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.
