Chapter Text
She feels completely out of her element. It’s a book launch party somewhere in the ritzy part of Philadelphia. On the Mainline, according to her Uber driver.
Meredith Chezik, her former mentor at Rutgers, now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, is hosting a party in someone’s beautiful home to showcase her new release, a history of American medicine through the lens of immigration. Samira was on the mass e-vite list, even though it has been ages since she spoke to Professor Chezik about anything other than a potential reference for a job.
When she gets there, Samira is taken aback by what a spectacle it is. There are about 75-people in what looks to be Chezik’s house. They are all dressed formally, with waiters passing with glasses of wine and hors d'oeuvres.
She is by herself, of course. She’s glad she had chosen her more formal option, the burgundy halter dress with a flowy skirt that thankfully didn’t suffer too much after being crammed into her backpack for the bus ride from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.
Samira had straightened her hair with the same flat iron she used to iron out her dresses in the bus station bathroom, put makeup on with her fingers while avoiding the wet spots by the sink.
She has just grabbed a glass of champagne off a waiter’s tray when Professor Chezik, the guest of honor, taps her on the shoulder and envelopes her in a hug.
“Sam, I’m so glad you came!”
Samira feels instantly affirmed. She had been worried that the warm woman would have somehow forgotten her amid all the research assistants and students that had crossed her path over the years.
The fact that Professor Chezik was now at Penn, an Ivy League institution 45 minutes away from Samira’s hometown in New Jersey, makes this a particularly strategic reconnection.
“I couldn’t miss this. Congratulations!” Samira responds with genuine joy. “I remember how we used to talk for hours about the need for a book like this. And now you’ve written it!”
“I remember those conversations very well. And I hope you saw the note of gratitude to you in the acknowledgments!”
Samira hasn’t seen it. But she doesn’t want to let on that she hasn’t actually bought or read the book yet. “I’m really touched that you remember. I know tonight is not the night for it amid … all this,” Samira says, “but I would really like to get coffee and catch up with you sometime soon. I’d love to hear what else you’re working on and I’d like to tell you about my racial inequities research.”
“Absolutely,” Professor Chezik says. “I’d love that too. My family and I are on vacation for the rest of the summer but…”
She trails off and Samira can tell her attention has shifted to someone over her shoulder.
“Jab!” Professor Chezik yells, seemingly across the room. “Well isn’t this the night for old friends.”
Professor Chezik steps back to welcome someone else into her and Samira’s orbit, pure adoration on her face.
“Jab, you punk. You could have told me that you were coming! What is it with people surprising a girl out of the blue? I mean I love a good surprise. There have just been so many tonight.”
Samira turns just as Jab gets pulled into a hug. She instantly recognizes the freckled profile and the fluffy dollop of curls.
“Sam, this is, well, I call him Jab, one of my oldest friends in the world. We grew up together and I can’t believe he actually came out for this!”
Chezik smacks him on the arm and he bows his head, holding back a laugh. “I figure I can’t only show up for the bad stuff, especially when this book is already shortlisted for the Archer. Congratulations, Mere!”
He finally meets Samira’s eyes and smiles at her. Chezik recovers from his praise enough to continue the introduction.
“And this is Sam, who was my amazing research assistant at Rutgers a few years ago, pre-pandemic. Some of our initial conversations served as the inspiration for this book. She’s brilliant and…”
Samira is nodding along mechanically, waiting for a breath to jump in with a correction while trying to compute the odds that PTMC attending Jack Abbot, or Jab apparently, is standing next to her and she’s about to be introduced to him.
She can’t even escape him when she’s a seven hour bus ride away in a different city.
“You’ll see,” Chezik continues with a proud smile on her face, “because it looks like you picked up a couple of copies- thank you, Jab!”
Chezik gestures towards the paper bag Jack is carrying that Samira thinks likely houses more than one copy of the $125 tome. “Thanks for signing them,” he responds quietly. “I’m looking forward to reading it.”
Finally, after what feels like an eternity in miscommunication, Jack turns to Samira. She thinks that this is it, he’s finally going to tell Chezik that not only do they already know each other but that he’s kind of her boss, and, if Samira is lucky, he can add that he’s also familiar with some of her better attributes.
As an opportunity for professional connection, this couldn’t go any better for her.
“Actually, it’s Jack,” he says, holding out his hand to Samira to shake. “Jab’s an old high school nickname that I’ve never been able to put to death. “Sam, is it?”
Samira lets out a breath and wonders what exactly might be happening here. It’s not quite the professional overture she had in mind. But Jack Abbot and professional are two categories she has trouble keeping separate.
It's dangerous even at the best of times.
“I mostly go by Samira now, actually,” Samira says earnestly, taking his hand and giving it a warm shake. “I hear you on old nicknames that stick around too long. It feels like you’re a different person.”
Jack smiles tightly at Samira’s comment, an obvious attempt to cover up a laugh.
