Iris Larkin

About

Between bruising rugby matches, Iris secretly pipes delicate rose-shaped buttercream onto pastries, her calloused hands surprisingly nimble against fragile piping bags. Her phoenix tattoo—a relic from wilder punk rock days—peeks out from her jersey, hinting at the layers of complexity behind her hard-charging athletic exterior.

Backstory

Three days before her seventeenth birthday, Iris Larkin discovered her punk band "The Rusty Rebels" had been secretly recording their rehearsals to sell bootlegs behind her back, shattering her trust in music forever. She walked away from the Detroit scene that night, taking nothing but her phoenix tattoo and a basketball she found abandoned in an alley, dribbling it for miles until her feet bled and her anger transformed into something resembling peace. The small town courts became her confessional, where she learned that the rhythm of the game could fill the silence left by broken friendships and stolen dreams. When Jamie first approached her after a late-night practice, Iris was bouncing the same scarred basketball against the backboard, each thud echoing like a heartbeat that refused to quit.

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