Only If You Stop Halfway

Iris

Thursday. Early October.

Still warm, but the air has that shifting crispness--the kind that makes the back of your neck feel watched. There's no breeze, but the leaves are holding their breath. The sky is cloudless, but Iris keeps looking up like she's waiting for something to fall.

She woke up at 10:43. First class was at 10:30. She didn't go. Didn't even try. Just lay in her twin bed in an oversized t-shirt she stole from an ex-girlfriend's older brother--some band that doesn't exist anymore, probably never did.

She scrolled Reddit for half an hour pretending to read a thread on queer literature, then went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out if Eileen Myles is single. They are. Allegedly. That made Iris feel a little feral.

Iris steps into the shower like she's walking into a confessional.

The water's too hot, and she doesn't turn it down. She lets it sting her shoulders, her neck, the slope of her back--like it might cauterize something.

Her body is slight, wiry, all tension and intent. No softness, no curves to fold into. Her chest is almost boyish--flat with small, tight nipples that go hard in the steam. She never hated it, exactly. But she noticed. Always. The way other girls filled out bras like offerings, the way she still gets mistaken for younger than she is. She doesn't hide it anymore. She doesn't pad. She lets her shirts hang, lets her collarbones show.

Her thighs are thin but strong. She runs. She doesn't admit it, but she likes the ache. The proof of effort. Her hips are narrow, her stomach a taut plane that trembles slightly now under the spray.

And below--she's unabashed. A full, thick thatch of copper between her legs, redder than the curls on her head, soaked now and clinging to the pale skin beneath. She doesn't shave. Never did. Once, someone told her it made her look European. Another said it made her look "serious." She liked that one.

She scrubs without hurrying. Small, precise motions. Her hands drift across her ribs, her chest, the hollow beneath her navel. She doesn't linger. Not today. Today she's not trying to cum. She's just trying to be.

The steam fogs the mirror outside the stall. Her reflection disappears.

And for a moment, she feels perfectly alone. Not unloved. Not invisible.

Just... unobserved.

And somehow, that's the most erotic thing of all.

Now her red hair's in a damp, frizzy knot on top of her head like a war wound. No makeup yet--just the wine-colored lipstick from her desk drawer, smudged slightly at the corners. That's the point.

Now it's lunch.

Or whatever passes for it.

She's outside, legs stretched under a round metal table outside the library, half in the sun like she owns the quad. She hates eating indoors--too many eyes with nowhere to go. Out here, she can pretend she's not waiting for anything.

Trashy meal: plastic-wrapped pesto panini, cherry Coke, sad little cup of hummus with pretzels that'll cut her mouth if she eats them too fast. She's not really hungry. She's just full of want. But she eats like it's a dare.

There's a book open--Bluets by Maggie Nelson. Underlined to hell. Scribbled margins. One line circled three times:

I want you to feel what I feel.

Next to it, in all caps:

TAMAR WOULD HATE THIS.

Her phone's face-down. Cracked screen. She checks it every three minutes anyway. No texts. A few Discord pings. A Tinder match with someone named Cy who's clearly a bot. She doesn't care.

She watches people go by with sharp, assessing eyes. That girl in the red backpack? Noticed. That guy in the bike shorts? Looked too long. She clocks everything. She likes being seen. Not approached. Just--registered. Filed away.

When she reapplies her lipstick--slowly, deliberately, using the tiny cracked mirror in her compact--it's not about fixing anything. It's about control. It's about the performance of control. About mouth as weapon.

She checks the time again. 12:38.

The lecture is in just under an hour.

Topic: Feminist Reinterpretations of Lilith.

Guest speaker: Professor Tamar Elisheva Klein.

Iris doesn't care about the title. Doesn't care about the flyer.

She saw the name, and something in her spine snapped to attention.

She doesn't know what Professor Klein is into. But she knows how women with names like that walk. She knows the scent of danger dressed in scholarship. Knows when something is going to matter and wants to matter back.

She watches a couple pass--Callie and Lexi. Calexi. Campus royalty. The kind of couple that people write stories about by accident. Visible. Digestible. Eternal Sunshine lesbians. One open and cardiganed, the other taut and haunted.

Iris doesn't envy them. She envies the legibility. The fact that their grief became a story, and their story became a love that people believed in. They're easy to root for.

Iris? She's not a story. She's a fucking glitch.

She doesn't want to be understood.

She wants to be felt.

Callie glances her way. Just a flicker.

