The One With Whisky Eyes

For the Love of Words

No sleep.

Not one hour of sleep through the entire night.

Iris had shadows under her eyes as she looked down at her phone, sitting in the middle of her bed, wrapped in her duvet, with the large clock display glaring back at her. Taunting her. Red rimmed her eyes from the tears she had shed the night before, only making her appearance all the more haggard and worrying. She had to go to work. She had to open the store on time. Looking away from the clock, the woman's attention instead centered on the email icon on the top of the screen.

She'd never opened it, never even checked who had sent it.

The more obvious answer was that it was sent by Barry, Luke or BT—most likely BT, since they had just parted ways shortly before she'd received it. However, after what she had found on her door the night before and the voicemail left on her phone, Iris no longer believed that it was the obvious, first answer.

Locking the screen on her phone, she tossed the device to the end of her bed as her lips trembled. Could she really keep this up? Could she stay with her soulmates, trying for happiness again, if it meant that her parents would know what she was doing and possibly punish her for it? Taking a breath to try and calm herself, Iris slipped out of her duvet-cocoon and headed into the bathroom. She would need to shower before work, and she was desperately in need of some time to clear her head.

She turned on the hot water before stepping back and beginning to strip off her clothes, which she had left on for too long. Her hair was oily from her hands running through it relentlessly all night, and she was hoping that a nice, steamy shower would help her to get rid of the haggard look she had acquired. Refusing to look in the mirror—already knowing how disgusting she would look—Iris pushed her clothing aside with her foot.

Stepping into the shower, water hot enough that her skin stung momentarily upon contact, Iris let her forehead come to rest on the tiles of the shower.

She needed to check that email; it was a no-brainer, and she knew that it was something she couldn't delay on any further. There was nothing more that she hoped for that to open that email and find that it was from one of her soulmates.

Iris wasn't sure she could take her mother or father stepping into any more parts of her life.

Sighing against the steam, Iris tipped her head back into the water and let it cascade through her hair. Weighing it down immediately, she simply stood beneath the spray for a moment as she let the feeling of the water wash away the stress she had carried through the night. The fatigue wouldn't wash away, she knew that, but the water helped her to feel...clean. Like her troubles, her fears, were washing away with every drop of scalding water; burning them off her skin.

Picking up her bottle of soap, she dutifully began cleaning her hair. The movements were robotic, mechanical and heavily rehearsed as her body ran on auto-pilot.

More than ten years had passed since she'd left her parents behind; she thought that she had rid herself of the greatest fear, greatest pain that would ever come to her. Yet...they were back. And they were the same. They felt the need to control who she was, to take hold of her life and use her like a puppet hanging from strings.

Tipping her head back under the spray of water to let the thick suds of soap rinse out, her slender fingers began combing through the soft, tangle-free strands.

She was not a puppet.

Turning to look through the glass door of the shower, her eyes fell on the mirror that was steadily fogging up around the edges, steam taking over every surface in her bathroom. Water cascaded down off her chin, her hair plastered down to her neck and shoulders, with her makeup making the shadows beneath her eyes that much more prominent.