“I’ll come this evening—”
“No.”
Tristan’s face pinched together at the same time Alex squeezed his shoulder, keeping him in place. Keeping him calm. Ish.
“Iris, please. Don’t do this.” And it pained him to watch her blink her eyes shut for too long to be an ordinary blink. She was holding back tears. Tears for which he was the cause.
“I’ll…” But she just let the word hang, unable to complete the sentence as he watched her swallow past the lump in her throat.
“Let’s go home, Iris,” Violet said soothingly. And he watched her mouth something to Alex but was too distraught to read the words as the love of his life walked out the door.
Chapter 9
“Ican’t believe he lied to me,” Iris huffed while she paced her room. She felt like an empty canvas. No, she felt like a repainted canvas. Which was worse. It meant that something beautiful—or at least something attempting to be beautiful—had been there, and now it wasn’t. It was worse than emptiness. It was draining. Empty but never having been filled was bearable. Empty after having been full to the brim was soul crushing.
“Did he lie?” Violet questioned from her cross-legged position on her bed.
“Yes! How can you even ask that? We are best friends. We tell each other everything.”
“Like how you’ve told him how you feel about him all these years?”
A loud, most ungenteel harrumph exploded from Iris. Quite possibly the loudest of its kind. “Violet, of course I didn’t tell him that.”
“So you’ve been lying to him all these years then?”
“He never told me how he felt either.” The retort felt as ridiculous inside of her as it sounded on the outside, but still, she held firm.
“So he loves you?”
“Yes, but that’s besides the point—”
“Because you both have been lying to each other?”
“Yes—”
“And have you told him the truth about why you won’t do a self-portrait?” No, she had not. Mostly because every time she sat down to one, she couldn’t even determine the real reason she felt incapable of doing it.
“Ugh. No.” She paused, her pacing temporarily defeated. “We have been lying to each other this whole time. This is no way to start a relationship. A relationship must be built on trust.”
“As far as lies go…those aren’t so bad, really.”
“Whose side are you on, Violet?”
“Both.”
“You can’t be.”
“Yes I can.” She stood up and approached Iris, placing her hands on her shoulders. Iris could feel a speech about to start, the kind typically given by an older sister to a younger one, but the roles here were reversed. “I love you both. You love each other. You deserve each other. You deserve to be happy.”
“But the lies…”
“The truth always comes to light. Once the lies are exposed, you can move forward in truth together.”
“He’s betrayed my independence. My pride. My privacy. How can I forgive him?”
“He hasn’t betrayed your heart, Iris. He acted out of love. This was not something maliciously done.”
“You’re right.” And as an afterthought, she added, “Probably.”