Iris tips her chin. Acknowledges.

Lexi doesn't look at her at all.

That's fine. Lexi never looks unless she means it. And Iris--she respects that.

Still. She watches them disappear, shoes crunching softly on gravel. Not with envy. Not even longing.

More like research.

At 12:57, Iris packs up. Leaves the Coke. Folds the book open to a page that hurts. Slides it into her bag like a weapon. Walks toward the lecture hall with that deliberate, hips-swinging pace that says don't you fucking dare talk to me, but look. Look hard.

The sun catches the smudge on her lipstick.

Her boots click on the pavement like punctuation.

She's not going to learn anything.

She's going to change something.

She doesn't know what yet.

But something is going to shift.

And she wants to be in the front row when it does.

Front row like she planned it. Because she did.

Iris walks in late--not late enough to be disrespectful, just late enough to be noticed. The room is small, hot with over-interested undergrads and a few desperate faculty trying to be seen supporting "interdisciplinary engagement." There's a little hum of earnestness, bodies in folding chairs, the unmistakable musk of ethically sourced deodorant.

And there's Tamar. Already talking, already lit up. Whiteboard behind her covered in notes, scrawl that looks like it was written in passion, not planning. The kind of lecture that makes the classics kids drool and the queer lit majors feel seen.

Iris doesn't even pretend to care. She drops into the front row like a bomb, lets her backpack thud under the chair. Crosses her legs. Unwraps a cinnamon gum slowly, like a striptease for her mouth. She doesn't look at Tamar--at first. She looks just past her. Casual. Like she's here because there was nowhere better to be.

But she's exactly where she wants to be.

Tamar's talking about Lilith--of course she is. Lilith as the first woman who refused to lie beneath. Lilith as the woman who left. Lilith as a figure of divine rage, feminine autonomy, sexual knowledge without shame. There's fire in it. Not just in the text, but in the way she talks. Tamar gets animated when she teaches--pacing, gesturing, curling her lip when something's especially loaded.

And Iris is close enough to see everything.

The buttons on Tamar's blouse strain when she gestures with both hands. Her voice dips when she quotes Hebrew. And when she leans against the podium, head tilted, talking about how Lilith wasn't banished from Eden but walked out, Iris sees it. Just the edge of skin between blouse and trousers. That faint, dark line. Soft and deliberate. A treasure trail that leads exactly where Iris wants to go.

She doesn't hear half the lecture. She couldn't give a fuck about the textual analysis. She's not here for the theology. She's here to watch this woman unravel a myth with her body, not just her words. To see the little flashes of sweat at her hairline. The glint of a necklace that falls right between her breasts. The way she owns the room without ever asking for it.

And Iris? She shifts in her seat. Lets her bare knee brush the leg of the table. Tilts her face up a little too slowly when Tamar glances down.

There's a pause.

Just a flicker.

And Tamar--Tamar fucking Klein--catches it. Just for a second. Her words don't falter, but her eyes do. They land. Right on Iris. Right on that wine-dark mouth and those unrepentant eyes.

Iris doesn't smile.

She knows she's winning.

Iris came to college with a half-used vibrator, two tote bags full of queer theory, and the unshakable belief that somewhere on this godforsaken campus was a woman who'd teach her more than Judith fucking Butler ever could. She's not here for the degree. Not really. She's here for the experience. For the stories. For the kind of heat that leaves marks and the kind of mistake you don't regret until you're forty.

And yeah, maybe she treats it like Match.com. Like a fuck-it-all dating app with better lighting and worse cafeteria food. Office hours instead of DMs. Panel talks instead of party invites. If you squint, a guest lecture is basically a profile bio with live audio.

It's not wise. It's not even safe, sometimes. But Iris doesn't do safe. Not now. Not when she's eighteen and made entirely out of hunger and nerve. Her body's a weapon, a temple, a project--and she wants it seen. Wants to watch older women flinch when she enters a room. Wants them to notice the lipstick, the open posture, the calculated ankle-cross, and then have to look away.

She tells herself she's not trying to seduce anyone.

She's just... being available. Visible. In case someone interesting looks back.

She's had a couple flings already. A hot mess of a junior who wrote slam poetry about her after a week. A weepy ceramics major who called her "angel" during sex and ghosted the next day. Nothing that lasted, but that's not the point.

The point is proximity. The point is heat. The point is figuring out what kind of woman she can be by seeing who responds when she turns up the volume.

