Iris Kelly Doesn't Date (Bright Falls, #3)

by Ashley Herring Blake

She could handle the little stuff—do you want a soda, have you seen this movie, do you like onions on your pizza—but the big stuff, the stuff that caused disappointed expressions and down-turned mouths . . . yeah, she sucked at that part. Her anxiety would flare, and she’d spend the next week convinced her friends hated her, she’d die alone and miserable, and wasn’t worth a damn to anyone. Then, when said friend or family member eventually got ahold of her to tell her that, no, of course they didn’t hate her, why in the world would she think that, her anxiety would crest once again, convincing her that she was terrible at understanding people and could never trust her own brain to make heads or tails of any social situation.

More and more lately, coming over to her parents’ house felt like undergoing a root canal—she felt exposed, judged for her choices, and left with a fierce need for some self-medication.

“Delilah Green didn’t care about anyone and consistently forgot the names of the women she slept with. Until she met Claire Sutherland.” I like it. Catchy

But maybe you need to hear it from someone who barely knows you and has no stake in the game. Because it doesn’t seem like you quite believe it.”

“It’s just . . . do you ever feel like the you you want to be isn’t the person anyone else wants?”

She simply was, with another disaster by her side—because Stevie was one hundred percent an adorable disaster—and it felt like that first gulp of cold water after a long hike.

“That’s actually what I love most about romances,” Stevie went on. “The sex scenes are hot, sure, but it’s that HEA that makes me keep reading, you know? The feeling of finding someone who loves you for exactly who you are. No more, no less.”

Maybe those kinds of stories were simply that—stories. Myths humanity wove to thread hope through the meaningless chaos of life.

Shakespeare was brilliant, sure, but seeing his characters played out as queer, as identities the world had so often tried to stifle and beat down . . . well, it was powerful. It was beautiful.

“Show me what?” she asked one more time. “Stevie.” Stevie pressed her forehead to Iris’s. “That you’re worth loving.”

She loved the pain of it, the emotions, the obstacles the characters had to face in themselves and their relationship to truly be together, all of this followed by the couple’s blissful reconciliation.

But that was the tricky thing about love—it was selfless and also needy; generous, but greedy and desperate too.