Candy Greeting

I sincerely hope that I meet someone this way....

     The bus was scheduled to be there in five minutes, but Olivia knew that it most likely would not be on time. It never was. With time on her hands, she reached into her bag to pull out her trusty smokes that weren’t there. Sigh.

      But, just as she was about to gather her things and walk to the next stop, a young woman her age was pulling out a nice cigarette case. Shiny, silver, and new. The woman was opening it with slender fingers that went with her slender body, and a chance was open.

     “Excuse me,” the nicotine craving Olivia commented, making the woman look up from her bag. “Could I bum one of those?”

     The young woman’s eyes met Olivias, and she smiled. She was very pretty indeed and seemed friendly enough to ask for a smoke. Besides, she carried them in a fancy case.

     “Absolutely,” her voice suited her, smooth and creamy like her. “Need a light?”

     “No, I got one,” she said, digging out her old red Bic when the woman opened her case and pulled out the skinny white stick. Olivia didn’t’ know why she grabbed it from her hands.

     It was a peppermint stick, a candy cigarette that smelled sweetly of mint and the woman’s perfume. It was the same exact weight and length of a Marlboro but Olivia just thought it was menthol at first. She seems like the menthol type, she thought. But as she looked at the candy, the woman seemed unperturbed at Olivia’s reaction.

     “I don’t mean to be snooty,” Olivia said to her, convinced the beauty didn’t know what she had handed her. “But this is a candy, and I asked for a cigarette.”

     “Cigarettes are so nasty for you,” the woman cooed back, completely ready for this little exchange. “But they look so cool.”

    “Do you even smoke?”

     “Of course not,” she replied.

     Baffled, she pressed.

     “They why do you carry a cigarette case with peppermint candies?” Olivia was curious at this point, forgetting about the bus and the cigarette.

     “Great ice breaker,” she grinned. She moved in on Olivia and shook her hand sweetly.  “I’m Clarissa.”

Reviews

[Mockingbird]

"With time on her hands, she reached into her bag to pull out her trusty smokes that weren’t there." The wording of that doesn't make sense to me. It implies that she knows that her 'smokes' won't be there, which wouldn't make any sense.

Other than that, it's definitely a cute little story you have there. That'd be a wonderful conversation starter and something that you would never forget.