Samira hazards a glance up at Chezik to see if their ruse is at all convincing but the professor is again distracted by someone trying to wave her into the kitchen.
“You two,” Chezik says, gesturing at them while she starts walking towards the kitchen, “chat, have fun, meet some people. There’s another bar and more food on the patio. Go bring the party out there. But don’t either of you dare leave without saying goodbye!”
Jack and Samira are left without their buffer, staring silently at each other.
She waits a beat, takes a gulp of the champagne that she still has in her hand, waiting for him to fill in the gap of whatever this is that he clearly started.
Instead, Jack grabs a glass of champagne for himself off a waiter’s tray and gestures towards the patio where a few people are already milling about.
“Shall we?” he asks, already moving towards the French doors, looking behind him just once to see whether she follows.
As if she, whether Samira or Sam, has ever had a choice with him.
She takes a few seconds to empty her glass before placing it on a passing tray and following him outside.
***
By the time she makes it out to the patio, he’s sitting on a wooden bench, his champagne flute resting next to him.
She sits at the other end of the bench, but inclines her legs towards him.
“Hi,” he says almost shyly up at her when she gets comfortable on the bench. “Do you know anyone else here?”
“No,” Samira says honestly. “I mostly came to reconnect with Professor Chezik. It’s been a few years since we were in touch, and I was so excited to see that she had written this book.”
“I don’t know anyone else either,” he says. “Only Professor Chezik … Meredith.”
“You guys seem pretty close,” Samira says, the statement sounding much more like the question she intends it to be.
“We grew up together, same small town. Her brother Danny was my best friend. I spent a lot of time at their house when I was a teenager. Danny and I enlisted together. He’s in Okinawa now. Her mom passed away a few months ago. She never got to see this and I felt like it would be good for Mere to have a friendly face here tonight. She’s like family.”
“Like the kind of family you date?”
Jack chokes a little bit at her directness and looks up at her with disbelief. For her part, Samira responds with the quirk of an eyebrow. If they are playing pretend strangers, she’ll milk it for all it’s worth.
Jack scrunches up his face, shoots her what she thinks may be a guilty look. “Define date.”
Samira laughs. “Don’t worry. That tells me all I need to know.”
“Does it?” he asks, cocking his head, but he seems unperturbed and maybe even pleased by her question. “She’s a few years older than Danny and I are. She came back from college the summer before we deployed. It wasn’t ever anything serious, but it was fun. For me at least.”
“And Jab?” Samira asks, wishing she had gotten another drink before she sat down. She’s not quite sure what she should do with her hands and she could use the distraction.
“The epitome of teenage idiocy,” he retorts with a self-deprecating laugh. “I felt like the name Jack Abbot was the most boring, from the middle of nowhere, white bread name ever. So I tried to make myself more interesting. Jab was about as inventive as I could get back then.”
He gestures to a waiter who has been taking orders on a notepad and she wonders, not for the first time ever, if he can read her mind.
“I’ll have whatever is on ice for beer,” he says once the waiter comes over. “Mere has good taste.” “Tequila soda, with lime, thank you,” Samira says, smiling up at the waiter when he asks for her order.
“And Sam?” Jack asks, once the waiter leaves. “Somehow I have a hard time picturing you going by that nickname.”
She swallows at the uncomfortable memory, then shrugs for his benefit. “I felt the need for reinvention myself in college. Sam felt … I don’t know? More mainstream? More neutral? Less tied to my culture, to my family? I think I was chasing a bit of boring or white bread. My life felt a little too complicated then.”
She looks back up at him to gauge his reaction, only to see that his eyes are locked on her.
“I can understand that,” he says, never breaking eye contact. “It’s fun to escape your life sometimes. Slip into a new identity. Push some boundaries.”
The waiter returns with their drinks and it provides her a natural interlude to ponder Jack’s words. He’s clearly talking about whatever it is they are doing, which he started, her subconscious feels the need to keep pointing out. But, it also shouts, she’s clearly willing to go along with it.
And maybe use it to her advantage?
“Hmmm. I wonder what Jab would have made of Sam,” she floats, tracing the rim of her half-salted glass with her finger.
“I think he would be captivated by her,” Jack says.” “Completely.” Jack responds more quickly than she expected and she’s flattered, can feel the blush creeping up on her from just how close this conversation feels to the one she wants.
“He’d be drawn to her strength, her perseverance, her brilliance.” He smiles a sad smile. “Maybe a little envious of it all.”
She chuckles, lobbying him a challenging look. “Nothing to be envious of. If anything, I think Sam would envy Jab’s confidence, his courage, his ease with people … and with the world.”
He shakes his head at her, flicks a hand at her as if to minimize her words.
Before he shies away from her praise entirely, she continues, “well, I’m pretty impressed. And I’m glad they get this chance to meet tonight.”
She feels like there might be magic baked into this evening. Having drinks with Jack Abbot, talking about everything and yet nothing related to medicine, sharing their pasts, their feelings, with the distance and the years between them now spanning the length of a short bench.
