by Robin Hale
After a few minutes trying to predict all the different ways any recommendation I made could go wrong, I settled on something simple. Consumable.
‘He likes chocolate’
That shouldn’t go too badly, right?
‘Noted.’
I shook my head, unable to lose the dopey grin. She was something else.
“Ooh, that’s girlfriend face. I recognize that face,” Dave grinned at me from the doorway to my room. “Not on me, obviously, but on you it looks great.” He hefted a wide, flat box and raised an eyebrow. “Pizza?”
“You’re some kind of angel,” I said by way of confirmation. Grabby hands in his direction completed the picture, and he joined me on my wrecked sheets.
“So what’s she doing that’s got you grinning?” Dave asked, pulling a slice from the box.
“Iris is going to come to your birthday karaoke,” I said around a mouthful of pizza. I groaned. He’d gotten the kind with pesto under the tomato sauce. Otherwise known in our apartment as ‘the best kind’.
Dave’s eyes went wide and he coughed. “I’m sorry — we’re doing karaoke with Iris Spark?” He swallowed hard, eyes glittering. “This is the weirdest place.” His laughter was delighted, the glint in his eyes just this side of wicked, but the dissonance between his joy and my anxiety was a brick in my stomach.
“It really is,” I said, staring down at my slice of pizza morosely.
“Hey.” Dave reached toward me, slid his hand over my knee and squeezed, drawing my eyes to his face. “What’s that look for? Are you worried about having her come along?”
“No,” I said. “No, it’s not that. I just…” I trailed off, a helpless, self-deprecating laugh not quite covering the way I was fumbling the conversation. “I’m in a little over my head.” The admission hurt.
“Princess,” Dave began, voice soft. “If you don’t want to keep dating her, you don’t have to.”
I almost laughed as I thought of the summary contract sitting in my inbox, prepared by Iris’s highly competent assistant. Wouldn’t she be surprised to have me bail a week before we’d finished?
“It isn’t that.” And it wasn’t. It was pretty much entirely the opposite of that. “I feel…I’m more invested than she is, you know?” I sat forward, wrapped my arms around my knees and tucked them against my chest. “I’m sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Ah,” he said and flopped back against the pillows we were sharing. “That’s more familiar.” He munched thoughtfully on his pizza. “I’ve seen the stuff you’ve been posting, though. And she seems all-in? I mean, that tea bouquet made me want to puke it was so cute.”
I grinned despite myself. That had been kind of amazing.
“And she’s been blowing up your phone non-stop for two weeks.”
Well, that was true, too. Iris had taken to the texting like she was trying to get an ‘A’ in it — not like she’d been trying to be aloof or unattainable. She’d messaged me with questions about the plan, sure, but also with sharp-tongued remarks about the idiots she was dealing with in negotiations for her next expansion. She sent me photos of her disgusting morning smoothie, inviting commentary. She rarely went more than an hour without sending me something.
I squashed down the warmth that was blooming.
It was fake. I knew it was fake.
And all I was going to do was hurt myself if I tried to interpret the things she did as if they’d happened organically.
I knew better than that.
“I think she’s every bit as invested as you are,” Dave said with a lopsided grin.
“Maybe,” I conceded. Or maybe she was as invested as she thought I was. As invested as I should have been if I were any kind of professional at all.
Suddenly, the pesto didn’t taste quite as good.
11
IRIS
“Are you going to sing?”
I looked up from my displays, away from the granular usage data coming out of eastern Europe, to frown at Carrie where she stood in the open door to my office. It took a few moments for my brain to context-switch enough to realize why she’d asked me that.
Ah. Amber’s roommate’s birthday. The karaoke event.
“Not if I can avoid it,” I responded.
Carrie stepped into the office and pushed the door shut behind her. It was serious, then.
I sat back and waited for her to explain.
She approached the desk and planted her feet like she expected me to sock her. “I think you should.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall — it was getting toward evening, but too early for Carrie to have been drinking. She never did at the office unless she’d been drinking with me.
“You think I should sing at karaoke.”
My assistant nodded.
Right.
“Any particular reason…?” I asked, head cocked at an angle as if the statement were an optical illusion, something that required losing focus and then seeing something unexpected.
“I’ve gone over the numbers from the past week and all of the engagement spikes have correlated with live events. The racing game has been the largest one.” Carrie turned her tablet to face me. A tidy line chart declared in simple graphics the exact thing she’d been saying. “The audience likes watching the two of you interact in real time. It drives SparkSignal engagement.”
I narrowed my eyes, ignoring the tablet in favor of staring at Carrie’s face. Specifically, staring at the slight tremor in her eyelids, the way her pupils darted between my forehead and the window behind me.
“You’re lying,” I said in confusion. “Which is an impressive trick, given that everything you just said is true.”
Carrie went pink and hesitated before she spoke again. “I —” The words cut off and she shifted her weight between her feet.
I’d never seen her so unsure of what she wanted to say.
“Spit it out.”
“I think Ms. Kowalczyk would love to hear you sing,” Carrie said at last, meeting my eyes instead of the window or my forehead or the top of my desk. “And I have never seen you as happy as when you are on your way to an appointment with her.”
