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He's cramped in this Corolla. Knees nearly level with his chest. She's got CDs all along both sun visors. She's chewing gum, but not popping bubbles. 5 Gum. It isn't Bubble Yum.
She isn't a kid.
It's strange to be in the passenger seat of a car. It's strange not seeing the sunset glint off his steel wristwatch as he turns the steering wheel with one hand. He reads the titles of her CDs an inch above his head, but they appear to mostly be burned copies. Mixes, with Sharpie track lists in different handwriting, colors. Multiple friends, he thinks. It makes sense. She's the prettiest girl he's ever seen. It's frankly untenable. He doesn't understand how she can go about her day. Eating and sitting and driving like she was just anyone else.
“Pick something,” she says, nodding at her CDs.
He tries to hone in on something. Takes the temperature of the car cabin; was it the tone of Evanescence or Brian McKnight? He wishes she had some CCR or something. You could be fucking or fixing a stove with CCR on, and it would have been an appropriate soundtrack for the moment.
“You pick,” he says, a cop out.
“No, I'm taking you out.” She smiles at the road. The windows are down, and her hair is basking in it. “Passenger princess privileges.”
Abbot supposes he should feel like a princess. This Corolla might as well be a pumpkin. He's an average sized man, he shouldn't feel like filling in a pie, in a car meant to seat five people.
He shuts his eyes. Runs his index finger along the edges of the discs, four, five. Half a smile when he reads what's scrawled on the fifth.
“Sarah McLachlan it is.” He ejects the current CD, pushes Sarah in. “Ready to cry?”
Samira laughs with white teeth, her tongue peeking through. A strand of hair gets caught on her lip. Her blunt-nailed hand goes to the volume knob. “Can you ever really cry while blasting a song?”
“Try me.”
The lilting piano comes through indeed fucking loud. The poor car's speakers buckle, the windows are all the way down as they drive on side streets in summer rush hour. It's absurd. It's an inhaling sort of fun, replenishing.
“Ja-ack!”
He's never going to forget how she says it. An exclamation, stretched to two syllables, jaw falling, lips upturned, her perfect teeth. And her eyes. Moving from the road, risking it all, because he had started to sing.
Ja-ack!
A punch to his arm.
You're good! You're so good!
He met her underground.
It was a place that many associated with the dead, six feet under, pushing up daisies—but Abbot knew that the dead and dying could be found in the brightest sunshine. This particular day had been gray. Not that it mattered. People screamed the same under any sky.
She wore jeans and a striped t-shirt. He was in body armor. He pushed her into the flow of traffic in the hallway away from the danger, like salmon upstream. “Go,” he told her, before running the other way.
He had nearly done it. Cleared the hallway. Until he realized she had followed him toward the screams, fucking hell—
“I have to help—”
“No, you fucking don't,” he had barked at her. A young girl with a black and white view of the world. You're not saving it.
“I'm a med student,” she told him.
And I don't know how many gunmen there are.
When you’re underground, there’s one way up, and the same way down. Abbot heard the echoes in the second stairwell, the slam of the door opening against the wall, and cursed just before her fresh scream pierced his air.
Her left leg buckled, the blood blooming already on blue denim, too high. He went. Covered her body, took her down to the ground. In the air, his hand moved on its own. Muscle memory. Cradled her skull so it didn't shatter on the floor.
He felt something on his shoulder before he felt his knuckles crack against the tile. He ignored it all.
Go, he told himself. It was all he ever really needed to tell himself.
And he went.
Through one, two sets of doors, laid the closet of a computer lab. There were reams of paper, wires and boxes with lights giving off heat in the tight space. If evil were playing the numbers game, they wouldn't bother with this place. Abbot set her down on the dusty floor before closing the door.
The lights surrounding them bled colors: yellow, green, blue, and red, red, red.
He crouched beside her. “What's your name?” he said, low, under his labored breath.
“Samira,” she whispered. Pretty. It suited her, and the curly hairs that framed her wide open eyes.
“I'm Jack. Samira, I have to check your wound on your leg, alright?”
“Yes, but I can do that myself.”
