After the incident with the blood and black, sludgy shit, Jones stopped smoking cigarettes for a while. They eventually picked it back up again. They always said their last cigarette wasn’t far away from them, if they could only find the bottom of the pack.

During that short period of time where Jones wasn’t smoking, Marie was, having picked up the habit in her stay in Carl Joyce’s rusty shack. She felt strange being the only smoker in the house. On the last day, before Jones had officially gotten off the wagon again, Marie didn’t smoke a single thing. She kept like this for a week or so, creating a venn diagram of the time in which either party had not been smoking.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

The night before they were both to leave for Garden City, Marie played a small concert for Jones. It was all of the pieces that Marie and Jones had composed together in the system. It was on a night where Jones came home closer to midnight, soaked in grease. They sat on the couch, smoking their cigarettes and reading their electronic reader when they heard the first note of the first piece. They immediately leapt off of the couch and came running into Marie’s studio. They spent the entire night humming along with the tunes, despite the stomping of boots from their neighbors on the fifth floor.