by Robin Hale
“I’ll speak to her. And the rest?”
Carrie met my eyes at last, shifting in her seat. “I think you and Ms. Kowalczyk should set aside some time to get more physically comfortable.”
“I…what?” I replayed the sentence in my head four, five times, trying to make sense of it. No luck.
“I saw the elevator photo and the clip from her video game stream,” Carrie went on. “You’re…rigid with each other.” Carrie looked down at her tablet as though the screen were filled with notes pertaining to my performance in a fake social media relationship. “I can rearrange your late afternoon if you need the additional time.”
Silence hung in the air while I studied Carrie’s averted face. After a moment longer, a moment in which neither of us moved or spoke, stuck in some standoff with unknown stakes or motives, I snagged my phone from the desk.
“All right,” I said.
‘I’ve been informed we need to practice.’
Amber, who lived with her phone in short reach at all times, answered immediately.
‘Practice what?’
Now there was a question. I’d throw myself from the roof before I described it as ‘cuddling’, but there were only a few ways to phrase it. None of which preserved my dignity.
‘Physical proximity. Carrie thinks we’re frigid.’
No hint of shame about throwing my assistant under the bus. Best not to dwell on the hiccup in my pulse when Amber began typing a reply.
I frowned down at the screen as I reread my message. No. Rigid. Carrie had said ‘rigid’. Damn it. My fingers hovered over the keyboard to correct the mistake when Amber’s reply came through.
‘Lol! Yeah, ok, I think we can heat it up a little.’
The aforementioned heat wasted no time in coiling behind my navel. What did she mean by that?
‘Just let me kick this headache and I’ll get back to you. We could do a live post thing? Play-by-play some Netflix-and-heavily-implied-Chill?’
“I need this evening free,” I said without looking up from my phone.
I didn’t need to see her in order to hear the smile that spread across my assistant’s face. “I’ll clear your schedule.”
“And I need a special order from that tea shop you like. Better get a courier, too.”
8
AMBER
Sunlight played over the laptop perched on my legs — one more tease of spring that hadn’t arrived yet — where I sat in the Juliet balcony at the front of the apartment. The building was tucked back, spared from the worst of San Francisco’s winds by the buildings on either side. It was a nice day. Sunny, bright blue sky, warm enough that I could sit in my sweater and fuzzy leggings without feeling the late winter-early spring chill.
I’d been at it since early in the morning, churning through email like nothing had ever fascinated me more. Designing and tweaking campaigns that weren’t due for another week just because I was inspired.
It was a neat trick when work distracted me from the things I couldn’t let myself think about. Things like that dinner with Iris. The walk home. The way she’d tugged me close as if I belonged at the end of her arm or tucked up under it. The way I’d been so sure she’d been about to kiss me on my doorstep. The doorstep right below where I sat.
I leaned forward, looking out over the railing as if I’d see an echo of the two of us down there: Iris’s blonde head cocked to the side while she leaned in close to me. The way her body heat had banished the evening’s chill. The way her lips had quirked in the direction of a smile and I hadn’t been able to look away.
The way she’d squeezed my arms and stepped back before either of us could do anything we shouldn’t.
I was probably projecting. A huffed breath sent my bangs fluttering over my forehead. Aside from the sort of lazy flirtation that came to Iris as easily as breathing — and why didn’t her reputation include that? — there hadn’t been anything to suggest Iris was having the same thoughts I was.
“Hey — I have a delivery here for an Amber…Kow-all-kuh-zeek?” A voice called up from the front walk where I’d been staring sightlessly for the last minute.
That was more like it. The mangling was reassuring. It meant not everyone had been faking it all these years. Meant that either Iris had just known how to say it from the beginning or she’d put in the effort to find out. I suppressed a shiver. That shouldn’t have affected me as much as it did.
The courier hefted a bundle of something — a bouquet? — and glanced toward the front door hopefully.
“That’s me!” I called, moving to set the laptop aside and scamper down to the door.
It swung open to reveal a pleasantly smiling young man holding the strangest bouquet I’d ever seen. He handed it over to me, confident it didn’t need an explanation, along with...a thermos?
“What’s this?” I asked, halting his retreat once I’d signed the slip he held out.
“That’s a thermos of hot water.” He pointed. “Those are tea, I think?”
Tea?
I mumbled thanks and wandered back up to my balconet, settling down among the detritus of my workday. Upon further inspection, the courier was right. It was a bouquet of tea. Hand-tied bags in several shades of red — natural dyes, from the look of them — were formed around bamboo stir-sticks styled into a bundle of long-stemmed roses. I leaned in, let the smell of the teas waft over me, and shivered under an immediate rush of delight. There were at least a dozen different varieties there.
An unbleached linen card stuck out from the arrangement, but I knew who had sent it before I flipped it over.
‘If none of these help with the headache, let me know.
- Iris’
The grin that followed was almost painful. She’d sent me tea. Tea for my headache. Tea so that I’d feel well enough to see her. That was —
Words failed me. I plucked a vaguely pomegranate-scented bloom from the bunch — then immediately tucked it back in as I remembered that I should have taken a photo. Of course. That was why she had sent it. Because it was the sort of thing my followers would eat up. The fact that it was the single most thoughtful gift I’d ever received? That wouldn’t have mattered to her at all. How had she known I liked tea?