He ignored this. Worked with half his senses. His ears were peeled. The door slams grew further away. He dressed the shallow-enough wound with efficiency. The people they both cared about were on the other side. There was a piece of gum stuck to the floor near her leg where he had cut open the cuff of her jeans. 5 Gum, he could smell it. The ad played in his head from late night channel-surfing memory.
“You'll be alright, Samira,” he said. He got to his feet. Wiped the sweat from his brow. “Stay along this wall. Do not move until you get the all clear. I need to go help others.”
“Please,” she said.
“I'm sorry.”
“I meant—please go,” she said from her position, far below him, a single jerk off her upturned chin. It was not quivering. And for the first time, he had wondered if he'd read someone wrong. He stepped back. He had done his due diligence. Every ounce of his training joined the cacophony in his mind—go, go, go.
“I'll come back for you,” he heard himself say before he did go. “I'll come back for you, Samira.”
Where the fuck are we?
“How do you know this place?” he asks instead.
“It's the fanciest place I have access to.”
Fancy wouldn’t be the word that came to mind for him when he looks around the bar. Kitschy, maybe. Or gimmicky. A faux speakeasy. Themed. The decor is large, cheap veneers. He can just smell how overpriced the cocktails will be. They’re waiting in a goddamn line, with a gaggle of young people dressed in mall-bought clothing. He feels like he hasn’t lined up for something in years.
“Do I seem like someone who needs fancy?” Abbot says. There’s only one acceptable answer.
“It's proportional to the thanks I want to convey.”
“Then take me to fucking Dunkin or something.” Her eyes are round, confused. “You don't need to thank me at all,” he explains. “It was my job. I also wanted to.”
The light flickers. Her arms cross over her chest. She’s wearing a white cotton dress, and it’s beautiful on her.
“You took a bullet for me,” she says.
“I took it for myself.”
Samira huffs a sigh. Juts out her chin. “It’s not just that day. It’s every day since.”
“What do you mean?”
Though Abbot’s certain he already knows what she means. It’s been haunting him for nearly as many days as have passed since he met her. It’s a terrifying experience, to know Samira Mohan. The every day with her is shaking to the core. It’s turned him inside out, viscera on display, his heart beating vulgar and bloody.
Her eyes dart around. The young people around them are loud. Her shoulders shift, and he sees her wind her arms around herself tighter.
“What do you mean, ‘what do you mean’?” she says. Her voice is low, strained. “The phone? Talking on the phone? We don’t even schedule it, it just happens—” Samira shakes her head. Mortification is setting into her features, and his heart thuds to the fucking cheap floor. “Oh no. Oh no. Am I being an idiot?”
“No, God no. God, I'm sorry.” He wants to tell her about Latent Asshole Syndrome. She doesn’t know what that is, and he doubts she would or should care. He leans closer to her, his mouth at her temple, lens focus on her, the noise around them blurring. “Samira. You’re not. Believe me.”
“Then what—” He watches her bite the thin skin of her lip. It’s fascinating seeing it this close. “Where do you—what do you even want?”
“You don’t want to hear the answer to that, Samira.”
It was an honest reply, but the reaction it elicits surprises him. Her arms unwind. Her eyes are heavier. He feels the full weight of them through her hand on his forearm, just below where he had rolled the sleeves to his elbow.
“Then show me,” she whispers.
Fuck.
“Samira. It's Jack.”
He rested his forehead briefly on the door frame, collecting himself against the cool, clean metal.
“Samira. Open up. You're safe. Your friends are safe now.”
The door opened, but she was not standing in the center frame. Her body hugged the wall, shielded from whatever lay beyond the door. Good instincts. He was rethinking her again. She stepped to the side with a limp.
“You're hurt, Jack.”
He didn't think so. “It’s not my blood. How's your leg?”
“Your shoulder,” she insisted. Not easily distracted, he supposed.
He took a step back when she actually put her hands on him. Full contact on his bloody kit. He stared at her. She lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender, but said, “Turn around.”
Something must have possessed him in that moment, because he did. Was he hypnotized? Abbot wondered the instant his back was to her. She tugged at his collar, and he obeyed like a dog, undoing it so she could expose his shoulder.
“Do you have a suturing kit?” she asked, soft and serious.
He came to his senses, thank God, and shrugged his shirt back into place. “I can get fixed up by a colleague, Samira.” He turned to her. “Get a hold of your family. Tell them you’re safe, but you’re going to the hospital to take care of your leg and to get checked out.”
