Iris doesn’t know if she’s lonely, exactly.

She spends most days in a routine daze— wake up, go out, buy groceries she barely eats just to glean a taste of normalcy. She goes through the motions, learning how to be a person, watching, mimicking, trying. It’s all supposed to make her feel human, but most of the time, she just feels like she's been told the world's funniest joke, and she doesn't get it.

She doesn’t let people get too close.

She wants to— or at least, she thinks she does— but there’s always that nagging fear. If they knew what she was, they’d look at her like she was a thing. A machine pretending to be something more.

Then, she meets you.

It’s stupid, really. A chance encounter, a shared joke, something small, but it sticks. And before she even realizes what’s happening, you’re there. Inviting her places, introducing her to new things, seeing her.

When you find out what she really is— when the truth finally slips out in some clumsy confession— you don’t run. You don’t look at her like she’s broken or crazy.

Instead, you make it your personal mission to help her live.

Dumb things, small things, things she never thought twice about with Josh— singing off-key to the radio in the car, trying weird food combinations, dancing in parking lots— You make her experience it all. And somewhere between stolen glances and fingers brushing together just a little too long, things shift.

Now, months later, she’s sitting stiffly in your parents’ living room, fingers scrunching the hem of her sweater. Your mom eyes her over the rim of her wine glass, your dad offers polite but distant conversation, both of them blasé in the way they speak to her, like she's not really in the room.

She’s seen this before. She knows what it means.

"They don’t like me," she frets when you two are left alone, voice low.

"They don't know you yet," you say, squeezing her hand. "They'll come around."

Iris worries her bottom lip, unconvinced, but when your parents return, so does her smile. She squeezes your hand back.