A Story of Cigarettes

He was the first to notice the open but full pack of cigarettes hidden in the back of her desk drawer. The two of them were in her attic bedroom, working on a school project. She was lying with her stomach against the wood floor and he had been sitting cross-legged in front of her until he asked for a pencil and she directed him to the desk drawer.

“Do you smoke?” he asked uncertainly, holding the box where she could see and making it clear he didn’t approve.

She shrugged, then shook her head. “They were my grandfather’s brand,” she offered as an explanation.

He didn’t know what to say. He remembered how close she had been to her grandfather, and his mother had told him when the old man died several years ago. He just looked at her.

“I don’t smoke them,” she said finally. “But sometimes I just like to smell them, or to hold them in my mouth.”

He continued to look at her and she studied him back through long eyelashes.

Maybe she had expected too much of him, but the story would have been so perfect. Best friends from birth to age seven, when he moves away, and then he comes back nine years later and they fall in love. She shouldn’t have been expecting that, but she had at least been hoping.

But would it have been too much to expect that they could at least be friends again? Because she had expected that and it hadn’t happened. Maybe it was unrealistic to think that many years could pass and they could just pick up where they left off.

He broke their gaze and gently placed the cigarettes in the back of her desk drawer. He sat down cross-legged in front of her and then, after a pause in which he seemed to reconsider, he lay down on his stomach, mirroring her. He looked down at the assignment that lay between them, but he wasn’t thinking about it.

He watched her sometimes. Her room had four windows lined up right next to each other that spanned the wall facing the street. And his room was right across that street. He’d glance out his window and see her dancing across the floor to some inaudible music. He saw her swing the windows open on warm sunny days and then shut them at night before the bugs came. And sometimes, if he watched late at night, he would see her lights flip on at one or two in the morning and he would watch her pace back and forth in front of the window. Sometimes he thought he might have seen her crying. He couldn’t see the tears, of course, not from that distance. But he noticed something about the way she held herself that gave it away. He didn’t watch her all the time, just enough to want to know her like he used to.

Every day when he got home from school, his mom would ask about his day and then, as soon as he finished his answer, he was asked about her. How was she doing? Did they have classes together that day? It wouldn’t have been half as annoying if he ever spoke with her. He didn’t want to tell his mom that they never really talked, though, because she seemed to hold the irrational hope that they would someday get married.

It wasn’t his fault really. Or hers either. They had just grown up so differently once he moved away. They were different people, different genders. They just didn’t connect in a lot of ways.

“Do you remember when we were about six and we built that igloo in your backyard?” she asked suddenly. She didn’t know why, but it had been the first thing to come to her.

To her relief, he smiled. “Yeah, but we couldn’t close up the top.”

“Well, considering our age it was still quite a feat.”

“Right, and I wanted to spend the night out there.”

“I did too! But then I wanted to go in for hot cocoa that your mom made and you called me a sissy girl, so I didn’t come back out just to spite you. I knew you wouldn’t sleep out there alone.”

“I almost did.”

“You came in ten minutes after I did.”

He grinned and blushed and she found that her mouth was tipped up and her cheeks were warm as well.

Their blushes faded and their smiled stayed in place as he said, “I’m sorry I called you a sissy girl.”

“Yeah well I’m sorry we didn’t sleep in the igloo,” she answered.

“Nah, it was a bad idea anyway.”

“So were a lot of other things we did.”

He grinned absently and looked at her. There was another memory he wanted to bring up, but he wasn’t sure how.

“Do you remember when we said goodbye and my mom made me kiss your cheek? I made a fuss, but I didn’t mind,” he said finally.

“I know.”

“Did you mind?”

“No. We were best friends.” And I’d kissed you before when we were playing house, she wanted to add, but she was too embarrassed. He had been the father and she the mother of two baby dolls (since they both thought two kids was the perfect amount) and had decided that as a married couple, they should at least kiss once.

She didn’t want to mention this particular memory for fear that he had forgotten and would think it silly that she had remembered. And though the same scene played through his head, he didn’t mention it for the same reason.

When it was time for him to leave, she walked him to the door and watched him wrap a scarf around his neck even though he only had to walk across the street. Standing in her open doorway, he did what he had been contemplating for some time: he leaned in and brushed his lips across her cheek.

She blushed and he waved as he walked slowly down her driveway and across the street to his house.

---

It was probably about midnight, she guessed, because it was dark but she could still hear cars speeding down 65th avenue, two blocks away. If it was midnight, she had been sitting on her roof for about an hour and a half when she saw him open his back door and cross the street towards her house. She crawled quickly back through the window and padded down the stairs to open the back door for him.