And now Tamar has looked. Really looked.

And Iris? She's not thinking about consequences. She's thinking about how far she can push it. About that little tremble in Tamar's jaw when she makes a particularly brutal argument about divine feminine vengeance.

She doesn't realize--yet--that this one could burn back. That Tamar isn't some overread sophomore or shy TA.

She's a grown woman with teeth.

And when Iris bites, Tamar might just bite harder.

Tamar

Tamar leans back against the podium, hand still curled around the edge like she needs something to ground her. She's smiling, answering a question--something about demonology and post-structuralism, some breathless young thing in the third row who genuinely believes they've discovered nuance. She answers, because it's what she does. She knows how to fill a room with her voice, how to keep people listening.

But her eyes--

Her eyes flick to the front row. Empty now.

Iris is gone.

Slipped out just before the closing applause, like a ghost that never intended to stay. No goodbye. No glance back. No performance this time. Just a quiet exit, the sway of her hips marking time like punctuation. One long, final sentence.

Tamar watches the empty chair like it might confess something.

Her heart is doing that thing it hasn't done in years--fluttering, betraying her. She breathes deep. Focus. She thanks the audience. She unclips her mic. She smiles at the organizer, the dean, the simpering adjunct who tries to flirt by quoting bell hooks badly.

But inside? She's a mess.

That girl--Iris--she's not just reckless. She's fucking dangerous. Not because she's bold. Not because she's sexy. Because she doesn't know what she is yet. She hasn't learned the rules, the consequences, the long shadow that follows women like Tamar when they stray too close to the edge.

Tamar knows better. She's worked too fucking hard to build a life out of caution and sharp elbows. She's sat through Title IX training, watched colleagues get burned, watched herself almost fall once--back in grad school, when she still thought desire was something you could compartmentalize.

She's not that woman anymore.

And yet--

Iris sat there with her legs crossed and her lips smudged like a bruise and looked up at her like she was reading scripture. Like she knew Tamar's body better than Tamar did. Like she wanted to be the next chapter in a story Tamar had stopped writing.

It wasn't a crush. It wasn't admiration.

It was invitation.

And now Iris is gone, leaving behind the ghost of her heat and the lingering scent of cheap cinnamon gum.

Tamar exhales.

She knows better.

She also knows she'll be looking for her next time.

Iris

She doesn't eat much. Just some weird-ass quinoa thing from the vegan station and a microwaved bao from her dorm stash, eaten half-cold while leaning against the windowsill like some tragic Victorian ghost with chopsticks and a vengeance. Her roommate's gone--thank fuck--and Iris is free to pace.

She's not thinking about Tamar's body. Not intentionally. Not like a creep. More like... her brain is orbiting around it. Like a moon with bad boundaries.

It's the treasure trail. That fucking strip of soft black hair leading down beneath her blouse. The way Tamar leaned forward at the podium, hand bracing her hip, neckline gaping just slightly too far. Not on purpose, maybe. But maybe. God. Iris wants to believe she imagined it, but her imagination isn't that generous.

She licks the inside of her bottom lip and tosses the rest of her dinner in the trash. Her thighs ache from sitting too long. Her spine's tense. She needs to move.

So she pulls on her beat-up sports bra, the one with the unraveling strap, and those tight black shorts that hug her ass like a scandal. Hair in a high, angry ponytail. She skips the campus rec center--too many frat guys and too much neon lighting--and hits the smaller basement gym in her dorm instead. The one that smells like rubber mats and repressed rage.

It's mostly empty. Just her and some overenthusiastic psych major doing deadlifts with bad form.

Perfect.

She climbs onto the treadmill and starts at a walk, just to warm up, just to feel herself again. Every footfall a thud that echoes somewhere behind her ribs. She pumps it up to a jog, then faster. Hair bouncing. Mouth open. Not pretty. Not for anyone.

And still--Tamar.

Tamar's breasts. The slope of them. Heavy and defiant. Not delicate. Not fake. Real enough to spill out if she leaned forward too far. The way her waist cinches just enough to make space for the curve of her hips. The presence of her. Like she's always slightly too much for the room she's in.

Iris speeds up. Her legs are flying now. Her lungs are burning. Her nipples are hard against the thin cotton of her bra and she's sweating but it's not just the workout--it's that low, gnawing want under everything.

What would Tamar do if she showed up at her office like this? Still damp from running, shirt clinging to her stomach, flushed and buzzing and utterly without shame?

