Work Text:
“You were a pleasure to have in class,” Jack says, flipping the second page over, folding it down behind the staple, “you were a pleasure in this class,” he continues, turning the page around and pointing at the comic sans text box, “and in this class too,” he folds the page again. “You weren’t a pleasure in Drama though, what happened?” Nudges her knee with his foot from his spot on the couch.
Samira wobbles dramatically from her position, kneeling on the floor, rolls her eyes. “Trash pile, please,” she replies, holding her hand out. When he doesn’t pass her freshman year report card over, she reaches and snatches the booklet from his hands, depositing it on the growing heap of papers, laminated certificates, and birthday cards from people she can’t remember anymore. There is a stack of VHS tapes, DVDs and CDs in the corner that they will sort though later, a box of clothes to be donated – her childhood favourites, a pink scallop necked t-shirt, a dark velvet skirt, thick ribboned hairbands.
Tiny pearl drop earrings with a matching necklace, and a ring that she can barely get down past the knuckle of her little finger sit in a soft black jewelry box, nestled next to the chain her appa wore.
The leftovers from their lunch, bowls of thick lentil soup and bread baked by Jack’s sister lay haphazardly stacked and abandoned on her coffee table. Samira takes a sip from her mug of tea, wipes her mouth and sighs, “there’s so much shit here, like an insurmountable amount of shit, and there’s still one more box after this one.”
“I like it,” Jack replies, fishing the next item from the box that sits between them: a booklet held together with a treasury tag, purple stock card with bubble writing on the front in his hands, “how else would I learn about…” He flips the page, “the fiery topaz, a brilliant bird with an orange chest found in the Amazon Rainforest,” he concludes, reading ten year old Samira’s neat handwriting. “Your drawings are very cute.”
“I remember that project, I worked so hard on it, thought I was going to win first prize but this girl Emma in my class, her dad was a carpenter and he built this six foot giant tree cutout with these door flaps you could open to learn facts about different species of monkeys. It was so impressive they put it up in the lobby of my school. I was crushed.”
“That wound still fresh?” He chuckles.
“It wasn’t but now I’m mad all over again, well not mad, indignant.”
“Trash?” He asks.
“Trash.” She confirms.
—
The drive to her childhood home had been emotionally fraught. She had spent the whole journey anticipating an argument with Amma, gearing up to cite abandonment, disappointment, but her mother and Sunil had met her in the driveway, and she watched the way his arm was settled around her waist, the way she leaned in to the touch, comforted and grounded, and immediately thought of Jack, of steadiness and the way new love had blossomed within her. She watched them over lunch, his deference, attentiveness, listened to stories of their group of friends, the community her mother had been building around herself in Samira’s decade of absence, and realised that in the last year in Pittsburgh she had really started building one too. One she could never imagine leaving.
The boxes were waiting in her bedroom, what was left of it. Purple walls littered with tiny thumb tack holes, framed photographs that her appa had taken of various flowers, thick silvery metal frames, wild daisies on an embankment, a lotus flower from their trip to the botanical gardens, daffodils and tulips, all resting in a stack on the floor against the wall. Her white dresser, scuffed and stained by blue nail polish around one of the handles, drawers creaking open and empty.
There really was nothing there for her anymore.
She returned and inked the contract on her new research fellowship at PTMC. Finished the night in Jack Abbot’s bed.
—
She pulls a folder out of the third box, leafs through the first few pages, “I should keep these,” she notes, holding out her undergraduate diploma to show him.
“You graduated summa cum laude?” She nods, “Of course you did, my smart girl.” That nets him a small smile. “When you have your own office, we should frame it, all of your certificates, all of your achievements.”
“Isn’t that, I don’t know, embarrassing?”
“We can hang it alongside this one,” he replies, passing her a laminated card, a photograph paperclipped to the top right corner. “He was handsome,” he notes, the meaningful tilt of her head before she receives what he is proffering. A gentle warning.
A wet laugh bubbles out of her chest when she turns the certificate to read the words, she completed the toddler water safety course in July of 1998, the picture, a tiny Samira, water slicked hair on her forehead, little mermaid armbands floating above the waterline, cradled in the pool by her father, his bright smile, all teeth. “He was,” she replies, takes a deep breath. “I think the photographs are in the last box. I think… I think I need a break before we tackle those.” She gets to her feet, pads the few steps over to the couch, Jack scrambles to make space next to her but she settles her knees either side of his thighs and lowers herself onto his lap.
His hands immediately band around her back, her cheek pressed against his ear. “This is harder than I thought,” murmured against his hair.
“I know, baby, but I got you.”
“You make it easier.” She whispers, “you make everything easier,” quieter still.