cigarettes and chocolate milk

the room is uncomfortably warm, but that's what individual room heaters do when there's an american living there in winter. turn the heat up at night and the room becomes too warm and too dry - thus the window cracked open at the top and the ceramic bowl of water sitting on the coils of the heater.
tonight there's another body in her bed, someone to share warmth with. she is awake, not used to the feel of someone next to her just yet - the tumble of legs and arms, lost beneath a cloud of thick blankets, two pillows. the first morning, her eyes felt his face before she opened them to see him watching her, his head resting on the crook of his arm on the pillow. it became a pattern - nights were hers to wake and watch him sleep, mornings were his. there is enough light shining through the window for her to see by, to rise and grab a contemplative cigarette by the terrace door, to have the night to herself for awhile and ruminate on all number of things. she moves her body slightly away from the pull of his arm around her waist, and even in his sleep, the arm instinctively tightens. asleep or awake, with friends or alone, he stops her from flying too far, constantly afraid of losing her in his quiet and determined way. it is not possessiveness, simply some all-engulfing emotion, one that they both throw themselves into completely - perhaps to avoid the reality of its being short-lived, perhaps to embrace it.

she is persistent, and gently disentangles herself from the sheets, his legs from hers, herself from him. padding quietly across the room, she covers her nakedness with her robe and smells him in it, from earlier in the night when he (still clothed) had held her (freshly showered) against his chest, his chin in her hair. the shutter covering the terrace door creaks upward with each pull of the strap and more light streams in. she opens the door to the chill of wintry night air - there is a sharpness to it, a crispness of clarity, and instead of recoiling from it the way she once did, her lungs expand, and she embraces it. she lights a cigarette and sits on one of the white wrought-iron terrace chairs, the smoke from her mouth mixing with the mist of her breath against the cold.

she fears for him. this thing that has grabbed hold of them began innocently enough, but with time has become embedded, has sprouted claws which are firmly stuck to their insides. their eyelashes touch - his a pale blond, almost invisible, hers a sharp contrasting black, long and belligerent - their mouths, their fingertips, their skin, his leg between her legs, her legs wrapped around his back. he constantly needs her, which makes her constantly pull away from him in everything but the sex: there they meet halfway, both of them tempting and teasing the other, culminating in something they both want. she is emotionally independent, he the dependent. she leaves every now and again, to explore other places and meet new people, to make love to others with her eyes and her smile. she will move on and he will stay...

a year later and she is smoking again, not to alleviate stress, or because it's a nasty habit. she keeps her smokes few and far between, to savor their rareness and preserve the feeling she gets with the first drag - the feeling of being home again, amongst friends, with him. the feeling of another person's warmth in her bed became more than a habit after a time, it is now an addiction. these days she sleeps with a pillow parallel to her body, wraps her arms around it and wills it to hold her. where she worried so much about him, she should have feared more for herself, the person who remained ever turning, constantly wrenching and twisting herself away.