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“I know,” said Audrey, in a manner that suggested she and Blair went way back.
The waitress approached the table with an appetizer-laden tray. She handed Iris her soda, then set down a plate each of quesadillas, mozzarella sticks, fries, and steamed vegetables. When she was gone, Iris craned her neck around, hoping to spot Evette and Minnie. Unhelpfully, she couldn’t actually see the bar from their table.
“You know he came to see me and Evette,” said Audrey offhandedly, squirting a spiral of ketchup on top of the fries with an artist's practiced hand.
“Blair? When?”
She shrugged, popping a steamed cauliflower into her mouth. “Maybe a month or so ago? He said he wanted to see more of my art.”
That couldn’t have been long after Thanksgiving, then. Iris frowned, wondering why Blair would have kept something like that from her.
“What’s his story, anyway?” Audrey asked, taking a thoughtful bite. “He was pretty quiet when he visited. I’m still really curious why he was living under that bridge.”
Iris hesitated, her mind spinning together a palatable version of Blair’s life that would stick to, if not the facts, then at least the spirit of them.
“Blair’s parents were very protective of him,” she began. “They homeschooled him and wouldn’t let him leave the house on his own, even as an adult, because of an, um, rare condition that he has. I’d rather not get into the specifics right now,” Iris said, noting Audrey’s look of curiosity. “But because of that, he has some trouble in social situations, which you’ve probably picked up on.” She took a sip of root beer, hiding behind the glass while she waited for Audrey’s reaction.
“That must have been a really lonely way to grow up,” Audrey mused, her voice softening in sympathy. “So, what, he just eventually had enough and up and left?”
Iris made a movement somewhere between a nod and a shrug. “Basically, yeah.”
“I bet you’ve been good for him.” Audrey stretched out her legs, leaning back in her chair. “Being isolated for so long must have been miserable. A sympathetic ear was probably just what he needed.”
“I hope so.” Iris' shoulders sank. “Sometimes, I don’t know, I feel like I might be too much for him. Like, I ask too many questions, and maybe…maybe I’m overbearing. Maybe I care too much.”
Audrey pinned her with a perceptive smile. “You do have a tendency to want people to bare their souls to you.”
“What do you mean?”
She laughed. “Oh, come on! This is like Trevor all over again.” Her smile faded as she took in Iris’ expression. “Oh, Iris, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s okay.”
“It isn’t okay. All I meant was, I feel like when you meet someone new, you have a tendency to try to find cracks to squeeze through, and if their walls are built up too high, or if they’re too flawless and scarless, you sort of lose interest.”
Iris had never heard herself described that way, but she couldn’t deny the truth in Audrey’s words. It was as though her friend had scooped out a part of her psyche she had buried deep in the sand, had built a castle out of it with a waving red flag that Iris couldn’t ignore.
But bringing up Trevor, comparing what she had with Blair to her one failed relationship…that stung more than she wished it would.
“That’s enough about me. This is your night.” Iris gestured to the food. “Want me to go track down Evette and Minnie?”
Audrey still looked worried, but she nodded and pushed back her chair. “I’ll go.” She placed a hand briefly on Iris’ arm before moving away toward the bar.
Iris stared unseeingly out the small window to her left, glad for a moment to herself so she could consider what Audrey had said.
She hadn’t really thought about her time with Trevor for years.
He’d been the TA for Iris’ Intro to Anthropology class during her second year at Bennington, a tall, lanky boy with hair so short you couldn’t tell if it was dark blonde or light brown. Piercings had lined the bell curves of his ears, and tattoos of flowers and vines snaked down the lengths of his arms.
He was quiet, and she was usually quiet, but as the weeks passed, she’d found herself raising her hand at every question and reading the sixty-page packets on world heritage sites as voraciously as she did her favorite novels so she would sound intelligent in class.
One day, she was sitting next to Trevor when he dropped his pen. And when Iris, who was attuned to him like he was her favorite station, bent down immediately and retrieved it for him, he had smiled—that knowing Trevor smile.
The following week, he handed her back an assignment that he’d graded for the professor. At the bottom, there was a little note scribbled in his messy scrawl, asking her to meet him over coffee to discuss some revisions.
And that was how it began.
It took no time at all before Trevor became her moon, her stars, her sun. Iris realized that she was just a dusty old rock until he came along to give her light.
