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

by Ashley Herring Blake

Iris had never been that little girl who dreamed of her wedding day. She’d never played with dolls as a kid, rocking tiny bald plastic babies to sleep. She’d never envisioned wearing white and walking down the aisle. Of course, she knew how monumental the Marriage Equality Act was, that people like her weren’t always able to spend the rest of their lives with their partner, legally speaking, anyway. And she wanted that for every queer person in her life who wanted it for themselves.

Throughout her sexual history, she’d always been the good lay, the one-night fuck. Even when she did date someone for a while, it always ended with very little fanfare, a ho-hum parting of the ways.

Champagne tastes like carbonated puke.”

“I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Have since I was a kid. And it makes things . . . tricky. I don’t always know what’s going to trigger my anxiety, and it’s like, the whole fucking world won’t slow down, you know? To keep up, I have to do and be and act and move to that city and say no to that person and be fine when my ex says we should break up even though I’m terrified to do life by myself.”

It’s not always easy to separate myself from my illness, or to even understand if I should separate myself at all? Like, what is my personality and what is my anxiety? Or are they the same thing? It’s confusing sometimes.”

But here, in front of the Pacific at twilight, with nothing around except water and rocks and sky, she remembered just how small she was, how insignificant in the scheme of the universe.

Since the night of the fair over a month ago, Iris couldn’t stop thinking about a curly-haired lesbian. She couldn’t stop texting that curly-haired lesbian that she missed her. And she couldn’t stop constantly fucking grinning when she and the curly-haired lesbian were together.

everything was dying so it could be reborn. Every day she felt stronger. Every day, she took her medication, prepared herself for what lay outside her door as best she could,

“I spent a lot of time,” Iris went on, “convincing myself I wasn’t built to last, wasn’t built for romance, for love. But maybe . . .” Tears bloomed into her eyes. “Maybe I was just built for you.”