One Small Step

by MA Binfield

  “We didn’t agree, Iris. You did. You’ve decided we can’t have this.”

  “Dammit, Cam, that’s not fair. You have a fiancé. There are three people involved here, and if we don’t put a stop to this, all three are going to get really hurt. I know what that’s like. It’s horrible. I stopped hurting people a long time ago, I won’t…we can’t—”

  “I know.” Cam cut across her, shaking her head, sounding weary. “I’m not asking you to do that. But I can’t not have you in my life.” She turned to Iris and looked at her in the dark of the car. “I just can’t. You mean too much to me. Don’t you know that?”

  Cam reached for Iris and stroked her cheek. Iris couldn’t help but lean in to the touch. Cam grazed Iris’s bottom lip with her thumb. It was what she had done on the dance floor, and Iris felt herself shiver. Cam moved closer and her mouth followed where her thumb had been, grazing Iris’s lips tentatively. Iris moaned. It was all the encouragement Cam needed to deepen the kiss, reaching one hand behind Iris’s neck, reaching her fingers up into her hair. Cam had her other hand on Iris’s jacket, pulling her into the embrace, and her whole body responded. She leaned into Cam, letting her mouth be taken, opening it to Cam, moaning as Cam darted her tongue inside.

  “Oh God.” Iris murmured the words, her insides turning molten, the sparks igniting her center, making her swollen and aroused. She reached for Cam without meaning to, wrapping her arms around her waist, pulling her closer, letting her tongue explore Cam’s mouth, loving the taste of her, feeling Cam writhing in her arms, wanting even more than Cam was offering. They were both breathing heavily, the kisses taking what breath was left. Cam’s mouth was so soft, her kisses so certain, Iris wasn’t sure she could stop this, wasn’t sure she wanted to. She was dangerously close to losing control, but then she pulled something from her depths and put a hand on Cam’s chest to push her away.

  “No, Cam, stop, we can’t…”

  Cam looked at Iris, as if just realizing where they were and what they had been doing. Her hands dropped to her side, and she looked straight at Iris, arousal and hurt visible in her eyes.

  “I know, I know we can’t. I’m sorry.” The words came out as a low whisper as Cam turned her back to Iris and got out of the car, running away, up the main street toward her house, taking the route that Iris should have driven.

  Iris stayed sat in the car, put her head on the steering wheel, and wept.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Iris stopped at the white bench that was her usual halfway point of her jog. She leaned against it as she made the necessary moves to stretch her calves and hamstrings. It wasn’t that she particularly needed to stretch mid-run, but she definitely needed a breather and felt this was a more dignified way of doing it than to slump breathlessly into the seat while people were watching.

  She had pushed herself much harder on this morning’s run. She looked at her watch, knowing she had gotten here several minutes quicker than usual. No wonder she felt the burn in her chest and legs. It was painful, but she didn’t mind. It took her mind off the other pain in the way she had hoped it might.

  She had woken before five a.m., after tossing and turning for most of the night. She was struggling with seeing Cam, and struggling with not seeing Cam, and wasn’t handling any of it well. Other than an awkward hello, they hadn’t spoken for more than a week, and every time Iris saw Cam—in the kitchen, at the printer, in meetings—she was reminded of just how much she missed having her in her life. And every time she felt sorry for herself about it, she reminded herself that she had been the one to turn her back on Cam, not the other way around.

  Iris wasn’t willing to even consider the possibility of them finding a way through whatever this was, and now Cam looked haunted, a shadow of herself, and Iris felt responsible. Iris was hurting. She had never felt this miserable, not even after her breakup with Amanda, but she didn’t want that for Cam. The sad fact was that she couldn’t do anything to make Cam feel better that wasn’t eventually going to hurt them, and Ryan, more. It was insane.

  She’d sat next to Hazel in the lunch room yesterday and listened to Priti casually ask Cam about her plans to return to Seattle. She’d felt a panic in her chest that made her literally breathless. Cam had been noncommittal, suggesting they didn’t have any firm plans, that they were still deciding, but Iris hadn’t been able to sleep for thinking about never seeing Cam again, which was crazy since seeing Cam caused her nothing but pain. What the hell was wrong with her?

