Combustion (2)

The certainty of the heat felt first on the skin: by the middle of the summer they could feel it in their entrails. The heat: what had started as a promise for longer days, always ended as a threat to rot their intestines. But there was an undeniable beauty in sitting on the sidewalk outside the store facing the parking lot, witnessing the calcination of concrete. She flung her cigarette under the car parked in front of them. For a few seconds she imagined metal, plastic and glass flying around. Blowing shit up was something that came to her mind every time she lit one: for her, smoking was not an addiction but a commitment to that beautiful image.

He put what was left of his cigarette under one of his boots and crushed it until there was no more smoke coming out. Before standing up they kissed. The menthol lingering in their lips created the momentary illusion of a cool intimate retreat. But when their tongues met, a world of warm organs in bodies exposed to the outside heat was revealed to their senses. She wasn't sure if the repulsion she had just felt was ignited by the smell of antifreeze leaking from the car being started two parking spaces from where they were sitting or by his breath, hot as the afternoon breeze.
To be contiued>>