Cigarettes after Sex

A feeling most anything in the world that feels like ecstasy. Cigarettes after sex, as his fingers pull the white Marlboro out of its pack mere seconds after pulling himself out of her. He flicks the tip of the lighter and flames ignite as he lights her cigarette. She watches the fingertips picturing the last half hour of how they played with her nipples.

Was it something everyone experienced, she wondered? Their relationship began in a bar on Church Street one drunken night, and now two years later, he holds her in the back seat of her car and tells her she’s his. A lot happened in the middle, but his eyes never left her mind.

Most often, as they inhale a drag of their cigarettes, there are no words spoken between the two as he starts to scroll through TikTok and she puts her legs in his lap, caressing his neck. The silence between them has become a comfort. Her thoughts stand still with him, her only thoughts filled with knowing she was his and his cum was inside her.

She didn’t even care if he’d eaten the makeup off her face or sweat her out of her blowout as she blew her back out riding him. None of those thoughts mattered with each drag of the nicotine rushing through to her head.

She often wondered why it never felt dull with him, even after he’d cum inside her twenty times. The thought of her body excited him. Everything with him was peace, and the cigarette after sex was the bliss of life.

She’d thought how she’d loved him without question and how the thought of him being from a Muslim country was only exciting for her to learn more about an entirely different culture than her own. Even if she was tattooed,  transgender, and American. Somehow, he loved her. She knew that, and it was equal. It wouldn’t ever be fully easy, she imagined, but she’d do anything for him.