  The feeling of confusion made Iris want to start running again, to physically try to drive the thoughts away, but she was too washed out to carry on.

  They had problems at the Dubai office and Mr. Cottom wanted someone to go. He hadn’t dared ask Iris again after last time, but as she sat on the bench feeling defeated by everything, she decided to offer to go. It would be four weeks starting at the end of the month and she couldn’t help but feel it would be good for both of them not to have to see each other every day. And maybe she’d come back and find her feelings for Cam had changed. Or maybe she’ll already have gone home with Ryan.

  Iris leaned back and sighed, feeling the headache and the confusion she had woken up with settle back in. She rubbed away tears for the second time that day. Yeah, she was coping with it all pretty well actually.

  * * *

  “Hey.” Vicki waved her hands in front of Cam’s face. “Lost you again there for a bit. Want to tell me what’s going on? You seem a bit out of it and, mate, let’s be honest, you look terrible. I’m chuffed to have you buy me lunch at the cafe opposite my office, but the fact you came all the way over here to buy me lunch at the cafe opposite my office, says you may have something on your mind.”

  Cam poured sugar into her coffee, desperate for the energy she hoped it would give her. She hadn’t been sleeping and it was taking its toll.

  “I’m in trouble.” Cam spoke the words quietly.

  “Go on, mate, I’m listening.” She tilted her head toward Cam.

  “I don’t know where to start.” Cam sighed. “You know Iris pretty well I guess?”

  Vicki had just put a forkful of salad into her mouth. “Does anyone really? I mean, apart from maybe Hazel and Casey. She’s a pretty closed book. I like her a lot and we get on well, but I wouldn’t say we’re close.”

  “But you guys, I mean, I thought maybe because, you know…” Cam didn’t want to say the actual words.

  “We had sex? You can say it, mate. It’s not like it meant anything.”

  “It didn’t?”

  “No, not really. We were drunk, she was lonely I guess. Though I didn’t know that at the time. I thought it was just me being impossible to resist.” Vicki sipped her juice. “And it was purely a one time thing. Kind of great, bit awkward afterward, but we talked and agreed to be grownups and not let it get in the way of us being friends.”

  “Wow.” Cam wanted to be Vicki at that moment. Sure and confident—and past it all. She shook her head.

  “What?”

  “That, I mean just agreeing to put it behind you like that and be friends.”

  “It wasn’t hard. It was something that happened out of nowhere. We just happened to be single, drunk, and horny in the same place at the same time. It’s not like we had real feelings for each other.”

  Cam couldn’t stop the breath escaping. Mostly the hurt felt like a silent hollow ache, but sometimes, like then, it was like a hot spear. She fought back the tears that threatened to fall. Vicki looked across at her with concern until Cam saw the jolt of comprehension hit.

  “Ohhh.” Vicki put down her fork. “Oh, I see. I mean, okay, so you two…?”

  Cam put her head in her hands, leaning her elbows on the table, as if she was trying to keep herself upright. She sat like that for a moment until Vicki reached across and cupped her hand around one of the elbows.

  “Cam? Looks like you got something you need to say. Don’t worry, mate. I’m not gonna judge you.”

  “We did
n’t…I mean, we kissed, that’s all.” Cam shook her head, knowing the kiss wasn’t all it was. “But I’ve tried to get past it and I can’t because I think I’m in love with her and—”

  “Holy crap.”

  “And I think she, well, I’m pretty sure she has some kind of feelings for me too. But she won’t talk about it, I mean, she’s closed it down, closed us down, says we can’t even be friends now. She won’t see me. And it really hurts.” Her eyes watered and Cam swiped her hand across them, annoyed with herself.

  “I did not see that coming.”

  “Neither did I. We’d been hanging out a lot obviously, getting on well. And then, well, I couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t stop wanting to see her. I realized I was thinking about her in ways I don’t usually think about my friends.”

  “Not even me?” Vicki winked.

