Page 34 of Washed Up
Her out here, and Reid and Max inside moping. Fuck. I told Reid I categorically wasn’t going to do this, but I can’t deal with this much moseying about being pathetic.
I crunch across the noisy shingle towards her, which instantly causes her to turn her head.
“Come to show me how it’s done?” She offers me the chunky pebble from her palm.
“Not something I’ve mastered.” I do know that you’re supposed to use flatter stones. I hunt around and find one, along with a chunk of sea glass I offer to her.
“I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow.” She tries to make it sound jocular and not as if her heart is rupturing at the thought of leaving. “Sorry that I got in the way.”
“What are you doing, Iris?”
“Skipping stones.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean the ‘Sorry I got in the way’. We’re way past this. You’re the reason we have a future that’s worth pursuing. If you hadn’t arrived, our world would be fucking grim right now. Either we’d have been dropped with no hope of scoring another deal, or worse, we’d have been still fuckingsigned to Chinchilla and being strongarmed into releasing that utter bunch of toss their guy produced.”
She accepts this with her head bowed, teeth indenting her lip. “I’m glad it worked out for you all.”
It hasn’t worked out, yet. We still have to convince Harry, but I believe in what we have. Enough to be optimistic.
“Why is everyone around here so shit at communicating?” I mutter it under my breath, but I mean for her to hear me. She looks up, startled. “Reid doesn’t want it to end. Max doesn’t want it to end. You don’t want it to end. So why the fuck are you ending it?”
Her mouth drops open. Tears well in her eyes. Angry tears. Frustrated tears. “It won’t last, out there. How can it. People will—”
Any phrase that starts with that sort of phrasing is always a reflection of internal fucking fears. I know. I’ve spent the last six months engaged in that sort of thinking.
“Fuck people. What do you want, Iris?”
She opens her mouth. Closes it again.
I try and fail to skim a stone.Plop! “Okay, ideal world time. Humour me. If you could have anything you want to happen tonight, tomorrow, what would that be?”
It takes her a while, but eventually she admits in the smallest of voices. “I’d leave with the three of you, and—”
“What’s stopping that from happening?”
“Peop—”
“No.” I abandon any further attempts at stone skipping and shake my head. “Not people. You. The only person stopping it from happening is you.”
Heat blooms in her cheeks as if I’ve struck her with more than words. “It’s not…”
I hold my ground. “Iris, why the fuck not? And if you’re about to respond with some bollocks about what other people think,then don’t. The only people who get to have a say in the matter are the ones involved.”
“I can’t date all three members of Lucidity out in the real world.”
Big assumption, in more than one way. “You asking me out, mermaid girl?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Iris
I’m an idiot. “Wynter, you don’t even like me.”
“Really? That old chestnut again.” His glass-green eyes are alight with a sort of inner fire I’ve not seen before. It makes him nearly unrecognisable. He seems so… so uncontained. It makes me realise how broken he’s been. Now, the real him is peeping through. “I never said that, Iris.”
“Your body language for the last week has.”
“My body language sometimes lies. I lie. It’s easier than being rejected.” He crooks one of those devilishly sharp brows as if to challenge me on that point. Of course he fears rejection. I’m familiar with the songs now. I’ve heard the lyrics he wrote. Lyrics in which he bares his soul.
