cigarette daydreams

/10

This time, Karden wasn't shoveling. It was Tuesday. Clear skies. Three-quarter moon. Icy wind. This time, Karden chose to go to Jasper Bridge not because he was already out, or because he had groceries.

He went because he wanted to talk.

Or, maybe that was phrasing it a little to lightly. He didn't want to talk. He didn't want to speak a word. He wanted to bottle it all up inside and wish it away to the deepest part of his soul and hope it never came back.

But he was a leaking bottle. And he knew that the deepest part of his soul would eventually drain out, and everyone would see it as it soaked into the carpet - an ugly stain never to be removed.

So he went to talk.

She was sitting on the railing. Karden was worried for a moment that she was going to jump, but Lydi said that life meant something, and he doubted she would waste it like that. Or maybe she would, and would claim it all a metaphor for some greater scheme Karden didn't understand.

Either way, she was just sitting. He walked up to her. She offered him a cigarette. He took it.

"Those are bad for you, you know," she said, giving him a light.

"And don't I know it."

His smoke spilled thick and gray into the air, from the cracks in his skin, he felt.

She fixed him with a dark-eyed stare. "I didn't ask you to come."

"I hoped I'd be welcome."

"I don't know yet. Ask me tomorrow."

"Are you asking me to leave?"

"Did I?"

Karden shrugged. "I didn't hear it."

"Then it didn't happen."

He was starting to think he understood how Lydi worked. If that was possible. Connor would say decidedly not. Connor wasn't the one talking to her, though.

He took another drag. Smoke leaked from his lips. "You want me to prove that life is meaningless, right?"

"Sure."

Karden scuffed his feet. The snow was soaking into his jeans. Dark splotches. At night, it could be anything - water, lemonade, blood.

Blood.

He shut his eyes.

He squeezed them until he felt his eyelids would bruise.

When he opened his eyes, the splotches were still there.

But so was Lydi.

And Lydi should have been enough, but Karden couldn't let her be enough. He couldn't give someone that kind of power. He had learned that trusting and having trust are two very painful things, and when they're ripped out of you, the holes they leave are jagged and throbbing and raw forever.

Or at least, it felt like forever.

He looked at his cigarette, then chucked it into the river and stuck his hands in his pockets. He glanced sidelong at Lydi, who was eyeing him as she always did.

"I . . . not right now. But I will. I don't know when, but I'll prove it to you. Life is meaningless, Lydi."

He turned and walked off, shoulders tight against the cold.

Lydi just watched him go. "Say that in a cigarette daydream, Karden, and I'll believe you."

He didn't hear.