Minefield of Mirrors

-35-

Another Saturday, meant another qualifying. On the way to the track, Iris picked up from some conversations of other colleagues who were sitting in front of her in the van. They all talked about how Max was looking strong in the car and that he had a high chance of getting that beloved pole position. The issues of last week had been resolved on the car and it should be working like a rocket.

The exhaustion was still feelable through Iris's body, but she knew that she couldn't take another day off. She was already a day behind on work. Let alone that she had to catch up on two whole days of work.

Once Iris arrived at the financial office, her colleagues were happy to see her back. There was even a little pile of paperwork waiting for her on her desk. The only things that were missing, were her laptop and her other documents, which were still hidden in Max's driver's room. Iris knew that if she walked up to Max, he wouldn't give her stuff back. He would pierce right through her and tell her to go back to the hotel and take some more time off until she was feeling fine again.

So instead of getting her own devices, she asked if she could lend a laptop from one of the other departments, with the excuse that she had "forgotten" her own back in the hotel and she didn't want to waste any time by going back on forth to get it. For a moment she thanked her oldest brother for teaching her to store all her files in the cloud. If it wasn't for him, she would've been stuck at this moment with all her documents saved on her laptop.

Iris opened quickly the documents she had been working on yesterday, in a way to get back on track as soon as possible. But as time was ticking by, Iris couldn't make any kind of sufficient progress on her work. The page in her Word document remained empty and all the sheets in front of her remained colourless. Something seemed to hold capture of her. She tried over and over again to get the words into her mind, but her brain and body just froze. Almost like it was telling her that it had been enough and it wasn't going to be able to perform any further.

Iris glanced at Mick's bracelet on her wrist. The beautiful green stone was blinking because of a stray of sunlight that came in through the window. The two of them were planning on meeting each other after the qualifying session today, but Iris was unsure at the moment. She couldn't meet him like this. What if she froze in front of him as well? After all the sweet things he had done for her, she couldn't get it over her heart to be numb like this around him. She wanted to be happy and glowing when she was around him. His life was already busy and crazy enough without him worrying about her. Mick deserved someone by his side who was living and moving forward into the future. Not someone who was feeling stuck as Iris did at the moment...

'Do you want to join along to have lunch?' Fred suddenly asked.

Iris looked up from the bracelet and snapped out of her thoughts. Was it already lunch time?

'Ah, thanks for asking, but you can already go ahead. I have to finish some things first. I'll catch up later again.'

Her colleague got up from his chair, looking proudly at her. 'Always working hard. You're such an example for everyone around here, Iris.'

A little sting went through her body. If he only knew... If he only knew that she hadn't done a single thing this morning...

She put a fake smile on her face to show him some gratitude for his compliment. 'It has to be done anyway. Have a great lunch, Fred.'

Fred nodded thankfully and walked out of the office. Suddenly the noises of the ground floor made their way to Iris's ears. It was then that she noticed how many people were already having lunch at the restaurant downstairs. How had she been even able to block all that noise? She got up from her chair and closed the door of the office. Had she been that much in her mind all morning?