Snow

6 | nada es para siempre

**I'm coming off a really, really strange high for this one. Sorry if it's all over the place.

❝'cause you were kissing me,
or fucking someone else.❞

❘❘

WE SHARE CIGARETTES AND SMOKY KISSES. It's become as natural as breathing.

So we surrender to patterns; fucking in my backseat and then twisting our lips through tendrils of smoke; crawling in and out of windows and flirting over the edge of fire escapes; ash crumbling between us, withering within the smoky glances he's been stealing for days.

Julian makes me feel wild. Like I'm stripped bare in an endless summer dream, like youth undressed into chaste, careless kisses that somehow always end in raw rebellion.

It's all the things that draw you into danger when you're young and dumb and willing to let the entire world destroy you.

It's the dark, tempting mistakes, the reckless abandon of sleepless nights. It's the things we do, lingering between sheets and in the hot air that separates us.

Maybe I've always had a kink for self-sabotage.

Lost in the curtain of smoke and the taste of Hennessy, I try to catch a glimpse of his charcoal eyes. A beautifully brash smile twists at his lips—

—and then he's reeling me in for one of those slow-burning kisses.

I sigh into his lips, let the wind tangle through my hair, and listen to the city unravel beneath us.

A hand sneaks up to snatch the cigarette from my shaky fingers, and when we part, the space between us softens. The empty platform is quiet; the J train is delayed or hijacked, or like us, it's derailing.

As we pass the cigarette back and forth, inch closer and closer to the edge of the platform, and simmer in the summer heat, his gaze never strays from me.

"What?" I finally ask breathlessly, shaking off the edge of three shots and a drunken kiss. Julian can't have that hold on me. I won't let him.

His lips part, but three distant cracks split through the night to swallow his words. As the sound melts into the distant city soundtrack, Julian looks up to the sky with a grin toying at his lips. "Gunshots or fireworks, Neva?"

I snag the cigarette back and take another pull. "Gunshots."

A strand of fire knots around my lungs and squeezes; my lashes flutter as I let the smoke roll off my tongue and peel away the soft, hazy filter of a night that hasn't even begun.

I have no idea where he's taking me, and I have no idea what I'm doing. Something about that is intoxicating.

"It can't be still going on from the Fourth of July," I say, looking out over the city. "El verano ya casi termina, Julian."

Licking his lips, Julian shakes his head. "It can't last forever."

"No?"

"Nada es para siempre, Neva."

The cigarette dwindles with the leftover conversation. Before I know it, I'm reaching for another, desperate to prove him wrong. We're living something that could be infinite—if we never change, if we never stop, this could last forever.

Stuck waiting for a J train on an empty platform sometime after midnight, tethered by strands of smoke and smears of ink, these moments exist in the most achingly soft version of chaos. I drop the last, burning cigarette and step closer to him. Succumbing to a natural pattern of highs and lows, release and pleasure, we meet somewhere in the middle.