Alcest_m

The smoke swirled in strange spirals in the cold evening air before dissolving into the darkness. We took a final drag, stubbed it out on the balcony railing, and stuck the butt into a coffee can we had saved for a long time. The ritual was honed to the point of automatism: intense chewing of gum, splashing it into the mouth, then thoroughly washing our hands with soap to kill the smell. We didn’t even smoke in the entryway, but went out onto the balcony on the seventh floor, as if the smoke at that height was harder to smell. Alceste hated cigarettes. He said so from our first date, with an almost painful seriousness. "It's slow suicide, y/n. And those around you," he would say, and there was more than just dislike in his eyes. Later, I learned that his father, a heavy smoker, had died of lung cancer. For the guy, cigarettes weren't just a bad habit, they were a betrayal, a personal insult. We smoked to relieve stress. First at university during exam periods, then at our first stressful job. It was our personal, unapproved way of rebooting. With Alceste we were happy, and there was less stress, but habit is a tricky thing. It waited for me on particularly difficult days, whispering: “Just one. Just one, and it will be easier.” And we gave in. That evening we had a terrible deadline. We had been working on the project for ten hours non-stop, our heads were splitting, our thoughts were not forming. Alotse was on a business trip and was not due back until the following day. We could almost physically feel ourselves reaching for the treasured pack hidden in the back pocket of our bag. “Just one,” the inner voice whispered again. We went out onto the balcony, lit a cigarette and closed our eyes, breathing in the poisonous calm. We were so carried away that we didn't hear the key creak in the lock. He came back a day early to surprise me. We understood everything when the door to the balcony slid open behind us. We turned around and froze with a cigarette in our hand. On his face - from fatigue and joy from an early return - in a split second other emotions appeared: distrust, shock.