Samira nodded her understanding. “I’m not sure where I’m going to find a phone,” she said. “I’m guessing all the school phones are tied up.”
He rethought it for a moment. Or maybe he stopped thinking. He handed over his own cell phone.
“Make it quick, I don't have unlimited minutes.”
He didn't know why he said that. Latent Asshole Syndrome, maybe, that's what Robby would have said. She thanked him anyway, and made it quick.
He made sure she got to the same hospital he was heading to, though he didn’t see her again. It was fine. It was go, go, go—no room for hypnosis. She was neatly wrapped up in ribbon. A pretty package, closed to him. It was fine. He didn’t expect gifts or thanks from this life.
He didn't see it until after he got home and fed the cat, flipping open his phone to check the time.
There it was on the little screen. Samira Mohan she had inputted as her first name. Leg Wound as her second. He had laughed. As if he could ever fucking forget the prettiest girl he had ever seen.
Mohan, he thought, wondering what language she was speaking on the phone.
“Is this more your speed?”
Samira gestures around them. At the plain, stainless steel vent hoods and gas grills, banchan, soju, and raw meat.
Abbot half-smiles. “Yeah. This is more my speed.”
“It's mine too,” she admits.
“Good.”
He adds mushrooms to the grill. They sizzle on contact. The smoke is settling in their hair. They'll need to roll down the windows again on their way to their next destination, wherever it may be, to get the smell off their skin.
Though he's uncertain if he wants to wash himself of this. The way he's serving her. The way she's accepting it.
It's not a film of grime, he thinks. It's a dusting of powdered sugar. A soft blanket of snow.
He pours her more green tea. Steam swirls up, adding to the smoke. Maybe it was that—a haze. Wool drawn over his eyes. Something like that. He pushes the cup toward her across the table. Maybe no metaphor is needed.
He touches her wrist. Maybe it’s just that. The brush of two of his fingers over the dainty bone, and the real way her eyes seek his through it all.
“Hello, Samira speaking.”
“Hey, it's Jack.” His voice was a little rough from his nap. He sandwiched the phone between his ear and shoulder as he pulled a shirt off a hanger.
A crackle on the line. “Hi Jack.” She sounded quite shy over the phone. He remembered how she had put her hands on him so easily, ready to turn his body to treat him. Perhaps she felt more at ease when she was acting as a provider. He could certainly understand that.
“How's your leg?” he asked, the easy question.
“Good. How's your shoulder?”
“I forgot it's even there.”
“The body part or the bullet?”
“Bullet’s out, actually. They recommended it.”
“Good, that's what I would have done.”
He laughed. “If I had allowed it?”
“Yes.”
He put her on speaker phone so he could pull the shirt over his head.
“So you found my number.” She said it almost too casually. It was charming. He casted her an amused smile she could not see.
“I did, Mohan,” he said.
A beat.
“What are you up to right now?” she asked. Another crackle. He wondered if this was a landline. Was she lounging on the couch, twirling a cord in her hand?
“I'm getting ready for work.”
“Now? You work night shift?”
“Yup.”
“A night owl, then?”
Abbot shrugged. “I prefer it. But I can be awake any time, anywhere that I'm needed.”
“That's admirable.”
He made a non-committal sound. Pumped some product in his hands to scrunch into his hair. “Samira, I called to let you know that you can talk to me or someone else whenever you need it. This was a lot for you to go through.”
“I barely got hurt, there were so many people who suffered more,” she said, predictably.
“You don't need to lose a leg to have PTSD from war.”
More silence. He hoped it was because she was absorbing what he said.
“I have to go, but remember that, alright?” He fastened his watch. “Save this number.”
“I will. Have, um. Have a good night at work.”
He picked the phone back up and pressed it to his ear.
“Good night, Samira.”
He hadn’t intended it. His voice was still gravelly from stolen sleep. The lowered volume to accommodate the closeness of the microphone. The good night of it all, the last words offered to a person at the end of the day, reserved for the last person they see—it was devastatingly intimate.
Jack Abbot was no coward. So he had no earthly explanation for why he snapped his cell phone shut with a sound so sharp the cat slunk from the bedroom, before he could hear what she might have said back.