The light was perfect and the day cooperated to create a gorgeous backdrop for the photo I quickly snapped.
I dug back into the tea.
‘You’re incredible. Thank you so much!’
The text was fired off before I’d prepared the social media post, and I didn’t have long to wait before Iris’s response came back: ‘Tonight. Seven. I’ll send a car.’
A shiver chased up my spine as I settled back into my chair, tea steeping and the unorthodox bouquet drawing every scrap of my attention from the work I still needed to finish.
Just incredible.
* * *
BEING ONLY the second visit to Iris’s fancy neighborhood, with its high-rise condos and its doormen and the streets it was safe to stumble down at night, I wasn’t exactly strolling through the doors with a wave to Greg on my way to the elevator. I still stopped at the front, still smiled and cringed and explained who I was. And Greg still sent me through with a professional incline of his head.
It was different knowing where the elevator was, where the number for Iris’s floor would be. Passing doors I’d seen a couple of times before wasn’t a level of familiarity I’d turn into waving to the neighbors, but I still walked with more confidence.
My fist had hardly made contact with Iris’s door before she was opening it to me, black sweater clinging to her chest, jeans hanging from her hips, barefoot and comfortable with a glass of wine already in her hand.
“Your head?” She asked instead of saying ‘hello’ the way anyone else might have.
“Totally fine,” I grinned in response. I passed by her, accepting the second glass she offered wordlessly, and lifted a small black box in my other hand.
I watched recognition flash through those blue eyes and she lifted a bro
w. “I have a smart TV.”
“The UI on those things is terrible,” I insisted, toeing off my shoes and leaning my backpack against the mid-century-styled couch in her expansive living room. “I think you’ll like this better.”
Every twitch at the corner of her mouth, every subtle shift of her jaw was a victory point, and I was happy to collect as many of them as I could.
“All right. Thai?” Her phone was already in hand, opening the delivery app to compose an order. It was strange to see. I’d half-expected her to send the order to Carrie to handle instead. It was almost…domestic. Greeted with a glass of wine at the door, arranging to have dinner together.
Settle in with a film. Cuddle up on the couch.
Broadcast the result to a few thousand people.
Well, that was the wind out of my sails. I sagged against the couch and tried to remember that I was there because I’d been hired. We were staging a practical ad campaign. Something subtle. All the best campaigns were. The fact that I still didn’t know why we were trying to sell this particular lie didn’t change it into a truth.
“Red curry,” I said when Iris’s eyes lifted from the screen to remind me I hadn’t actually answered. “Chicken.”
Setting up the streaming box and finding which services had the movie I planned to suggest gave Iris enough time to place our dinner order. I was keenly aware that the rush of warmth through my chest at the thought of ‘our dinner’ was pathetic in the extreme.
It was basically a working dinner. Nothing to get excited about.
“How does this work?” Iris asked as she settled onto the couch at my side.
“We pick a movie, come up with a hashtag for it, and watch while posting our reactions along with the hashtag.” The process was simple. It usually worked better if there was a tie-in event, something with pre-built interest. But we didn’t have that kind of time and I was pretty sure Iris herself would be enough of a draw to kick things off.
“That’s all?” Iris considered the screen ahead of her. “‘Arsenic and Old Lace’. I haven’t seen that one.”
“That’s perfect,” I said with a grin. “And yes, that’s basically all. We’ll include a few photos, maybe a reaction vid or two if the mood strikes.” The wink was excessive, but that didn’t actually occur to me until I’d already done it. Smooth, Kowalczyk. “Just — settle in over here and I’ll get the first selfie going. What do you think about ‘#IrisHasntSeenArsenic’?” I lifted my arm, gesturing for her to settle in against me, and watched as she grappled with the idea.
Her mouth went tight, eyes flashing briefly with an objection that stayed trapped behind the line of her mouth.
“I’m taller than you are,” I reasoned. “It’s only logistics.”
The wry lift of her brow said she wanted to argue but Iris just pursed those soft-looking lips together and scooted toward me, settling against my side with the proprietary confidence of a cat. Every space was hers by right and she knew just how to occupy it. I fought desperately against the shiver that wanted to overtake me at the feeling of that sweater under my arm, the warmth of her pushing through the lingering wind that had picked up on my walk from the bus.
Her arm settled over my thigh, fingers falling innocently on the outside of my leg, and my skin seared beneath the leggings I’d stupidly worn. I should’ve dressed in plate mail. It was the only thing that had a prayer of keeping me safe from her.
“First photo?” Iris prompted, jerking me from the way I was drowning in the feeling of her body pressed along my side from shoulder to knee.
“Right.” I held the phone up over our heads, the universally flattering selfie angle that anyone with a tenth of my follower count would recognize, and made sure that I correctly framed the hint of a smirk on Iris’s face as she kept glancing away from the lens. Like selfies were something she’d had so little practice in she didn’t quite know how to do them. I tilted my cheek against her hair, smiled as wide as any sane woman would when cuddled up with Iris fucking Spark, and snapped a shot that I knew immediately would never be deleted from my phone.
