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First a spark, then flame. I watched in awe as the fire drew closer to the one I love. The flames flashed for only a moment and settled to embers glowing softly in the subtle darkness of a December afternoon.

"I thought you quit." I said. She rolled the cigarette between her thumb and index finger and blew a soft white cloud into the air. It hovered momentarily around her jet black hair and dissolved among the shadows.

"I did quit, and now I'm starting again." She stretched across the bed and with a graceful flick of her wrist dropped the ashen tip into a half empty soda can. The filter glimmered as the evening's last rays of sunshine caught the lip gloss residue smeared across the paper.

"You know I hate that you smoke, right?" I casually replaced the can with a ceramic ashtray and laid face-up beside her on the bed, my eyes focused sternly in her direction awaiting a reply. She rolled to her side and met my rigid glare with equally stubborn eyes. For a moment she said nothing, as if waiting for a retraction.

"So? You're not perfect either." I watched as the orange ring of embers crept slowly up the length of the cigarette leaving a dull black and white mass in its wake. It grew until it began to bend under its own wait. Just as it seemed it would buckle and fall, she elegantly tapped the cigarette to the rim of the ashtray. "You play too many video games."

"That's a bit different babe. I'm not hurting myself playing too many video games."

"Oh yeah? Maybe you won't get lung cancer, but you're defiantly hurting yourself. You'll play a game for seven hours strait and at the end you have absolutely nothing to show for it. You just wasted seven hours of your life. That's seven hours you could have spent working, or studying, or doing something constructive. You'll never get that time back, and when class comes and you turn in a paper that you should have spent seven more hours on, or take a test that you should have spent seven more hours studying for, you'll see what I mean." She took a long drag from her cigarette as if to signal my defeat and implicitly claimed her victory over the conversation.

"Hey, first off, I barely ever play for seven hours strait, and secondly, shut up." My attempt at a counter attack fell short, but I enjoyed the spoils of a different type of victory as a smile slowly spread across her face. She took one last hit and rested the smoldering butt against the ashtray's wall. With a twist of her hips, she was snug up beside me with her arms around

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