11. Iris
11
IRIS
“I can’t believe you kept the place.” I walk into the apartment I used to call home.
“Yes, well…I was going to get around to selling it eventually, but you can’t beat the view.”
It’s true. The view of the lake from the expansive windows is stunning. Beautiful sunrises, endless blue.
I pull Trevor inside by the lapel of his coat, dragging his mouth to mine. I kiss him messily.
What are we here to do if not this ?
Trevor bought it. All cash offer. So, I didn’t mind leaving it behind in that sense. But it was my home. It wasn’t easy to know I wasn’t welcomed back to the life we’d built together in our little condo forty stories up.
Things don’t look the same, though. Of course, they don’t. I don’t live here anymore. It doesn’t look like Trevor does either. All the things I took have left gaps in the modern apartment. It’s not homey anymore. It’s sterile.
“Is it like you remember it?” Trevor asks.
I have to take a few measured breaths to keep my emotions at bay. “Yes. A little empty, but yes.”
I run my hand along the kitchen counter, walk through the living room and up to the windows.
Missed this view. Missed laying on the couch with Trevor late into the night, staring out at the lake and sky.
I miss when there was so much possibility.
Trevor comes up behind me at the window, wraps his arms around me. “I’m glad you’re here.”
I lean back into his chest. “Me too.”
We sway back and forth as if we are a rocking boat.
I don’t want to get too comfortable, don’t want too many memories to start swirling around us and pull me into a delusion.
Tomorrow, I go back to Seattle. Tonight, I’m with Trevor.
I can enjoy tonight without sacrificing tomorrow. I’ll probably break my heart doing it, but I’ve survived broken hearts before, haven’t I?
Of course, an argument could be made that I haven’t really been surviving the past six months. I’ve just been…getting by. Working a lot to forget all the pain.
Can I do that again? For much longer?
I tilt my head back, looking up into Trevor’s face. He looks right back, his lips soft and attention all on me.
“Kiss me.”
His lips perk. He kisses me. Soft.
I want more than a soft kiss. “Another.”
Another. Soft.
“Another.”
“You are greedy.”
“I haven’t had your kisses in six months. I have every right to be greedy.”
Trevor smiles and kisses me again, deeper this time. Harder.
I sway my hips side to side against his crotch, trying to awaken him.
“Iris,” he groans.
Twirling out of his arms in my best Nutcracker style, I giggle and take his hand, pulling him toward the open doorway across the room, to our– his bedroom. “Come on, don’t act coy.”
“I’m not, I just–”
I stop in the doorway. The bedroom looks almost the same compared to the rest of the apartment. In fact, my hair ties are still in a jar on the dresser. “You kept the bed?”
“I’m not going to get a whole new bed just because–”
“Your next girlfriend isn’t going to want to sleep in a bed you shared with your ex.” I whip around to pull him into my arms again.
I kiss shim with force, my teeth nipping at his lower lip. Marking him.
Mine.
Trevor huffs a darkening breath. “Iris–”
I grab the front of his pants, starting to undo the button. “Come on, let’s do this.”
Trevor’s hands link around my wrists. “Iris, honey, wait .”
I pause, furrowing my brow.
Trevor’s expression hardens. Not in a mean way, but…there’s something he’s not saying.
“What’s wrong?”
Trevor swallows, his gaze dropping from mine. “I need to tell you something.”
“Okay…”
He releases my wrists and goes to the window.
I stare after him with confusion and…fear. I’m afraid he’s going to– Well, he’s already broken my heart. How could he do it again?
Would he do it again? I don’t even know what that would look like.
He leans an arm against the window and looks out at the lake.
“Trevor, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.”
“I’m just trying to think of the right thing to say and how to say it.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, folding my hands between my knees, trying to distract myself by picking at my nails. “Just say it.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Well, you’ve said things that hurt me before, I can take it.” I try to laugh it off.
Trevor glances back at me, his curls casting long shadows on his face. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Well, I’ll be the judge of that.”
Trevor straightens up, scratches a hand through his hair, and then mutters, “This was a mistake.”
A knife to my chest. “Well, you shouldn’t have agreed to come with me tonight if it was–”
Trevor holds his hands out, palms facing me, waving them erratically. “No! No, no, not this. Not tonight. The past six months. What I did.”
“Oh.”
