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His eyes still find hers in crowded rooms, still seek out her acknowledgment. If Samira didn’t know better, she’d think it was the beginning of an attempt at reconciliation. She’d indulge the foolish, childish hope that blooms weakly in her chest when he stares at her during shift changes. She stares back, unashamed and challenging, and he holds her gaze until it’s his turn to speak and he looks to Robby on instinct.
It had all happened so quickly, now that she thinks about it. The Emergency Department’s New Years Eve make-up party, whatever was between them was still so fragile and new. Robby was hosting, because of course he was, and they’d come separately. Jack hadn’t offered to drive, didn’t want to strand her without a ride home. Samira hadn’t pointed out Uber.
Looking back, maybe he had always had one foot out the door.
She wants it now; craves the way he’d treated her like something precious in that funny in between period. Coffees without asking. Praise offered easily and without hesitation. Stolen moments on the right side of the roof railing sitting side by side with their arms, torsos, hips, thighs, calves, pressed against each other as they looked out over the Pittsburgh skyline.
He’d kissed her first there after staring at her side profile and her lips for several minutes. That was their second kiss. She’d kissed him first the first time, tucked behind a concrete pillar next to the handicap parking spots in the employee lot. Her hands trembled slightly as she placed them on his chest and leaned in close. They were slightly sweaty and more than grimey from a night shift. It was little more than a soft press of her lips to his, meeting for a few moments before he’d pulled her in to him with an arm around her waist.
When they’d finally pulled away, he pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth, tender, to say, “Thank you, Samira.” He didn’t elaborate and she didn’t ask.
Robby doesn’t see them that time. He doesn’t even cross Samira’s mind in that moment. He sees them at his party, tucked away from sight in a corner, pressed up against each other. That kiss is chaste in comparison to what they’ve been doing to each other for months, but his reaction is nuclear all the same.
“Jack, what the fuck!?” Robby all but grabs him by the back of his shirt as the two of them jerk backwards at the ice bucket of his presence.
“It isn’t—“ Samira starts, mind racing and trying to explain that she was the one who pulled him close as the others touched glasses in celebration.
“Robby, hold on—“ Jack says at the same time, palms slipping away from where they were on Samira’s waist and bare back above the hip line of her dress.
Samira doesn’t actually remember much of what Robby says when it’s all said and done. Most of what she can recall is the way Jack looked as he listened to Robby lay into him about “making the same mistakes”, about HR and how disappointed he is. It’s bitter and probably more than half projection, but she can see when the thousandth cut lands as intended because Jack steps away from her and shoulder checks Robby on his way to the front door.
“Jack, wait,” It’s silly, following him out into the night, as she yanks on his jacket that he left behind.
“Samira, I,” He whirls around and his eyes are red in that way they get after he has to do an amputation on the fly, rimmed with unshed tears, “I thought I could do this.”
She jerks back like he’d slapped her with an open palm. His jacket feels like a lead weight. She doesn’t respond, just stands staring at him as she feels the tears start to rise in her own eyes, ignoring how she knows her mascara will run.
It’s the first time he’s doubted her. Or, it’s the first time he’s told her he’s doubting her.
She doesn’t speak as they stare at each other on Robby’s front lawn. Doesn’t voice the hurt and anger bubbling in her, burning the back of her throat like bile.
He fills the silence. “Look, I’m-I’m me, dead wife, and PTSD, and, and you’re so young.” Samira blinks at him, hearing Robby in his words. “I don’t think we should keep doing this.”
What comes out in response is, “I knew you didn’t actually want me like that.”
It’s too honest, betrays too many real feelings to the man who pressed kisses to her temple when she woke in his bed, who insisted she wear his clothes when she stayed the night, who knew that while she loved her mother she wasn’t sure she liked her.