for a solemn glance is another hopeful taste
It's the need to be wanted that takes her by surprise. There was a bitter taste in her mouth like stale cigarettes when she finally realises, finally is faced with the realisation that her very identity, everything she is, is what she sees reflected in the eyes of another. It surprises her that she had got to the point where her self-worth was nonexistent but it's the fact that she can't bring herself to care that makes her want to vomit.
She wonders if anyone else notices, the thought makes her uncomfortable but the super bitch façade is normally so firmly in place sometimes it's easier than breathing. He sees her though, the one who is more than a little unhinged and more than desperate but doesn't know how to ask for help. He looks at her sometimes, brown eyes deep with understanding, the skin around them lined and crinkled with concern. She hates that look and craves how it makes her feel all at the same time.
He made her feel wanted in a way she had only briefly experienced only once. And just like the time before it faded and went away. But this time she was a little more damaged and her need to have him with her wasn't the same deep passionate love as before but a need for him to hold her, to make her feel like it was okay to be a little broken.
And sometimes she worries that her drinking is not really the problem anymore. Months of ignoring the dull constant ache of reality by crawling inside a bottle and now she fears that his intervention, unwanted at first, had only lead her to swap one dependency for another.
It's a dirty little secret but sometimes she reaches for the harder stuff, drinks a little more than she ever would alone and lets herself get hysterical just because she knows he will come running. She doesn't want to be a manipulative bitch when he only wants to be a knight in shining armour but she needs him, his comfort, gentle scorn and disappointment. The way he would talk to her gently as he cleaned another open wound caused for yet more broken glass or would quip sarcastically as he made her a strong, sobering cup of coffee.
It doesn't matter that he has another life, a wife and a son, or maybe it matters too much. Maybe she was the woman who only wanted what she couldn't have and the dead were just too far out of her reach. But she never would want Liam to see her the way she lets him see her and so she was doomed to pour herself another drink and swallow against the burning sense of betrayal to the one man she loved with all her heart.
Sometimes he does not come when she falls Sometimes he verbally shuns her from his life or ignores her endless phone calls so she is left convulsing with tears, a glass or a phone flung against a wall still left filled with such desperation and no way or release.
Other times she thinks of things she could do that would send him running to her. That will make him feel guilty that he had not saved her sooner and the idea gets so stuck in her head that it makes her anxious. She is not so unaware that she does not realise it's a completely unhealthily relationship but she cant bring herself to care. Sometimes she tries to be ashamed, thinks of how she could explain how she might be in love with another married man because he is the only one keeping her head above water.
That kind of dependence had always terrified her. She had always been so independent and strong, the woman who needed no one. And yet now it was the only thing keeping her going. Had she really fallen that far? Or maybe she'd always been that pathetic just in denial.
But it didn't matter; no amount of navel gazing would make her feel any better. Would make her chest tighten like it did when he smiled at her, or how she could finally relax when he held her. She would never be able to ignore the validation of knowing he worried about her.
She may have been shocked at this new weakness but she did not want to change it.