What Happened to Wyatt

09 ｃｏｎｆｌｉｃｔｉｏｎ

After our first date, I spent the following two weeks with Iris. The day after our dinner date I had texted her and we had planned to meet up for coffee one morning. From there we had taken a stroll through a nearby park with her Spaniel, Ebony, and later we had had a picnic. A few days later I had her over for a game night of sorts. We got through a game of Jenga, Scrabble, and Uno. After getting my ass kicked at Uno we had taken a break from the board games and had headed into my bedroom for a little 7 minutes in heaven, courtesy of Iris.

Two weeks have passed and I have never been happier. Delilah has begun to cross my mind less and less, and my sisters offer to return home has been put on the backburner. Over the course of these two weeks, I have learned that Iris is twenty-three, she loves to run with Ebbie in the morning's before her classes and she grew up with a relative who was deaf so she's fluent in ASL. She speaks two different languages, Spanish and French. She doesn't cook very often and she hates to clean so her apartment can be a disaster zone at times, but somehow she always manages to keep herself organized. She sports a tough exterior and is one of the most intense people I have ever met. She knows exactly who she is and is sure of herself and her beliefs, but there's more to her than that. She's caring and compassionate and she'd do anything for the people she loves.

The more time I spend with her, the harder I'm beginning to fall for her. She has begun to open up to me, and I've started to do the same. Now she occupies my mind 24/7; most of the time she's all I can think about. Iris has turned my whole world around, I'm truly happy. It's Wednesday afternoon and I've just got my cast taken off. I call Iris to tell her the good news and soon enough we've made plans for her to come over and celebrate. She arrives at my door around 7:30, sporting a bottle of wine and a grin. She throws her arms around me and presses her lips up against my cheek before pulling back to look me in the eye, her grin widening.

"How does it feel to be able to put both of those arms of yours to use?" She asks.

Spontaneously, I take the wine from her and set it aside, and with a hand on her waist and another around her shoulders, I dip her and she immediately responds, tangling her arms around my neck as her lips connect with mine. The kiss obliterates any thoughts that had been running through my mind prior to it. My mind is locked in the present and I have no desire for the kiss to end. Our lips part momentarily and I begin trailing soft, delicate kisses down Iris's neck. She lets out a quiet moan and I grin. Drunk on endorphins, all I want to do is touch her, be close to her. I softly kiss the tender area at the base of her neck just as one of my neighbors exits the elevator across from us.

"For fuck's sake, get a room!" Mr. Walters barks before he begins muttering to himself. "Horny teenagers..." As soon as he makes his way into his apartment, slamming his door for good measure, Iris and I burst into a fit of laughter. I pull her up into my arms and rest my forehead against hers, closing my eyes. With a content sigh, she sinks into my arms.

"Now that...That is exactly how it feels." I mumble.

****

Soon enough,  Iris and I are sitting on my couch indulging in a glass of red wine, enjoying each other's company.

"I never did ask you what you did to your hand." She says suddenly. She's right, for the amount of time we've spent together it's odd that it hadn't come up.

"Well.." I start. I tell her about Isaac, and then about Brian before I finally get to the part about my hand.

"Brian is such a dick, hell, I wish I could have been there to see you deck his ass," Iris says after a moment, shaking her head with contempt. I let out a chuckle.

"Well, I got the pleasure of watching you slap that stupid smirk off of his face. Remind me not to get on your bad side." I tease. She lets out a laugh of her own. Suddenly the phone rings for the third time since Iris stepped foot in my apartment. My face falls and my eyes are swimming with emotion as I let it continue to ring.