He was waiting for her there, wearing pajama bottoms and a gray hooded sweatshirt. She could have found it funny that she was dressed the same.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure.” She moved aside and he stepped into the kitchen, wiping his sneakers on the welcome mat.

“I saw you out on the roof and I thought I’d come join you.”

Was he being too bold? Probably. She didn’t seem overly excited to see him. Should she? He was suddenly unsure of everything he had ever felt around or toward her. Maybe he’d only imagined that they’d connected the last time he was here. Maybe he’d only imagined his urge to touch his mouth to hers. No, that one was real. That feeling had been as true as anything. And she’d opened the door for him. That had to be a good sign.

“Come on up,” she said, and so he followed her up the narrow stairway squeezed between two walls. He almost felt as if they were closing in one him. He’d been up these stairs so many times and he never remembered feeling that before.

She climbed out the window first and took the same spot on the roof where she always sat. The white cigarette box lay between them, the top flipped open.

She was glad he’d come. She usually liked to sit on the roof alone. She never thought she’d let anyone else out there with her. But he’d come and she couldn’t send him back home and now she was pleased. He wasn’t imposing. He was still that little boy who’d been her best friend from the day she was born, four days after him, and their mothers had visited each other in the hospital and put the two of them in the same bassinet.

She pulled a long cigarette out of the box with slender fingers and held it out to him.

“You met my grandfather, right?” she asked. She pulled a cigarette out for herself.

“Once or twice.”

“What do you remember about him?”

He thought for a moment. What did he remember about the old man? It’d been so long.

“I remember how he looked sitting in one of your white lawn chairs at your—fifth or sixth birthday party, I guess. The whole picture. The denim button up shirt, the khaki pants, the brown shows. He was slouched down a little; both his arms were out on the armrests. He had those big glasses. God, I think he was probably smiling the entire time.” He looked down at the cigarette in his fingers, then at her. She was staring off somewhere in the direction of the city, where the lights speckled the otherwise dark sky in the same way the single, inch-wide spot of freckles on her left arm were the only ones on her whole body.

“What to hear what I remember?” She didn’t wait for an answer, not really. She paused, but only to hold the cigarette under her nose and breathe it in. She wasn’t listening to anything outside her own mind, so if he had said something, she wouldn’t have heard it. As it was, he stayed quietly waiting for her to begin.

“I remember the way he always smelled like cigarettes. The way he sometimes called me Carmen, even though my name sounds nothing like it. The way he smiled, the way he laughed. The way he loved to tell stories about my mom when she was little. The way he kept lollipops in the glove compartment of his car to give me one every time I drove with him.

“I remember the way the box of cigarettes poked out of his shirt pocket. The way my grandmother used to nag him about smoking and the way he’d brush it off. The way I left notes in his shoes and jacket pockets asking him to quit, and the way he never did. The way that killed him.”

He didn’t know what to say to her, so he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t know how to look at her, so he kept his eyes away.

She considered rubbing her eyes to push away the tears, but what was the use? She was glad he wasn’t staring at her or offering stupid condolences.

In retrospect, she’d had a terrible day. Sitting on the roof, before he came over, she’d come closer than ever to lighting up the cigarette between her lips. Because lit, it would smell more like her grandfather. And there had to be something calming about them, because lots of people she knew smoked when they were stressed about something.

The only thing that kept her from using her grandfather’s lighter, hidden in the back of her desk drawer as well, was lung cancer. Goddamn cancer that had killed her grandfather.

He wiggled the cigarette in his fingers and finally shoved it into the corner of his mouth. Some wonderful friend he was. He’d come over here to make her laugh. He wanted to talk about the time they’d formed a two-man band and the time she’d fallen over the fence into the neighbor’s yard and he’d tried to rescue her but ended up falling right on top of her and spraining her wrist. He wanted to bring up happy memories so she’d smile and laugh and like him again. He wanted to feel connected by the memories again.

Finally, he pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and slid it back into the box. He moved the box and shifted himself closer to her. The initial question. She didn’t answer. He leaned in and kissed her cheek high up, almost to her cheekbone. A bolder question.

She turned and stared straight at him, unprotected and unafraid. That was her answer.

So he kissed her. And she kissed him back, almost dropping the cigarette pinched between two fingers. And there they were on a rooftop in the middle of the night, their kiss the only bridge between two people who had grown separate but were recombining, bodies touching, hands on cheeks and stomachs.