The temperature is cooling. The sun had slipped below the horizon at some point as they were eating.
They’re walking the meal off in the neighborhood near the restaurant. There’s no view of the river, no twinkling lights. Just the odd street lamp throwing them in sharp relief.
“I feel like I’m just chatting at you,” she says eventually.
His hands are slung in his pockets. He doesn’t talk much with his hands anyway. “I like listening to you.”
“Even though it’s mostly related to medicine?”
He ponders this. It’s true, she likes to tell him about whatever interesting thing she had learned that day, or asks him for his opinion about a method or procedure. He supposes that he had chalked this up to the fact that he usually called her when she was immersed in her studies. This is the first time they are face to face for a chat. And it had been much of the same, he recalls. But there was the small slip here and there, on the phone and tonight. Like how she despised spiders but has never killed one. Her foolproof method involving junk mail and a deli meat tupperware for catch and release. How she learned color theory to combat dark circles around her eyes.
And her father. Only a few weeks had passed since she told him about her father. But it seemed to make everything else click.
“It could be anything,” he says. “I want it to be anything.”
It’s hard to discern her facial expression in the dark. He’s still learning the signs of her mouth, the way she sets her shoulders. But he’s familiar with her breathing. Her little inhales, stops, starts, crackle on the phone. The way she hums through the speaker. The way she stretches his name and lays it out under the sun to cure.
He wants to set his ear right up to her mouth to hear it. His hand at her waist, tell me.
“Okay. Alright.” Another step. “I'm starting to worry that it's hard for me to talk about anything else. Like I chose this path, right? I have to go all in. Every sacrifice has been made for me. So I sacrificed too.” She stops in her tracks. “It's been a long time since I've been out with friends. I don't even know if I have friends anymore.”
He raises a brow. “Your CDs. From friends, right?”
“Yes. And a lot of boys with crushes.” She exhales. “But nothing after what, 2003? God, has it been that long?”
Abbot wishes he had noticed this. Usually he's sharp like that, needling out the details. He turns to face her fully.
“Let me tell you right now—this job can't be your whole life. Hang onto your friendships. Forge new ones. Go home to something.”
“What do you go home to?”
“My cat.”
Samira laughs.
“Jack, I can count. I know how many hours you work. When. Where. Gym, therapy. And in those other spare hours…it's me. It's me, isn't it? You call me.”
“Yeah. I call you.”
“But you don't have unlimited minutes,” she says, half-laughing again. He still can’t quite make out her face. But he knows her laugh.
“I do now. I got it.”
“For me?”
His hands leave his pockets. “Yeah, Mohan. For you.”
“My mom has been complaining that I’ve been tying up the phone line. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to wait for my mom to finish a phone card to India so I can use the Internet for schoolwork.”
“India,” he had repeated. He peeled back the lid on the can of cat food. “What language do you speak?”
“A few. But mostly Tamil, at home.” A small shuffling sound, and he imagined that she was rearranging herself on her chair. Maybe tucking her legs underneath her. “Are you going to keep calling me like this?”
“Yeah, why?” he said evenly.
“It might be time for me to get a cell phone.”
So he bought her a cell phone. He had to fax over a credit card authorization form to the phone store from the Pitt, glancing around like he was stealing, cause he didn’t have a goddamn fax machine at home. It wasn't the most expensive or smallest one, and she was to pay the monthly bill, so he wasn't her sugar daddy. He wasn't a gross old man paying to hear the sound of her voice at his beck and call.
It started to become muscle memory. Keys in the valet, hand in his pocket, withdrawing his phone while flipping it open. Speed goddamn dial. Robby would never let him hear the end of it, if only he knew. No one knew. Except Abbot suspected they did. Robby made a conspicuous comment about Abbot’s lack of frown when he left his shift. And though Samira told him that her mother didn’t speak English, she also told him that her mother asked questions.
“What did you tell her?” he said. It was Christmas Eve, and a legitimate inquiry.
“Uh.” A breath of laughter. A little nervous. “A friend.”
“Yeah, Mohan? A friend?” He smiled to himself. He didn’t mind it. It was probably the best case scenario. He patted his cat’s head, before getting to his feet. “I’m heading out now. Enjoy your dinner. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, friend.”
