So I slipped out of the pew. Ducked down the hall. And saw her on a bench under a wide, bright window, sniffling quietly into her lap, that staff member on a phone a few paces away.
I’d held out my hand. “Come with me.”
Iris looked up at me.
“Come with me,” I’d whispered again.
She took my hand and I raced us out of the cathedral, to the graveyard out back. No one else was there yet except for the rounded stones of other people who’d been wept over, and there was the empty, waiting hole in the ground ready to consume Iris’s mother.
She fell to her knees next to it. But she didn’t cry.
So I did. I knelt next to her and dropped my head into my hands and let go of that tight decorum, because my mom had left me. She’d been gone forthree years.We only heard from her a few weeks after she left, when she texted Dad to tell us we should come visit her on the beach, and I hadn’tcriedand maybe if I did, it would stop hurting and I’d be able to, I don’t know, not move on, but stop thinking about it for one full hour.
I felt Iris watch me sob, and she told me later that she had no idea why I was so upset over the loss ofhermother, but it was the permission she needed—she fell apart over the empty grave, and we sat there in the churned dirt, making noises we weren’t allowed to make in front of the cameras, feeling all the things that existed beyond the frames and the captions and the poses.
Now, as we stand in front of my court and my father manipulates our lives, I do what I did back then. She may have told me she doesn’t need to be rescued, but I’m not going to let them treat my friend this way.
I take Iris’s arm and thread it in mine. “Come with me.”
We get two steps to the side.
Dad doesn’t let go of my shoulder. “Nicholas,” he says through his teeth.
I whip a glare to him, my back to the room. I could so easily mess this up for him.
The headline:Christmas conniption: Prince Nicholas throws a fit during tree trimming.
That would do nothing for me, nothing for this situation, and Iris is shaking against me.
But I grimace at him, and I let every bit of my anger show. “Let. Me. Go.”
Dad hesitates. Disappointment flashes in him, but he relents and faces the crowd with a smile. “King Neo and I will answer any questions you may have,” he says, and I waste no time ushering Iris the hell out of there.
We pass by Kris, who steps in with us, and I can’t look at him—get out of this room. That’s all I can do. Justget out of here.
Our court parts for us, and I wonder if I look panicked, I wonder if they can tell Iris is shaking, I wonder if Kris is fuming. The three of us bolt out, down the hallway, and I yank us into a sitting room, overstuffed armchairs bathed in soft orange light from a crackling fire.
I kick the door shut and twist to Iris. Who has gone gray. “Sit down. Here—sit.”
I guide her to one of the chairs and she sinks into it. I won’t make it to one myself—I drop to the floor, on my knees before her, propping my palms on my thighs and rocking in place.
Kris takes a step in front of us. Keeping distance. I can feel the wash of emotions palpitating off him—dread, shock—and god my heart aches more.
“Why would they do that?” Iris breathes, half a question, half a gust of air.
“So we couldn’t make a scene,” I say.
“I wouldn’t have—”
“SoIcouldn’t make a scene,” I amend.
Iris’s dark eyes brim with tears but she fights for a soft, forced smile. “Is it such a terrible fate to be engaged to me?”
I echo her grin. It hurts. “Do you want to be engaged tome?”
Another thing that bonded us over the years: the absolute bi confusion induced by movies likePirates of the CaribbeanorThe Mummy.Kris got in on that confusion too, but the only thing stopping me from calling usNSYNC(ya know, Bi Bi Bi) was him cringing at any kind of label, and when I told Iris, “I guess that forces you and me to be Bi Bi Buddies, but the first Bi is for two,” she’d smacked the back of my head. Which was just proof that I am way too much of a loud-mouthed asshole to be her type, and she has her shit together too much to be mine. What can I say, I get off on a mess. Like calls to like.
She falls back against the chair with an involuntary nose-curl.
