Gin

It was gloomy in the pub but busy with people of whom we were only two. I sat at a raw wood table stained with fresh beer and old water stains which had seeped deep into the grain. You were at the bar and because of how busy the pub was, I had been sat there alone for a long time when Gin came over. 

"Dya want another one?" He asked, gesturing to the cigarette in my right hand, which I was smoking right down to the filter. The smoking ban was far in the future, no body thought anything of sitting in the fug of a hundred different peoples exhaled smoke all evening. I nodded and in one, smooth and clearly practised move, he placed the white-tipped Silk Cut into my lipsticked mouth and lit it with the click of a heavy metal lighter. I inhaled. 
"Cheers." I said. 
"You're welcome," and he paused, the inflection in his voice clearly asking my name. 
"Laura." I answered. He nodded. My accent was very East next to his, he was clearly from London too, but another part of it. 
"You're not from round here, are you...?" I asked, and again that same pause with the inflection asking him his name.
"Gin." He said. "And no. I'm from South of the River." I nodded.
"Gin, though?" He smiled, big white teeth that were in sharp contrast to his brown skin. "That's more of a drink than a name?" He laughed. 
"You wouldn't be able to pronounce my actual name." I nodded again, blowing smoke over my shoulder and away from his face. "So, Laura. What you doing here with that old man?" he gestured across the pub to your back, now being served at the bar. I laughed, audibly this time and not the chuckle that had passed for polite tittering previously in our conversation.
"You know Gin, I don't know." I stubbed out the end of the now smoked cigarette. He offered me another and the lighter, I took them both.
"Husband?" He said. I shook my head. "Boyfriend?" I exhaled the first smoke of the new cigarette. You hated me smoking and I smoked them quickly in your absences during the evening. I held out my left hand flat so that the palm was facing downwards and shook it from side to side indicating that that was up for debate.
"Of a sort." Gin smiled widely.
"No offence, girl, " he said, pronouncing girl as "gel","but you're far too beautiful for an old man like him." I gazed across the room at you and thought of how beautiful I had once thought you were. 
"He's not so bad." I replied.
"He makes you sad though, doesn't he?" I didn't know how he knew, this stranger, but he did know. You did make me so sad. I looked away and gulped down smoke and looked back at him, nodding. He brushed the hair off of my forehead and I looked down at his hand as he gently cupped my chin. "This isn't a come on." He said softly, his voice quieter than it had been previously. "I was watching you across the room with him and I can see you love him. But life is too short to be sad all the time. Life is too short to do this to yourself." and with that he dropped his hand and slid the remainder of the box of cigarettes across the table to me. He stood up and I looked across to see you walking back towards the table. You raised your eyebrows quizzically and Gin said, loudly, loud enough that you could hear, "look after yourself, girl." and then looking down at me, he quietly added, "he's too old for you." And he walked away, melting into the crowd.

You always were a jealous man, so I wasn't surprised to see the colour rising in your cheeks as you sat down opposite me and slid a glass of red wine across the table.
"Asking strangers for cigarettes again?" you said, shortly. I nodded, miserably. 
"Yeah." I said, not really engaged, still thinking of what Gin had said.
"He fancied you," you continued, "I saw him touching your face." I looked across the room, into the crowd where Gin had gone.
"He didn't." I said, taking another cigarette from the pack and placing it in my mouth, inhaling the smoke at the exact same second that I clicked the flame of the lighter to life. "He specifically said he didn't." 
"So," you replied trying desperately to look as though you didn't care, that this was amusing to you. You didn't want me but you didn't want anyone else to have me, either. "What was he saying to you?"
"We were just talking about cigarettes." You took a sip from your glass and there was a pause, a beat in the conversation where you could have accused me of lying, and I heard the cogs in your brain clatter angrily against one another as you considered whether to tell me that I wasn't telling you the truth. Your green eyes darkened and I saw it happen, the moment you were going to call me a slut and tell me that I was a liar as well, but then you seemed to think better of it and maybe you were considering your own untruths, so the moment passed. You forced you higgledy-piggledy teeth into a smile and a childhood rhyme came unbidden into my head, "never smile at a crocodile". 
"So," you said, a lighter tone in your voice suddenly, "what was the Asian Lothario called?" I took a sip of my own drink.
"Gin." I replied. You laughed, a genuine laugh this time.
"That's more of a drink than a name." I smiled.
"That was what I said, but he said that his real name was too hard for my clumsy English tongue." I drew on the last of the cigarette and smashed the filter and millimetre of remaining cigarette into the ash tray on the table. 
"Please don't smoke any more tonight," you said with disdain, "you know I don't like it." I raised my eyebrows.
"Yeah because I always do everything you like, dad." I exclaimed, sarcastically. 
"Alright, how about if you carry on smoking all night, I won't kiss you later?" I rolled my eyes and lit another cigarette.
"Maybe I don't want you to kiss me later." And I smiled, broadly and genuinely as I leant across the table and kissed your lips, my mouth full of smoke and knowing full well that whatever differences we might have, you definitely would kiss me later, and that I would let you, even if it would be wiser not to.