❝i got boulders on my shoulders, collar bones about to crack. there is very little left of me,
and it's never coming back.❞

❘❘

CIGARETTES ALWAYS BURN SLOWER WHEN YOU'RE ALONE. I'd always believed they were a social clashing—a quiet company that helped strike up conversation with strangers.

But the bathroom on the 5th floor is empty. I'm alone.

I take a drag of the fucking Newport I stole from Julian. Even if the cigarette burns slowly, it doesn't stop my hand from trembling. A warm breeze twists through the cracked window; it lifts my hair, sending it fluttering around me in a tornado of tangled strands and wasted ashes.

It's too warm to be September, and I'm too high to be in class.

The tail-end of the summer caught up to me too fast. As the lingering high from Julian's apartment fades with each lonely moment, the heat in my chest begins to fracture into ice. My gaze surrenders lazily, dropping to the solution beside me.

A tiny, tiny, tiny pocket at the top of my backpack hides and holds the tiny, tiny, tiny bags of white powder.

Smoke billows from my lips as I toy with the zipper. I should be in my lecture about law and ethics in journalism, but I can't quite find it in me to care about it like I did three months ago.

I can't find it in me to care about anything.

It's too hot. I rub a hand up my face to slide the sweat into my hairline. The messy bun at the top of my head is limp; my heart is sinking with defeat.

It's never come easy to me, but mamá used to lecture us on the importance of an educación—an educación that she and papá didn't get.

So then the lectures became rants, and then the rants became full, frustrating orders to go to school, to find opportunity, to get a good job, to become something. Anything.

That was always the problem.

I wanted to be nothing. Nada.

Weightless in a summer storm, drifting with whatever came my way, and free of anything that could drag me down.

Infinite, invincible, indestructible.

Coasting along a cocaine high.

I scoot further onto the vent, tuck my legs under me; I swivel to face the window, blowing hot smoke out into the hot, hot, hot evening.

My phone vibrates, but my fingers are curled beneath the window frame. With my cigarette still dangling from my left hand, I push the window up higher and higher—until the tiny bathroom is only an ocean of stale, summer air...until I'm drowning in the taste of heavy, hazy memories.

My eyes flutter closed, desperate to untie the knot in my chest—that tight feeling, that stifling pressure, that reminder of a million mistakes.

Things change. People change.

Nada es para siempre.

I need to move on, but so does Enzo.

When I open my eyes, I'm gazing down five stories to the bottom of the city. Rooftops, sidewalks, cars. I could slide out the window and just...jump...fall.

Then every call would go to voicemail para siempre.

Another vibration shakes my leg, and when I blink, I'm holding the phone in my palm.

I could throw it.

Only a black background stares back at me, Enzo's name in small, white letters. I'd deleted the picture of us, but it didn't make me feel better. It made everything worse.

Because sometimes, I forget what my brother looks like. That stings worse than anything else.

Sighing, I slip my phone back into my pocket. As I tug at the hem of my shorts mindlessly, the cigarette dwindles to nothing. The final drag is a last-ditch effort, desperate for the motivation to head back to my lecture. When it doesn't come, I flick the butt out the window with a frustrated groan.

I need to go back.

A dizzy spell washes over me as I stand, sweeping me back against the cool, cool, cool vent. The backs of my thighs hit it, and I twist to place my hands on the sink. My head throbs, my stomach lurches, my entire head spins. I press harder through my palms, squeezing my eyes shut to stay still.

Chills erupt where my skin meets anything that isn't air. As the feeling splices through my fingertips, travels the length of my spine, and wraps around my heart, I fumble.

No, no, no.

A wave of nausea crashes over me. I shiver; an icy heat pulls and pries inside of me.

The solution is easy.

I duck down to grab my backpack. As I edge back to the vent, my fingers work fast, fast, fast, tugging my hair free from the bun, tugging the zipper to the left, tugging a tiny bag of coke free.

I sit on the vent, lean back against the wall beside the window. As I reach for my key, another warm breeze slides through the bathroom. I shiver again.

Just a bump. Just one.

A curtain of hair waterfalls over my shoulder; I jerk in surprise when the door swings open. My eyes widen, and I take the hit quickly, quickly, quickly.

As I sniff, tuck my hair back, and squeeze the bag of coke into my palm, a girl steps into the bathroom. In all the washed-out hues of the blue-white light, there's an aura of exhaustion that walks with her. In her dragging steps, in the bags under her eyes, in her weak scowl, in the knots of her black hair. Dark eyes flicker to me carelessly, and all she does is blink.

