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“Gonna go for a smoke.” Jack says, shaking a pack of Marlboro Reds with genial warning. He pushes off the bar stool swiveling in a way she should probably find ungainly. Instead Samira is relentlessly endeared.
She bites down on a truffle fry with undue violence.
He used to smoke American Spirits, the blue pack always neatly tucked in the third pocket of his cargo pants. He had an obsessive post-nicotine handwashing routine and yet the smell still clung to his jacket, an ancient Carhartt he rarely went without. Cloves, cloying and musky in constant companionship with his skin.
She noticed, she notices everything about him. It’s becoming a problem. The reoccurrence of the noticing is a fast acting tail-spin that’s liable to end up smoldering in flames and wreckage.
Samira’s grip slackens against her Posh G&T short nails clacking against the thin rim as she watches him move, unable to tear her eyes away. She’s dangerously loose as a pang of frustration settles in her chest. She isn’t stupid, it’s not like she’s unaware of the breadth of her feelings towards him. But his saccharine diffidence about the whole thing had worn a hole in her patience. If he wasn’t going to return her affections at the very least he could stop being so goddamn nice about it.
She’d heard them entirely by accident turning the corner in a stairwell trying to massage a tension headache out of her sinuses.
“You gotta relax man. You’re gonna fuck up majorly if you keep talking to Samira like that.”
It was Shen’s voice, cool, nonchalant in a way she’d become accustomed to.
“You know I’m still technically your boss right?”
She stilled in place, fingers tense against the concrete wall. Jack was there, Jack was talking about her. There was a pregnant pause and then a deep, weathered sigh.
“I know I just - I don’t wanna embarrass her.”
She couldn’t stand to listen any longer after that, willing her tears to remain firmly inside her eye ducts. She refused to cry over a boy not liking her like a child. She was thirty years old, she was a celebrated emergency medicine physician. Some guy not returning her affections was as insignificant as floppy discs, or Blockbuster.
This was the mantra she repeated as she scrubbed tears from her face urging her 2003 Honda Civic to purr to life so she could get out of that God-forsaken hospital.
He’s retreating out the back door completely unaware of her woes, like an asshole. The rational part of her brain says hey, you can’t blame him for not returning your feelings! It’s a perfectly human experience. And you’re at least fifteen years younger than him. Really what were you expecting?
The irrational part wants to grab his stupid dog-tags and shake him until he explains why all of the nine-dollar lattes and notated medical case studies were apparently just a kind gesture to an impressionable young resident he had no interest in beyond academic curiosity.
She stands, not completely of her own volition chewing on her anger until it breaks skin. She’s out the door before she can really parse what she’s going to say to him. But she’s going to say something, anything.
Jack’s eyes flick up to her as he stands his good leg propped against the brick wall, the small orange flame of his lighter fluttering in the December wind.
“What the hell is your problem?” Samira starts. She can see the metaphorical shot she’s fired land squarely in his chest. A click-boom of overwhelming exasperation.
“I’m sorry-”
“I mean seriously. I’m not asking rhetorically what the hell is your problem?” She cuts in, an accusatory finger leveled at his bicep. “I feel like I’ve been pretty fucking obvious around you. Call it a cliche or whatever but you, you...”
She throws up her hands, a few delinquent, dark ringlets escaping from her claw clip.
“You didn’t have to feed into it. I mean god-forbid I think the guy who brings me a fucking latte every day and drives me to work in the snow and fixes my sink might have a modicum of romantic interest in me.”
Jack is frozen, simmering cigarette hanging between his fingers paused just before his mouth like his muscle forgot the proper sequence of movements to bring it all the way.
“And then!” She laughs, affronted. “You have the audacity to say you don’t want to embarrass me. Like I’m some kid chasing your coattails and not a grown fucking woman. I might not have an AARP membership and a sciatica problem but I’ve been doing just fine on my own, thank you.”
His face has taken on a slightly delighted quality, eyes alight with recognition, handsome mouth quirking up at the left corner. There’s a gleam of enjoyment lurking there that makes Samira want to punch him in the nose. She huffs out a hot rush of air.
“So I ask you again. What the hell is your problem?” The question hangs in the air too ethereal to cut.
Jack makes a small noise of assent and crushes his cigarette under his boot.
“You done yelling at me?”
“I don’t know.” She says, petulant. “Is there something else I need to yell at you about?”
He shrugs noncommittally. “Probably. But not before I make you feel like an asshole for about thirty seconds.”
She guffaws, taken aback.
“Cause if you’d let me talk for a second I would have told you-” He’s pushing off the wall charting a path towards her with an expression that seems more wolfish than angry. A dizzying wave of confusion floods her body. “-That when I said that to Shen I meant I didn’t wanna embarrass you by having some old guy be obsessed with you.”
Samira blinks, once, twice, and then the gravity of how profoundly wrong she was settles.
“I-” She’s blustering, trying to make sense of the words leaving his mouth when he stops in front of her, one hand slipping easily onto the nape of her neck and the other cupping her cheek.
“Samira,” he says seriously, “I’m gonna kiss you now. Nod if you understand.”
Her head allows her one owlish nod, eyes still tracing his expression for any hint of jest. Then he’s on her.
Jack’s mouth slots easily into hers. Teeth scraping against her bottom lip dragging a needy, breathless noise from her chest. He kisses her like he’s been waiting his whole life to do it and she thinks that might actually be true.
“Wait but-” she pants into his mouth pulling away with some difficulty. He groans, knocking his forehead into her temple.
“Samira, honey, I promise I’ll answer all your questions later but for now just - stop talking, please.”
His idea of her shutting her up, as it turns out, is particularly agreeable.