Weaknesses

She set her drink down on the bar and turned her face up to where he stood at her side, her fierce eyes unrevealing, and said nothing.

Moira was still too young to drink, she knew, but the little detail didn't stop her. A gentle smile, and the stirring natural beauty in her gaze, were usually enough to convince the bartender that he didn't really need to see her I.D., this time. It always helped, of course, when she subtly flashed her left hand in some unconscious gesture, displaying the enormous rock he had given to her.

Tonight her poison was gin – a dry martini – and she drank it slowly, closing her eyes and savoring the waves of relief that came with every bitter swallow. The numbness was always a comfort. It helped her forget; at least, on the surface of her consciousness. She always felt the griminess of some kind of plague protruding and soiling the edges of her mind. But she couldn't always remember just what it was, so long as the torpor lasted.

But she wasn't drunk now, not yet. She still remembered where she was. She still remembered whom she was with. She still... remembered.

She also recalled that she had been asked a question.

“Why did you walk out on our counseling this afternoon?” he repeated, a touch of impatience in his words.

Moira sat silently for half a minute while he watched her stare at her drink, playing with the olive. She hadn't exactly agreed to attend the counseling; her compliance had – apparently – seemed implied with her agreement to marry him. All she had done was fail to provide a sufficient protest.

“Really, Moi. Our date is five months away. If we can't talk... what are we even doing?” Despite his desperate words his voice was gentle, quiet, even as he pressed her for answers.

She looked up at him then, standing beside her, so close that she could feel his warmth. She inched away, a subtle movement, concealed by the shifting of her crossed legs. He placed one hand on her bare shoulder; she flinched, gentle though the gesture was.

“What are we doing? I do wonder,” she finally spoke, but his sullen expression spelled that it wasn't the answer he'd wanted, not the one that he'd been searching out from her. She pulled some bills from the money clip in her purse and tossed them carelessly on the bar, not bothering to count them.

Moira shook his hand off her shoulder and tugged on her jacket. She walked out of the bar silently, abandoning her unfinished drink, and him.