Page 48 of Isolated
Exercising patience had never been a problem for me.
Whether that was the result of a phrase I’d heard countless times throughout my life or merely the result of having experienced precisely that, I didn’t know.
But there hadn’t ever been a time in my life when I’d struggled to remain patient. All my life, I’d been confident that whatever was bound to come my way would do so when the time was right.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t eager for certain things to happen. Of course, I was. But I found ways to focus my energy on other things until the timing was right. It had never failed me.
Though I suspected the same could be the case now. The fact that I was standing here clutching my phone inmy hand mere minutes after my sisters left to head home to Grouse indicated I might not have been as unflappable as I would have liked to believe.
Then again, Landen had entered the equation now. And I’d been waiting a long time to have a guy like him show interest in me. Granted, there were no guarantees as to where things would lead, but after all this time, didn’t I deserve to be just a touch greedy? Was I not entitled to some moments of weakness?
Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to forget a single second of last night. More specifically, I continued to replay everything that had happened from the moment Landen had shown up at The Steel Pub until he left from the moment that I crawled into my bed.
The dancing, the touching, the whispers, the closeness….
I didn’t even have to close my eyes to try to remember it. Somehow, I swore I could still feel his touch lingering on my skin, still hear his voice murmuring in my ear.
It had barely been a half of a day since we’d said goodbye to one another last night, but it felt like full days had passed. I was craving one more conversation, one more swipe of his fingertips across my skin, one more comforting embrace.
If Eleni and Flora hadn’t left a few minutes ago, I didn’t doubt my ability to keep myself restrained, composed. I would have been distracted by conversation and spending time visiting with them. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t already given me the third degree once we left.
Well, Flora had.
In a surprising twist, Eleni hadn’t said a whole lot. AndI found that to be strange. Because the oldest of my two younger sisters generally couldn’t hold herself back. And it was clear she’d been doing that last night, because the questions and thoughts were written all over her face.
I had no clue what had been going through her mind, but Flora was more than willing to share her own thoughts. She was ecstatic about what happened, even if she was befuddled by how it all went down.
“You’ve done that before, haven’t you?” She questioned me the moment we’d gotten into the car last night. I was driving, and she was riding in the front passenger’s seat.
“Done what?”
Flora scoffed. “Approached a guy like that.”
“I’ve never done that before, Flora.”
Silence filled the air, and though I could sense the questions Flora still had for me, it was the strange tension coming from Eleni in the back seat that had me feeling a touch uneasy. I was about to ask her what was going on, but Flora finally decided she wanted some answers.
“How is that possible?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking me. You want to know how it’s possible that I’ve never approached a guy like that in a bar before. Is that what you’re asking?”
I glanced over to see she’d turned in her seat to face me completely. When our eyes locked, she nodded. “Yes. Yes, I want to know. I mean, you’ve always been so unbelievably confident, Iris. It’s one thing I’ve always admired about you. But what you did tonight was on another level of self-assurance. I could never do something like that.”
My attention was focused on the road again, but I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. “Ofcourse, you can. That’s precisely the reason I did it. And look how it turned out.”
“That’s not the reason you did it.” At Eleni’s sudden interjection into the conversation, my body tensed. “You did it because you were so determined to prove me wrong.”
Technically, I’d done it because it was Landen who’d been standing there, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. Plus, I’d wanted them to believe the best was still ahead for the three of us.
When I spent too much time thinking about it, Eleni added, “Congratulations, Iris. You won.”
My eyes narrowed as I came to the last traffic light I’d hit before getting to my house. It was red, so I stopped and countered, “Are you angry with me?”
“What?”
I twisted my neck and looked back at her. “You’re angry. You’re mad because I did it, because I followed through on what I said I was going to do. Why?”
She pressed her lips together, clearly fighting the urge to say whatever was on her mind. “I’m not mad. I just congratulated you.”
