Never Grow Up {Watty Awards 2012: Teen Fiction}

Part Fourteen

A/N: Never Grow Up is ending. :/

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I remembered the first time I met Blake. He was smoking in the toilets and I could smell the stench of smoke from his breath. I'd made a deal with him some time later, when we were in Starbucks. We were seated in the smoking area drinking our coffee

"Hey Blake."

"Yeah?" His eyes drifted to me, while he lit up cigarette. He breathed in deeply then drew a long breath, the misty smoke coming from the glowing cigarette butt. Somehow, it fascinated me.

"Wanna try?" He smirked, offering me the cigarette.

"I better not-"

"You know you want to. Just try a little, if you don't like it you can give it back to me." He prompted, laughing as he handed the cigarette to me.

"Pushy." I commented, then drew out some smoke on the cigarette as well. I squinted my eyes. Yeah, I really didn't like the overwhelming taste.

"Oh well I guess you don't like it." He grinned, taking it back from me while he watched me lunge for my vanilla latte.

"How do you stand that taste?" I asked, washing my tongue with my latte and making a face.

"It's intoxicating, kinda pleasant and not easy to get away from." He tapped his chin as he described it. "Didn't you use to feel this way when you smoked?"

"I guess." I frowned. "I think I used to enjoy it but now I can't think of a time where I didn't gag on the taste of the cigarette."

"Then why'd you start smoking?" He raised his eyebrows at me.

"It looked mysterious... with all that smoke..." I said lamely, even though this was the real reason why I smoked.

"Pffft." He sniggered although I could see his mask facade was starting to slip off and he was kinda letting me into his world. I smiled.

He stabbed the cigarette butt into the ash tray and I looked at him curiously.

"Why'd you do that? You could probably smoke another ten minutes."

"You don't like it when I smoke, do I?" He said wryly.

I didn't want to sound bossy and order him what to do with his life but somehow I just felt like I needed to step in. I wringed my hands together and I could feel my palms sweating. "I don't think it's really healthy to smoke. It kinda harms your body a lot."

He grinned. For the first time, I seemed to note that Blake's teeth had a kind of yellow tint to it, although it wasn't too obvious if you didn't scrutinise it.

"What can I say, Elisa? It's not easy to break a habit." He admitted sheepishly, running a hand through his hair.

"I'll help you break it." I blurted, then my cheeks flushed. Way to go, Elisa! You just sounded stupid.

"How so?" He asked.

"Uhm, once in a while I will ask you how many cigarettes you've smoked the previous day, but you won't know when I will ask. So you must keep track of the number of cigarettes you are smoking every day. Hopefully you'll start reducing the number of cigarettes you smoke per day." I said what came to mind, but mostly blabbered it.

Blake nodded. "Sounds good to me."

"So how many have you smoked?"

Blake remained silent for a while before thinking intently, counting in his head. "Eh... ten."