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“Don’t worry, I got this,” Vi grins, the kind that’s all confidence and that makes Caitlyn’s heart flutter. “This one’s for you, Cupcake.”
She points the lighter at Caitlyn before setting it to the flower. Caitlyn watches her spark it up, and completely and confidently pull way too hard. The water bubbles up the stem and touches her lips—Vi breaks away with a gag, but still pulls out the bowl and smoke spills from the bottom hole.
Caitlyn’s eyes go wide and she reaches for the glass bong. “WHOA, whoa, easy there!”
But Vi clutches it to her chest as she hacks and splutters. “I said, I-” She gets interrupted by a full body cough and she chokes out the next words, “I can do it.”
“No, Vi, let me show you,” Caitlyn insists and fits her hands in the empty spaces between Vi’s. “Or else, you’ll waste it.”
Vi glares at her, but lets her take the water pipe between them. Caitlyn holds out her hand and Vi places the lighter in her open palm.
“Now, after I light this, you’re going to pull gently,” Caitlyn explains as she lights up the bowl. Vi closes her mouth around the top to do as Caitlyn says, and the smoke piles into the neck piece. “There you go, just like that... Let the smoke build.”
Vi’s cheeks flush pink, surely from the humid evening air, and it brings out the dusting of freckles under her eyes.
“Once you have the smoke, then you lift the bowl and inhale.”
Caitlyn nods to Vi as she pulls it for her and Vi inhales, taking most of the burnt flower in one go. She holds it in and tilts her head back to let it out. Caitlyn can’t help roaming over her side profile—the shaved side of her hair, over to the tattoo of her name and pierced nose underneath it.
Something tugs at the corner of Caitlyn’s heart, tearing a hole that fills her chest with a warmth that’s all too familiar whenever she’s around Vi. But it’s stronger than any other time, more consuming in the curls of marijuana—making her hands tremble and her heart beat so fierce, it pulses along her spine.
Vi looks back at her and her eyes are already lidded. The usual intensity of her gaze is softer through the red surrounding her irises.
“Whoa…” She murmurs, more of a sound than a word.
Caitlyn swallows hard and takes the bong from her. Vi slowly lets go and her hands stay in the air for a moment after Caitlyn sets it in her lap.
“Let’s see how you’re feeling, and you can take another if you want,” Caitlyn says and she can hear the unsteadiness in her breath.
“Oh, I’m feelin’ good, Cupcake,” Vi drawls and her arms come around the back of the lounge chair.
Caitlyn focuses on sparking up the weed, and not the way the lower register of Vi’s voice sends fireworks across her skin—she focuses on the smoke gathering in her lungs as she inhales, and not Vi’s arm behind her, moving closer to her back.
“You know… It’s really crazy how we know more about our moon than our oceans,” Vi says as Caitlyn goes for another hit. “Like, the oceans are here, and the moon is out there.”
“That’s true…” Caitlyn closes her eyes as she exhales. “Would you like another go?”
“Sure. I can do it this time, Cupcake, I promise,” Vi takes the bong and lighter from her. She sets the glass between her legs and gestures animatedly with the lighter in her hand. “But I mean, who’s to say aliens aren’t real? Maybe they’re not in space. Maybe they’re right here, you know?”
Vi takes a deep breath, lights up the bowl and pulls—still a little too hard, but she makes it work and inhales the smoke. She doesn’t even finish her exhale before speaking again.
“We have the technology to go to the moon, but not the bottom of the ocean? Although, we have the tech to go to the moon and we just… Never did it again. That’s kind of crazy… Almost suspicious, if you ask me.”
Caitlyn carefully takes the pipe from her and Vi doesn’t falter, just keeps going as she lets the glass go.
“To be fair-to be faaair…” Vi sings, a reference Caitlyn doesn’t understand, but makes her laugh all the same.
“There was that one horrible, horrible accident with the teachers,” Vi shudders. “And then those astronauts that were stuck up there for months, when they were supposed to be up there for, like, two weeks.”
