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Samira has always assumed that the morning of her wedding would be frenetic, hair and limbs and hems tugged this way and that. She’s only been a bridesmaid once, but it’s how she remembers the day and how they’re always depicted in movies anyway, replete with last-minute store trips and the slightly burnt smell of heat styling tools and shouting — jubilant shouting, but shouting nonetheless — over some pump-up playlist as the whole gaggle of them gets ready for the festivities ahead.
Instead, when she opens her eyes, she is greeted with stillness. Peace.
Beside her, Jack, already awake and bathed in golden bands of morning light, peers back at her with a smile on his lips that widens when their gazes meet. Bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony, or so the superstition goes, but Samira’s never really been one for myth and Jack, for his part, cannot look away. It is precisely what they had wanted: the quiet privilege of waking up to each other on this of all days.
He leans in and kisses her, plush and lazy and anything but unlucky.
“Hi,” he murmurs, his arms looping around her sleep-warm frame under the sheets and drawing her close.
“Hi.” Samira hums as his thumbs draw senseless patterns against her skin, intricate marginalia along the column of her spine. Slowly, he slides a hand forward to her waist, wide fingers sneaking ever so slightly lower. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asks, her nascent smile audible in her voice.
Jack drags his lips back over hers. “Just want to make sure my wife is good and awake for the day ahead,” he says innocently.
“Mm-hmm. I think we have a date at the courthouse to make good on before you can call me that.”
“Oh, honey. I’ve been calling you my wife in my head for months.”
It’s so intoxicatingly sweet that Samira has no choice but to indulge his eager touch for a moment longer before scraping her teeth along his ear to say, albeit half-heartedly, “Jack, I love you, but today’s going to be a long day and I am not about to risk either of us pulling something and needing a muscle relaxer.” Or worse, a visit to the Pitt. They would never live that one down. “Besides,” she adds at his moue, glancing over at her phone on the nightstand, “Amma will be here in just over an hour and we both still need to shower.”
“I’ve got an idea for how we can save some time,” he says with a boyish grin. But he sits up obediently and moves his kisses to her temple, her hair, a clear shift in intent.
She huffs out a fond laugh. “I bet you do.”
As expected, Amma is something of a tornado.
Ever-punctual, she arrives mere minutes after the steam from their showers has dissipated from the bathroom mirror. A good thing, too, because she immediately selects the space in front of the reflective surface for her makeshift salon and gets to work. Jack wisely evacuates the path of the storm to get himself ready, but not before sharing a sympathetic, bracing look with Samira that reminds: Breathe.
In through her nose, then out through her mouth, Samira’s lungs fill gratefully with the bright citrus scent of Jack’s body wash that still lingers on the air. There’s something else mixed in, though. She’s shocked by the magnitude of her nostalgia when she places it as the sweet sandalwood of Amma’s perfume. For all of the time they’ve spent at a remove from one another, whether physically or emotionally, there is something about the scent that filters straight to her central nervous system and soothes her nerves.
Really, it isn’t nerves so much as giddiness; Samira Mohan is not the slightest bit nervous about marrying Jack Abbot. There is a kinship and beholdenness between them that she has been ready for for years, a degree of safety and calm implicit in his company. He coaxes out the very essence of her, wants and fears alike, and allows her to simply be, without condition or undue expectation. And yet — her giddiness still presents like anxiety, her stomach giving in to knots that are only amplified by Amma’s own intensity.
Amma tuts over her mehndi now, studying Samira’s palms under the bathroom light. “You got it wet too soon,” she says, more fretful than admonishing. “The color could have been so much richer if you’d given it the proper time.”
But what was ‘proper time’ anyway? For so long, they’d had all manner of timelines to juggle and heed: the long-awaited conclusion of her residency, for one, so that they might finally act on their shared feelings without the extra bureaucratic complication. Could she really be blamed for running toward the day now, as hurriedly as was possible?
No, she had done her share of waiting and then some. If perfect henna was sacrificed in her excitement — well. It was a worthwhile price to pay.