I nod, press my lips together. Whatever.

Without a word, she slips past me, headed for a stall. I watch her inch the door open as much as the cramped room allows and disappear.

Sniffing again, I unfurl my fingers. A smear of snow escaped in my haste; now, it paints the top of my palm in white powder. I dip forward to lick it.

My tongue numbs instantly.

A mild panic laces the lagging high, and as I smack my lips together, I blink rapidly. It's the surreal feeling from earlier this afternoon—after sharing a cigarette with Rio.

Was he smoking it? Could I do that?

The stall door clatters open suddenly. My fingers curl around the bag of coke again, and a clumsy laugh escapes. "You scared me," I say, smiling lazily at her. "Sorry."

One brow raises. Amusement flashes in her tired eyes, but I can't concentrate on it.

I dig my teeth into my lower lip. My mouth feels like cotton, and I think she just asked me a question. When she stops in front of the sink, our eyes clash in the mirror. Clear as the night outside, her piercing stare plunges through my lungs.

I blame the trace of a new high hitting. I shift off the vent breathlessly, light as a feather, bouncing on my heels, and take another bump swiftly. As easy as breathing, I let the flurry of snow stir me away from the quiet judgment in her eyes.

Fuck her. Fuck everyone here. Maybe I just don't belong here anymore. People change.

As I seal the bag and slide it into my backpack, her gaze follows me, tracing from my hair down to my hands. Where I'm cramming the coke into that tiny pocket.

Paranoia strikes me cold. I freeze for a millisecond, our eyes meeting again in the mirror. I'm not sure what I'm afraid of, but the tension in the air strangles me with...anxiety? My breathing hitches, and before I can start to unravel in front of her, I turn on my heel. I leave her alone in the bathroom.

A little more alert and a little more awake, every remaining word in the lecture punctures the high. I can concentrate on investigative journalism; I can even love it.

Maybe not the way I love this feeling, but something is better than nothing.

I kiss the summer air when I stumble out of 20 Cooper Square, clinging to a desperate freedom that comes with the fate of another sleepless night. For the first few steps, it's exhilarating as fuck, a wave of restlessness washing over me. It's that feeling of invincibility, waning and waning until I can't quite find my footing. The sidewalk grinds to a halt beneath me, or I stop walking. I can't tell, and I don't fucking care because my phone is vibrating again.

As I fumble for a cigarette, the buzz rips through me like high-voltage electricity; it derails all my plans for a weak Newport, and sends me spiraling for something stronger. Distraction.

When I swivel around the corner and under a layer of scaffolding, I shake my head in pity. Why can't my brother just find something better to do? Besides ruin my night?

Even states away, that pendejo can somehow rip through all the walls my two years in New York have constructed. If only he could tear down all the walls. Borders wouldn't exist.

"Not tonight, Enzo," I breathe to myself, casting that thought away. As I sink into a deep, dark doorway, I abandon the idea of a cigarette and fish for the coke. My back hits the stone wall, and my hair falls over my shoulder to conceal my fiddling fingers. I take a quick bump, sniff, snort, shake my head again.

It's easy, fearless, nearly non-existent. In some abstract way, snow is the simplicity of an effortless dive into nothingness. I feel that weightless, distracted daze flutter up on me; like careless butterflies blossoming in my chest, like a moth with wisps for wings, tracing a path to the flame.

When I seal the bag and stuff it into my backpack, I close my eyes. A warm breeze sneaks through the scaffolding, a strand of a wistful summer night spent...alone. Alone.

I don't know how much time passed, as I sank into the doorway, desperate to disappear; I don't know how much time passed as I inhaled stale air, desperate to escape the slight shift of seedy memories.

I barely remember time exists as I light a cigarette and doze off in the middle of the city.

Alone.

Cigarettes burn slowly when you're lonely. Siempre.

It's a soft confession I feel at the tip of my tongue, and when it finally crushes beneath my feet with the ashes of a finished cigarette, sé lo que quiero.

So I let the faint high ride me all the way back to Ridgewood.

Because cigarettes bleed into smoky kisses when you're not alone. Siempre.

❘❘

**It's in a weird place. I know. 😂

Neva is such a detached character sometimes, so I try to write...in a detached way.

Anyways, I love you guys! ❤️❤️