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then
Jack had been a fidgety child, always picking at things he shouldn’t: scabs, price-tag stickers, the part of his bedroom door where the paint had started to chip from one too many times being kicked shut. Or, this time: the purple blouse in his mother’s Sunday best rotation, a garment he was only aware of because it was his turn to do the laundry and fold the clothes.
It wasn’t with any degree of conscious thought or premeditation, then, that he tugged at the exposed thread in the hem. He expected it to come free easily, satisfying in its release from the constraints of the weave, but it didn’t. Instead, it kept going and going, so he did, too, even though he knew he should stop. He couldn’t, morbid curiosity and just plain inertia winning out over his self-preservation instinct until the previously unblemished sateen fabric had puckered in a way that was impossible to miss.
For all of his picking, Jack was at least also adept at patching things together. Didn’t complain when Ma taught him how to sew and mend, then put him to work using his newfound skills, even when his father regarded him disapprovingly over the rim of his glass. But this — this was not something he could stitch back together. He couldn’t feed the thread back, couldn’t go back in time to still his hand.
That’s the look on Samira’s face when he says the words into the tiny sliver of space between their bodies, their chests still heaving from exertion: that there is no going back from this. That in some ways, this is where they had always been headed, from the very first time he crossed his fingers when promising he wouldn’t fall in love with her, took the fabric of her shirt in his hands, and lifted the hem over her head to see her, make them one.
now
The look on her face right before she slides a hand around his neck and kisses him is the exact same as it had been then: that this, Samira in his bedroom again, back from Boston for good, was where they had always been headed.
The gentle, almost chaste brush of their lips opens almost immediately into something a little sharper around the edges, then sharper still, breaths hot and ragged as they slip from one mouth to the other. It isn’t long after that Jack rucks Samira’s top up a little in question and she nods, both of them privately relieved that they still seem to have the unspoken rhythm that undergirded their relationship two years ago. Before then, even. Before Boston, before the fellowship, before their no-strings arrangement and the promise he made to her even though he’d already broken it.
Her shirt off, he skims his hands up her sides and over the swells of her breasts, then down down down the expanse of her back. Her breath hitches when he hooks two broad fingers under her waistband and he stills, studying her closely. There, in the deep pools of her eyes: was it doubt peering back at him? Apprehension?
“We don’t have to do this,” he says softly. “We don’t have to do anything.”
Samira shakes her head, tilting her face so that her reply fans out against his jaw. “I want to.”
“Samira, I - you don’t owe me anything,” Jack says desperately before he can stop himself. He never could keep his mouth shut around her, after all. “I need you to know that.”
“I know. Really,” she reassures, and punctuates the statement by guiding his hands to the button of her jeans.
Then why are you trembling, he wants to press, his fingers itching to dig in and pick and, above all, do right by her; but then she steps out of the denim and he gets his answer, there on the subtle curve of her hip.
then
“Jack, you promised.”
“I know.”
“You promised,” she repeats, like maybe the problem was simply that he’d misheard.
“Yeah. I did. The thing is, though—” His expression is rueful as he slides his gaze up to hers. “I already loved you then. I loved you from the start.”
Samira stares at him. This close, he can practically feel her mind racing, the kinetic energy of it prickling at him until his skin feels too small for his body.
More than once, Jack thinks she’s going to say something, her lips parting just so. He wants the rebuke, wants to offer himself up as penance, and so he isn’t at all prepared for the hollow evenness of her voice when she finally says, “I leave in a week. One week. Why would you wait until now to say something?”
He swallows.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You - what?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you. You were going to leave, and I was going to content myself with cheering you on from afar. But then it . . . slipped out.” She shakes her head quickly, screwing her eyes shut as she does. Exempted from her gaze for the moment, he studies how she clutches the sheet to her bare chest just as tightly, as if it might sufficiently shield her from each new revelation. “I’m sorry, Samira.”
“I can’t do this,” she says numbly. “It wouldn’t be responsible, I - I need to figure myself out before I can be in a relationship. I told you, I’m not in a place where I can give more than this.”
“I know, I promise.” Immediately, Jack grimaces at his word choice; his promises probably didn’t mean much to her now. He continues quickly, “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I never wanted you to think I was expecting anything from you in return. I don’t. I wanted whatever you were in a place to give, and I was never going to obligate you for even a second more. I would never have forgiven myself if my feelings steered you away from what you’ve been building toward for the bulk of your life. What you’ve chosen for yourself.”
Finally, the numbness gives way. “But instead, you chose for me!” she exclaims. “God, Jack, don’t you see? I—” She drops her head into her hands, a shock of curls spilling every which way at the abrupt movement. She tries to take a deep, steadying breath, but the result is little more than a shudder. “I love you, too.”
There’s a sudden whooshing in his ears.
Funny: for all his diligent, meticulous thought about how to love her without burdening her, not once had he dared to consider that she might love him back.
“Of course I love you,” Samira is saying now. At least, he thinks she is, because her lips are moving faster than his auditory cortex is processing the words. “But that’s the problem. Because there was - there was plausible deniability before, but it’s going to be so much worse now, knowing what could—”
She stops short, but Jack’s brain fills the sentence in. You could go crazy ruminating on all the what-could-have-beens, he wants to warn her. But that was, of course, her entire point.
“And when I’m done with my fellowship,” she continues, caught in the undertow now, “whatever that looks like — god, there’s not even a guarantee I’ll be back in Pittsburgh! When I’m done, and we’re two or more years into having gone our separate ways—” He watches in real-time as her features harden. “We’re never going to find each other again, are we? And it will hurt that much more, knowing. Having and losing, instead of allowing myself the illusion that we never had at all.”
For a long while, there’s only silence. There’s so much Jack could say to push back against her self-deprecatory spiral, but as each thought surfaces, he lets it go; to push the topic would mean shutting her down even further, and he’s already fumbled their goodbye enough.
Still:
“You underestimate me,” he says softly.
“What?” she breathes, her trepidation audible.
He always did this, always pulled and pulled until something ruined laid at his feet. But he had to let her know.
Slowly, he brings his hands up to cup her face. “You could go to - to Jupiter and I’d find you, Samira,” he says with a melancholy smile. “If you let me, I would.”
now
There’s a little planet inked into her skin.
It hadn’t been there then. He had been intimately familiar with every inch of her body, had run over that exact spot and countless others with the pads of his fingers, the flat of his tongue. He remembers. He would remember this.
He studies it closer, grazing his thumb over its bands and intricate whorls, and particularly something he is fairly certain is the Great Red Spot. Which would make the celestial body—
“—Jupiter.” Suddenly, Jack’s throat feels tight. “Samira,” he says carefully, “when did you get this?”
She peers up at him through her lashes.
“A couple of weeks after my move.”
“Why?” he asks. But he knows the answer.
“Because you said,” Samira whispers. “Do you remember?”
In answer, Jack steps in and slowly presses his lips to hers for another kiss, his hand settling on her side so that the tattoo is cradled by the flat of his palm.
“Found you,” he whispers in turn.
He feels her smile against his mouth.