Art of smoking...

An excerpt from the book I'm writing:

She leaned her side against the wall, took a deep drag, and exhaled the stingingly sweet smoke from her lungs out of her nose and mouth.

Clara perfected the art of smoking, and she thought about her actions deliberately and carefully each time she lit up. She loved it. She loved the look of it, the smell, the way it felt between her index finger and middle finger, always between the top and middle knuckle. It always irritated her to watch people who socially smoke holding a cigarette like it there’s a bomb between their fingers and a stiff hand. Stiff hands are always a dead give away, when you were dealing with a novice smoker. That and the way they took a drag.

Clara liked to let the thick tendrils of smoke creep out of her nose and mouth, draw it back into her lungs, and then blow it out in a long steady stream. When an "amateur" smokes, it's always a quick drag. Then they hold the smoke their mouths, never taking it into their lungs, until they practically spit the smoke out. Why bother, if you aren’t going to learn to appreciate it?

"Ok, so maybe I take smoking entirely too seriously," she thought sarcastically and smiled to herself as she watched the cherry burn and creep up the cigarette paper turning everything in its path into ash, "Like a fucking metaphor for exactly who i am..." she thought. Being a good girl was tough for someone who can’t help being bad.