Last Cigarette.

Jonah digs the toe of his shoe into the dry, cracked earth, stirring up a small cloud of dust. Smoke puffs from his cigarette, floating up and dissipating into the sky.

Memories stir in his mind, the one’s he had tried to put behind him years before. Apparently, all it takes are a few dreams to have him stumbling back to how he wished things were.

“What’s the point of going back in time when you’ve got the whole future to look forward to?” Michelle would have said. She was always optimistic, and Jonah envied her for it.

Optimism is a funny thing though, Jonah thinks, Michelle used to be so full of it, and look where she ended up. He curses himself for thinking that way, but it was true, and there was no way around it.

He traces his memories, only finding one day where her optimism had faltered. The same day that had uprooted so many hopes and dreams, for the both of them.

She had called him in the late afternoon, telling him to meet at their spot. Their spot, where Jonah stood currently, held so many different memories, good and bad. At that thought, Jonah takes another inhale of his cigarette.

That night, he had made the ever-familiar walk. Past the church, across the railroad tracks, into the forest, up the hill, and out the clearing, he hiked. When he hit the break in trees, the sunset was glowing; pink, red, orange streaked through the sky and skidded across the creek.

Jonah found Michelle swaying on the tire swing, the same one that has been there ever since they could remember. It was nothing but a simple tire tied by rope to a tree branch, but it was everything to them. Living in the middle of nowhere meant that there were not many children around, therefore, barely any parks, the few of which were never in walking distance. As kids, they had discovered the tire hanging there one day and had vowed to never, ever tell anyone about it; it would be their own secret getaway.

Jonah approached Michelle as she continued to swing slightly from side to side, the bell of her jeans dragged in the dirt, but she was too consumed in thought to care.

“God, it’s pretty out,” Jonah marveled, a few feet behind her. “I don’t think you could’ve picked a more perfect time.” He took the last few steps to reach her, but she kept his back to him. “So, what’d you need, Michelle? You sounded pretty frantic on the phone.”

She sputtered out a mess of words, none of them forming anything coherent. Growing more worried by the moment, Jonah stepped to see her face, immediately pulling her into a hug. Tears poured from her eyes, down her cheeks, onto her jeans, her face red and blotchy.

Jonah winces at the memory. She was optimistic, always. To find her crying was a sin, in his book. Another drag from his cigarette and Jonah plunges back into the past.

“What’s wrong, love? What happened?” he cooed, rubbing her back calmly. He pulled her tighter into his arms and continued to hush her crying.

She buried her head into the crook of his neck. “They… they said it’s too late. They said they couldn’t do anything except hope. They said it’s only a matter of time,” she choked out between sobs. Her voice was fragile, vulnerable, which was far from who she actually was, and that killed Jonah.

“Who can’t do anything about what?” he asked gently, wiping away a tear as it cascaded down her cheek. In no time, though, it was replaced by another, and another, and another; too many for him to get rid of.

“The doctors, they… they can’t stop the cancer. It’s already spread.” Jonah’s heart sunk, it sunk deeper than any river, valley, or hell. This wasn’t fair. She was perfect, flawless even. She spent her days volunteering, and Jonah spent his playing video games. She cared about every living being, and he cared for her alone. How dare God hand her this?

Jonah’s knees pleaded to give way, but he refused and scolded himself for wanting to surrender so easily. Michelle has never needed him before, how could he possibly snap the one time she did?

He continued to hush her, trailing kisses from her forehead down to her cheek, though he could not stop his own tears.

Jonah tosses the dead bud of his cigarette behind him, quickly pulling out a fresh one from his shirt pocket. Holding it in between his dry, stale lips, he strikes a match and ignites the cigarette, warmth filling in his chest as he takes a long, drawn out drag.

He remembers her telling him, over the phone, she was going to be taking chemotherapy, in an attempt to, perhaps, prolong the few months she had. He had been up for anything, as long as it kept her around.

Jonah scoffs, now, at that thought. Things may have just been a little different had he not been for it. Sure, he couldn’t take words back or undo an action, but that was one thing he’d take another shot at if he ever got a chance.

Less than a month after that phone call, they met, like usual, on Friday afternoon. That particular day, it had just stopped raining, he remembers. The sweet summer smell of wet concrete and fresh cut grass swam through the air.

She had beaten him there again. Her feet dangled from the rock she sat on into the crystal blue water as she hummed a tuneless song. Jonah quickly pulled off his shoes and took a seat next to her, letting his own bare feet brush against the water as well.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked carefully, trying not to hit any soft spots. She offered a shrug and took his hand in between hers.