  Cam shook her head. “Not even you.”

  “Wow. I thought…I just assumed…I mean, I didn’t even know you were bi.”

  “I don’t know what I am and I’m not sure it even matters. I know we’ve been having problems, but I honestly thought Ryan was it for me, that I’d settled on him. I didn’t expect to fall for Iris like this. I didn’t want to, obviously. But I think I can manage the feelings…over time, I mean…I want to try. I really miss her and want her back in my life somehow.”

  “What did Ryan say about it? He can’t be happy with the idea of you still seeing Iris, even just as friends. I know I wouldn’t be. Not if you’ve already kissed and you’re saying it meant something and you’re finding it hard to fight the feelings.”

  Cam looked down at the table.

  “I haven’t told him.” She sighed. “I know I should. It’s just…well, we’re not doing great, we haven’t been for a long while if I’m honest, and I don’t want to make things even worse. I’m trying to fix things. It might not seem like it, but I want my relationship to work, I want us both to be happier.” She sat forward. “And the problems we’re having aren’t anything to do with Iris, with how I feel about her. They were there before I even knew her.”

  “But I can see why Ryan would think they do, why he’d want to know.”

  Cam said nothing. Vicki was right, of course.

  “How can you ‘fix things’ with him if you’re keeping secrets?” Cam felt the weight of Vicki’s judgment. She deserved it. “And you can’t really say that it has nothing to do with Iris either. If you were happy with Ryan, you’d either have been too busy hanging out in your happy relationship to spend all that time with her or you’d have gone back to America by now to get married and left her far behind.” Vicki sat back in her chair.

  “And if you’ve both caught feelings and you’re already kissing, then her doing anything other than staying away is an inducement for you, at the very least, to cheat on your fiancé. Come on, Cam, you know Iris. She must have told you some of what she went through with Amanda.”

  “She told me all of it.”

  “Then you know she’s not gonna get in the middle of you and Ryan. You’re telling anyone that asks that you’re going home soon to get married. What the hell is Iris supposed to do? Even if she loved you, there’s nothing she can do about it but stay away.” She reached across the table and put her hand on Cam’s arm. “I love you, babe, but you’re being a bit dense.”

  Cam hadn’t thought of it that way. She assumed she’d fallen for Iris because she was wonderful and kind and sexy as hell, but—Vicki was right—she couldn’t separate that out from the fact of her failing relationship with Ryan. She poked at her own food, her appetite still missing. And she’d been dumb enough to kiss Iris while she was still with Ryan. Even if she loved her, it was still cheating. No wonder Iris ran a mile in the opposite direction.

  “I should tell him, beg his forgiveness.”

  “You should.”

  Cam felt out of her depth. Vicki had a better grip on this than she did and Vicki had known about it for two minutes while Cam had thought about nothing else for two weeks. She picked up her fork, not knowing what to say. She needed to talk to Ryan—of course she did—but she just wasn’t sure she could cope without having Iris in her life and, right now, she couldn’t see past that.

  “She’s impossible to really know. When we kissed she—”

  “Careful, I’m eating here.” Vicki interrupted, pointing at the remnants of her salad with her fork. Cam smiled sadly.

  “I was just going to say that I could feel how much she wanted me, but she pushed me away. And now I don’t even know if she misses me, if it’s as hard for her as it is for me. And I don’t know if she’s waiting for me to do something, if she’ll ever let us have a friendship or if she’s really just moved on like that.” She hesitated.

  “Seems pretty important. Ask her.”

  “What?”

  “Ask her.” Vicki shrugged. “For the life of me, I’ll never understand why people don’t just ask people the things they wanna know. It saves a lot of heartache. Admittedly, rom-coms would be shorter and we wouldn’t enjoy Jane Austen novels, but life would be a lot easier to navigate.”

  “But what would I say?” Cam couldn’t just ask Iris, surely. For one thing, they’d already agreed to keep away from each other.

  “Well, what do you really wanna know?” Vicki looked at Cam thoughtfully.