No. She wouldn't. She won't. She can't.

But fuck, she wants to.

By the time she slows down, her whole body's trembling. Not just from the sprint. From the imagining.

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and steps off the machine like she's coming down from something illegal.

She's not thinking about Tamar's body.

She's haunted by it.

The walk back to her dorm is quiet, misty. Cool air on hot skin. Her shirt's stuck to her back in places. Her thighs are still twitching from the sprint. Her lungs feel like they've been hollowed out and replaced with something thirsty.

She doesn't talk to anyone. Doesn't check her phone. She takes the back stairwell, skips the common room entirely.

In the shared bathroom, she strips fast. Not graceful, not cinematic. Clothes dumped in a heap. She steps into the shower with the kind of urgency that isn't about hygiene. It's about need.

The water's too hot. She wants it that way. She tips her head back and lets it scald the back of her neck, lets it run down her chest, over her tight, flat little breasts, nipples still hard from the treadmill and Tamar and the fact that she hasn't touched herself in a week because she's been waiting. For what, exactly, she doesn't know. But tonight? She's not waiting.

She soaps up quick, then slower. Lets her fingers slide down, across her ribs, between her thighs. Just pressure. Just warmth. No finesse yet. She bites her lip.

And she thinks about Tamar.

Not just her body now. Her voice. The way it dropped when she talked about Lilith walking out of Eden. The way she held her arms when she quoted Torah, like she was holding someone. Like she wanted to be held.

She thinks about that treasure trail again. But more than that--she imagines undoing the buttons of Tamar's blouse. One by one. Slow. Knuckles brushing skin. That soft give of heat. The way Tamar's breath would catch--not a gasp, just a pause, an allowance.

Iris slides her fingers in, soft at first. Not desperate. Not yet.

She imagines Tamar saying her name. Not in class. Not in front of others. Just--low. Dark. Iris. That fucking voice. Like a spell.

She pushes deeper. Tilts her hips toward the tile. Her forehead rests on the cool wall.

Now Tamar's mouth. Full, plush, intentional. She imagines it trailing across her collarbone. Teeth, maybe. The kind of kiss that bruises. That claims.

She speeds up. Her breath breaks. Her thighs clench. Her body arches just a little, knees going soft. She's going to come and she knows it. Knows it like a rising tide. Like punishment.

She lets herself say it, quiet, soaked in steam: "Fuck--Tamar--"

And then she does.

Not a scream. Not a whimper. Just a shudder. A release. A collapse of all that heat and hunger into one long, tremoring exhale.

Afterward, she leans there. Still. Water pounding. Mind blank.

She shouldn't have said the name. She knows that.

But it's too late now. It's in her mouth. It's in her blood.

She towels off in silence.

Crawls into bed without brushing her hair.

And dreams about crossing lines.

Tamar

The alarm goes off at 6:30, and Tamar wakes up like a woman who's been dragged out of some deep, judgmental ocean.

She doesn't hit snooze. She never has. That's not discipline--it's inevitability. Her body just moves. Like it's been doing this since before the sun remembered how to rise.

She stretches once, slow and full-bodied, arms over her head, spine arching until something pops. The sheets are still warm. Her body smells like sleep, like skin, like the trace of something she won't name. She's alone. She always is. That's how she likes it. Mostly.

She swings her legs over the side of the bed. The floor's cold. She likes that too.

First: the kettle. She doesn't speak, doesn't think, just fills it and clicks it on. Her apartment's quiet, still smelling faintly of last night's incense--frankincense and myrrh, the good stuff, not the headachey new-age shit from undergrad dorms. Tamar buys hers from a woman in Berkeley who speaks in riddles and carries grief in her shawls.

While the water heats, she rolls her neck, shakes out her arms. Strips off her sleep shirt--oversized, black, nothing written on it--and steps into the bathroom. She doesn't look in the mirror yet.

Toothbrush. Cold water. She scrubs her teeth with the same brutal efficiency she uses on patriarchal readings of Genesis. Then face. Then hair--curly, unruly, defiant. She doesn't fight it. She coaxes it, oils it, pins it half-up with a silver clasp shaped like a pomegranate.

Back to the kitchen. The kettle sings.

She pours hot water over loose black tea, lets it steep in silence. No music. No phone. No news. Just morning. She stands by the window in her robe, one breast half-exposed without caring, and watches the early fog roll across the apartment courtyard.