They broke apart and he said, grinning, “Do you remember the last time I kissed you?”

---

He hadn’t spoken to her all day. She hadn’t spoken to him either. They both thought maybe they were being avoided. She was bitter about it; she would admit it to herself, but probably not to him.

She didn’t feel well. She felt nauseous, almost as if she were carsick (a feeling she knew well from when her family used to take long drives to visit her grandparents or aunts and uncles.) There was a bad taste in her mouth. She felt like she needed to brush her teeth to make it go away.

She knew her back door was locked when he crossed the street, but she didn’t feel like opening it for him. Instead she lay down on her back, dangling her calves off the roof, half afraid she might fall. She swung her feet back and forth, her hands resting on her stomach.

He waited at the door for her and when she didn’t come right away he knew she wouldn’t. So he walked around to stand right below her spot on the roof. Her legs were dangling there, appearing almost disembodied. He hissed to get her attention.

“What?” she asked without moving.

“Why are you avoiding me?” he whispered.

“Why are you avoiding me?” she shot back.

He realized then that it was all a mistake. She didn’t. She was too annoyed, too grumpy. Angry, and not only with him but with herself.

“I’m not… Will you come let me in for a couple minutes? I want to talk to you.”

She sat up and drew her legs back up onto the roof.

“Fine.”

He went to the door and she went to the door and they stood opposite each other for a moment with the few inches of wood between them. Her long fingers fluttered around the lock, but she was just kidding herself. She wanted to let him in.

As soon as she opened the door to him he stepped into her, his body nearly grazing hers. His fingertips danced on her hips and he leaned in hesitantly.

“Wait.” She covered him lips with her hand. The feel of them against the pads of her fingers reminded her of the feel of them against her mouth and she was tempted to kiss him.

But then she remembered that she was annoyed with him. She led him upstairs and onto the roof by his sleeve, afraid to touch his hand.

They sat close together on the black roof, but not so close that they were touching. No, she made sure there was space between them.

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” he said softly.

“I haven’t been avoiding you either,” she retorted.

“I know,” he answered calmly, gazing just past his roof across the street.

“So, what then? Why haven’t you talked to me?”

He looked at her. “I thought you were avoiding me, so I left you alone. I thought I’d give you a little space. A little time.”

“So then I thought you were ignoring me.” She understood now what had happened. It was almost funny. Ironic? Not quite. But strange.

“Can I kiss you now?” he asked. She smiled.

And so he did. And she responded well to him. She took his face in her hands and drew him down to her, his torso nearly touching hers and his hands on either side of her shoulders, holding him over her.

And then he pulled his mouth away from hers, back far enough that he could see her face and look at her quizzically.

“You taste like…” He leaned in and kissed her because he needed to discover that flavor to her mouth.

The kiss was short. He knew what it was. She did too. Her heart was beating double time. He would be angry, disgusted.

“You smoked,” he said. That was all.

She stared at him. She blinked. Then she nodded.

“Just one,” she said, but without feeling. She knew that didn’t matter.

“Why? Why would you do that? You, of all people. You know what that’ll do to you. Don’t you care?” He was angry, the volume of his voice made that clear, but mostly he was confused.

She nodded, her face emotionless. “Yes. Yes I care. But I thought… I thought it would make me feel better. I just wanted to…” She trailed off, shaking her head.

He didn’t know what to say to her. He couldn’t believe she’d lit up a cigarette. After everything she’d said to him just last night. After her favorite grandfather had died of lung cancer.

“I hated it, I swear,” she told him. “I feel sick from it. I feel… I feel… God I hate myself for doing it. But I just wanted to try.”

She looked at him, expecting some reaction. She hoped she wouldn’t get one, because she was almost certain the reaction would be bad. But then she got none and started to think it would be better to have a bad reaction than none at all.

“I’m not going to do it ever again,” she told him. There was a pause.

“I guess I’ll see you around,” he said blankly. He had to get out, to go away. Back across the street to his house to sit in some room where he couldn’t glance out the window and see her. So he crawled through her window, tip-toed down the stairs and let himself out the back door.

She watched him cross the street and felt like crying. She found her grandfather’s lighter in her sweatshirt pocket and squeezed it tight in her fist. She could blame everything on this lighter if she wanted to. It had lit up almost all the cigarettes her grandfather smoked and the one that she had. She could say it had caused all the problems. She tossed it onto the roof in front of her where it clattered down into the gutter, but she doubted that would help her now.

