got you smoking

My girlfriend started smoking, she said, when she was sixteen. I don't think I ever had a cigarette until I was nineteen. I never even had the chance. I don't think I even knew anyone who ever smoked. I figured she must have been cooler than me in high school, and left it at that. I remember her, nineteen when I was twenty-one, calling me the very first time she ever had alcohol. It was a big deal at the time.

I started smoking a few months after we first met. I mostly just wanted a reason to go outside with her whenever she stepped out for a smoke. It felt so weird just standing and watching her burn through a cigarette. Over time it's something I do that makes me think of her, and even though my family's pressuring me to quit I can't say that I want to.

She's studying abroad in France these days. We talk when we can, but she's busy having fun, so it's not much. Instead I'll sit on the porch with a cigarette, just to remember. It's never anything really memorable--no landmark dates or big adventures. I just remember times when we'd be outside together, smoking, talking about nothing at all. It could have happened any time. It did happen any time. It was completely and utterly unremarkable. Those are the memories I cherish most.