Avoiding Reflection

Sweat seeped from his fingers into the pinched collection of stapled papers. He cleared his throat once again. His eyes traced from the page up to the mirror, his Adam's apple bobbed.
"You have the right to remain silent," his reflection repeated back to him. The words were as slippery as they were when he began. Practice wouldn't make perfect. He kept sipping from the glass on his dresser, uncaring that the edges of the mirror's cracked wooden frame started to wobble a full glass ago, and when he noticed his countenance drooping, he blinked the slouch away and set himself in steel.
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of... law."
He couldn't watch his lips say those words. His voice broke, and he grit his teeth at the situation's cruelty. All had been smooth for a time, but now that single night years back cast a mildewy veil over the face that gave him so many opportunities, a restless spirit come back to take away everything he's just created.
There were two small knocks, and the hotel room's door opened without pause.
"How's the thing going?"
His shoulders relaxed, "It's going," and he relinquished the tired papers to the dresser.
The voice flowed to him like a stream through stones, and a pair of cool arms slipped around his ribcage.
"You didn't have to take this gig, you know."
"It's just a part, I'll do it and be done with it."
"You can't pretend you don't exist here and now." A sigh tickled the hairs on his neck, and in the mirror he met those eyes spilling over his shoulder, warm and sweet like cups of cocoa. He couldn't help but smile.