Cigarettes.

I hate the smell of cigarettes, but it works on her, somehow. She just seems to be someone who would smell like them, even if you've never seen her smoke, which is an experience in and of itself.

Her name is Jamie, and she hates just about everything.

She smokes like she has a personal vendetta against the cigarette, like she wants it to burn into nothing as soon as it possibly can, like she wants to not just kill it, but the very idea of it.

She does everything the same way. Well, nearly everything.

She kisses gently, softly, like it's the only thing she can do, ever, and the only thing that even matters.

She tastes like what she smokes, and it's the closest I get to actually smoking anything. She knows I don't, and only offered me one, when we first met.

I do always have a lighter, though. She forgets hers, and sometimes, she just really wants to murder one.

I've tried to smoke with her, but I really just can't do it. But she does, and I think the nicotine sticks, because I am as addicted to her as she is to her coffin nails.

When she died, in a car crash, I went to her funeral. At her grave, I placed a pack of her favorite brand.

I finsished a whole cigarette for the first time in my life.