The statement was mild, gentle enough to suggest Carrie thought I might run. But despite the calm, matter-of-fact phrasing, the words cut through my skin straight to the heart of me. I’d been careless. Obvious. Broadcasting the feelings I’d fancied secret at anyone I passed.
And it was ludicrous.
Against my better instincts, against every sensible part of myself, Carrie’s suggestion wormed its way into my mind. It warmed me. Enticed me. I began to imagine that it was true, that Amber would be — affected by my singing. That it was at all acceptable to hope she would be.
“She’s a contractor, not a date.” It’d been too long since Carrie had spoken. I’d let the silence stretch too far. It had become too significant. I couldn’t puncture the way it swelled with a simple dismissal. Once upon a time, I’d known better than to do a thing like that.
“Her followers will love to hear you sing, too,” Carrie said. There was more behind the line of her lips. More about the chance I was letting pass me by or my general idiocy when it came to romance that might be more than a fling. Thankfully, she left it unsaid.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I rose from behind the desk. “Do you have the gift?”
“Here.” She held a tidily packaged box toward me and I nodded my thanks.
“I’ll see you for the design review.”
“Of course. Enjoy your evening, ma’am.”
* * *
ASKED LATER, I would’ve described the evening — the karaoke event I’d anticipated with the same fervor as SparkSignal’s initial launch — as a blur. A series of moments lost in the rapids of unfamiliar and addictive emotion.
It was an opportunity to bask in my favorite part of Amber’s and my charade: a whole evening where the reality that mattered was the one we performed. A reality in which Amber was mine and t
here was nothing she wanted more. The thought sent a ripple of desire through my belly to pool low in my hips.
My driver dropped me off around the corner from the bar. It was a boisterous, flamboyantly appointed space in one of San Francisco’s trendier neighborhoods, and I charged down the sidewalk separating me from Amber with strides too long for my height.
She waited outside, dark, tousled hair dusted with lamplight, ridiculous earrings streaking feathers and beads along the column of her throat. She was fixated on her phone, thumbs flying over the screen, keeping her empire afloat from the device that never left her side.
And Sandy had thought that I worked too much. I didn’t have anything on Amber.
“Waiting long?” I asked.
I loved the moment she first saw me. There was nothing like the smile that grew from inside her, the warmth and openness in her body that shattered whatever distance I might have tried to maintain. Amber was in my arms immediately.
I tugged her close, ducked my head to get a surreptitious whiff of her perfume — nose tickled by the feathers dangling from her ears — then noticed the people standing behind her.
I tilted her face and pressed my lips against her mouth. Not quite chastely, not quite professionally, but not so far over the line she’d be embarrassed.
I hoped.
“You must be Iris!” A blonde chirped, broad smile covering the roundness of her face.
Amber twitched in my arms. Had she forgotten they were there? The sharp edge of a grin pressed into my cheek.
“Right! Yes.” Amber turned, face flushed, one arm still wrapped around my waist. “This is Iris. Iris, this is Rain,” Amber gestured to the blonde. “And Dave.”
The brunet whose birthday we were celebrating lifted a hand in a partial wave. “Hey.”
Rain. The blonde’s name was Rain. Of course it was.
“This is for you,” I said, handing the artfully wrapped box over to Dave.
“Oh, thanks!” His smile was brighter than it should have been. It competed with the neon from the bar’s front windows, and I had a rare moment of aesthetic appreciation for a man’s attractiveness. He tore into the package with none of the aloofness that I remembered from soul-sucking gift exchanges in professional organizations, and the whisper of a smile settled on my face.
“Ohhh my god I love this shop,” Dave groaned, clutching the box and tipping his head back. “Thank you!” He met my eyes, lifted his arms in a questioning gesture, then came in for a one-armed hug at my nod.
“Beer is traditional, right?” I glanced toward the bar’s open door.
“Yes! Let’s get this started.”
* * *
ALSO TRADITIONAL, it turned out, was the opening song between Amber and her roommates. I waved off their invitation to join them on stage, claiming a need for liquid courage in the form of the one beer I would consume that night, and settled back against a table.
Each of them, individually, had nice voices. Not that it was easy to tell with the shout-singing coming from the raised stage. But every so often their voices would slide apart, and I could catch Rain’s gentle soprano, Dave’s full-throated baritone, and Amber’s mezzo on their own. And they were lovely.
The grin on Amber’s face was mesmerizing. She looked so — in the moment. She didn’t have her phone up, capturing the experience for the filter of her audience. The selfie before they’d started had been enough for her. Instead, she danced with her friends: arms wrapped, liquid, around one then the other. Microphones shared, lyrics forgotten and misspoken and laughed over.
Every so often I got a glimpse of what Amber might look like in a world where she didn’t carry insecurity like a shield — god only knew what she fended off with it. Her plan of attack after the SparkSignal profile came out. Her firm protests in my office that first day. And now this. This simple joy in singing with her roommates. Dancing in her youth, the adventure that she’d made for herself in a city she’d dreamed of.
My chest went tight, breathing shallow and ragged, and my palms ached with the desire to touch her. To feel how she felt right then, unburdened and happy.
