Smoke

A/N: Do you remember the first time you tried to smoke a cigarette? Hated it? Me, too. Loved the person you did it with? Me, too. Each summer I let go the good girls I went to school with and hung out with the bad girls from my part of town. Each summer they changed a little bit more.

It smells good. Like the way I remembered you. The brown leaves crumble between your fingertips and fall into the curve of the thin white paper. You shape the tobacco into a tube, lick an edge and close it up. I check the clock and then the door. You tap the paper tube against the tabletop.

"This is how you pack it," you instruct, leveling your hard, serious eyes at me. I wonder how I look to you. Am I who you remember? "Hey, you're not going to punk out, are you?"

Your nimble, yellowed fingers flip it and turn it, lift it to your lips. The flame licks the tip and paints it construction sign orange. Smoke floats up and circles my head where I can't close my eyes to it. You are not who I remember.

You push it at me, and I stand at the soft edge of unease, my breath shallow.