That photo was going to torture me. There was nothing in it to give away that we were lying. No stiffness in the way Iris relaxed against me. No cold aloofness in her expression. Just an impish smirk behind the soft curve of her mouth. Just my own dazzled-by-her expression.
It looked exactly the way it would have if we’d met in that coffee shop and started talking, rather than cooking up some hare-brained scheme I still didn’t understand.
“There,” I said more decisively than I felt. “The thread is started. We’ve already got engagement on the photo, and we’re kicking off the film.”
“Let me know if you want popcorn,” Iris murmured from the vicinity of my shoulder while Cary Grant set to work chewing every inch of the scenery on screen.
Given that popcorn would involve Iris getting up — which would mean I wasn’t touching her — it wasn’t likely.
* * *
IRIS TOOK to the idea of live blogging a movie better than I’d expected, and it was a good thing she had. I wasn’t watching the movie at all. I was entranced by watching her watch it. She didn’t hide, exactly, in her normal life. She just didn’t see the point of performing most of the polite reactions that people expected. She wouldn’t laugh at a joke if it didn’t actually amuse her. She wouldn’t offer a sympathetic glance if you hadn’t earned it.
Evidently, absurd 1944 comedies tickled her.
If she hadn’t laughed, hadn’t made pithy little remarks that she murmured quietly to me like she didn’t want to disturb someone else — or didn’t want to disturb the strange closeness that had fallen in the soft shadows of the living room — then I wouldn’t have made a single post after the first one.
All I wanted to pay attention to was the humor in the twitching of her lips. The low, throaty laugh that poured pure delight all the way through my brain. I wanted to pay attention to the way her sweater was riding up as she snuggled closer into my side, the way my fingers slid over the hot skin at her hip while my heart pounded.
But she laughed and she made her jokes, and I dutifully recorded them and sent them out to an audience that couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to watch that movie with her. They didn’t know how she’d toss her hair back, how she’d snort and murmur ‘Dahlia’ — her cousin, Dahlia was her cousin, she’d said — when Cary Grant kept expecting sanity in an insane situation. They couldn’t know how the laughter sapped the tension from her body, sent her languid against me so that I was pushed into the corner of the couch. My legs tangled with hers and oh, God, if she didn’t keep talking I was going to lose my mind wanting to kiss her.
Iris practically laid on me, stealing my phone now and then to take quick selfies or record a few seconds of video. Her favorite, so far, had been to start recording and say something I didn’t expect, making sure most of the frame was taken up with the desperate way I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep from spitting red wine all over her floor. She had a wicked sense of humor and, given half a chance, she settled into the night giving every impression it was the only thing she’d needed.
Too soon, the intercom buzzed and alerted us that one of the doormen would be bringing our Thai delivery up to the apartment. Feeling Iris pull away was like losing a limb. I was freezing with it. I wanted to shake and rub the place she was supposed to be and if it wouldn’t have made me look insane, I would’ve done it.
* * *
I WATCHED Iris amble back toward the couch, hands full of Thai food and an open bottle of wine, hair gloriously loose around her shoulders.
When she settled back onto the couch it was with deference to the need for my arms to move so I could eat — and I wished like hell that I’d suggested we get dinner before meeting up. It was polite of her to move away but I wasn’t feeling polite. I wasn’t feeling polite at all.
The depths of my own pathetic yearning hit me as I realized that, in any other circumstance, the evening would alr
eady qualify as the best date I’d ever been on. And it was increasingly likely that even though she’d hired me, even though the arrangement was strictly professional, it was still the best date I’d ever had.
“Spring roll?” Iris asked, extending the wrap toward me between a pair of expertly-wielded chopsticks.
Without thinking, I leaned forward and wrapped my lips around the roll only to watch those bright blue eyes go dark while Iris’s lips parted.
“Oh,” she said and half a heartbeat later the corner of her mouth quirked into a wicked smile. Her phone was in her hand snapping a photo before my brain caught up enough for me to pull back, and I clapped a hand over my eyes.
“Delete that,” I groaned.
“Absolutely not.” Iris’s eyes glittered. “We’re ‘heavily implying chill’, right?”
“I run a family-friendly feed.”
Iris glanced over her phone at me, obviously unimpressed. “I hired you because you publicized a photo of my ass.”
Okay, fair point.
“You were in public?”
Iris cocked her head to the side, elongating the column of her throat and dragging my eyes down to the taunting neck of her sweater.
“No, not better,” she announced after a moment.
I chewed the remaining bit of spring roll, searching for something to say that would get Iris to smirk at me again when the humor abruptly fled from her face.
She stared down at her phone as three chimes pinged and her expression grew darker and darker.
On the TV, Cary Grant looked like someone had just told him his dog was about to blow up both Houses of Parliament — the distressed disbelief that was half his performance in Arsenic — but Iris wasn’t looking his way at all.