  “If she loves me or if it’s just an attraction.” Cam surprised herself with how quickly she knew what it was she needed to know.

  “How would knowing that help?”

  “I really don’t know.” Cam put her head in her hands, feeling tears well up again.

  “Cam?” Vicki leaned in and pulled her hands away. “I don’t want to be brutal, but it doesn’t really matter whether she loves you or not. You’ve got nothing to offer her right now. Surely your priority has to be figuring out what you’re going to do about Ryan.” Vicki sounded so emphatic that Cam sat up straighter in her chair.

  “I know. I’m trying to find the courage to have the conversation we need to have.” Cam felt like Vicki was interrogating her, but it wasn’t unhelpful. It was making her face up to things, giving her more clarity.

  “Which is?”

  “He wants us to go home and get married, and I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Because of Iris?”

  “Because of Iris and also not because of Iris, because it’s not what I want.”

  “But you love him?”

  “I do. But sometimes I think…” she paused. “I think that the way I love him might not be enough. For either of us. Not enough to build a marriage on, to build a family on. He deserves more, we both do. I thought London would save us, and he thinks going back to Seattle is the answer. Maybe there isn’t an answer. Maybe there never was. But I don’t even know what the options are for us because I haven’t been very good at letting him know what I’m really feeling.”

  “Sounds to me like you have some talking to do with people who aren’t me.” Vicki sat back in her chair.

  “I do.” Cam looked at Vicki across the table. “Thank you.”

  “No problem. I definitely owe you some angsty relationship chatter after the way I’ve gone on about Harry this past couple of weeks.”

  “Still the same?” Cam was relieved to get on to another topic.

  “Yeah. We’re not gonna make it.” Vicki sounded a little sad.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too, kinda, but it just wasn’t right. Though I very much miss the sex.”

  It was Cam’s turn to point at her food. “Ew, eating.”

  “It was so good though. Posh girls are the absolute dirtiest.” Vicki grinned.

  “Too much information.”

  “She’s not as good a kisser as Iris though.” Vicki winked.

  The memory of Iris pushing her away after the kiss they had shared in the car forced its way to the front of Cam’s mind, and she felt something close to panic course through her body. She groaned.

  “Sorry, mate, lame joke.” Vicki
held up her hands.

  “Bit too soon maybe.” Cam tried to smile, but the memory of Iris’s mouth on hers had taken hold again and she couldn’t. She shook the memory away and tried to concentrate on her lunch, knowing already that she wouldn’t finish it.

  * * *

  Cam entered the lunch room with her coffee cup in hand. Like every day that week, she was dreading, and yet desperately wanting, Iris to be in there. It wasn’t that they didn’t see each other at work, it was that they didn’t speak. Not about anything that wasn’t work and, even then, it felt like Iris was only saying the words that were absolutely necessary. And, worse, Iris always avoided her gaze. The fact that Iris—who had always made her feel so seen—didn’t even look at her anymore hurt Cam as much as anything else.

  Megan, Iris, and Jess sat at one of the tables, each of them holding one of the magazines that had arrived earlier that day.

  “This is amazing.” Megan waved a copy of the magazine at her, pointing excitedly at the cover. Cam made herself join them at the table.

  “I know. I was really pleased with it. The photos Oliver took turned out really well.” She had spent far too much time looking at them. Far too much. “I wasn’t sure Janie would make good on her promise about the cover, but us winning the league didn’t really give her a choice.” She tried to smile.

  “We’ve left a few copies on Liam’s desk.” Megan chuckled.

  Cam moved across to the counter to pour herself some coffee. She had no energy for the banter.

  “Has Graham seen it?” The voice was Iris’s. Cam didn’t answer, assuming the question wasn’t meant for her, but when she turned, Iris was looking in her direction. Cam gripped the coffee pot a little tighter, feeling a tension in her chest.

  “I think Sylvia slipped one into his briefcase.” Her throat felt so dry.

  Iris nodded and turned back to the table. Cam leaned against the counter, willing herself to pick up her cup and just walk out but Iris’s presence made it difficult. She couldn’t not want to be around her.