He sets them down on the left.
That pile nudges the toe of my own boot, wedged between us, and I eye it over, from the pads and the Milky Way to the fresh pair of thermal socks and insulated mug.
I don’t know why he would let me keep the mug or the nougat-chocolate heaven, but I can’t bank on the right pile because, you know, magazines.
My face is on the verge of crumpling under the weight of the confusion.
The backpack is soon softer, emptier, and he’s digging around the remnants at the bottom. He finds a pack of smokes—and I forgot those were in there.
The beige butts of the cigarettes are exposed from the torn packaging, but those aren’t the smokes I had in my jacket pocket.
I reach for the pocket now, the rustle of my gloved hand slipping along the edges of my waist.
That cuts his sharp gaze to me.
A gleam of swords that I freeze under.
His lashes narrow, only slightly, and against my palms I feel nothing. No inhaler, no curve of a lighter, no jagged edges that should come with the cigarette packet.
Pockets are empty.
It takes me a moment to feel the difference—not the same pockets, because it’s not the same jacket. I don’t know where myKathmandu is, whether it’s folded and packed in his satchel, or gone back in the forest where he fucking attacked me. But even if I found the parka, I wouldn’t find the cigarettes.
Those fell out.
I remember, faintly, my spine flattened to the hood of the car, numbness slowing me in my fight against him as he rummaged through my pockets.
Everything spilled out.
He ripped through every nook and cranny of that jacket—because Bee told him to find my inhaler—and I lost everything in my pockets.
So that really is the last of my cigarettes.
My mouth flattens into a line.
The cold one considers them a little longer.
The gold packaging is different to the ones from my pocket, those were menthols, smooth going down, but these ones are backups.
A faint frown touches his brow.
It echoes a memory through me; at the museum, those lovely marble sculptures with the finest details, the soft ripples of a skirt billowing.
He runs the pad of his thumb along the end of an exposed cigarette, luring it out of the packet. Another moment passes before he pinches it and brings it to his nose. He gives the faintest sniff—
And he hates it.
His face shutters for the quickest of moments, a blink-and-miss-it look before he chucks the packet aside.
It lands on the pile with the painkillers.
There’s more to rummage through.
My bag was packed to the brim.
Every pocket stuffed, every slot full, and his interest fades with each item. Mostly cans of soda, packets of crisps, chocolate bars, all the crappy stuff that’s easily found in destroyed, looted stores. He sets those ones down on the left, but the tinned food goes on the right, canned beans, chickpeas, spam (which I can hardly stomach, even on the verge of throwing up bile).
Maybe it’s the vegan in me, or maybe it’s that spam is so disgusting it should be internationally illegal.
