Melbourne

I lied to Iris the first night I met her. It was late July, and the air was hot and sticky even with the sun down. I was dragged to a party by my friends and slipped out onto the porch to get away for a few minutes. Iris had the same idea and was already out there—she was always one step ahead of me. I hated small talk with strangers and considered going back inside, where I could at least hide among the group. But no talk with Iris was small. She saw me immediately and complimented my combat boots. She told me her name was Iris, like the flower, or the part of the eye, or the song by the Goo Goo Dolls—whichever sounded cooler. We talked for an hour about how we were both fresh out of college and worked part-time jobs we hated. We debated for a while about whether we’d rather lose our hearing or our eyesight (I said hearing because I couldn’t give up books, and she said eyesight because she couldn’t give up music). We told stories back and forth, and hers were mostly about the summer she followed a band around Europe. She went on and on about Melbourne, where she was moving for grad school in the winter, and by the end of it, I felt like I knew the way around the city myself. She was the easiest person I had ever talked to. So when she asked if I wanted to go somewhere else, away from all the party noise, I said yes.

“Do you like coffee?” she said. “I know a place that’s open late.”

“I love coffee.” I couldn’t stand coffee, but I couldn’t stand to let this conversation end either. She tugged on my jacket sleeve and led me down the street. Something about the way the moonlight cascaded down her dark, wavy hair made it hard to look away.

She took me to an all-night diner where the only other occasional customers were truck drivers just passing through. We slid into a booth by the window, where the moonlight still traced her outline, and our feet found each other under the table. Whenever a song Iris loved played on the radio, she jumped up and danced in the aisles. With confidence like hers, she was the last person to ever need a dance partner, but she pulled me up from my seat eventually. We accidentally twirled into the stools at the counter, laughed too loudly, and pissed off the only waitress there.

Then, back in our booth, she leaned across the table and kissed me. The bitterness of coffee was all over her lips. For the first time, I didn’t mind the taste.

From then on, all of my days were Iris’s. Summer bled into fall, and I slept in her sheets more than I did in mine. Sometimes we drove down to the lake for a swim or went out for the nicest dinner minimum wage could buy. Other times, we stayed in to watch movies we’d talk over and abandon halfway through. Nothing was more interesting to us than each other, and being with Iris was belonging in ways I had never known. My laugh belonged at the ends of her jokes. My hand belonged in the curve of her waist, like we were made to hold each other like that. I didn’t know I was a missing piece until I belonged with her. It must have been what people meant when they said they were in love.

Most nights ended with Iris attached to my side, her breath hot and hypnotizing on my neck. We were lying in her bed one October night, too warm to be tangled up the way we were, but too serene to care. We played a game of twenty questions, but lost count somewhere around number eight. It was really a game of trying not to fall asleep first—trying not to let the moment end.

“You’re falling asleep,” she teased when I took too long to answer a question. It was, What was your favorite age growing up?

“I am not,” I lied, forcing my eyes to stay open. “My favorite age was twelve. Old enough to hang out with friends alone, but have no real responsibilities. You?”

“I don’t think my favorite age has happened yet,” she said, the smile audible in her voice. “Maybe it’ll be twenty-two, the age I’ll be in Melbourne.”

Melbourne was the punctuation mark on all of our sentences. Although Iris and I talked about everything—we could’ve written books on each other’s lives, footnotes and all—we never talked far into the future. It was a line we didn’t cross, an unspoken agreement from the moment outside of that party when she told me she was leaving for grad school. Maybe the promised end was why it was so easy to be with her. Still, I wished it wouldn’t come. Nights like this, where the world was only as big as Iris’s bed, made me certain I loved her.

But I could never bring myself to say those words. They came with a permanence we couldn’t afford.

The night before she left, we had dinner at a place nice enough to require a reservation, but ordered the cheapest wine and appetizer on the menu. We talked about everything and nothing the way we always did, and I loved how beautiful she looked in the candlelight. She held my hand across the table, as if I’d run away if she didn’t. I counted the freckles dashed across her nose, as if it slowed down time.

“The song by the Goo Goo Dolls,” I said as she took the last sip from her wineglass.

“What?” she said.

“When you introduce yourself to all the people you’ll meet in Melbourne,” I said, “go with that one. Iris, like the song by the Goo Goo Dolls. It sounds the coolest.”

She smiled, remembering.

When the tables around us cleared out and the staff started to mop the floors, we finally took our cue to leave. She tugged me out the door, and I stumbled behind her—she was always one step ahead of me. We ran, skipped, twirled, and kissed our way to the all-night diner just a few blocks down. When we got there, we slid into the same side of a booth and Iris ordered two cups of coffee. It was still dark out, but the sun would be teasing the horizon at any minute.

We were close enough that my hand fit comfortably between her knees, and her breath danced on my collarbone. Still, the few inches of space between us felt too far. She kissed me then, and I knew that meant she felt it too.

“Tell me you don’t want me to go,” she said after. I would’ve lived the rest of my life drinking three cups of horrible coffee a day just to have her around.

“I want you to go,” I lied. “Of course I want you to go.”

She didn’t argue with it and just kissed me again.