Our motel room smells like cigarettes and I want to leave. Rachel says, "I'm cold," so I hug her.

Through a slit in the curtains, a dead tree bends in the blizzard.

"That's better," she says into my shoulder.

"I just need a second." I kiss her once. Her lips are cold and she still smells like the snow. Then I get off the bed from overtop the covers. "It came down so fast."

She pulls the sheets up to her shoulders. "I'm still shaking."

"Yeah," I say, looking out the window aimlessly. Headlights driving down the highway.

"I need a cigarette."

"Do you have to?" I turn around and she's going through her bag, sitting cross-legged. She's so beautiful, pale skin and brown hair and a broken nose that was never reset properly. Freckles sometimes in the sun. Then she pulls out the box. "How long do you think we'll be here?" I ask.
A white stick with a black filter, light against her lips. These are special somehow, I forget what she told me.

"I'm not driving until the snow stops." Facing me with the cigarette in her mouth, pointing it at me.

"Yeah." I walk around the bed and she follows me first with her eyes and then cranes her neck. I sit at our desk, a shabby thing that creaks when I put weight on it. "I'm gonna go to bed early tonight." There's smoke in the carpet and in the yellowed wallpaper.

Rachel sits back against the bed frame. "What're you doing?"

"Writing something." I pull my laptop out of my bag, littered with application forms.

"Now? C'mon. About what?"

"Tantalus, if he could leave anytime. I think he'd stay in the pool."

"He would just leave." She breathes in her own smoke through the silence. Some days I can smell it through her pores. "Have you sent them anything yet?"

I run my hand through my short hair. "There hasn't been enough time." I open my laptop and in the black screen I see my frail arms and small shoulders, so I look away until the loading screen flashes on.

"It'll come. Nobody will be at the cabin," Rachel says. "Now come ‘ere."

"In a minute. I'm, I dunno."

"Well I'm sad," she says.

"One second. I can't be sitting still all the time."

"You're sitting right now."

"I'm doing something."

"Fine," she says. She rummages through her bag again. Some smoke wafts over to me, and I watch it spread across the desk and my keyboard. "Did you see me take my book in?"

"I think so. I dunno. I don't keep tabs on you."

"It's in here, don't worry." She tosses her bag on the floor and settles in.

"Hey." I turn around. "Remember when we went to that reading?" She looks up, holding the book open with her thumb against the spine. I can't make out what it is. "Remember when we went to readings at all? That time you couldn't stop laughing because you were so wired from the coffee, but the guy just kept going with his novel? They must have hated us." I'm grinning and the light above our bed flickers for a second, it seems brighter when it comes back.

"Yeah?"

"That was good. I had a lot of fun."

"We can go to readings again, I guess. Good ones, though. The small ones don't do it for me anymore." She gave up coffee when she started smoking.

"Maybe." I've slid past her, or maybe through her. I turn back to the laptop, but she's derailed me. I feel her eyes on my neck, trying to pull me away from the desk so she can tie us together with the blanket.

"Do you think this bed is clean?"

"Maybe," I say.

"Hm."

"Hm." I get up and lumber towards her.

"Yeah! Come here," she smiles.

"Hey." I put my arm around her and kiss her. My back against the bed frame as Rachel nestles into me. She smiles again and I feel it against my lips. When she pulls away I say, "Let's leave tomorrow if we can."

"Why? It could be nice to stay here."

"Here? There's nothing here, the cabin is like an hour away."

"I don't wanna drive in the snow."
We don't say anything and she feels strange against me; she smells like smoke. Her cigarette is across the top of the ash tray, pushed to the side of the bed. I tell her, "I hate feeling like this." Smoldering cigarette, she'll pick it up soon.

"Like what?"

"Like, detoured. Derailed."

"We can figure something out."

"Like what?"

She shrugs. "We have each other," she says.

"Yeah."

"We'll still go. You said it's important to you. We'll go when the snow dies down."

"Alright." She pulls away a little for the cigarette and I see her in profile and she looks so serene, smooth skin and sloping cheek bones. Then she breathes in and the cheek closest to me sinks into her face. She breathes out.
Rachel nods. "Yeah, we'll see. Don't worry." She coils into me with the cigarette in her hand.

"Don't worry."

I hug her, shallow breaths. "Alright."

"I can hear your heart."

"Yeah? It's still there?"
Rachel stretches to show me her scowl. Then she looks away. "It's beating so fast."

She sucks on the cigarette and everything slows down. She pulls it away from her lips, and I hug her once, unblinking. I look over her head, out the window. Her fumes drift into my throat and smoke leaks out through my nose. Then I inhale again, holding this thick breath for myself and kissing her hair. The snow blows against the window. Air leaks out between my lips as I kiss her hair and then I force the smoke out, quickly so that it rakes my throat. I watch it drift through the air in front of us with my chest fluttering and my lungs empty.

#Calgary writer #Calgary story