Cliffs Edge [Kaylor]

sixteen

A/N: Damn, back at it again with the quick updates! This flowed really easily so here ya go. Also, there is a small trigger warning for brief mentions of suicide. It's fleeting but I wanted you guys to be prepared anyway, so be kind to yourselves. 

Take Me Away - Bleachers 

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Karlie gets her cigarettes, and lights up the second her feet hit the sidewalk, but her next destination is unclear. She's still overflowing with anger, and walks around aimlessly while she takes long, desperate pulls of her cigarette. She ends up trekking back through the Village but she has no intention of going home just yet. Going home would probably be what's best for her. It is chilly out, and she can still feel the anger coursing through her veins. That doesn't stop her from leaning up against a building and pulling out another cigarette, though. Her fingers shake a little as she reaches for her lighter, and she doesn't know if it's from the biting wind or the barrage of emotions trampling over her heart. The wind makes it difficult to keep the flame steady, and Karlie becomes irrationally frustrated after the fourth try. She's about to throw the lighter against the wall when she hears the slow clicking of heels approaching her.

"Smoking kills." The voice is familiar and low, and Karlie is certain the only reason she hears it is because the wind carries it towards her. She turns her head and rolls her eyes when she sees Toni Garrn walking towards her, looking every bit like a panther cornering its prey.

"We all die in the end anyway." Karlie finally gets a decent flame, and she lights the end of the cigarette dangling from her mouth. She takes a long drag, staring straight ahead, and doesn't move a muscle when Toni sidles up beside her.

"You'll die quicker."

"Maybe that's the plan." Karlie shrugs carelessly. 

She's about to put the cigarette back up to her lips but it's quickly snatched away from her. A protest is about to roll off of her tongue, but it falls short when Toni brings the cigarette up to her own lips. Karlie watches in mild annoyance as Toni takes a long pull of the cigarette, holding the smoke in before breathing it out through flared nostrils.

"I thought smoking killed?" Karlie teases.

"You're not the only one who wouldn't mind checking out early," Toni proceeds to smoke the rest of Karlie's second cigarette, and when it's gone they just stand there for a moment.

"So why are you here?" Karlie finally asks.

Toni laughs, and then gestures towards the building that Karlie is currently leaning against. "I live here."

"Really?" Karlie steps back from the building and looks up at it. It's a tall apartment building, wedged between a dry cleaner's and an internet café. Karlie recognizes this street. She has walked on this street almost every day during the trips home from the bar. What are the odds of Toni living in this building? The building that she had randomly ended up leaning on so she could smoke and brood.

"Yeah. It's a bit of a shithole, but whatever."

"You don't seem like the type of girl to live in a shithole." Karlie muses lowly. She remembers the first time she had seen Toni, back in Doctor Bennett's waiting room. The blonde had been donning an expensive purse and had had a sense of entitlement hanging over her head. Plus her dad owned one of the most popular clubs in the city, so what was she doing in a shithole in one of the sleazier parts of the Village?

"Tell that to my father. He cut me off when I was nineteen," Toni snorts and shrugs, not looking bothered in the slightest. "You know how it is."

Karlie pauses, surprised to find that she actually did know how it was. Her own parents could never look at her the same after her addiction came to light, and though she had never been officially disowned, she definitely wasn't winning any daughter of the year awards anytime soon.