She advised Olivia to wear something formal, and took a small delivery contract to get the money to pay for it. She rented out a nice men's suit & vest & dress pants for it, and knocked at Olivia's door at around 6PM that Friday.
"You look great!" called out a few female students passing behind her, and she felt a little embarrassed. "I'm sure she'll love it!"
She hoped Amelie wouldn't see her. She still occasionally felt responsible for Amelie's emotions, to an extent she could not convince herself was fully platonic. Maybe if she just had...
Olivia answered the door. To Iris her face had a radiant glow of softness, hitherto noticed, but that now more deeply allured her by that it was practically attainable. Her black hair tumbled to her shoulders, her cheeks each a soft hemisphere of beauty desiring to be kissed, her collarbones firm. The single strap of her dress rippled and crested into the black fabric held taut around her figure, before parting to reveal a tattooed string of roses upon her right thigh.
She wondered how far those roses went up...
"Earth to Iris..."
Iris coughed. "You look great."
Olivia grinned. "You too." She squeezed Iris's forearms. "Got that in the men's section?"
"I get all of my clothes there."
"Mm." Olivia dipped her arm in the crook of Iris's and let her lead her to the parking lot. "So, where are you taking me?"
Iris helped Olivia into her truck. "I made reservations at a nice Italian place about a half-hour from here. They mentioned on their website they specifically hire a professional to keep students from stealing, so I'd like to think they're legitimate."
"Mm." Olivia looked Iris down as Iris sat driverside. "You know we look like the most obvious caricature of a lesbian couple to ever exist, right?"
"We could swap. That might fix it."
Olivia adjusted her dress. For Iris to bring up what she had blatantly done with her cleavage might've opened her up to accusations of not making eye contact, so she simply noticed it and drove on.
As she sat down to eat with Olivia a few minutes later, she looked over the menu, realized they had not yet invented an Italian dish without carbs, then muttered to herself as she read through it. Soon they sat in silence.
"Did you find out about this place from somebody?" said Olivia.
"No, I read about it online." said Iris.
"Oh."
Still they sat in silence. She looked to Olivia, then back to her menu. She had already decided what to order.
"…so..."
"Do you want any appetizers?" said Iris.
"Oh, let me see what they have. … I assume you don't want me drinking."
"Only if you want."
"No, I'm alright. … Probably shouldn't drink on a first date. Or bring it up."
"It's fine."
"There's bruschetta."
"I don't eat bread."
"No, I meant for me."
"Oh."
"I know you don't..."
Iris looked around at the other tables of other romantic couples, and wondered if she should mimic such. She knew Olivia was a romantic type, but she had never felt herself one; but for Olivia there was desire that often made reality a secondary thing to the ache of her wants, whereas for Iris the ache of reality had made her desire a superfluous thing.
"Mm. What are you thinking about?"
"That they don't look as good as us."
Olivia snickered. "I'm sure you don't mind being the hottest couple here, right?"
"Here or elsewhere."
Olivia grinned as she leaned in. "Well, I can tell you you're the handsomest woman I've gone on a date with."
"I'm sure that takes in a lot of territory, knowing you."
"I could say the same about you."
Iris mused. "But I suppose what you go on with those women couldn't really be considered dates."
Olivia smiled as she reached under the table and spilled her drink on Iris. "Dumbass. I'm trying to loosen you up. You're too tense."
Iris reverted it. But they melded well for the rest of evening, and at the end of it Iris was walking Olivia back to her truck. They passed by men, and Olivia felt for if Iris would pull her closer and make more visible their romance to impress them. She worried that despite their friendship, Iris would treat her as a beautiful offering valued for the gaze of others and not herself, a preconception Olivia scorned yet would nonetheless indulge to keep a woman.
But Iris did not, so she smiled as Iris asked her to continue on about Naomi's recent encounter.
"But once Naomi mentioned that she had an abortion, that's when this woman's demeanor changed. She started yelling at Naomi about how she's going to hell and how she's a child-killer."
"She's already a man-killer, though."
"I know, right? I mean, what right to life does a fetus have? It can't survive on its own, it has no personality-"
"An insect has a more complex consciousness than a fetus."
"Exactly, but this snooty religious bitch wants to go off on her for nothing? Fuck, Naomi said she saw pictures of her family when she was questioning her earlier, yet she says her husband was useless and never pitched in to help."
"She sounds like one of these women who likes to live traditionally and invests herself deeply into that construct, then convinces herself she's happy and hurls scorn at anyone who can live without those limits."
"Yeah, and a lot of people are like that. Look at Viktoria."
"I don't think Viktoria's delusional about her misery."
Olivia snickered. "Yeah, but it's what she deserves."
"It certainly is."
"Naomi's able to shrug it all off, though, since she's been a student for four years now. She's used to all this weird shit. She said that the woman didn't even seem angry at her, specifically, just someone that had been in her mood for years."
"Just never understood why people'll invest themselves into what they think'll bring them popularity or love rather than what they're best suited for."
Olivia giggled, and she reached out to run her hand over Iris's butch muscularity. "Yeah, me neither."
Iris smiled and wrapped her arm around Olivia, keeping it there on the drive back to Urasaria. When they arrived back at Urasaria she parked, then walked Olivia home.
"Did you have a nice time?" said Olivia.
"I did. Did you?"
"I did." Olivia pressed her fingers on Iris's chest. "I like when you're all dressed up. And, I know you like me when I'm all dressed up, so, I was thinking... Do you want to come home with me? No pressure. But if we do, I was thinking we could..."
Iris looked over Olivia in her dress again, but was unable to summon what it had earlier loosened in herself. It was not that she wasn't sexy: she obviously was. "I... think I'd like to hold off on that for now. But I'd still like a second date."
"Okay." Olivia smiled. "Me too. Kiss?"
Iris pulled Olivia close and folded her into her arms, her mouth searching for her's, enjoying how Olivia hung off her a little as she kissed her.
When Iris went home to wash up for the night, she noticed her appearance more in the mirror. Her muscles had been growing recently, and she hoped she might eventually attain Natasha's physique. Her diet was as good as a student's could be and her abs were the type women liked to eat off of. She generally felt rather handsome.
So she tried to think why she had declined Olivia's invitation. She was a beautiful woman; very few would've declined. She had once nursed fantasies of it. It hadn't been that Olivia was her friend before that held her back. She tried to think through it logically, but again could not, annoyed at this self-sabotaging characteristic she still possessed. But she had enjoyed her date with Olivia and was excited for another.