Married Into The Mafia *Undergoing Re-editing*

I Keep Thinking About You

--Eloise--

I had no tears left to cry. 

My eyes had branched over its whites with reddened vessels to supply the constant flow of moisture that had leaked forth over the past two days. Now, my vision had grown blurred and disorientated from the puff of my eyes that remained. 

I inspected the state of my appearance with disassociated regard. The limp, sagging bun clinging onto the bottom of my hairline. The stray strand was in disarray across my forehead, hanging over my eyes or stuck to the wet slick on my cheeks. Gastly pale and lifeless as I stared at the mirror with a parting to my chapped lips. They had been torn apart from the nervous and frustrated nibbles I had taken from during my episode. 

Now that I had recovered from my breakdown, I could only lick them back to health. I could only wipe the glistening remains from my cheeks and rest my swollen eyes to create the illusion of propriety. It was the only way I could pick myself up again. And, undoubtedly, in the future, I shall do it once more. Again and again. Without fail, this was the only way. 

My sight darkened with a flutter shut of my eyelids. I wished that it could just give me peace from all of this. If it could only just lift me from these grounding chains and take me elsewhere. A place in which I could relieve that happiness from before all of this started. Home. A morning with my parents and Sam. Just mundane and ordinary would be perfect. 

It was all I wanted. A dream that was far past impossible now. 

With a crack open of my eyes, I was back to reality, greeted immediately with a presence I had not welcomed. Snuck into my room amidst the distracting rapture of my fantasies.

Stood in stylish suiting, was the undead devil himself. Cunning and silver-tongued as one, at least. The boy who had charmed and fooled me more than anyone else. The one who had sent my guilt to hell and back for no reason. 

My aimless gaze switched to the open window, recollecting the incident I had encountered a few days ago when I thought I had heard someone outside my window. Of course. That made sense now. So, he had been keeping his eye on me this entire time. I suppose old habits die hard.

"You're not real," I whispered, whilst lingering morbidly on his reflection. His sudden appearance behind me failed to move my heart even to surprise. I felt nothing, too exhausted of my emotions to waste anymore energy on them. Cooper's countanence held remorse and yearning. He clenched his jaw before twitching a meager smile onto his lips at my statement.

"What are you talking about, Eli? It's me. Cooper. I'm actually here," he murmured heistantly with a finishing little chuckle to humour me. I simply looked on as though he floated within the mirror as a ghostly apparition. A hallucination. A trick of my fatigued mind. I'm dreaming again. I'm finally being haunted by my guilt. By you. It was because of me that you died at Ashton's hands. There was no way that you were here. 

And, perhaps, it would have been better if he wasn't. As all I could still see, despite all he had done to me, was that charming boy I had loved in school.

Nevertheless, I could not continue to fill my head with these soothing delusions. Reality was only the more harsh if I was to pretend it didn't exist. 

With a disbelieving furrow of my eyebrows, I slowly shook my head. "The Cooper I knew of should be dead. Or perhaps, he never even existed in the first place," I muttered in the sombre, cracked tone of my voice.

Cooper's features wavered out from their traces of hope, urging a longing step forward. "Eloise...please will you look at me?"

"Just as my friend Brittany didn't exist either. You were all such huge pieces in my life and yet, you never even truly existed. So, how much of this life I've lived was even genuine?" Even now, with all that I've cried, somehow, this realisation brought me to tears. Fresh and pained at the vocalization of my reality. Had I ever had an authentic, untainted experience in my life? Or had I just been monitored and watched by the people I thought truly loved and cared about me for no other reason but me?