Smoke

After I left home, I checked the time on my phone and it was around 3:30 AM. 

Damn, where am I supposed to go at this time? And why did I get kicked out of my own house? Well, not exactly get kicked out, I walked out myself, but they drove me out. 

:Ding:

Just as I was putting the phone back into my pocket, I heard that I got a new message.

"Have you arrived home safely?"

It was Yuna.

"Yes"

"Ok. Thanks for the night. See you around"

"Thank you too"

I put the phone back and just started to walk away from my home in no particular direction. Then I thought of something,

"Actually I'm kicked out of my house"

I typed that out but hesitated for a long time whether to press send or not, but maybe because I still had some alcohol in my veins, I just ended up saying fuck it and send it anyway. 

:Ding:

"You got no place to go?"

It's kinda nice that she doesn't ask what happened or why, but the first thing she asks is if I have somewhere to go and be okay.

"Not really"

"Come over to my place then, unless you want to sleep on the streets"

I had to think about this one a little longer. Was it really okay for me to visit a girl's place at these hours? But on the other hand, it was Yuna. We had a great time and there was no real sexual innuendos or tension between us over the many hours we spent drinking together just until an hour ago. We are probably just going to be good friends, and it should be ok, I think…?

But well, there were practical concerns to address here. 

"Your parents okay with it?"

"They won't mind"

"Where would I sleep?"

"I have an extra mattress I can set up. You won't have to sleep on the floor"

Ok. So her parents are home. I'm gonna sleep on my own on a separate mattress. 

She isn't making any move on me and I have no intention to either.

"Right, I will take up on your offer"

"Cool. I will send you the address"

I then got a link that I could open up in a map app. It wouldn't have been too far if buses were running, but it was beyond late at night and I had to walk for about 40 minutes. 

Well, the only alternative was to sleep on some bench in a park anyway. I might as well walk…

When I arrived at Yuna's place it turned out that she lived in a rather decent-looking detached house, not a flat. It would have been unwise to ring the bell at this time even if her parents were cool with me staying there, so I sent a message to Yuna.

"I'm here"

"Wait a moment"

After a minute or two, the gate opened and Yuna welcomed me. She was still dressed in what she was wearing before, simple jeans and T-shirts. 

"I'm sorry about bothering you at night"

"No problem, come in"

I followed Yuna in and looked around a little. We walked through a small modest garden, leading to the house's door. Yuna opened it and there were stairs almost immediately, which we walked up to go to her room. One of what seemed to be three bedrooms on the second floor. 

"So, this is my room"

"Wow, it's… Interesting"

"Hehe, I guess that's a compliment"

That was perhaps a bit of an odd first impression of seeing a girl's room, but Yuna surely was an oddity. I didn't expect she'd have a girly room anyway, but this was just very different from anything I've seen before (not that I have been to many girls' rooms…).

She had quite a few canvases hanging in the room which were abstract paintings, but they all had some melancholic feel to them through the use of colors and brush strokes. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly what but I could kind of understand what she meant by she could relate to my paintings, because I could relate to hers, inexplicably. 

Then there were also things that looked like talismans stuck on various areas of the room, and symbols drawn onto the walls that I did not recognize. On one side of the room, there was an elevated bed that you needed to get on using the ladders, and below the bed were metal lockers that looked like they would be school lockers, but one of them had a door open which told me that she was using them as a wardrobe. 

What also caught me off guard though, was that there was a mattress laid out in the middle of the room on the floor, complete with a pillow and duvet.

"So, you can sleep here"

Yuna noticed that my eyes were resting on the mattress on the floor now. 

"In the same room?"

"Yeah"

"Are you okay with it…?"

A bit of a weird question coming from me who has been sleeping with Sayna for quite some time now - until recently that was.

"Sure, why not?"

She did sound genuinely innocuous. There was no cheeky trick here. She just really thought it was not a problem that I - a boy, was sleeping in the same room with her - a girl, on the first night that we had been out. 

Well, the more I think about it the more awkward it would be - I thought to myself. 

