He watches her for every minute detail, the way she doesn't flinch from the heat of the joint, the way that the ash crumbles between her fingers, the color of it streaked across her skin. It's not always one's facial expression that shows their emotions, after all. It comes in the way that they walk, in the way they carry their weight, and for all that Wichita's able to smile at him now, try to shrug everything else like it's nothing at all, it continues to strike him as an act. Question is whether or not he wants to pry under it. There's a part of him that wants to try, his mother's voice sounding from some indistinct point, nosing into his affairs, forcing him to hammer them out with as much diligence as a masseuse kneading into the knots of his shoulders. He always felt better for that, the subtle mental beating and deconstruction.

But not everyone is him, and so he takes a few seconds' pause before turning to her with a soft grin. "I don't get easily zuckered into things," he remarks with a quirk of his brow, before the smile passes some. "But honestly, Wichita, I don't think you have to feel guilty. And I know that it's going to feel hard. You're making an adjustment, and a couple of joints won't fix that for long. If you want to talk through it, I can throw rationale at you until your head spins. Or you can promise that you'll try to trust me when I say that you're doing fine. Better than you think."