Steam roiled off of the surface of the water, aided by the jets stirring up the water. It was bitterly cold; the concrete around the edge of the tub was coated in a thin layer of ice, and any moisture that found its way outside the tub’s ambient heat froze alarmingly fast. It was the coldest night in Arch in the last decade, well below zero degrees Fahrenheit. The twentieth-story balcony was shielded from the worst of the wind, but even then, the altitude made it feel even colder.
A quiet metallic click cut through the rushing sound of the jet, followed shortly by the faint sound of burning paper. Pungent smoke joined the steam as it rose above the water, followed by a sudden sputtering cough, shattering the peaceful moment.
“Fuck, ow,” Jamie said, pounding his chest with his fist and reaching for the thermos of water he’d set on the side of the tub, stubbing out the joint he’d just lit in the process. He wheezed a little as he caught his breath, a task made much more difficult by the feeling of his wet hair freezing over now that he’d risen from the water.
“Oh shit, you alright?” David asked, squinting at his friend with a vaguely concerned look on his face. He started off early with a quarter of a brownie, and it showed.
“Yeah,” Jamie said, quickly sinking back into the water to warm up. “I’m fine. Took too big of a hit, that’s all.” He slid to the bottom of the hot tub so that everything below his nose was under the water, soaking in the heat and waiting for the flood of cannabinoids to wash over his brain. He peered up at David, who had already wiped his hands down with the rag they’d brought and was attempting to re-light the joint. David’s black hair was cut short enough that it didn’t keep his body heat in; his head radiated heat and steam into the cold air. Jamie idly thought that it looked like an angel’s halo as David rose up just enough to not soak the joint with the spray. After three or four tries, he got the flame to catch paper and took a long, smooth draw, pulling the joint away from his mouth and exhaling a billow of fluffy white smoke from his nose, his expression serene. Somehow, it helped his angelic appearance.
Jamie blinked rapidly as his focus sharpened back to him and he reoriented himself. It was definitely hitting him. He rose slowly, letting the water evaporate from his skin before he got above the hot tub’s ambient heat. He clumsily sat himself back down across from David, pretending that the length of the five-by-five square hot tub would keep him from staring too long.
David sat back down and set the joint in the ashtray, reveling in the oncoming high with a long exhalation, his breath misting heavily above his head. Jamie and David lived in the same apartment suite a few blocks away, sharing the 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom space with two other people. They’d gotten to be good friends in the year and change they’d lived there, buddying up when they went barhopping and spending many late nights playing games, getting drunk, high, or both, and just talking.
The hot tub, balcony, and the condo they were attached to belonged to Jamie’s older brother. Jamie was watching the place while his brother was out of town; he’d invited David over because he wanted to see what it was like, getting high in a hot tub on the coldest night in decades. It was exactly the kind of experience Jamie loved: unique and contradictory and a little bit thrilling, the cold and the heat from the water amplified by the altered perceptions of his baked-out brain. An experience he loved sharing with David, too.
“Yo, dude, you already feeling it that much?” David asked, chuckling, bringing Jamie’s meandering train of thought to a screeching halt. “You’re kinda zoned out on my face.”
Jamie had the presence of mind to blink twice, very slowly, exaggerating the delay between his brain and his body. He sank back in the water a little as prickling warmth spread up from the small of his back to the back of his neck, radiating to his face and chest from there. A dull flutter stirred behind his sternum, and he averted his gaze.
“Yeah, I’m, uh, really feeling it,” he mumbled, hoping that he was doing a better job at hiding his embarrassment than he felt like he was. The paranoia from the high made it harder to gauge that.
“Hell yeah,” David said, nodding and grinning aimlessly. His eyes were getting more bloodshot by the second, creating a sharp contrast of pale skin, red eyes, and the blue of his irises. “What does your brother even do? This place is nice as hell.”
“He’s a fucking asset manager or something,” Jamie said, struggling to remember the answer. “Some kind of money shit. I don’t fucking know; he tells rich people what to do with their money.”
“Damn, that’s awesome,” David said, his sentence trailing off into a mumble. “I wish I had that kind of money. The bougie life, a high-rise condo. No debt, no worries.” His words trialed off as he stared upward, indulging in his financial fantasies.
Jamie scooted over just far enough that he could reach the joint. Light, draw, exhale, pass back to David. “What would you do with money like that,” David asked, his breath pitched and stilted from holding the smoke in while talking. He sputtered on the exhale as he passed the joint over to Jamie.
