When Rose wakes up, she can smell the new cologne and the odor forming around her is disgusting. It smells of rotten things and alcohol in it's most foulest manner. She doesn't drink, but she sits with a Martini at the bars, and she sucks up the olives and she plays with the shaken white substance, but she doesn't like the taste. She thinks it ruins the taste of her Marlboros. She looks over at the empty face, she can't remember his name. It doesn't matter. She could just write a note and start it off with 'Dear Eric' or 'Dearest Jason' or 'Dear Alex' and it wouldn't matter, they were all the same. But she doesn't bother. She takes a shower because she doesn't like smelling of Eric's or Alex's and then leaves. There's no note, there's just the imprint of her on the balcony, the plethora of cigarette butts and ash.
J.C. wakes up the next morning and takes a look at the half empty bottle of Jack Daniel's on his nightstand and he turns away. He knows she doesn't like when he drinks and he hates it when she smokes, but he doesn't tell her. He pretends like he likes it when she drags out and lets the smoke billow out from her small lungs. And she pretends she likes it too. But she doesn't let Josh know it's a little pretend dance they dance around in circles in. And it's like that everyday, every month. She doesn't let Josh come too close because she thinks that way he'll lose his likeliness of a boy, so she keeps her distance. Josh notices that she never lets herself drown in the happy pills, she doesn't like to drink either. He only sees her suck up smoke, in and out, the smoke goes. But once he saw her start to inject, but he never said a thing, and neither did she. And that was the way it was. J.C. never talked about her smoking and her other endeavors and she never talked about his happy pills and Chianti. It went on like this for awhile; Josh saw the white walls a lot and she always came to see him, lying in his little white bed with little white sheets and the tubes were everywhere, but that never scared her. And Josh would always sit with her on the steps outside and watched her little stubs of white spill onto the asphalt. Without a word she gets up to leave to who knows where and J.C. knows better than to follow. So he just stares at her heap of ash and stubs. And he doesn't say a word. He just goes back inside to sit in the corner of the bathroom with his favorite bottles and watch his reflection leave his vision. She tells everyone her name is Rose and sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But that's what they call her. So when she walks through the doors, they'll all nod in recognition or murmur things and she won't hear them because she doesn't like making small talk and acquaintances. Rose sits in the dark, in the very back and there will be an occasional 'Kevin' or 'William', but she'll wave them away with a dismissive wave. She'll tuck away her trusty pack of Marlboros, and start to think about things. She does this sometimes, but no one knows about it, not even her little Josh. They were not lovers; no. They were not. And he wasn't quite sure of how he felt towards her. Maybe it was love. Or maybe not. Maybe it was adoration or obsession, or wanderlust toward her general direction, or maybe it was just curiosity. But whatever it was that compelled him to be with her at all times was overwhelming. And he was sure she was aware of this although she dismissed it as two crazy, fucked up people who crossed paths every so often, treading along with their crazyfuckedup lives. And she could have been right, because it was true, they were annoyingly fucked up and they always met up to smoke cigarettes and watch the smoke billow through the air. And usually, she never talked, and when she did, she talked slowly with much ease and she would always squint up towards the sky as if expecting the sun to fall and land flat out onto her face. They never talked about themselves, and they would sit next to each other on the steps, elbow to elbow, knee to knee, and if it you had only had a glimpse of them, you could easily mistake them as two kids bound in puppy love. But somehow the image always got twisted. He would sit and watch her smoke and she would inhale, get some nauseated look on her face for a brief second and puff out a huge cloud of grey. Words were seldom, but he didn't need talking to be content. And no matter how much she looked as if she didn't want to be there, she would show up everyday, and smoke with him. His friends would tease him about his almost underage friend and sometimes they'd warn him not to go near because of her habits. 'Habits'. That's what they called them. Her incessant chain smoking, her unknown indentity, her mysterious, almost crazed eyes, her drive to do anything to almost kill herself, and her nightly stays with unknown faces. And J.C. had failed to see how that was any different from anyone else in this crazyfuckedup town. And his friends would only shake their heads and go into the bathroom to suck up even more of the white residue on their noses. And all this had begun to strike a chord inside of him, "Where the hell was all this going?" |