“Good night, Jack,” her voice said into his ear, a shot to the gray matter; and he finally knew exactly what he sounded like that first time he ended their call.
“Turn right,” Abbot says.
His hand reaches across the meager center console of her Corolla. His hand swallows her knee.
She takes the corner sharp. He laughs under his breath. Maybe it’s an unkindness to laugh at her, when his palm kneads her bare thigh.
“Don’t kill us, Mohan."
“Don’t distract me.”
He squeezes his hand, just once. Show me, he reminds her as his fingers indent flesh. You told me to do it.
One eye shut. An arm barred over his headache as he stretched out on the couch. The phone wedged between his bicep and ear. It was a holiday today, he forgot which. “You're going to be a fun one for your future attending.”
“What if it's you?”
He had laughed.
“Lucky me, then.”
“What’s your cat’s name?”
Abbot stands still, watching his cat melt into Samira's touch. It's a sight he's never really given thought to. She's existed in the airwaves for so long, it's not occurred to him that it would have been possible for her to pet his cat. “His name is Orange.”
She furrows her brow. “He’s black.”
“He’s an orange one on the inside.”
She peeks up at Abbot. “What are you on the inside?”
He snorts. “Again. Don't want to know.”
Samira doesn't seem to like this. She's frowning as she straightens up from the kitchen floor. Orange slinks around her ankles. “Why do you get to learn about me, but I don't get to learn about you?”
“Because you're lovely, Samira.”
“You're lovely too,” she insists.
“I'm not saying I'm shit. I'm good. Good at a lot of things, good for a lot of things. But you're just fucking lovely.”
She approaches him. “You are good,” she says. Touches his bicep, like she's testing the meat there. He's in damn good shape, especially for his age. He knows this. But for the first time in decades, he's nervous for a test. His lips are thin. He touches the tendrils of hair at her cheek to ground himself, and his muscles flex under her fingertips.
“You're—”
He snaps to attention. What? I'm what?
Her throat bobs. Her cheek is hot to the touch.
“You're a very attractive man.”
The stubble on his chin scrapes the top of her head as he brings her closer. Her hand moves to his chest, fingers spread over the pectoral muscle there.
“Is it okay that I said that?” she whispers into his collar.
Shit. “Yes.”
“What do I have to say for you to kiss me?”
His eyes shut. He's good at control. His voice is even. Hands steady as he holds her. But he cannot control the cadence of his heart. It's not for lack of trying. Those times when he's standing on the edge, mismatched feet, arrhythmic pulse and hard blinks of his eyes—he wishes quieting his heart was as easy as slipping his hands in his pockets. It's a wishbone-snap sort of wish. Fantasy, indulgence, and a little too much truth in the privacy of silence. But he's never been the type to have wishes granted, and Samira’s got her beautiful head and divine ear pressing right over the damn thing. She's doing this on purpose, he thinks, vicious. She's fucking mean.
“What do I have to say?” she murmurs.
He can smell the salt of sweat on her skin. He realizes he doesn't want it to be washed off, sloughed off by a shower. He wants to lick it off her, dirty his tongue. Take a bite from her lip, inhale the smoke from her hair until his lungs are black.
“Ja-ack.”
“Yeah,” he says suddenly. “That's it, that's fucking it—”
It's rushed. A small sound in her throat, his kiss perhaps a bit too messy, bruised. His hand moves to the side of her face, tilting her jaw, opening her to him. And he takes. Ravenous, he takes.
She bites back. He wrenches from her. His name escapes her in a gasp.
“You asked what I wanted,” he says. Rough, jagged from his chest.
“Yes.” She nods, almost mindlessly. She's somehow bright-eyed and unfocused all at once.
“I'm going to fuck you.”
A whimper. “Oh my God.”
“I've given a lot of thought to how I'm going to fuck you.” He pushes his knee between her legs, hitching her dress up. Hands on her ass, squeezing, dragging her cunt along his thigh.
“Oh my God, Jack.”
He buries his face in her neck. He’s always seeked comfort in darkness. “Will you allow it?” he says, harsh against her soft skin.
