve it. Like someone’s gonna take it away from me.”
She held her hand up in the air between us. Not touching me. Just there, hovering nearby, ready to grab onto me.
“I hate that he still lives in my head,” I said, voice trembling now. “The Deacon. He’s not here, but he is. Every day. I see him. I smell him. I hear his voice. And sometimes I think… maybe if I had just done something, anything, to shut him up. To stop him…”
“You don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to,” she interrupted me softly.
But I did. “He ruined me, Iris. I don’t know who I was before him.
And I sure as hell don’t know how to be anything other than what I am now.
But you are so beautiful, and I couldn’t let myself be too afraid to tell you that.
And I hate how much I want to tell you that all the time. ”
Her expression softened into something unreadable. “You can tell me.”
“No, I can’t,” I said, stepping back. “Because then it’s real. And if it’s real, I’m going to fuck it up.”
She reached for my hand again, and I let her. Just for a second. Just long enough to pretend.
“You don’t have to be perfect to be worth loving,” she said softly. I blinked, and the words hit me like a punch to the sternum. She might as well have kissed me. I think it would’ve hurt less. Would have been less of a shock.
“You were right, you know. I’m not scared of dying,” I said suddenly, the alcohol had my thoughts bouncing around in my head, jumping from thing to thing faster than I could keep up. “I’m scared of living and it not getting any better.”
Her face didn’t change. She didn’t recoil. She most certainly didn’t say I told you so. She just stood there, swaying slightly, eyes locked on mine like she could see every version of me that I was trying to bury.
“I know,” she finally said. “But you’re here now. And you’re dancing, that’s better than it was yesterday… isn’t it?” Then she slid a little closer. Not dramatically. Just enough that I felt the shape of her hip brush mine.
“I like drunk Danny,” she said softly. “He’s honest.”
“I’m not drunk,” I lied.
She laughed and looped her arm through mine. “Okay, well then maybe I just like the real Danny.”
The music changed—something slower now—and she didn’t let go, she just swayed there beside me, her body warm against mine, her head tilted slightly like she was considering something dangerous.
“You ever dance like this before?” she asked.
“Never.”
She put her hands around my waist, closer than we were before, so much so that I could smell her shampoo, could feel the warmth of her breath when she said, “Relax. I promise I won’t bite…” And then she winked.
I swallowed hard, wishing I could get another drink.
I had never seen her be so bold. I needed something to distract myself from how badly I wanted to touch her.
She smiled like she knew, like she could feel it in the air between us, but she didn’t push.
She just stayed close as we danced slowly.
Lazily. Like we had all the time in the world.
For a second, I let myself forget the noise in my head.
The nightmares. The Deacon. The letter. All of it.
It was just her and the music and the little way her fingers played with the collar of my shirt like she couldn’t help herself but touch me.
Then some guy showed up next to us. He was tall and scruffy, classic Brooklyn, wearing rings and a backwards cap, and he looked right at her—not even glancing in my direction although I was standing right here.
“Hey,” he said with a crooked smirk. “You wanna dance?”
She didn’t move. “I’m with someone.”
The guy finally looked at me like I wasn’t worth noticing.
“You with him?” he asked, like the words tasted weird. Something inside me snapped. Not in a rage kind of way. Just… cracked in a I’ve had quite the fuck enough kind of way.
“Yeah,” Iris said, still looking at the guy. “With him.”
He held up his hands as if to say, “my bad,” and wandered off, but I couldn’t stop hearing the way he’d said it.
With him? Like I didn’t make sense. Confirming my fears that someone like her couldn’t possibly choose to be with someone like me.
Iris turned back to me, soft and steady as always. “You okay?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.” But I wasn’t. Not even close. Because the truth was… I wanted to be chosen. And I didn’t know how to live with that because I’d never wanted something like that before, and the shame that stemmed from the desire choked me. That was the beginning of the end of the night.
I returned to the bar without a word and knocked back another drink.
Fast. Too fast. It burned, but I welcomed it.
Needed it. Needed something to punch a hole in the tightness building in my chest. By the time Iris realized that everything was unraveling and we went outside, I was seriously drunk.
Not falling-down drunk. Not fight-a-guy-in-an-alley drunk.
Just loose. Unraveled. Honest in a way that made my throat clench with all the things that I had left unsaid that were now clamoring to get out.
“I really do hate how scared I am all the time,” I said as we walked. “Of life. Of people. Of needing them.”
Iris sucked in a breath as she listened and walked beside me, her jacket pulled tight, like the cool night air couldn’t touch her if she didn’t let it.