“Would you just come over here so I can get my damn cigarette lit?”
“Oh.” He relaxes, scooting over to me.
“Back to the railing,” I order, and he obeys. I move over, so we’re shoulder to shoulder, and he shelters my hand while I strike another match.
“Leave it,” he says.
For a few seconds, we watch the flame dance along the paper stem. I check him from the corner of my eye, see how he’s staring at it like he’s willing it to stay. When it burns out, I light another, and I feel him start to relax against me, so I pretend my cigarette isn’t all the way lit, and I strike one more. The bitter scent of smoke and sulfur encircles us. Duke’s eyes are softer now, almost faraway, when I glimpse them before the flame flickers out.
“Do you need me to keep going?” I ask. “I’ve got a few more.”
“Save them,” he says, but I light one more anyway, and he melts into me, his shoulder fully resting on mine.
“You already saw the roof when the lights were on,” I say. “There’s no one up here. Just us.”
“Uh huh.”
“In case you forgot, I’m scared of heights,” I tell him.
He drops his head forward. “Fuck.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him, reaching for his hand. My fingers close around his wrist, and I squeeze. “You’re okay.”
Under my fingertips, I can feel his pulse racing, though.
“Damn,” I say. “You’re not okay, are you?”
He doesn’t say anything.
I hand him my cigarette. “Here.”
While he smokes, I pull out the matchbook again. One by one, I light them, letting them burn until they consume the paper stem or flicker out. Duke leans onto me heavier, and when I’m on the last match and I peer over at him, he’s smiling a little, his eyes glazed and dreamy.
When I’m done, I drop the empty pack with the burnt out matches.
“Better?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks. But now you’re out of matches.”
“I’ll live,” I say. “Come on. Lay down.”
He draws back, his spine stiffening. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“For Christ sake, I’m trying to help you, not fuck you. I forgot how stubborn you are. Can you stop arguing and just do what I tell you for once?”
“Don’t I always?” he asks, but he shuffles around on the blanket with me. I look out over the city again. It looks cool as fuck, despite the drop in my gut when I look too close to ourbuilding, and realize how far up we are, probably fifty stories. It’s not the death at the bottom that scares me the most. It’s the fall to get there. How long I’d be in the air, a being of nothing but pure terror.
Head spinning, I lay back on the blanket next to him, resting on my elbows and looking up at the night sky. “It’s not so dark up there,” I say. “And we could be flat on the ground, not on top of a tower a thousand feet up.”
He chuckles. “It’s not a thousand feet.”
“Might as well be.”
He lays down fully, folding his hands over his middle. “I think there’s more stars. I forget how many you can see when it’s really dark.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Exactly. You can’t even tell what’s going on in the city. We could be in Arkansas right now.”
“Nah,” he says. “Not going back there. But maybe a beach somewhere. Hawaii.”