My mind recycled the look she’d given me as I’d approached, played it over and over again until I believed she’d been as unburdened, as free then as she was singing on that stage with her closest friends.
Another pull of my beer swirled into my mouth, painted memories across my tongue. Other nights, other adventures. Dahlia by my side for some of them, but not all. Nights when I’d been more reckless. More willing to take the consequences of whatever felt best in the moment.
It was setting myself up for disappointment to read truth in Amber when she was performing a lie I’d hired her to tell.
But while I watched her basking in music and joy and the easy camaraderie of her roommates, I couldn’t stop myself.
* * *
AMBER LEANED BACK AGAINST ME, soft curve of her ass pressed against my hip, her back cradled against my side. My fingers clung to her belt loop, tangled there to hold her close while I pressed idle kisses to the top of her shoulder.
If I kissed her mouth, Amber would taste of rum and coke. I wanted to. I was torn between moving her so that I could reach and keeping her exactly where she was, my possessive hand on her hip, her easy relaxation against my body as if leaning on me were something she did all the time.
On stage, Dave sang a song I hadn’t heard in years. His quick patter and astonishing falsetto transitioned seamlessly into a natural-sounding tenor — hadn’t he just been singing in a baritone range? — while he reminded the bar that The Darkness had briefly had the biggest song in the world and he could sing it.
“He’s good,” I murmured against Amber’s shoulder, barely loud enough for her to hear.
“He used to do theater. Community stuff, mostly, but the occasional pro gig.” Amber’s brown eyes shone with fondness.
“He stopped?”
“Couldn’t afford the time. Started working as an assistant for a VC and, well,” Amber trailed off vaguely and took another sip of her drink.
I snorted. I could only imagine. If Carrie lacked a consistent social life, the assistant of a VC must have been the walking dead in comparison.
From the other side of the table, Rain divided her attention between Dave’s performance and the spectacle that Amber and I were making of ourselves. I consoled myself that it was permitted. Intended, even. We weren’t privately lovers, we were publicly dating.
The jolt of longing through my chest wasn’t subtle.
“What are you going to sing, Iris?” Rain asked, calling across the table with a voice that was as gentle as her namesake.
Obviously in league with Carrie.
Before I could answer, Amber broke in. “Oh, no, she doesn’t have to do that. It’s nice of her to just come along, don’t you think?”
As deflections went, it wasn’t the worst I’d ever heard. But it was unnecessary.
“Do you want me to?” I asked, voice low, lips brushing Amber’s ear.
“I do appreciate your being here,” she insisted as if it were an answer.
“That’s not what I asked.” I slipped out from behind her, pushed up on the balls of my feet to silence her protest with a soft kiss, and winked at Rain. “Sign-up is this way?” I confirmed, gesturing toward the DJ’s booth.
Rain grinned and nodded.
* * *
GIVEN THE CIRCUMSTANCES, only one song was appropriate. I was a lesbian doing karaoke in a bar in the queer capital of the United States, singing to a woman who made my mouth water, whose primary goal in our time together involved making me into a romantic icon.
I barely needed to say the words ‘Melissa Etheridge’ before the DJ nodded in perfect understanding.
From there it was muscle memory. Voice lessons had been a long time ago, sure, but they’d been a constant fixture in my life for a decade and a half. The body remembered.
My throat was going to remember the next day, but I couldn’t regret i
t. Melissa deserved to be belted.
My eyes were locked onto Amber’s like a heat-seeking missile. I sang every word directly to her. Every last bit of borrowed intensity funneled into an all-out assault on Amber’s heart.
And when the phone came out, my stomach dropped. It was fine. I’d known we were going to end up filmed — she’d warned me of that, after all. Invited me specifically to have usable footage.
But it was a stark reminder that I was up there ‘drowning in desire’ and she was doing the job I paid her for.
I shut my eyes, kept my focus on the song, and by the time I opened them again the view had changed. Amber’s eyes weren’t on her phone. They weren’t checking the frame, making sure the connection was strong enough to stream to her followers. They were on me. Her eyes were dark, swallowed by her pupils. Her lips parted. They glistened, wetted by her tongue and her drink and the breath she was panting.
Her hands drooped. The phone slid further and further from any sort of useful angle, and it wasn’t until Dave nudged Amber’s arm that she corrected the view.
But it didn’t matter.
The grin seared its way across my face and I let a background thread in my mind think about a suitable ‘thank you’ gift for Carrie. She’d been right.
* * *
AS THE NIGHT wore on our monopoly over the karaoke stage waned. Other groups stood up and got the bar singing along to the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys. Old, nostalgic favorites from a vastly different time.
“Backstreet Boys or NSYNC?” Dave asked while a group of men my age performed shockingly faithful choreography to ‘No Strings Attached’ at the other end of the bar.
“Backstreet Boys,” Rain and Amber chimed at once.
“Dahlia picked NSYNC,” I said with a shake of my head. “She was my entire social life in school. So went my kingdom.”
Dave laughed. “I spent a year listening to 98 Degrees for that same reason.”
I clinked the neck of my beer bottle against his gin and tonic in mock-solidarity.
