I think Iris knows why I didn’t want to learn his name. It’s obvious to me that he knows there’s something I want to hide, but he never brings it up. Instead he focuses on taking care of his flowers.

I’ve started to help around the flower shop as well, though there was never much for me to do as there were barely any customers these days. “It’s okay,” Iris tells me one day. “Some of the flowers were dying anyway.”

It was the first time we had sat outside since he had approached me around a month ago. I had asked him why, since it was obvious he seemed more comfortable inside the flower shop and all he did was smile. “I wanted to watch them pass by,” he says. “I’ve been inside for so long that sometimes I forget what other people look like.”

We sit in silence.

Iris watches the people pass by like he’d said, and I watch him—because I don’t know what else to do. Because I’d rather watch him than a stranger. Because everything he did made me feel at ease, even if he was just sitting beside me in silence. His presence brought me comfort and peace, and his words only added to that comfort. I didn’t need him to speak—all I needed was for him to be beside me, because that’s enough.

I wonder how he felt about me.

“Daisy,” he calls my name—the name he had given me, the name I had gotten used to. I hum in response, waiting for him to continue. “Is this how it felt to watch me through the window?”

It takes me a while to answer as I think of a response. I try to study his face, looking for something that would tell me what he was feeling, but his face was blank. What wasn’t, however, were his eyes, glossy and sad and tearing up. He’s going to cry? I ask myself. But why? Why would he cry, especially over someone passing by?

“I don’t know,” I said as I turn to look at the people passing by. “I never felt sadness while looking at you.”

Iris, too, takes a moment to response. “That’s good then,” he says. “You should save your tears for something worth crying for.” He sniffles and smiles, but it’s a painful smile, a hurting smile. And it hurts me because I’d never seen Iris so emotional before.

“You’ve had a painful past,” I say, watching him bring his knees closer to him and bury his face in them. In this moment, Iris is weak. His walls are falling apart only after watching a few people pass by, but that says so much about him. Those people, they remind him of something that has hurt him before.

“You could tell?” He’s still smiling, but it makes me look away. He’s smiling through the pain, even as tears start to fall from his eyes and land on his shirt. He’s smiling, even though it’s clear he wants nothing more than to scream. He’s smiling, even as his heart shatters before me.

Iris reminds me someone I used to know—someone who was always hurting and falling apart and being ripped to pieces by others and despite all that, they smiled.

Pretending they were happy was their definition of achieving their dreams, because they knew that no matter how hard they tried, they would never be able to achieve that happiness.

“Of course I can tell,” I said. I could feel his eyes on me—his sad, lonely eyes staring at the side of my face. I turned my head to him, making eye contact with him. “Us emotional train wrecks, we know one another, just by looking at their eyes.” I smiled at him, watching as his brown eyes widened in surprise.

Iris reminds me so much of the person I used to be.