He does it all with such smoothness, like he’s been doing it for years, and I know he has.
Iknow.
I know about his smoking habit. Hissecretsmoking habit.
But still, as he hollows out his cheeks and sends a gray puff of cloud skyward, I blurt out, “You’re smoking.”
He looks at the cigarette like he’s seeing it for the first time and sort of sighs. “Yeah. Just don’t tell my mom.”
I know that he isn’t serious but like the crazy girl I am, I can’t help but say, “That’s what you said to me. The first time we met.”
He was about to pop it in his mouth again, but he stops midway and turns his head to look at me. “The first time we met.”
“Yeah.”
Then he turns his whole body toward me, forgoing the sight of the river. Not only that, he does it in a way that makes me think that I’ve arrested all his attention. “What’d I say?”
I never thought we’d have this conversation.
I never thought we’d have any conversation really, let alone a conversation about the first time we saw each other, while hanging out on a desolate bridge, in the middle of the night.
So I don’t hesitate when I tell him, “It was early morning. You came in through the kitchen door after your run and you didn’t see me there. You got the juice out from the fridge and you drankstraight from the carton. And then you realized someone was watching. It was me. So you turned and saiddon’t tell my mom.”
He also said something else.
He asked me if I was cold but I don’t think he’d remember that. That’s okay though. It’s okay if only I remember the details of our first meeting.
It’s not his burden anyway.
It’s mine.
“And you were hidden between the wall and that old china cabinet. You had a blanket wrapped around you, didn’t you?”
His words cut through the air between us and steal my breath away.
He remembers.
Gosh, heremembers.
But that’s not the only thing he remembers because then, he goes ahead and says, “Because you were cold.”
A stupid lump of emotion forms in my throat and I clear it away to nod and say, “Yeah. Because I was cold.”
“Because you’re always cold.”
“I am,” I whisper, grabbing the lapels of his vintage jacket.
I rub my nose in the collar and eat up his scent. And he watches me do that as he brings the cigarette up to his lips and takes a drag.
“I didn’t, you know?” I whisper.
He tips up his face before exhaling and gray smoke fills the space between us. “You didn’t what?”
“I didn’t tell her about the juice thing. Ever,” I tell him when the smoke clears and I can see his bright eyes again, on me. And then I tell him something else. “And neither did I tell her or anyone for that matter, that sometimes when everyone’s asleep, you sneak out of the house. You go to the backyard and you stand under my window. And you smoke. Even though Leah told you not to.”
In my knowledge, that was the only time Leah was ever mad at Arrow.
She’d caught him smoking one day and she really laid into him. Even Sarah was unhappy and by the end of it, they both made him promise that he wouldn’t do it again.
