Iris

That night as the birds slowly quietened and the moon came out shining brightly Iris started humming to her-self. It wasn’t a tune that I was familiar with, nor do I think she had heard it before. She was improvising, which was just her style. It was sweet, her soft lips curling over to change the pitch of her notes. She turned to me, “Jake, do you ever think about the end?”
This question surprised and confused me, “The end of what?”
“Just the end in general, the end of the school, the end of childhood, or the end of our teenage years... That sort of thing...”
I pondered this question over in my head for a bit, “Well yeah, I have an idea of what I want to do when school finishes and when I move out of home. It’s human nature. Everyone thinks about the future.”
“I’m not exactly talking about the future here, but rather if you had the power to change something. I mean like, against your will or even someone else’s will.”
I didn’t know what she meant. I looked at her waiting for more of an explanation, “Do you mean have I thought about ending something against someone else’s will?” As I said it; so many thoughts were rushing through my head. Was this hypothetical or was she hinting at something?
“Sort of...” She turned away unable to keep my gaze again.

We sat there, in silence. Both of us were drowning in our own thoughts, unable to reach the surface.

But after a long while she turned to me and said, “Don’t worry; you have nothing to worry about.” If I wasn’t already confused this really did confuse me now. I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. But just the simple fact that she knew now and possibly all along what I was thinking make me wonder why she wasn’t trying to be more convincing for me not to worry.
For a few more minutes we lay there, her head resting in my lap, her hair finding its way back between my fingers. Her eyes fixed to the tree above us, we sat there.

She turned to face me, “I don’t want to lose you,” she said.
I then realised that she wasn’t worried about hurting me, but rather scared that I would hurt her. “I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered.
Her blue eyes locked with mine. Her mouth opened in a silent message, “I love you,” she mouthed.

At that moment I just wanted Iris to know how I felt. I wanted her to realise I loved her. I wanted her to see me for who I was. I wanted her to know that the real Jake was the Jake that she knew and not the Jake that everyone else knew.

In the end it was too hard to hide the truth...