Headline

one

troy
seven months earlier

The pop rock blasted around the guest house of the Butterfly's Bel Air estate. Slim and five foot nine, her long length of frizzy spiral curls bounced as she danced; her A-cup breasts jiggling under her tiny crop top with her nipples flashed through the white fabric. She bent her thin right arm for her mouth, placing the Smooth Marlboro cigarette to her pink lips and taking in a pull of the smoke into her mouth. She place her arm back straight beside her, rotating her small hips around until she stopped and faced her boyfriend on the couch.

      In a manspread, donning only navy cotton fleece shorts, he looked up at the ceiling; making her suck her teeth with the smoke smoothly releasing from her mouth. Grabbing the remote to the 70" Roku flatscreen behind her, she lowered the volume of the music and sashay over in her figure-hugging, lime green satin skirt. With her left hand, she pull up the fabric enough to hop on his lap and he grunted lightly at the action. His head lifted, staring into her ice blue eyes.

      The Butterfly looked identical to her Scottish and European mother—the oval face structure with thin eyebrows, snub nose, and downturned, ice blue eyes. Her skin-tone warm ivory.

      Hailey turned the cigarette upside down to place between his full, thick lips. "Are you just sitting here?"

      Inhaling the smoke, Troy pulled the cigarette out his mouth with his index finger and thumb. "I'm chillin," he said with the smoke escaping his mouth.

      Glancing over to the table, the two powdery white lines and rolled up bill sat waiting for them. "Do you see those over there?" she asked, pointing her thumb over her shoulder, "They're waiting for us and you're over here being a Debbie downer. Lighten up!"

      In seconds, his handsome face screwed. "You forget I just found out my fuckin' Grandma got cancer just a week ago and you talkin' bout why I'm being a Debbie fuckin' downer?"

      "Okay..." Hailey's blues bounce from side to side as if she just heard was non-sense. "That's all the reason to get high."

      "Get away from Hailey." Troy said, "We talkin' bout fuckin' cancer; she dying and you wanna get high—"

      "Yes!" She cut him off with a short laugh, "Why would you want to even think about it? Get high and your mind will just escape the bullshit. You wanna sit around sad?"

      "She got—you know what, move." Troy pushed her off his lap, holding the cigarette outward in his hand. She softly bounced against the cushion, staring at him as he leaned forward to stab out the cigarette in the ashtray.

      "You worried bout the wrong shit," he went on. "I'm sitting here tellin' you my fuckin' Grandma got cancer and you in here laughing. That's funny to you?"

      "Oh my God!" Hailey groaned, tossing her legs off the couch. "You've been talking about this, Troy. If it wasn't about you bitching about you hurting yo family or you wanting to get clean. Now you're whining about cancer. She has cancer! Suck it the fuck up. Everyone dies. Nothing you can do."

      Troy grimaced with his browns following her movement to kneeling on the floor beside the table. She picked up the rolled hundred bill, putting it to her left nostril, hovering over and sniffing the white power; quick and downward. She sniffed hard, leaning back onto the couch with a smile.

      "This.." Hailey started, lifting her hand with the rolled bill and letting the drug take over her body. "Is what you should be worried about. It's.. heaven."