13. Iris
IRIS
I can't sleep.
This is not unusual—I have a complicated relationship with sleep at the best of times, and these are not the best of times.
My brain won't stop replaying the same stretch of the evening on an endless loop: Cat gold in the last of the light, telling me I looked like a dream.
The lavender stem in her hand. The two of us writing wishes across the sky like a couple of children—and the thing I wrote up there that I still won't say out loud, even to myself.
That's the terrifying part. For an hour in that field, I wasn't managing anything. I wasn't planning or performing or bracing for the next disaster. I was just feeling, just wanting, just leaning toward her like she was gravity and I was helpless to resist.
I roll onto my side, stare at the wall, try to think about anything else. The harvest schedule. The lawyer's next steps. The seventeen emails from my Chicago office that I've been ignoring.
The way she laughed when I finally wrote something back. The way she looked at me like I was worth looking at.
Damn it.
I flip onto my back and stare at the ceiling instead. The moonlight is coming through the curtains, painting silver stripes across the plaster, and somewhere outside a night bird is calling—something plaintive and repetitive that matches the spiral of my thoughts.
The thing is, I've been attracted to people before.
I know what attraction feels like—the flutter, the awareness, the way your eyes keep finding someone across a room.
I dated in college. I had a boyfriend for two years, a perfectly nice man named Dylan who worked in consulting and looked good in photographs and left me feeling absolutely nothing.
I told myself that was just how it worked. That the butterflies were for teenagers and romance novels. That adult relationships were about compatibility and shared goals, not about wanting someone so badly you forgot how to breathe.
I was wrong.
Because what I feel when I look at Cat—what I felt in that lavender field—is nothing like what I felt with Dylan. It's not even the same species. This is hunger. This is my whole body lighting up like someone plugged me into an electrical socket.
I sit up in bed, giving up on sleep entirely. The clock on the nightstand reads 2:47 AM, which means I've been lying here for over three hours, accomplishing nothing except driving myself slowly insane.
I grab my phone and do what I always do when I'm spiraling: I make a list.
Things I Know For Certain:
1. I am attracted to Cat.
2. This attraction is intense.
3. This attraction is possibly reciprocated (see: lavender field incident).
4. I have never felt this way about a woman before.
5. I have rarely felt this way about anyone before.
I stare at the list. It doesn't help. If anything, seeing it written down makes it more real, more unavoidable.
I open a new search window and type: am I gay quiz
Then I delete it, because that's ridiculous.
I type instead: suddenly attracted to a woman
The results are overwhelming. Articles about late-blooming lesbians. Reddit threads about compulsory heterosexuality. Personal essays with titles like "I Didn't Know I Was Gay Until I Was 35." I scroll through them, my heart racing, looking for something that matches my experience.
The problem is, nothing quite fits. I wasn't unhappy with men—I just wasn't particularly happy either.
I didn't feel like I was hiding something.
I wasn't performing straightness; I just...
existed. Dated who I was supposed to date.
Felt what I was supposed to feel. Never questioned it because there was nothing to question.
Until Cat.
Until Cat with her messy bun and her easy laugh and her hands that move like magic when she cooks. Until Cat who stood in a lavender field at sunset and taught me to write my wishes across the sky—like it was easy, like it was allowed, like I was someone who got to have wishes at all.
I close the browser. I don't open Notes. I don't make another list.
The urge is there—that instinct to categorize, label, file this away somewhere organized and safe. I've spent my whole life naming things so they can't surprise me.
But this isn't something that fits in a list.
I lie back down, phone abandoned on the pillow beside me.
The bird is still calling outside, the moonlight still painting its silver stripes.
I'm no closer to understanding what's happening to me—except that I am.
This isn't about whether I'm gay or bi or whatever label applies.
It's about control. About wanting, for the first time in my life, something I didn't plan for.
Something that could blow up everything I've carefully built.
I want Cat.
I want her in a way that's messy and inconvenient and completely outside my experience.
I want to know what would have happened if I'd been brave enough to close the space between us out there.
I want to know what her lips taste like, what sounds she makes, what it feels like to be close to her with no space between us at all.
I want, and wanting is terrifying, because wanting means you have something to lose.
I finally fall asleep somewhere around 4 AM, and I dream of lavender and golden light and the word I wrote across the sky—the one I still won't say out loud.
Morning comes too soon and too bright.
I drag myself out of bed feeling like I've been run over by something large and French. My eyes are gritty, my head aches, and when I look in the mirror, I see exactly what I'd expect: a woman who spent the night having a sexuality crisis instead of sleeping.
I shower and dress in my most normal clothes—jeans, a plain white t-shirt, my hair pulled back in a ponytail that's severe even by my standards. Armor. I'm putting on armor to face a woman I wrote wishes with in a field of flowers.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
Cat is in the kitchen, which is both expected and devastating. She's wearing cutoff shorts and a tank top, her hair loose around her shoulders, and she's doing something complicated with eggs that I can't follow.
"Morning," she says without looking up. "Coffee's ready."
"Thanks."
I pour myself a cup and retreat to the far end of the island, putting as much distance between us as the kitchen allows. Cat glances at me, and something flickers across her face—confusion, maybe, or hurt—but she doesn't comment.
