“I just…”

“What?”

“No matter which way I look at it, I don’t like it. Not one bit.”

“I know. Neither do I.”

“You had a choice.”

“Did I?”

“I… I don’t know.” He leaned back against the rail, blinking against the ocean wind and staring st the waves crashing and leaping over the rocks. “I guess not.”

Silence, save for the seagulls squawking on a distant shore.

“You don’t have to smoke those things anymore, dammit.”

“It’s an old habit, Jack, I know.” She was squinting. She didn’t like the taste these days, but she breathed it in anyways. The sea breeze snuffed it out, so she brought a lighter to its tip, cupping it in her hands, the tiny flame brightening her face like candlelight.

None of this should have happened. The ocean waves like slowing heartbeats, slower than a breath, slower than death, the birds screeching far away, loud as whispers but not unlike the voices in his head full of doubts, of fears, of sadness and a quiet pain that would sooner wait until the waves had stopped beating to come closer and say something before it was too late, because the smell of tobacco was a biter memory before they held hands and it was only getting stronger, coming back as though someone was pulling the floor up to his face really fast. And then it was over.

“I should go.”

A pause. A deep breath. Like the waves.

“Will I see you again?”

She flicked the cigarette on the ground. She thought she had wanted it, but she didn’t. She wasn’t sure.

“No, I don’t think so.”