“I was selfish, I was…” Trevor looks down. “I was scared.”
“I know, Trev.”
“But I haven’t told you why. Really why.”
We know everything about each other. Well, almost everything. I have a secret I’ve held back because I don’t like that part of me, but nothing that could hurt him, nothing that would push him away.
Something that pushes me away from myself.
Apparently, though, I’m not the only one holding something back.
“You know I don’t have a relationship with my stepfather. Not since my mom died.”
“I do.”
Trevor’s mom died when he was seventeen. As far as his stepfather goes, I’ve never met the man. He lives somewhere in the suburbs with his new wife, a woman he married soon after Trevor’s mother’s death. Trevor always said he was an asshole, and I believed it.
Who moves on from someone so quickly?
I never pushed harder for more information. He’d found a new family in the Hawthorns, and he seemed to have recovered from whatever trauma there was in the past.
“Jake, he raised me, practically. I mean, I never knew my real dad. I even have his last name,” Trevor says. “He was in my life from the time I was six years old.”
I don’t know how this has to do with us, but I’m not going to question it. To this day, I want to know all of Trevor. I still do, despite…everything.
“And when my mom got sick, he…he was never an affectionate guy, but he got even more distant. I suspect he was already seeing his new wife by the time my mom passed away.”
I shake my head. “That’s terrible, Trevor. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, she didn’t deserve that.”
I wish I could meet his mother and thank her for the amazing man she raised. Even if he isn’t mine, even if he broke my heart, he’s amazing.
He’ll make someone very happy.
I just can’t help but hope it’s me.
Trevor chews on his lower lip and leans back on the window. “Anyway, I was still a minor, but once I turned eighteen, he got even colder to me. Made me start paying rent until I went to college.”
“ What? ”
Trevor jumps. “Yeah, he…I get it, it was his house, but–”
“You were his child.”
“Only his stepchild. Not legally. Besides, I was an adult, and–”
“That’s wrong, Trevor.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“That’s wrong . You needed him.” My heart breaks for the boy Trevor was.
Losing his mom so early, and then his stepfather turning into his landlord.
Trevor nods. “It took me a long time to realize that, but yes, I did. I just tried to compartmentalize and move on. I went to college soon after, so it wasn’t a long time of being tortured like that. That’s where I met Oliver. How I met the Hawthorns.”
I press my hand to my chest.
My heart is pounding fast.
How could anyone do that to a child? How could anyone do that to Trevor ?
“They became my family. I never saw my stepfather again after I left. He’s never tried to reach out. He’s married, I think he even has a kid with his new wife, I don’t–” Trevor shuts his eyes tight. “I don’t care, I don’t, but–”
I get to my feet and go to him. “Of course, you care. It’s okay to care.”
Trevor’s breath is shallow as he tries to maintain control.
I touch his arms, rub my hands up and down them, trying to keep him calm.
“You didn’t deserve that, Trevor.”
Trevor’s jaw tightens. “Oliver and I both bonded over having dead moms.” He laughs that off. Laughs most likely to keep from crying. “And then when he realized I didn’t have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving, he invited me to stay with his family and…I just have been a part of the family ever since.”
I place my hand on Trevor’s neck, guiding his chin up so our eyes meet. “I’m so glad you found each other. It kills me you had to go through that. It…it just kills me.”
Trevor leans his cheek into my hand. “I’m telling you this because I know now that the reason I ended things was because I couldn’t handle you leaving. I couldn’t handle it at all.”
“I should have told you I took the job. That’s on me.”
“You didn’t know–”
“I didn’t have to. People don’t hide big shit like that from each other, and I’m sorry.”
Trevor wraps his hands around the back of my head, pulls my forehead to his mouth.
Instead of kissing it, he whispers, “I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry. I was just so scared you’d leave me that I thought if I cut it off first, I’d keep myself safe. I felt like that kid again. Abandoned.”
“Of course, you did. I’m so sorry, Trevor. I never would have done that to you if…” I shake my head. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“But it’s on me too. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did, I should have let you explain rather than–” His eyes fill with tears. “If I hadn’t given you the ultimatum or made you feel like I wouldn’t try and make things work…”
“I understand now. I get it.”
“I blamed you, but you’re right, it was my fault. We could have had something, I could have gotten over it. I should have. And then I lost you. I lost you.”
