“Hey, can you give me four cigarettes?”
She looked up at him with sparkling green eyes. He had always liked her.
“No,” he said, though, because he never smoked, but he would never tell her that, not her. Anyone else, but not her.
“Are you serious?” she pouted, leaning against the wall. The colour of her pink pyjamas jumped out from the mahogany colour of the door. At this point, he wanted to give her cigarettes, but he couldn’t because he didn’t smoke. He would do anything to please this girl.
“You’re the last person I’ve asked on this floor. I just need a smoke, you know?”
The fact that she was still talking to him seemed to be a good sign. She could have just blown him off and tried to find someone else.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could help you.”
She wasn’t pleased and soon went back into her room.
He shut the door and stared up at the ceiling. He wondered if she even knew.
He could picture her in his room laughing at his jokes. He could picture smoking with her, but he really didn’t want to. Why couldn’t he just tell her to her face that he thought about her everyday? Why did you have to signal girls in secret? He needed a drink, but there was no whisky left in his fridge. His friends had finished the last quarter with the shots of last Friday. He needed something to drink, something strong. He thought of her, those pink pyjamas and those bright green eyes. She looked so beautiful, like a princess he wanted to please. A girl with flowing brown hair disregarding her parents so she could smoke outside. Delicious. But it wasn’t really. He had contemplated making out with a smoker, but he wasn’t sure how she would taste. The ashy smell in his mouth might be too much for him. Still, if it were she, he’d easily kiss her even if her last meal had just been onions. Anything for her.
He opened his door to find her walking down the hallway carrying four cigarettes.
“Hey, sorry about before,” he opened with.
She waved it away.
“Don’t worry about it, Larry gave me some.”
Larry, that bastard. Larry was in fourth year and was probably 26. He lived down the hall from him, but he barely saw him. The man seemed to be working all the time. He’d deck him in the face if she fell for him.
What was wrong with his looks? He contemplated smoking, but still decided it would become a disgusting habit.
She had changed her clothes, the pyjamas were gone and she was wearing grey sweatpants that accented her buttocks and a green coat that almost matched her eyes. Moccasins were what she wore on her feet, and he wondered if white people wore them more than the Native Americans did. He wondered what the Natives thought of their style being stolen. The white people always stole everything.
He wondered if the pyjamas were for him, but he shrugged that thought off, calling it “nonsense.” Maybe she had just been helpless and knew that she wasn’t going to get a smoke by the end of the evening. He wondered if he met her at the smoking pit, if she would talk to him. He didn’t know her that well and really she was just a body in his memory. A beautiful body, no doubt. No guy got a girl without trying, though, but he still decided to not leave his room.
His residence in the Okanagan Valley University was small. Two stories. It was the rundown residence as they called it, but it didn’t matter about how dilapidated it was, all that mattered was her. He was friendly with everyone on the fourth floor and the first one. She lived on first.
He contemplated sitting down and beginning to work on his essay, which was due Friday, but too many thoughts of her kept appearing.
He pictured her sitting in his room again, but this time she was crying. She was drunk, very drunk, and kept swaying in his direction. She was crying about a boyfriend, a boyfriend that didn’t seem to love her. She never said any words in this fantasy of his, but he felt her pain and squeezed her closer to him.
The dream ended and he looked up at the ceiling again.
He needed whisky and decided that maybe it was time to head to the liquor store and by the best scotch he could find. After all, it was only 5 p.m. on a Wednesday, the perfect time to drink to drown your sorrows and forget about them. But he never left his room that night and went to bed early. In his dreams, all he dreamed about was she, her, the girl he loved but would never have. The one that got away, but stayed.