---

By nightfall the next day, he was bursting. He was sure he was on the verge of spontaneous combustion. He had to talk to her. He had to apologize for losing his temper, for leaving—abandoning—her, for something. He wasn’t sure what. But he couldn’t stop himself from creeping out of his house in the middle of the night and crossing the street.

She was out on the roof, he knew because he had checked before he left his room, but as he crossed the street she became invisible. She was lying on her back, staring upwards, not focusing her eyes on anything but somehow watching everything.

She had left the door unlocked for him; or rather she had gone down after her dad locked it and unlocked it again. She told herself over and over again that he wouldn’t come, but traitorous thoughts in the back of her mind hoped he would.

She sat straight up when she heard her bedroom door click open. It was him, it had to be. No, he was angry with her. He wouldn’t have come. It was her mother and she was going to be in trouble for sitting out on the roof. Reluctantly, she turned.

He was standing at her desk and it took her a moment to figure out that he had the drawer pulled all the way out and was staring into the back of it. He looked at her and met her watching eyes, almost surprised that she was staring at him like that. He ordered himself not to let his eyes slide away. He had come to make things right, but now he wasn’t positive what that meant.

“Where are the cigarettes?” he asked, his head hanging out her window but his body planted firmly inside her room.

She stared at him. She patted the roof next to her and he climbed out, but only because he thought she might not talk to him if he didn’t seem like he was staying. And he wasn’t sure if he was.

“Where are they?” he asked again.

She held out the box to him. “There all in there. Except the one…” she told him, flipping open the top and showing him.

“I trust you,” he said assuredly. But he wasn’t quite sure if he had before he’d seen that the box was only missing one cigarette.

“I’m sorry I smoked one,” she said, not looking at him.

“You don’t have to apologize to me,” he replied.

There was a pause. “I wasn’t really,” she said absently. “I think I was apologizing to the world in general.” He thought maybe that meant to herself, or to her grandfather. But probably it meant to both of them.

She looked at the box in her hands. She wasn’t generally an impulsive person, so he figured she had been contemplating her next move for some time. Almost as if it meant nothing, she pulled out a cigarette and broke it, dropping the two pieces into the gutter.

“That’s not how I want to remember him,” she murmured to no one. She would walk a few blocks the next day and throw the rest of the pack in a dumpster behind a 7-11.

They both stared outward for quite some time, afraid to look at each other but neither of them sure why.

“Can we talk about something else now?” she asked desperately.

“Do you remember when we went to see Pocahontas in theaters?” he began, grinning at her.

She glared at him in mock anger, because the memory was a funny one in a slightly embarrassing way. She had started crying when Pocahontas was running through the woods with all her animals and her mom had to take her out of the theater.

“I can’t believe you got scared before the movie even started,” he teased.

“And you, Mr. Manly-Man who played with Barbie dolls with me all the time,” she teased back. She was smiling. The mood had lightened so much in just a few seconds that she was grinning and laughing and she had placed the box of cigarettes down next to her and forgotten about it.

He leaned in a kissed her once quickly, surprising her.

“I really like you,” he told her.

“I think I’ve always been half in love with you,” she said with a smile opening her face to him.

“Oh?”

“In kindergarten I told another girl that she couldn’t marry you because she was older than you and the husband always had to be older than the wife. I didn’t care; I just didn’t want her to marry you.”

“You’re sweet,” he told her, nudging her arm with his.

“No, not really,” she said absently, smiling.

He reached out and lightly trailed his knuckles down her cheek.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” he said gently, moving his hand to the cheek furthest from him.

“You don’t have to ask my permission anymore, you know,” she told him.

He nodded, leaning in, and kissed her. When they pulled apart, she hugged him and he splayed his fingers out on her back and held her tight. She pressed her mouth into the crook of his neck and closed her eyes.

They separated most of the way, still holding hands.

“I should go home,” he said, glancing at his house. The bathroom light was on, and then it flipped off. But it was enough to remind him he should be there.

“Okay.”

They crawled through the window one at a time and treaded quietly down the stairs and across the linoleum floor of the kitchen. They stood in the open doorway and kissed until he finally dragged himself away.

She crept back out onto the roof to sit until she felt tired enough to sleep and saw that it had begun to snow. She was about to go back inside when she heard a hiss from below. He stood there on her lawn, looking up at her.

“Goodnight, Patrick,” she called softly.

“Sleep tight, Leigh.”

---

A/N: I really like this story. I like that you don't figure out their names until the end. I don't know. I'm pleased with it. tell me what you think.