despite letting herself have an occasional drink, cindy's mind is still perfectly lucid. if anything, her thoughts are a little deeper and more poignant. but he says that and the world stops. she's paid attention to every detail, aware of the way he looked at her and his proximity. asked herself a hundred times what it means. if it means anything, or if she's just a particularly delusional flavor of hopelessly romantic. the way he showed her a different side of himself than what everyone else knew. that alone had to be pretty damn special and she knew that. but she hopes it's not just the beer talking, or even worse, some weird experiment to see how quickly she folds because she's not the naive girl she once was, she's lost that fragility that made her easy to prey on. do not do this to me, billy hargrove. he better be honest about this, because god, she swears she feels a tectonic shift. her gaze is suddenly more intense and nothing else matters except how badly she wants it too. her pride might've kept her from admitting it even to herself at times, along with attempts to reason with herself that it would probably be a bad idea or never work, but she tragically has a heart and this isn't something she can outrun for much longer. and maybe she doesn't want to. she's dead silent for a moment, her gaze never leaving his piercing blues that are dangerously easy to get lost in and she knows she's on the edge of doing something potentially very stupid. and just might if he lets her. she's only ever felt real with billy, actually feeling something after disassociating through most of her days. it was always different with him with a sense of inevitability. "you're the realest thing i've ever felt in my life." a disturbingly honest thing to say. she's half terrified, half electrified, but she's not dancing around the truth tonight.