Page 25 of Isolated
So, I plastered a genuine smile on my face, finished making dinner, and called Walter up to eat. We had a lovely time chatting—it meant the world to him, despite the fact he’d never admit it—and he immediately went back down into the basement to finish the installation.
Two hours later, Walter finished.
“What’s this?” he asked when I handed him a container.
“Are you going to allow me to pay you for your work tonight?”
He growled at me. “Absolutely not.”
I grinned at him. “I figured that would be the case. So, since you enjoyed those sandwiches so much, I packed up a few extras for you to take home as a token of my appreciation for what you did for me today.”
Any time he’d helped me in the past, Walter never accepted money. He was legitimately insulted the first time I’d offered it. But I hated feeling like he’d done something for me without getting anything in return. I quickly learned that Walter never turned down home-cooked meals.
He held the container up between us. “Just this. Nothing else.”
I pressed my lips together to stifle the laughter threateningto spill out. “Okay. Thank you, again, for doing this for me. You’re a lifesaver.”
Walter tipped his chin up proudly. “I’m always around if you need help.”
“I appreciate it.”
Walter and I said goodbye to one another, and I locked up behind him after he left. Then, I tested out his handiwork and hopped into the shower. It was gloriously warm, and the heat eased any of the lingering stress out of my muscles.
By the time I crawled into bed and closed my eyes, I felt a renewed sense of peace. Things were turning around. I could feel it in my bones.
NINE
Landen
“Are you sure everything’s okay?”
It was the second time I’d asked that question, hoping for a real answer. But once again, I was met by a bout of silence and hesitation.
That immediate response was enough for me to know that I was justified in asking to begin with. The problem was that I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get much of an answer the second time around.
And that was what made this so difficult.
Because I wasn’t the kind of guy who could sit back in most situations when I believed I could help someone. In this case, I was helpless.
For as long as I’d known Iris, I hadn’t ever seen her like this. Today was Tuesday, and there was something about the way she’d been during our workout sessions this week that just didn’t seem right.
I thought back to last week to see if I could recallanything that stood out as strange—to summon any memory of something I might have done to bring this on—but I couldn’t come up with anything.
Not everything was strange, though. For the past two days, Iris had been at the gym in the morning—even arriving before me, like usual—but even if she was physically present, it was clear to me that her mind was elsewhere.
I hadn’t said anything about it yesterday, but it had bugged me enough that when she arrived again today in the same state, I couldn’t ignore it. So, I’d asked her at the start of our workout if she was okay, and Iris had insisted that everything was fine.
With no reason not to trust her, I accepted her response as the truth.
But over the course of the last hour or so, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Now that we’d finished another session and were heading out—now that I knew I wouldn’t see her again until Thursday morning—I couldn’t stop myself from taking the steps to be certain that there wasn’t anything I could do to help her.
Following several beats of heavy silence, Iris answered, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”
“You seem distracted,” I noted.
“I’m sorry. I just… It’s been busy at work lately, and I’ve needed to work through some stuff.”
I had no way of knowing for sure, but this felt like something that was a lot more than just an increased workload at the office. But who was I to call her out on it? If Iris didn’t intend to share more than she just had, if she didn’t feel that she could trust me with whatever it was, I couldn’t exactly force her.
