“Why not?”
“Because it’s bad. And you’re good.”
“It’s not bad for you?”
I shake my head, not in denial, but in disbelief. “No, it’s bad for me. But it doesn’t matter if it’s bad for me.”
She’s clearly perplexed by this answer. “What the hell does that mean? Of course it matters. What if you get lung cancer?”
“Then I get lung cancer. The only person who’d even remotely care is Mom.”
Hurt registers in Kylie’s eyes. “What about me?”
I ignore the pain in her blue eyes and keep pushing. “You’d get over it. You barely know me. This is just shiny-new-thing syndrome going on here for you,” I say, gesturing between her and me. I lean toward her, blow smoke right at her. “If you really knew me, you wouldn’t be here.”
She doesn’t back away. Doesn’t register my words. She just reaches out, slowly, pinches the cigarette in my hands between her finger and thumb. Takes it from me. I let her. She put the slightly crushed filter to her lips, hesitates. She’s nervous. Not sure she wants to do this, knows she shouldn’t. But she does. She inhales, a huge hit. Shit. She’s probably going to cough so hard she pukes, I’ll bet.
Yep. She starts hacking, hands the cigarette back to me, leaning over double and coughing so hard she nearly retches. I grab a handful of her hair and hold it out of the way.
“Breathe in, sweetness. It’ll pass in a second. Just try to breathe. You’ll be fine.” Holy shit, her hair is soft. Like f**king silk slipping between my fingers. She gasps, face pale, eyes watering and panicked. “Breathe in, Kylie. Force the oxygen in.”
She opens her mouth and sucks in a deep breath, lets it out with a couple more coughs, and then begins to regain her color. “How—shit—how can you do that?”
I shrug. “Everybody does that their first time. I puked the first time I tried to smoke. I did just what you did, took a big ol’ hit and sucked it right down. Puked all over the merry-go-round. I, for real, thought I was going to die. Of course, I was ten.”
“Ten? You’ve been smoking since you were ten?”
I laugh. “No! That was just when I first tried it. My mom’s a smoker, and it was one of hers. That was when she was smoking Reds, and those f**kers are harsh. I didn’t start actually smoking regularly till I was…fifteen. Sixteen? A few years ago.”
“Reds?”
“Marlboro Reds. They’re like, almost unfiltered. The smoke is a lot harsher than that.” I lift the butt of the cigarette as a gesture, then stab it out. “These are Parliament Lights. They’re one of the lightest cigarettes you can buy.”
“That was light?”
“Yeah, babe. It’s like breathing regular old air compared to Reds.”
“Ugh. Gross.” She shudders. “Okay, enough about cigarettes. Back to music.”
“Kylie—”
“No, just listen. Have you ever actually listened to country music? Tried to forget the fact that you think you hate it and really listened?”
I shrugged. “No, but—”
“Then just try it.” She pulls her phone from the back pocket of her jeans, types in her passcode, and pulls up her music app, scrolls through looking for a specific song. She finds it, I assume, and spots my dock, plugs her phone into it. “Listen. This isn’t what I want you to play. I just want to prove something.” She hits “play” and I hear what sounds like a music box, a little tinkling sound, and then it’s joined by an acoustic guitar.
“What is this?”
She waves me off. “It’s ‘I’m Still a Guy’ by Brad Paisley. It’s a funny song. Listen.”
I listen. For her, I try to push away my distaste, and really listen. It is a funny song, and against my own will I find myself nodding along. It’s soft, it doesn’t have the same edge as metal, obviously, but there’s something to it that I don’t mind. When the lyrics talk about how you can’t grip a tackle box with creamy, lotion-y hands, I laugh out loud. “Okay, that wasn’t too bad. What else you got?”
She scrolls through her songs again and selects one. “This is ‘Goodbye Town’ by Lady Antebellum. This is more like what I want to play.”
I listen. The harmony is really good, and the melody is catchy. Not too bad, either. I’d never listen to it on my own, but I’m not choking on my own vomit like I’d expected to.
Before I can say anything, she’s got another song playing. “You might like this. It’s ‘Four on the Floor’ by Lee Brice.”
It’s filtered, slightly distorted, and has a rock edge to it. I dig it. “I could get into this. It doesn’t sound like country, really.”
She nods, and I can tell she’s passionate about this. “I think a lot of people who say they hate country are thinking of like, Vince Gill and Randy Travis. Old school, traditional country. All slide guitar and twang. Modern country isn’t like that. Not as much. I mean there’re still artists like Easton Corbin and Joe Nichols who are closer to that traditional sound, but if you listen to Jason Aldean or Luke Bryan or Lee Brice, it’s not like that. It’s got a more mainstream sound, more of a rock music undertone. I mean, it’s still unmistakably country for the most part, but it’s not your preconceived notions of country.”
“This is a big deal to you, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It is. I like all kinds of music, Oz. I liked what you played. I really did. It was different than what I usually listen to, but if you’ll notice” —she rubs at her nose, grinning at me sarcastically— “no nosebleed.”
I laugh. “Fair enough. I misjudged you. I apologize.”
She frowns and shakes her head. “We’re both always misjudging each other.” The song ends, and she puts something else on. “I really like this guy. Brantley Gilbert. I think you’ll like him, too. This song is ‘Hell on Wheels.’”
There’s a hard edge to this song, guitar work that I can actually move to, rock-n-roll riffs that touch on my ear for the-harder-the-better music. When the song ends, I nod at her. “Okay, that I actually like.”
She squeals and claps, literally giddy with happiness. “Yay! I knew I could convert you.” She pulls her phone off the dock and points at me. “Your turn. Play me something you listen to.”