We eat breakfast in silence. It's the loudest silence I've ever experienced.
"So," Cat says finally, setting down her fork. "About yesterday—"
"I have to make a phone call." I'm already standing, already moving toward the door. "Work stuff. It's urgent."
"Iris—"
"I'll be back in an hour."
I escape to the terrace before she can say anything else, my heart pounding and my face burning. That was not smooth. That was the opposite of smooth. That was the behavior of a person who is absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent not fine.
I call Nadia.
"It's two AM here," she says instead of hello. "This better be an emergency."
"I think I'm having a crisis."
"What kind of crisis? Work crisis? Family crisis? French-grandmother's-inheritance crisis?"
"The other kind."
"There's an other kind?" I hear rustling as she sits up. "Okay, I'm awake. Talk to me."
I open my mouth to tell her everything—the lavender field, the whole ridiculous evening, the 3 AM spiral—and what comes out instead is: "I'm finding it hard to sleep here. The time zone is difficult."
Silence.
"Iris," Nadia says slowly. "You called me at two to tell me about jet lag? You've been there for a month."
"Three weeks."
"You know what I mean."
I close my eyes, pressing my hand to my forehead. "I don't know how to say it."
"So just say it badly. That's what I'm here for."
The words stick in my throat. I've never said them out loud before—not to anyone, not even to myself outside my own head. Saying them makes them real. Saying them means I can't take them back.
"Something happened," I manage. "With Cat."
Another silence, this one weighted differently.
"Something like what?"
"Nothing happened. That's the maddening part—nothing actually happened.
We were out in the lavender at sunset, and she was being ridiculous and sweet, and I wanted her so badly I could hardly breathe, and I did nothing about it, and now I can't stop thinking about it, and I don't know what this means about me, and—"
"Breathe," Nadia says firmly. "Iris. Breathe."
I realize I've been talking without breathing. I take a gulp of air, then another.
"Okay," Nadia says. "So you spent a romantic evening with your very attractive roommate, didn't lay a finger on her, and now you're freaking out about how much you wanted to. Is that the summary?"
"That's—yes. That's the summary."
"And the freaking out is about...?"
"Everything? Whether I'm gay, whether she's interested, whether this is real or just proximity-induced insanity, whether—"
"Stop." Nadia's voice is gentle but firm. "You're doing that thing you do where you try to solve the whole equation before you have all the variables. You can't logic your way through feelings, babe. That's not how they work."
"But I need to know—"
"You need to feel. That's it. That's the whole thing." She pauses. "Do you want her?"
The question drops straight through me.
"Yes," I whisper.
"Then that's what matters right now. Not labels, not categories, not a five-year plan for your sexual identity. Just that you want her, and maybe she wants you, and you're allowed to see where that goes."
I want to argue—I want to explain that it's not that simple, that there are complications, that I can't just feel things without understanding them first—but the words don't come.
Because maybe it is that simple. Maybe I've been making it complicated because simple is terrifying.
"I don't know how to do this," I say instead.
"Nobody does. That's the secret." I can hear Nadia's smile through the phone. "Look, I have to get ready for work. But can I give you one piece of advice?"
"Please."
"Stop running away from the kitchen. Whatever's happening between you two, you're not going to figure it out by hiding."
I laugh despite myself. "How did you know I ran away from the kitchen?"
"Because I know you." Her voice softens. "Call me later. Tell me how it goes."
I hang up and sit for a long moment, watching the lavender fields stretch toward the mountains. The sun is higher now, burning off the morning mist, and the sky is that particular shade of blue that doesn't exist anywhere except here.
Maybe it's time to stop building boxes.
I go for a run—a long one, pushing myself harder than usual, trying to process with my body what my brain refuses to accept. By the time I get back, I'm sweaty and exhausted and slightly more sane.
Cat is on the terrace, reading a book in the afternoon sun. She looks up when I approach, and her expression is careful, guarded.
"Good run?"
"Yeah." I stop a few feet away, catching my breath. "Listen, about this morning—"
"You don't have to explain."
"I know. But I want to." I swallow. "I was weird. I'm sorry. It wasn't about you."
"Wasn't it?"
The question hangs between us. Cat's eyes are steady on mine, and there's something in them that makes my stomach flip—hope, maybe, or fear, or both.
"Are you good?" she asks softly. "You seem... not okay."
I could lie. I could deflect, change the subject, retreat back into the safety of small talk and carefully maintained distance.
"I'm figuring some things out," I say instead. "About myself. About what I want." I pause. "It's taking longer than I'd like."
Cat studies me for a long moment. Then she nods, slowly, like she understands more than I'm saying.
"I'm here," she says. "When you figure it out. If you want to talk."
"Okay."
"Okay."
We look at each other across the terrace, and the air is thick with everything we're not saying. I want to close the distance between us. I want to be brave enough to take what I want.
I'm not there yet. But maybe I'm getting closer.
"I should shower," I say finally.
"You really should. You smell terrible."
I laugh—genuinely laugh—and something in my chest loosens. "Thanks for that."
"Anytime." Cat's smile is small but real. "Go. Clean yourself up."
I go inside, and I don't look back, and I tell myself this is progress—this small honesty, this tiny step toward being someone who feels instead of someone who plans.
It doesn't feel like much.
But it's a start.