“Cheers to that,” Jack says, smiling and tapping his beer bottle to her glass.
***
They’ve been lost in their own world for a few minutes when reality barges back in.
“Can we join you?” a lady says, walking over to them with a man on her arm and another couple trailing behind. “You two seem like you’re having a good time and seating is hard to find out here. What are you talking about?”
Jack looks annoyed at the interruption but Samira is quick to pacify. “Of course. Um, we were just talking about … art, murals, actually, and how integral they are to the city.”
“Funny you should mention that,” the woman starts, “we are planning to commission a mural for our house. But we can’t decide whether we should give the artist a theme for inspiration or full artistic license. Any thoughts?”
Samira feels more than hears Jack’s groan and suppresses a chuckle, determined to make the best of a bad situation.
Samira slides down the bench to sit next to Jack, fitting herself into his right side under the guise of making space for the interveners. His arm moves out automatically, making a detour to trace a finger down her exposed back before curving around her waist, uniting them against the world.
They try - she a little more than him - to make small talk with the others, but they inevitably fall into their own conversation. At some point, Samira abandons even the attempt at social propriety.
When else will they get the chance to discuss with each other what they are reading or the movies they’ve seen a hundred times? He’s never seen Bend it Like Beckham, which feels like sacrilege to her, and she can’t tell her Bond films apart. She has thoughts about the new Arundhati Roy autobiography that may or may not be projections of her own dynamics with her own mother. He’s got a few choice dynamics of his own. They have a shared love for Cutting for Stone and Verghese in general and yet they still somehow manage any mention of what they do and who they are and an emergency department that feels worlds away from the warm Philadelphia night.
It’s their one unspoken rule.
One last interruption comes from a kind-hearted woman who tells them the hosts are trying to get everyone inside for a few speeches after pretty much everyone else has cleared the patio.
Jack looks reluctantly towards the doors that lead back to the house and then back at her.
She can tell he’s weighing his words when her phone emits a shrill tone, one that she hopes beyond hope is inaudible to the people gathering in the living room listening to the person who just started to speak.
She turns the alarm off, sighs loudly.
“I have to go. My bus leaves in a little over an hour and it’s a trek back to the station from here.”
“You took the bus here? From Pittsburgh?”
She nods, already getting up. “It felt like too much of a drive to do in one day. The bus tickets were decent, especially this one since it’s essentially a redeye.” She empties her glass, grabs his empty beer bottle to take back to the bartenders.
“I have to grab my backpack from the coatcheck,” she continues when she returns. “Hopefully I can do that without being too disruptive. I’ll have to email Professor Chezik an apology that I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
He looks conflicted, unmoored by her matter of fact ending of their evening. “I can drive you to the train station …”
“No, it’s fine,” she interrupts, wanting a clean departure. “You should go inside, enjoy the party, and get a chance to catch up with your ex who is like family to you.” She winks then smiles at him to let him know that she’s kidding.
“I had a good time tonight, Jack,” she says wistfully, looking down at him still seated on the bench. “We should meet in Philly more often.”
“Are you working tomorrow?” he asks, ignoring her opening, her implicit request for closure. She almost recoils from the question. They’ve avoided references to PTMC tonight with nearly surgical precision.
“No,” she says eventually, hating him a little bit for ruining the fun, for making her think about work, and who she is there, and who they are to each other there. “I’m hoping to sleep in. I doubt I’ll get much sleep on the bus tonight.”
“Crash with me here,” he says quickly, and her mouth drops open a little, both at the words themselves and the desperation and nerves she hears that feel totally out of place coming from him.
“I’ve got a hotel room downtown and I’m driving back in the morning anyhow.”
“Jack.”
She means it as a plea, a warning, perhaps to them both. Whatever this is tonight has been welcome. But how far can she go before the possibility of them becomes an overwhelming temptation?
“Stay, please,” he pleads in return. “Let’s have dinner and talk some more. We didn’t even get to the Top Model documentary conversation we said we’d get back to. You know you want to hear my take on that.” He laughs softly, shooting her a probing glance.
“The room has two beds. I swear it, Samira. So this isn’t…”
He sighs deeply, runs a hand through his curls, and she can tell he’s thinking hard about what he wants to say.
“It’s one night, Samira. Can’t we get just one night?”
And then what?, she wants to know. Because what he’s asking her isn’t just about tonight. It’s about the countless nights ahead of her back in Pittsburgh where she replays every detail of every interaction, every piece of him that she wants to keep and can’t.
After the past hour alone, she knows she is going to spend the whole bus ride captive in thoughts about him, replaying every glance, every laugh, every touch, intentional or otherwise.
She wants this - him – too much. She wants to be a normal woman, being asked by a man she likes, who likes her back, to go to dinner with him, to hang out with him and talk about bad TV with him, and, yes, maybe even go to bed with him.
She can handle that. She can be courageous and confident and bold. Or she can at least pretend to be. For tonight.
“We should have one night,” she agrees.