“You… I… The chemo, you know about the side effects, right?” Her voice was even smaller than before, it barely carried across to Jonah, sitting a few inches away.

“For the most part…” He was clueless about all this; he wasn’t fooling himself, or anyone else for that matter.

“Then, I have to show you something.” She slid his hand out of hers and moved them up to gently remove the ball cap sitting atop her head. Jonah clamped down on his lip to stop from gasping. A dozen patches of hair were missing haphazardly around the sides and back of her head.

She ran her fingers through her thinned hair retrieving a handful of dead strands balled together. She held them out over the water, letting the wind take it, scattering them across the ground. Michelle returned the hat, and glanced at Jonah for his reaction.

“I guess it won’t be such a hassle getting ready in the morning anymore,” she joked, trying to lighten the mood, though a single tear dripped down her cheek. On instinct, Jonah pulled her back into his arms.

“And you know what?” he whispered into her ear. “You’ll still manage to make it look beautiful.”

What a cheesy line, Jonah thinks, growing frustrated at the fact his cigarette won’t stay lit. He lights yet another match and then the cigarette, taking a relieved breath as the smoke enters his chest again.

One week later – seven days, one-hundred sixty-eight hours, ten-thousand eighty minutes - however you wish to look at it, Jonah had walked back to the their spot, with a plan. In his pocket sat a silver ring, topped with a small diamond. Nothing special, by far, but it was the only one he could afford.

As soon as I get the money, I’ll get you a better one, Jonah was going to promise her, just as long as she was his. She used to always talk about her wedding day, and how grand it would be. He wanted to give her that.

Nothing seemed different about their spot when he arrived, the creek still shimmered blue, the tire swing still hung swaying with the wind, but Michelle wasn’t there.

Taking a seat on the swing, Jonah waited. He couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t shown up. If she couldn’t make it, she always called before he could leave the house.

As time ticked on, she still hadn’t appeared and he was growing impatient. The late sun began to dip down behind the hill, and Jonah decided that she wasn’t coming.

She could be sick, or just too tired, Jonah assumed, starting towards her house, instead of his own. The path there was even prettier than he had remembered it. It wound around a hill, through a cemetery, and past the Johnson’s farm.

He started up the walkway, hands jammed in his pockets, head focused to the ground. He had only been to her house a few times; they usually stayed at their spot or Jonah’s house, rarely hers.

Taking the last step to the door, it flung open, revealing Michelle’s mother. She looked twenty years older, dark, droopy bags hung from her eyes, wrinkles multiplied across her forehead and cheeks, this was the first time Jonah had seen her without makeup.

“She’s not here,” she said, her words dark, gravelly.

Jonah shifted uncomfortably, dragging the toe of his shoe in random shapes across the concrete. “Do...do you know where she is?”

He glanced up for a moment to find her eyes becoming red and puffy. “The chemo beat the cancer. She… she’s gone.” The last few words she only whispered, collapsing onto the ground in sobs after choking them out.

That’s about the last time Jonah remembers caring. He had turned around and just left her mom there, his own heart feeling disconnected from the rest of him.

But, now, as Jonah takes a deep breath in of his cigarette, he regrets it. The least he could’ve done was given her a hug.

That was the difference between him and Michelle; she cared, he didn’t. How was it that she was the one taken, and not him?

Jonah lets the end of his cigarette fall to the ground, stomping it out underneath his foot as her voice enters her head.

“If God gave you healthy lungs, why would you want to damage them? He must’ve given you them for a reason,” she probably would say if she was around, but he couldn’t believe in God anymore. How could you believe in something that took your everything away from you?

He holds the rest of the pack of cigarettes in his hand, taking one hard throw of them into the creek, which was now a murky mix of green and brown. McDonald’s wrappers and beer cans litter across through the water, gathering at the coast. In midst of it all, the tire lay half in the creek, half in the mud. The green plentiful forest is gone now. Instead, there is a highway passing behind him. Cars honk and screech, ruining every aurora this place ever had.

Jonah sighs, letting the memories slowly shelter in the back of his mind again. Ten years is a long time, and there’s no way he can get them back, he decides.

He lays the ring right under where the tire swing used to hang, and leaves it. He takes one last deep breath and turns back to his car sitting on the shoulder of the highway.

She would’ve wanted him to move on, and that’s exactly what he’s going to do.