Smoke

“I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about,” he said, and I looked up at him from where I sat on the carpet at his feet, where I’d been the whole time his roommate and him had been arguing. His face was stone; his eyes full of frigid fire. I knew it was coming and I was ready for it as he put his laptop on the floor and got up from the big armchair I was leaning against in a rush of harsh, deliberate movement. I shifted out of the way but his leg still scraped up against my arm and my shoulder. The contact pulled my body towards him, I started to tip over, and I had to catch myself with one hand pressing hard against the floor.

He didn’t apologize. I wasn’t surprised.

I pushed myself back up straight, not wanting to fall, but I could not keep my body from turning towards him, could not keep my eyes from tracing the familiar contours of his shoulders and his back, the places where his shirt clung and the places it hung loose. The quick rhythm of his feet and the swishing sound his jeans made were a song I had heard too many times but could not get enough of.

He didn’t turn around and look at me, left on the floor of his living room alone, silently watching him leave. He went out to the small room at the front of the house that had windows overlooking the street. When he yanked the door shut behind him I didn’t even flinch, used to that gunshot by now, I just stiffened my spine a little bit more and shifted my gaze back to the TV.

It was like I didn’t breathe in those few seconds; all of me was too focused on his retreating form. So when my lungs expanded, I felt them take in all the emptiness he’d left in his wake. And when they collapsed, I filled the room with all of the comforting words I was not brave enough to offer him. My fingers clenched around the fabric of my jeans as I drew my knees in closer. I knew what he wanted, what he needed; he would be smoking it by now. He’d already been pulling the pack out of his jeans pocket when he was walking the five steps from the chair to the door.