“Kris.” She sniffs. “I—even with everything that happened. I want you to know.”
Oh god. “Iris—we don’t have to—”
“No. Kris.” She tips my face so our foreheads are pressed together. “Kristopher. Even with everything that happened. You are going to be great at drawing things. I will teach yousomuch.”
I pause.
Then snort. “That’s not what—actually, that’s fine. Thank you, Iris. I appreciate that.”
She shoves my face back, rocking me like a bobblehead. “I’mserious,Kris. You’ll be such a good artist. We’ll be artiststogether.”
I definitely could have timed this conversation better. “You’re very drunk.”
She giggles and throws her arms around me again. “Iknow.Isn’t itgreat?”
The song ends and up kicks one by The Script. “Hall of Fame.”Iris flails to Siobhán with a gasp so loud half the oxygen gets yanked out of the room, and they both bellow out the lyrics.
A hand grabs my arm.
It’s Finn, and that shocks me enough that I immediately feel like someone must’ve died.
“What?” I shout over the music.
“He’s a stubborn arse,” she tells me. “But you got him to talk to our court today. Siobhán was right. You are good for him.”
I gape at her. Fully open-mouthed staring. “What?”
She grimaces. “Do na make me repeat the nice thing or I’ll vomit.”
“She’s into art too.” I nod at Iris.
Finn’s face goes stricken. “Eh?”
“She’s into art too,” I say a little louder. Iris is enraptured in singing. “If you point out unusual things, stuff she could use as inspiration, she’ll eat it up.”
Finn gawps at me. “Thanks,” she says, sounding winded.
“Thank you.”
She punches me. And I think I finally cracked her over to my side.
Coal pops up from his chair, sending Finn startling backwards, andshrieksthe chorus to “Hall of Fame.”
I bust out laughing and point to Hex, sitting primly on the chair Coal vacated, sipping a glass of water.
“Your regularly scheduled make-out session is over, I take it?”
Coal bats the side of my head. Fuck, everyone’s handsy tonight.
But he gets a deeply serious look on his face and sings the lyrics as if they’re a ballad, directing all that cheesy energy at me. I try to grab Hex to put him between us but the little shit slips out of my hands like an eel. Coal snatches a fork from the table to use as a microphone and goes full-on serenading, and fine, that’s what we’re doing tonight?
I sing right back at him, matching his weird energy, and he breaks in belly-deep laughs. His laughter yanks me over the edge, and I have to catch myself on the table to stay upright in my own hysterics.
I open my arms to this simplicity. Maybe everything can be thissimple, too. As simple as accepting it, not overthinking, not worrying, and whatever backlash comes, I can stand strong knowing that I did whatIneeded, what was true tome.
It’s past three by the time Coal uses more magic to send us all stumbling exhaustedly—and, in some cases, drunk off our asses—back to the foyer of Castle Patrick.
Iris leans heavily on Coal, her eyes shut, nearly asleep on her feet; her face paint is utterly wrecked, smears of green and orange muddled by sweat and exertion. Siobhán is Iris’s mirror on Finn, and I realize—only two of us got hammered? Well, damn. Did we fail this particular St. Patrick’s Day outing, then?