In her rambling, she doesn’t seem to notice Caitlyn watching her closely. The hybrid strain she picked clearly hit Vi like a truth serum and Caitlyn would be more than happy to listen to her for hours. This strain makes her a little loopy and spacey, like she wants to sit and watch the world in front of her—the way the setting sun dances across Vi’s chest, the exposed skin tinted pink between the lapels of her shirt. The scar on Vi’s upper lip moves as her features change, still talking like she can’t stop.
“Could you imagine? That sounds like an absolute ballsack of a situation, being stuck out in space for months with no set rescue date. What if you didn’t even like the other person that much? But even still, they didn’t land anywhere, they were just orbiting.”
Caitlyn finishes what’s left in the bowl and exhales slowly before setting the bong on the table next to her.
“Why haven’t we landed on any other planets yet?” Vi asks, then answers before Caitlyn can, but she doesn’t really mind. “I guess they would have to know more about the equipment we would need to visit each one. Wasn’t it Mars we were supposed to be able to land on? That can support life or whatever? Well, I think that’s according to that one guy and fuck him.”
Caitlyn nods in agreement and goes to grab the grinder to refill the bowl, but then Vi’s hands are on her face, bringing her closer until they’re barely centimeters apart. Caitlyn stares into the powder eyes of her best friend who, in return, is searching her face intensely. Vi meets her gaze and the air gets punched out of Caitlyn’s lungs.
Oh.
It hits her all at once through the high, the feelings that have been building for she doesn’t even know how long. But as she stares into Vi’s eyes before trailing her gaze down to her lips, it’s so obvious.
Oh, I think I’m in love.
“You aren’t talking,” Vi pouts and gently turns her face side to side. She shifts closer and squints until Caitlyn’s not sure how she can see anything. “Are you even high?”
“I-mhmm,” Caitlyn’s voice cracks and she covers it with a nod. “It just hit me differently than you, I suppose.”
Vi shrugs. “Maybe because it’s my first time.”
Her hands drop from Caitlyn’s face and Caitlyn splutters, less from the admission and more from the coldness left from the lack of Vi’s touch.
“First time?!” Caitlyn exclaims. “I thought you had smoked before?”
“I got some shitty weed from a friend of a friend ages ago,” Vi waves her hand. “But it didn’t do anything. I was basically smoking dandelions.”
“You said I got this, like you had done it a hundred times,” Caitlyn huffs.
“I aim to impress, Cupcake! Always!”
Caitlyn rolls her eyes, but finds herself grinning at the stupid smile on Vi’s face.
“I can’t believe this was your first time,” Caitlyn shakes her head.
It was unfairly attractive how Vi had inhaled and exhaled the flower like a pro—once she had the hang of hitting the bong.
Vi nudges her with her shoulder. “Yeah, Cupcake, how do you feel about taking my virginity?”
“Your what??”
“My… high-ginity, that is,” Vi says and wiggles her eyebrows.
“Oh, right,” Caitlyn lets out a shaky laugh.
“It was only ever yours,” Vi teases.
Caitlyn feels her face burn red. “You’re so annoying.”
But there’s no bite in the words, and Caitlyn knows Vi can tell.
“You love it,” Vi grins.
“I do,” Caitlyn replies and hopes Vi can’t hear how much deeper it goes.
“Can we smoke a little more?” Vi asks with that adorable puppy look in her glazed over eyes.
And how can Caitlyn ever say no to her? She grinds up enough for another bowl and they pass the bong back and forth. Vi goes on a ramble again, this time about vampires and Dracula. Caitlyn simply listens and watches, observing her best friend in a new light, through the eyes of a love-stricken high.
She walks Vi to the door after the last embers in the bowl settle. They exchange goodbyes and Vi promises to text her when she gets home safe. Caitlyn waits until Vi is around the corner to close it. It clicks shut and she slides down the back of the dark wood—her hands come up to her face before she even reaches the floor.
Oh hell… I’m so fucking screwed.