Jane Lark - Just for the Rush

‘I do still love him like a friend. But there’s no desperation. I want to feel desperate when I love someone.’

His gaze held mine, the pupils at the heart of his eyes wide in the electric light.

I drank the last of my champagne.

‘Do you want more?’

‘No it’ll give me a headache. I wouldn’t mind a lager, though, if we’re going to stay up.’

‘I don’t drink lager. Ale? Do you want a bottle of ale?’

‘Yeah, okay.’

He got up and went into the kitchen. Then came back with two open bottles. He flipped the light switch off when he came past it.

The only light in the room then came from the flames in the burner. He handed me a bottle, then tapped the neck of my bottle with the base of his. ‘Happy morning. Technically we’re not staying up late, we’re up early.’

He put his bottle down on the hearth beside his empty glass, then turned his back on me and walked around behind the sofa.

He opened the cupboard under the stairs and reached into it to get something off a high shelf, something that he’d obviously had hidden away so his cleaner wouldn’t find it. He pulled out a tin. ‘Do you smoke cannabis?’

‘Shit, I didn’t know you did that.’

‘Do you smoke it?’

I breathed out, my heart dancing to the beat of his music. ‘No.’ Not even when I was at school. Rick and I had got together a month before my sixteenth birthday; I’d never had an adolescent stage when I’d tested out life.

‘Do you want to try it?’

‘I don’t know. What does it do to you?’

‘You sound like you’re fourteen. It relaxes you. It’s a downer.’

‘A downer?’

‘I’m not so good at relaxing; my head races with too much stuff—’

‘You drink too much coffee.’

‘I know, that’s an upper, it keeps me punched up and thinking fast at work, but I keep cannabis up here so when I get away from the city I can chill out.’

‘You don’t smoke it in London.’

‘Not so much now.’

‘Is it addictive?’

‘Do you want me to look up FRANK on my phone? There’s a whole website there that’ll tell you the risks and what it does. Or are you going to call the police…’ He dropped down on the cushions next to me again and settled his back against the sofa. ‘They wouldn’t do anything, you know, there’s hardly any here. I’m not a dealer, only a casual smoker.’

He opened the tin, then glanced up at me and smiled. His look took the piss, calling me naive.

I sipped from the bottle of ale and watched him pull out a long, white bit of paper. He lay it on the lid, then put what I thought was tobacco in that. I’d never been a smoker at all, so I knew nothing. Then he lifted out a bag of greener-looking stuff and sprinkled that along the tobacco.

He glanced up. ‘I haven’t put too much in, so you can see if you like the feeling first. But I wouldn’t put too much in anyway – you only want enough to relax and feel good.’ He looked back at what he was doing and rolled the paper up into a tube about the tobacco with his dexterous long fingers and thumbs.

I drank my ale while I watched him.

He licked the edge of the paper, then grinned at me as he rolled the joint so it sealed.

The last thing he did was tear a little bit of card off the packet he’d taken the paper from, then he rolled that up and slotted it into the end of the joint.

He looked up and grinned at me again as he lifted it to his lips and then, sucking on the other end, he held a lighter flame to it. It flared as it lit. He took it out of his mouth and blew out the flame, so the end glowed and nothing more.

‘You don’t smoke,’ I said really stupidly.

‘No.’ He sucked on the joint again, breathing it in deep, and held the smoke in his mouth for a while, then blew the smoke out upward.

‘But you smoke that.’

‘I don’t smoke it all that much now.’ After he’d inhaled from it three times, he held the end he’d put to his lips out to me. ‘Do you want some?’

‘You can still get cancer from that if it has tobacco in it.’ God, that was such a Rick thing to say.

‘Yeah, but one isn’t going to give you cancer, and you can get cancer whatever. Do you want it?’ He lifted it up in my direction, his arm out, like now is your moment, take it or leave it.

My heart knocked against my ribs. It was telling me to choose – not to do it – or do it. Heat and adrenaline pulsed in my blood, a rush of life, a rush of feeling. I wanted to feel like this. I wanted to take risks. ‘Yes.’ I reached out, took it and put it to my lips, then drew in a breath and choked.

He laughed. ‘I take it you’ve never smoked.’

I shook my head, still coughing.

When I stopped coughing, I took a mouthful of ale and swallowed it, my throat had literally burned.

‘Just put it to your lips, breath in a little, let the smoke fill your mouth, then blow it out for now. You won’t get the hit so hard, but it won’t make you cough.’

I did that; it still felt a weird thing to do.

I blew the smoke out upward. Then I took a swig of ale, and then tried again, this time I breathed in slowly. It didn’t make me cough. I handed the thing back to him.

He was smiling at me, like he thought I was funny.

I poked my tongue out at him. ‘How did you get so successful?’ I knew he worked hard, but where had it started.

‘I’m a natural entrepreneur, Ivy. I have ideas, I put them out there, and I work my arse off to make them a success. And my brain buzzes with stuff. That’s why I need things like this to bring me down.’ He lifted the joint. ‘That’s why Em and I work so well together – she has all the qualities I don’t. She’s calm, cool and organised.’

He inhaled from the joint.

‘You two are good together.’

‘I know.’ He breathed out smoke. ‘She knows it too.’ He laughed.

‘I like you,’ I said to him as he held out the joint to me.

His smile quirked as I took the joint from his fingers.

‘I mean, I haven’t just always fancied you. I’ve always liked you.’

‘Thank you. I’ve always liked you too. That’s why I employ you.’

‘You don’t employ me any more, I gave you my notice.’

He laughed as I breathed in some of the smoke. I felt different already, woozy, like being drunk but sober. Weird.

‘Oh yeah, right, I’m your lover now.’ His eyes looked at me in a different way when he said it.

I wondered what the cannabis was doing to him.

After my third turn smoking his joint I handed it back. I could feel it in my blood. The music seemed to play louder and I could pick out the sounds within it more: the beat, the lyrics, all seemed – separated out.

He watched me as he inhaled, then said, as he let the smoke slide out of his mouth, ‘How do you feel?’