Jamie was quiet for a moment. Maybe several. It was hard to tell. He thought about what he’d do if he had his brother’s kind of money. If he got even a portion of it to do as he liked with it, no strings attached. “I’d move out of Arch, probably. Get a passport, be an expat. Move to Canada, maybe. Or Pacifica. Living in Seattle would be cool.”
Click, light, draw.
“I wouldn’t even need a place like this.”
Exhale, cough. Cough again.
“I’d just be somewhere else. And not be worried about money all the time.”
Pass.
David shrugged and nodded. “I can get behind that. Kinda quiet, out of the rat race.”
Click, light, draw, exhale. Nothing left to pass.
David set the remnant of the joint down, then paused. “Ah, shit, I forgot the other joints inside. Wanna go ahead and get out? I’m all wrinkled and shit.”
Jamie nodded, shifting from his sprawled position into a crouch, bracing himself.
“Ready?” he asked David, who had moved to a similar position. David nodded. “Fuck it, let’s go!”
Jamie leapt out of the hot tub as soon as he finished speaking, grabbing the ashtray and hand towel as he and David sprinted toward the door. David fumbled with the handle for a second before getting it open, just long enough that Jamie’s beard and eyebrows started to frost, and they stumbled inside. They grabbed the towels they’d laid out over a vent, warmed by the condo’s heater, drying most of the way off before grabbing a blanket each and wrapping up. Jamie stumbled and shivered over to the panel on the wall, next to the patio door. He flinched as the interface sprung to life, the bright LEDs creating a series of buttons on-screen with a couple of simple pre-sets. Satisfied, he tapped another button, turning the windows into walls of opaque black glass, and shuffled over to the couch, where David was already lighting up, and flopped gracelessly onto the cushions.
The world swayed motionlessly around Jamie as he lay there, gazing up at the ceiling. He idly reached up and ran his pruning fingertips across his chin, shaking the moisture from his beard and looking far more contemplative than he actually was.
“Here,” David said, passing Jamie the joint as well as a set of AR glasses. Jamie put the glasses on and started them up, putting the joint between his lips as he watched the Pavo logo swirl to life on the display. Oranges, greens, blues, and purples started from the edges of the lens and coalesced into a stylized peacock feather.
Draw, hold, exhale.
Smoke billowed out Jamie’s nose and around the edges of the lenses. He could see two little lights in one corner of his field of vision, one orange, one purple. The orange light blinked – David was uploading something from his display. Suddenly, the menu options disappeared, and a dome appeared above Jamie’s head, dark purple and semitransparent. In that dome, lights began to appear – stars, filling up the faux firmament and arranging themselves into the night sky.
“Holy shit,” Jamie said, his puffy eyes narrowing to take the scene in.
“I know, right?” David replied, his cadence slowed to the point that he sounded half-asleep. He may well have been, given how much weed he’d consumed over the course of an hour. “This is what the sky actually looks like, when you take away all the light pollution.”
Jamie stared at each individual star, tracing the faintly outlined paths from one celestial body to another, until he had seen all the stars in a constellation and had to shift his focus to a new one. They wore that joint down to the roach too, and then there was only silence between them as they watched the virtual star display, shifting and twinkling and doing what Jamie assumed was a damned good impression of the real thing. He sorely wished he could find out; he grew up in Arch City, but even if he hadn’t, there were enough low orbit satellites these days that even astronomers couldn’t get a clear picture.
“Hey, Jamie,” David said, breaking the silence.
“Huh?” Jamie’s focus ground to a complete halt, mid-jump between Orion and Gemini.
“If you do move somewhere else, can you let me know?”
Jamie blinked once or twice, struggling to get his mental wiring restarted. “Yeah, of course. I wouldn’t leave you behind.”
Another pause, longer this time. It felt longer, anyway; Jamie’s perception of time was nonexistent. In that pause, Jamie’s eyes widened, as he realized what he’d just said. The way he’d said it.
“I’m glad. I don’t want to live here without you.”
Jamie turned his head over to look at David, who was gazing back at him. The glasses parted the celestial display, roughly around the edges of David’s form. He couldn’t see David’s eyes – the lights of his own glasses were getting in the way of that. But he could imagine them, and he could see the rest of David’s expression. Gentle, unguarded, with a warm if somewhat vacant smile. Jamie moved his hand over, ever so slightly, to the empty space on the couch between them, and turned his head back to see the full display. David’s hand brushed his, tentatively, and it felt like lightning had shot up from that point of contact and right into his spine, warmth spreading up the top of his neck and up into his ears. David’s hand eventually settled atop Jamie’s, fingers gently curling to cradle his hand. Jamie smiled, content.
The cold night felt a little bit warmer, the artificial starlight a little more real, his own toiling heart a little more at peace.