“I—yes, oh my God—”
He grins, like the honest shit-eating grin of a kid who finally got what he wanted. He's glad she can't see it. His fingers find her zipper, and he pulls. Her white dress falls from her shoulders, crumpling to a pathetic heap on the ground. She has some sort of strappy, flimsy bra—it's gone. Tugs at her thin cotton underwear, and it joins her dress on the floor.
He's generous to himself. Allows his eyes to rake over her, note the moles and scars he wanted to kiss. Especially the one on her leg, above the knee. “People must tell you every day that you're gorgeous.”
Samira seems self-conscious. The imbalance in their state of dress must have been a strong taste in her mouth. She starts toward him, her hands reaching out. He shakes his head.
“Walk, baby.” He nods toward his bedroom. “There.”
He watches her legs, the muscles working. She has the perky ass of a twenty-something year-old. He can't wait to get his hands on it again. He pulls his shirt over his head as they cross the threshold into his room.
“On the bed,” he said, flicking on the lamp on the nightstand.
She crawls onto the bed, ass in the air. He does reach to smack a cheek, unable to resist. She makes a sweet little sound, and he watches her face closely as she looks up at him. Eyes like fucking stars. Like he was something to behold. She tries to touch him again, and he closes his hand around her wrist.
“Wait for me.” He directs her hand down, sliding it past her stomach. “Show me first, baby. Show me how wet you are.”
Her legs fall open as her lips part. His hands start on his belt. Her fingers are so small. Her eyes close briefly as two fingers disappear into her cunt. He's so fucking hard as he unzips his slacks.
“Show me.”
She holds up her hand. Her fingers are shiny in the lamplight. He pushes his thumb between the knuckles of her fingers, prising them apart, and her sticky wetness stretches between them.
“Fuck. Yes, baby.” He sucks them into his mouth, efficient, pulling them away clean. He drops her hand back on the bed. “Good girl.”
“Ja-ack.” Whiny this time. Like she was fucking spoiled.
“You're not going to get your way every time you say my name like that.” But he pushes his pants down anyway. He's been hard for so much of this evening, he needs some relief. “I'm going to take this off.”
He reaches down to take off his prosthetic. Samira's eyes follow his hands, and her jaw drops.
“You didn't—”
“It's never come up,” he says, and it's the truth.
“I did—I did notice your limp,” she admits, a little breathless as he braces himself over her.
“Of course you did.” He knees her legs apart. “I would've been disappointed in you if you hadn't.”
“How do you keep your faith?”
Abbot yawned. He probably should have extended his nap right up to when he needed to leave the house after the past 24 hours he had, but his body had awoken him at the usual time anyway. It's time for your daily bread, it seemed to tell him. Call her for your daily fill.
“I don't.”
“In people, I mean,” she said, and he supposed she knew him well enough to clarify.
“I mostly find it in the people I work with.”
“What if the people you work with are the ones making you lose faith?” she said. She did sound dispirited.
“How are they doing that?”
A sigh. “You know what happened with my dad.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do.”
“And a lot of people showed their true colors to me after 9/11.”
“Right.”
“And it's not just that—I mean, that's a huge part of it. That racial disparity in care. But just broader than that. Our—our collective goldfish memory. The shooting was on the news cycle for two days, maybe. And then it moved onto the next thing. And it's like we just drop our empathy and have to pick it back up. But every time, a little bit gets left behind. This can't be normal.”
“It's not right. But I do think it's normal, in the sense that it's the norm.”
Another sigh. It's slow. “How are you still doing this?”
They didn't often acknowledge their ages. Whether it was by chance or choice, he couldn't say. “After all these years?”
“Yes.”
He drew a hand over his face. He was still in bed. The sun setting over crumpled linen sheets. He had been waking up alone for close to a decade now. But for the first time, he felt lonely in that fact. He wanted to be face to face with her for this conversation. He needed her to see his sincerity. She knew he often deflected. But not now, not with this.
“It’s an ongoing, active choice. I won’t lie, I’ve lost sight at times. But I choose to see it again. I think it is possible to learn something more than once, you know? I learned it that first time I knew what I was good for. I figured it out when I met Robby. I found it again when I met you.”
The small sound that came through his phone seemed involuntary. Like it was pushed from her stomach. The expression of hearing something that was felt deeply.