Samira expects to have to bite her tongue more than just the once, so it is a pleasant surprise when, after allowing her the single voiced worry, Amma seems to collect herself. She recounts details of her own multi-day wedding festivities as she plaits and pins Samira’s hair: Appa’s cheeky shenanigans, the seemingly endless procession of food, the guests in attendance, packed practically shoulder to shoulder. So different on the surface from their own plans to go to the courthouse and celebrate afterward with an intimate reception in the backyard, but at their cores, the two days were mirror images of each other, tangible representations of love and devotion, for better or for worse.
By the time Amma slips the last of the gold bangles over Samira’s wrists, the room has fallen comfortably quiet. Samira feels it then: the drop of a tear falling onto the back of her hand. It’s followed instantly by Amma mumbling something about not wanting to mess up the henna they just diligently flaked off and sealed with oil, but Samira ignores her and pulls her into a hug.
There is so much the two women could say to one another, but the words don’t come, don’t need to, not until Amma pulls back and says, her eyes shining, “How I wish he were here to see you, kanna. He would be so happy.”
There are only more tears after that.
“Jack.”
There’s a moment, right before he responds to the sound of her voice, where Samira is certain her heart is going to beat out of her chest. Even with his back to her, she can tell she isn’t prepared for the full force of him in his wedding attire, a steel blue suit that brings out the cooler strands of silver in his salt and pepper hair.
Sure enough, she aches when he turns to face her, not least because of what he is wearing — though the couple of buttons of his dress shirt he’s left undone have her aching in another way entirely. Rather, it’s his expression that does her in, and the way his fingers freeze where they’d been fiddling with his cuffs only to tremble just so as he takes her in: the ivory dress spilling over her frame to end mid-calf, the umber-hued mehndi trellising up her arms, the delicate bangles quietly chiming with each step that she takes into the living room.
He closes the distance between them before he even realizes he’s moving, a brilliant smile lighting up his face as he gathers her into his arms.
“My gorgeous bride,” he breathes when they release each other. He catches her hand at the end of its path down the lapel of his jacket and brings it to his mouth. “God, Samira, you are an absolute dream,” he crows, his voice thick with awe and disbelief.
It’s disbelief that only multiplies as the day unfolds. The ceremony is perfect in its simplicity, yet Jack still manages to get distracted. Lost in the fact that Samira — that this, their vows to each other — isn’t a dream at all but actual technicolored life, he misses his cue to repeat after the justice of the peace. A miracle, really, that they are ever pronounced married, but they are, and they melt into each other’s embrace at the proclamation, solid and warm and indisputably real.
When they finally pull into the driveway, after a not insignificant number of stolen kisses at stoplights, Jack comes around to her side of the car to scoop her up and carries her over the threshold. She manages a few protests through peals of laughter, but he refuses to put her down once they’re inside, instead whisking her through their townhome into the backyard where their loved ones are waiting.
The moment the door swings open, the September air erupts in cheers. Samira gasps as she takes in the scene before them, the result of Amma’s and Victoria’s diligent, loving work. Twinkling string lights slope from tree to tree over wooden tables arranged banquet-style in the middle of the lawn. They’re adorned with breezy runners and the last of the summer’s blooms in colorful glass bud vases; votive candles, too, which will dot their evening like fireflies once the sun begins to set. There’s the distinct pop of a champagne bottle, and music on the breeze, and —
— their friends and family. Their whole worlds, now merged. Tears well in her eyes at the evidence of how many people are in their corner, grounding them and building them up: their beloved Pitt crew, or at least, all those who managed to be off-shift. Someone has to be on-site to keep the ED running, she supposes, but it must be a veritable skeleton crew because they’ve shown up in droves. There’s Jack’s parents on either side of Amma, keeping her close. Jack’s sisters and their kids, too, and a handful of army buddies who may as well be blood. Samira’s friends from her new attending post at Presby are the latest additions into the fold, but they fit in as if they’ve been in the mix for ages.
Disbelief lodges in her throat now.
There was a time, not too long ago even, when Samira was sure she would never have any of this, including and perhaps especially the man currently holding her. Yet here he was.
Here they were.
When Jack finally lowers her to her feet, she takes him right back into her arms. Kisses him with enough fervor and relief and pure, ecstatic delight that another round of cheers frissons through the crowd.
Here they were, their adventure just beginning.