Page 56 of Light in the Dark
“Up to you. I'm here for whatever you need."
She gives me a smile—grateful, sweet, tender. "I can't with you, Fee. You're too fucking sweet."
"Sorry. I'll try to be more of an asshole."
She looks at me with wide, bugging out eye. "I was kidding, I hope you realize that. Please don’t change, Fee."
I laugh. "I know. I couldn't intentionally be a dick to you if I tried. Which is not to say I'm not gonna do something stupid and asshole-ish on accident."
She lets out a sharp, short sigh. "I can't do it here, like this." She slips out of bed and traipses naked to my closet. "Can I borrow a shirt?"
"Of course."
She pulls open the tri-fold door, flips through my limited selection of button-downs, and selects a plain white one. She slips it on, buttons it, and rolls the sleeves to her elbows. The hem falls to just below her butt, and with the top three buttons left undone, her goddamned magnificent cleavage is on mouthwatering display.
She opens my bedroom door, pausing in the doorway. "Coming?"
"Yep." I hop out of bed and grab a pair of workout shorts from my bureau, following her out of my room.
I'd expected her to sit on the couch, or at the island in the kitchen, or on the deck. Instead, she goes out the front door, clambers up onto the flatbed—incidentally flashing her bare ass, which she doesn’t seem to notice or care about—and tugs open the sliding door of her VW. She rummages in an upper cabinet and comes back with a small leather zipper bag, a toiletries case kind of thing. She hops down, shuts the door, and breezes back into the house and out onto the back deck.
“What's in there?" I ask.
"The only way I'll get through this." She sits in one of my Adirondacks with her legs crossed and opens the case.
Inside is cannabis paraphernalia—several glass jars with dried flower, a glass pipe, rolling papers, a grinder, and several glass tubes containing pre-rolled joints.
She glances at me. "You okay with this?"
I shrug. "Sure. It's recreationally legal in Michigan.”
"But you don't use it?"
I shake my head. "No. Never got into it."
"It was obviously a common thing in my life, and Dutchie grew up outside Portland where it's been recreationally legal since like 2014, I think." She opens one of the pre-rolled joints, finds a lighter in the case, and sets the open case aside. Lights the joint, takes a long inhale. Hands it to me.
I hesitate, and then sit in the other Adirondack next to her, and take the joint. "Can't hurt, I guess."
She laughs. "Just take a hit or two. I don't want to be responsible for you greening out."
"Greening out?"
"Get so high you can't function.”
"Oh, yeah, don't want that."
"So just take a little puff, inhale it, and blow it out right away. No need to hold it—that doesn’t do anything." She watches me take a small puff, laughing when I dissolve into hacking. "Now wait a bit and see how that feels."
She takes a much longer hit, closing her eyes and exhaling the smoke in a thick, rolling cloud. She scoots down in the chair and kicks her legs out ankle over ankle, rests her head against the chair back, and takes another long hit. Passes it to me. I take another puff, and now I'm starting to feel…
Loose. A little floaty, as if my head is a balloon. Mellow.
I grin. "Not bad."
She smiles at me. "I rarely drink. This is my vice." The smile fades, the distance of memory occluding her expression. "Hard not to think of him, though."
There's nothing to say to that, so I say nothing.