"Alright. If you are okay with it"

"Cool. Make yourself at home then. The bathroom is just down the hallway if you need to go any time"

"Right, thank you"

"I'm gonna climb onto my bed now. You get some sleep too"

"Ok"

I went to the bathroom and came back, and Yuna was really just sleeping as I could hear her regular breathing.

It was only then I suddenly felt like I was really with a girl, not just a 'cool new friend' that I saw Yuna as just until an hour or two ago. I grew more and more conscious of it as I lay on the mattress and my ears adjusted to the quietness of the night and only the sound of her breaths was filling up the room. I checked the time on my phone and it was close to 5 AM. 

Man, I really need to get some sleep, but how…

I was just tossing and turning in bed for about an hour, and around 6 AM I heard some rustling sound coming down from Yuna's bed. 

"Boh, are you awake?"

Yuna sounded like she had just woken up.

"Yeah"

"I feel like I can't sleep very well. You wanna share a smoke?"

Well, it's not like it matters anymore.

"Sure"

"Hang on a bit then"

I heard some more rustling sound coming down and started to wonder what she was doing. I mean we could just smoke a cigarette each, what does she mean by 'share' a smoke? Or does she just mean we sit and smoke together? Besides, is this what she does when she wakes up in the middle of the night? Smoke to get herself back to sleep? Maybe she's so hooked on nicotine that she can't fall back to sleep without smoking. I knew that feeling from a long time ago. 

Then there was some click-click sound of a lighter and I saw a brief flash of light from the flame, and the sound of Yuna taking a deep drag. I could hear her take a few puffs, and she called me over

"Here, Boh. Take this"

Yuna handed me what seemed to be a fat hand-rolled cigarette and it's at this point I started to realize that this didn't smell like a cigarette at all. 

"Yuna, what is this?"

"Weed. Have you ever tried?"

"What? No-, never"

"It's very nice. You should try"

"Jesus, isn't this stuff like seriously bad?"

"Nah, they just want you to think that, but it's really nothing. It's actually better than tobacco for your health"

"I mean-, isn't this stuff like highly illegal?"

"Only in our country, in some places around the world, it's perfectly legal"

"I don't know man, I've never touched something like this before"

"Well, you don't need to if you don't want to"

I felt a bit hesitant. 

"Pass it back to me if you are not going to smoke. It's alright, don't feel bad"

"OK…"

I just passed it back to her but for some reason felt a bit bad about it. Maybe I should at least try? But although I've done many 'bad' things in life, I've never done any kind of illegal drugs before. Well, I did try inhaling some gas before with my delinquent friends back in middle school, but that was no fun and just felt like a brain fuck. What we did was put a handkerchief over our mouth and spray deodorant into it, which filtered the liquid out and let us only inhale the gas. That wasn't nice at all. 

Yuna took over the cigarette - which I later learned was called a joint and took another few drags. 

"Boh-"

"Yeah?"

"Would you get mad if I tried something on you?"

"Huh? Like what?"

"Come closer"

I walked closer to her bed and me being the uselessly tall guy that I am, her elevated bed was about the level of my chin. 

"A bit more"

"What are you up to?"

I asked her but got closer regardless, now my face just about touching the mattress of her bed. It looked like Yuna almost finished her smoke.

"Open your mouth"

"Why?"

"Just say ah-"

I had an inkling that this might lead to something, but well, you don't ask a guy to open his mouth to kiss him. What was I expecting? Idiot.

"Ah-"

Yuna then tilted her head a little and brought her mouth to mine, covering my ah- with her own ah-. As our mouths connected she blew thick smoke into me, which I felt go all the way down to the bottom of my lungs. I didn't know what was going on or what to do, but now she was holding my head with her two frail hands and gently pulled it towards her, locking our mouths together even tighter. Naturally and eventually, I exhaled and this time the smoke traveled from my lungs to Yuna's. We did that back and forth a few times and she let go of my head.

"Good night, Boh"

Yuna smiled and ruffled my head, turned her back on me to face the wall, and covered herself with a duvet.