Jason and Sarah

Jason pressed the cigarette inbetween his lips, leaning his head forward, towards the gunmetal-gray lighter in his hand. He let the tip of the flame lick back and forth over the tip until it cherried to his satisfaction. Closing the cover down with a click, he inhaled smoke and ash through the filter and into his lungs, holding it painfully there for a moment before he allowed himself to exhale.
The room was already too smoky--and it was a small room besides; the yellow light caught itself up in the smoke and made a sort of a wall. Somewhere, on the other side of that wall, Sarah was there, even though he could not see her. The very closeness of the walls seemed to amplify and echo the sound of his breath, making it less of a rise and a fall and more of a trembling. Now, the cigarette made his exhales slow and controlled. It quieted the sound of trembling breath, but did not silence it. The room seemed to become smaller as Jason's perception was swallowed by consciousness of his Self. The sound of his heart filled his ears. And yet, in-between beats, he could sometimes pick out the whisper of her breath.
She didn't want to be there; he knew as much.
He couldn't see her, but he knew her well enough; she was beautiful, but not as beautiful as the day they first met. She was worn down now, she had been broken in, and as he thought this, he also thought that it was his fault that she was this way, it was he who had destroyed her, who had used that youth and niaveity and spent it with his own.
Her eyes, like the rest of her, were beautiful, but unaffected. They looked at things, but never any further, never in; as if she had already seen and learned enough for her years.
They were still children, but Jason struggled to admit it to himself. To think that there were still so many years. Still so much pain.
Jason extinguished the cigarette on the ginger-gray cement floor. The smoke began to clear. He could see Sarah's blonde hair and still blue eyes. As if they had ever been gone from him. Here she was before him, two years of his life, devoted. Signed away. And she hated him. Hated him. It killed him to know but he rolled it over in his head, once and twice and then again.
He exhaled, but there was no more smoke in his lungs. She sat there, her hands folded in her lap.
"Is that it?" He asked, though nothing had been exchanged between them. She didn't reply, just looked at him with her still eyes. I could use another cigarette, he thought to himself, if only to hide her still, blue eyes.