“Ah.” She grimaces. “I didn’tquitegraduate.” She pauses here, tapping her finger against her mug, then amends, “No. That’s a lie.” The air trickles from her lungs. “I totally flunked out.”
Oh. Shit.
There’s a tug in my chest as I think about my sister. She struggled in college too. Soph is a brilliant artist and got into Rhode Island School of Design on pure talent, but betweenthe pressure of performing, missed deadlines, and the constant grind of critiques, she burned out and left early. It took her a while to find her footing again, and now she paints on her own terms.
I remember suddenly what I said to Iris last week before we met with David Lancaster,You’ve got a degree in architecture, do you?The way she shrank, how her face turned scarlet. Shit. I’m an asshole.
“What happened?” I ask gently.
She lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know. I just… couldn’t keep up.” She stares into her coffee, acting indifferent, but a tiny tremble in her bottom lip gives her away. “Guess I’m not as smart as everyone else.”
I’m reminded of Soph again, the trouble she had at school, in college. It was never for lack of trying, for lack of intelligence. As for Iris… she’s been a whirlwind, that’s for sure, but she’s never given me reason to believe she’s not intelligent. I’d assumed she was difficult on purpose, willful and defiant, because she could be. Because her father runs the place.
But her words from the day we met come back to me, making me pause.It feels like everyone manages things so effortlessly, but for me, no matter how hard I try, I can’t get anything right.
For the first time, I see it differently. I see a woman thrown in at the deep end, overwhelmed, trying to find her way in a job she’s not trained for.
“Anyway, that’s why I’m at the firm,” she mumbles. “I have to pay Dad back for my loans before he’ll let me go.”
“Wait.” I lean forward, wanting to make sure I understand this correctly. “He’smakingyou work for him?”
She winces, nodding. “I know, it’s pathetic, right? Dad taking half my paycheck like I’m a teenager who crashed their car, or something.”
I stare at her, chest growing tight and hot. John’s forcing her to work for himandtaking half her wages? He made it sound likehewas the one helpingher. Doinghera favor.
But he’s not.
The full picture forms, softening a place deep inside me. I think of the way he spoke to her this morning, how much she shrank. The way he responded when I told him I couldn’t work with her, asking meWhat has she done now?Almost as if he’d been waiting for her to screw up before she even began.
And what she said to me in the Uber when I told her to quit. How sad and hopeless she looked when she murmured,It’s not that simple. God, the things I said to her. Guilt swamps me as I mentally replay our interactions, my cutting words. I’d had an image of her as entitled, maybe a little spoiled, but she’s in a situation she didn’t ask for. Forced into it by her father.
“Dad’s right,” she mumbles, cutting into my thoughts. “All I do is fuck everything up.”
Something protective surges through me, sharp and sudden. “That’s not true,” I say, and she gives me a look that makes me cringe. “Okay, things haven’t been running as smoothly as I’d like,” I admit, “but you haven’t broughtnothingto the table, Iris.”
She lifts her brows, waiting. Her expression is one of amusement, but underneath I sense real vulnerability, as if she wantssomeoneto tell her she’s done something right.
“If it wasn’t for you, David Lancaster would have walked out of that meeting,” I say. “You rescued what could have been an awkward situation, all because I was being an ass.” I sense she’s going to rescue the situation in more ways than one, now that I’ve seen her apartment, seen what she can do with a small space in that model, but I don’t say this yet. I want to look over her plans before I jump the gun.
She snorts. “That almost sounds like a compliment.”
“And you found the good coffee near the office,” I say, setting my half-drunk mug aside.
She huffs a quiet laugh. “It’s Joe’s,” she murmurs. “Near Clark Street. They have the best cupcakes too.”
Our eyes meet. The mention of cupcakes takes me right back to Marco’s, and I can tell from the way she bites her bottom lip as she gazes at me that she’s back there too.
“The day we met… that’s when I learned I’d flunked out. When Dad told me I’d be working for him.” She looks at her hands. “It’s why… why I wasn’t at my best.”
Her voice cracks, and there’s a pull behind my ribs, a sensation I can’t name, because I knew this all along. Not the details—about college, or John—but I’d seen how defeated and hurt she was that day at the bar, miserable with her cupcakes, her makeup smeared.
“I’m sorry I lied,” she whispers, eyes coming back to mine. “About my age, about college… I wasn’t trying to deceive you. I was…” She looks away again with a shake of her head. “I was ashamed. I didn’t want you to look at me and see some kid who flunked out before she even got her degree. Lying felt easier than admitting how badly I messed up.”
Compassion rushes through me, and I fight the urge to reach for her. “It’s okay.” The hoarseness in my voice makes her look up.
“You’re not still angry?”
I shake my head. Any anger I felt toward Iris was unjustified. Even when I missed the meeting about the Whitmore Museum and tried to blame her, deep down I knew it was John’s fault. Iris should have put the meeting in the online calendar, but it was a dick move on John’s part to give me a project he knew was below my pay grade. To punish me for not showing up.