I slide my arms around him, holding as much of him as I can.
I won’t ever let him go. I won’t let him get away, won’t let him ache like that ever again.
“We would have been married by now,” he whispers. “We would be getting ready to go on our honeymoon, we would be talking about kids, we’d–”
A few tears drip down his cheeks. Beautiful, glassy drops that leave slick tracks of pain. So much pain.
It’s funny how we shared that pain at such a distance. And yet, we didn’t share it at all. It was each our own, the pain of losing one another.
I squeeze him a bit. “We can’t change the past, baby.”
“I know. I wish I could.”
“I wish you’d told me sooner.” I know I’m the pot calling the kettle black when I have my own stories I’ve never shared.
Trevor sighs. “I didn’t want you to know how unwanted I was.”
“Oh, baby. Baby, no, nothing could have changed that.”
Nothing can change that .
I press my face to his cheek. “And I’m sure your mother would have done everything in her power to take care of you if she was still alive. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
Trevor’s arms shift around me, embracing me.
And we remain like that for a long time.
I know he needs it and in some ways, I need it too. But the longer he holds me, the more anxious I feel.
He was strong enough to pour his heart out to me, to share something deep under the surface.
I should repay him in kind. But I can’t.
Mine feels bigger. Worse. If anything, I think he might be hurt I’ve kept something so big from him for so long.
Trevor’s hands widen on my back as if trying to hold as much as me as possible. “I love you, Iris. I still love you.”
My heart lodges in my throat.
Did I hear him right?
“I didn’t stop.”
I didn’t either .
I want to say it back. I should say it back. But I can’t.
I’m too scared.
What if I commit to him all over again, and I hurt him. What if I commit to him again and pull the rug out from under him again ?
I did it once. I’m capable of hurting him. Massively so.
Trevor waits for a few beats. For me to say it, I just know it.
But the words won’t come out.
Instead, I say, “I didn’t mean to make you cry.” I wick his tears away with my thumbs. “No more of that, baby.”
Trevor smiles, though tears continue to fall. “I’m just sorry. I’m so sorry I did this to us.”
“I’m sorry I did this to us too.” I dig my fingers into his hair, pull his mouth to mine and kiss him.
One kiss turns into two turns into ten.
Our clothing falls to the floor, bodies press against one another, and we tumble into bed together. Our bed, full of memories and imprints of us.
It’s not complicated, our bodies coming together.
We lay side by side and Trevor slides inside, my leg looped around his hip.
Neither of us says a thing. Just breaths and moans.
His cock strokes into me over and over, arms wrapped around me like a life jacket I need to survive.
“I need you,” I breathe. That’s as close to “love” as I can say.
He feels so good. Our bodies communing together feels so important.
We’re here together. And he loves me.
I love him too.
But is that enough to protect him?
Our bodies are so close he can barely retreat from me. Each thrust is more like a pulse. He doesn’t want to leave me.
“Iris. Baby .” He repeats my name again and again, begging for release.
I knit my hand at his back and bury my face in his neck, pressing, pressing until the hot coil inside me is too tense to coil any further.
I release first, shuddering on his cock, whining into his skin.
Trevor empties into me, every last drop, my name laced with swears and a cry for God. And then–
“I love you. Iris, I love you. I love you so much. I never stopped.”
“I…Trevor, I…” I can’t manage the words.
“Shhh…it’s okay. I’ve got you.”
My body spasms on his cock.
Filled by his girth and his seed, I am stuffed full of him.
The orgasm lasts longer than any I’ve ever had.
Trevor coaxes it out of me, encouraging with soft words and touches.
The echo of “I love you” remains.
There is a world where I have had an “I love you” from Trevor every night for the past six months. And he’s received one in return.
Except now we’re here, all this time of withheld I love yous. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to say it. I’ve forgotten how to say it to him.
“Stay,” Trevor whispers. “Tonight.”
“Okay.”
He pulls the covers over us, pressing his nude body to my back.
“Stay forever,” he says through a laugh so it sounds like a joke.
But I know it’s not a joke.
I pretend I’ve fallen asleep.
Trevor kisses my ear. “Goodnight, Iris. I love you .”
I think to myself, I love you too. But I don’t know if I can survive our love again. Not when you took it away so easily before.
Not when I still have so much to hide.