**Trigger Warnings for Drug Use and Spice**
Dusty, formerly white Nike high-tops crunch on either side of my head and Terry leans into my field of vision, hands slung low on his hips. "Are you an idiot?"
Puzzled, I tug down my bandana. "Excuse me?"
"Sorry, let me rephrase... You're an idiot!" Hazel eyes spit fire but he's impressed. I can tell. "I should kick you for scaring me like that."
My arms flop to either side, throwing up tiny brown puffs. "Take your best shot," I pant, knowing that he won't.
The fury in his face says he's seriously considering it, but after sighing into the air, he reaches down a hand. Dirt falls from my back like powdered sugar as he hauls me to my feet.
"You look like Pig-Pen," he demeans when I flap the sides of my jacket to dislodge a cloud of debris. "Except taller and pissier."
"Just because you're mad doesn't mean you have to be rude," I assert with a sneeze. Every atom hurts, my body savagely punishing me for all the dumb decisions I've made in the past twenty-four hours. "'Specially when I feel like I've been hit by a truck."
"Serves you right," mopes my intern. "You should've let me slow down. You didn't have to fall off the back like a lunatic."
"Seemed like a good idea at the time," I confess, lowering myself to the nearest bleacher with the speed and grace of a senior citizen.
Terry's spiky attitude dulls as he contemplates me. "Can I do anything?"
"Just stand there and look pretty," I whine, gingerly rotating the shoulder Malone slammed into.
Black brows crease further as I check for breaks and bruises. But then they shoot into his hairline as he perks up and pats himself down. "I think I have one more," he mutters, rifling through his pockets before victoriously holding something aloft. "Ah ha!"
It's a tightly rolled joint, bent with a bit of lint on it, but still the most magnificent thing I've seen all night. He dimples at me as he jokes, "You ever fire one of these?"
I smile back with about half the amount of my usual snark. "More than ten but less than twenty. Wanna see my stance?"
He snorts as he straddles the bleachers and I'm content for the moment to simply study the casual way he slips the filter between loose lips. How his large hands look, veined and dirt-flecked as they shield the zippo's flame to ignite the tip.
"Here." Blowing smoke to the side, he passes it to me. "This'll cure what ails ya."
Pinching it with a fluency honed through years of stealing Dad's cigarettes, I take a drag and glorious THC floods my veins. Exhaling a steady stream towards the darkened tracks, all my tiny aches and pains seem to blow away with the smoke.
"Better?" Terry asks as I help myself to two additional hits.
"Much," I cough, the dainty white tendrils twirling on the breeze. "Oof, been a while since I had the good stuff."
"Yeah, my buddy's a grower. Gives out a lot of free samples in the name of 'quality control'."
"Well, the last weed I smoked was basically stems and seeds. It was Ace's first time and I've never seen someone so anxious." I giggle at the memory, recalling the way she clung to her armchair. "She thought she was going to fall into the sky if she didn't have something to hold on to. Probably didn't help that I kept calling her Smokin' Aces." My giggle ratchets into full-on hoarse, squeaky laughter at the childish delight I take in my own antics. I'm such a stinker.
YOU ARE READING
Slate Gray
Paranormal||3X FEATURED|| For the Slates, Demon Slaying is the family business. And eighteen-year-old Perrin has fully embraced her chosen profession. But when her younger sister, fifteen-year-old Ace, unwittingly picks a doozy of a case as her first outing...