“Samira.” He pressed his head back into his pillow. Aching in the newfound dark. “I’m not going to be the last person to say this to you. When I met you, you saved my life.”
“Jack, don’t—”
“You’re going to hear it. God, you’re going to hear it, you're so fucking good—and I need you to hear it from me. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.” She sounded like she was underwater. A sharp inhale.
“Are you crying?”
“Yes.”
He should have done it then. Multiple things, actually. Run to her, then hold her, then tell her. That order.
“Oh Jack, the time—you have to go.” A sniffle. “I’m sorry, I'm making you late.”
“No,” he said. There was a fracture in his voice. It should have been the sign of something broken, and wrong. Run, hold, tell.
“Jack, I’m okay. You need to go. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“No,” he said mindlessly.
“Go.”
Go, go, go.
He went.
And for the first time, he hated himself for it.
She has her hands in his hair. Legs wrapped around his waist. Cunt spread, and rubbing up and down his shaft. He moans softly.
She's flushed. “I like how vocal you are.”
He snakes his arm around her. “You like it when I talk to you?”
“Yes. But also your moans.” A shudder radiates through her body. “They're…gorgeous.”
She leans in to kiss him. Her taste is still on his tongue, dripping down his chin. His other hand moves to his cock, pushing it so the next movement of her hips makes her sink onto it.
“Oh fuck.” It's explosive against his lips, louder than she's been in his bed so far. She slumps a little into his arms, breathing hard, and he rubs a soothing circle on the nape of her neck beneath the curtain of her hair.
“Good girl. Take it.”
She sinks another shuddering inch.
“Fucking hell,” he says through gritted teeth. “Take it, baby.”
He pushes a palm down on her stomach, as if she couldn't feel him enough—she gives him a pathetic moan. He takes pity on her, and allows her to just sit on his cock for a moment. She’s clenching around him. Tight, wet heat, leaking down to the base of his cock. Her hips twitch, and she curses into his mouth again. He smiles.
“Is that a good spot right there?”
“Mhmm.”
“Go on, then, baby. Fuck me.”
Her fist tightens painfully in his hair. He bares his teeth at the tension on his scalp. His hand cradles her head, pulls her back to force her to meet his eyes to tell her, “If you’re going to do that, I need to hear you.”
She fucks herself down onto him, and she does cry out. “Good girl.” He imagines her knuckles are white against his skull. “You don’t even know do you. So many days. I thought of you riding me like this.” He groans as she grinds her hips with another desperate sound. “Had to ask so many goddamn MS3’s to repeat themselves. Never had to check myself so much.” He slaps her ass, earning him a yelp. “Fuck you, baby. You’ve fucking ruined me.”
He lifts her off of him, throwing her on the bed.
“Ja-ack—!” She truly sounds miffed this time. Her hand reaches down blindly toward the mess between her legs. “I was so close—”
He swats her hand away. He’s already made her come twice, she could stand to wait for her third. He swallows her moan when he presses into her again. He grunts, hitching her leg around him. Cradles her head, gentler this time. Strokes her cheek, kisses her lips. He likes being with her. Present and listening. Carving a space for himself inside her, so she can also know what it feels like to exist with another heartbeat dictating your own.
Second ring. She usually picked up on the first. Third ring. She hardly ever waited this long—
“Hi Jack.”
“Samira.” It spilled from him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you yesterday.”
A little laugh, like he’s being silly. “I told you to go.”
“Fuck that. Are you okay?”
“Do you trust me?”
“Almost exclusively,” he told her.
She giggled. It was a balm, but he didn’t stop aching. He supposed he’d long missed the window to prevent this ache, of having her soul shoved up alongside his black and bruised heart. He’d have to live with this pain. It was fine.
“I’m okay, Jack,” she said, enunciating clearly. “I just had a bad day, that’s all.”
“Yeah.” She was going to have another one eventually. The thought irked him.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“Nothing to note.”
He wouldn’t be able to recall their conversation that day. It was ordinary. He had probably made her laugh, and she had probably made him think. A conversation like the hundreds they had already shared.
But he could never forget how he ended it.
“Good night, baby,” he had told her, knowing he could never take it back.
“That's fucking insane. No, don't stop, keep doing that, baby. Shit, that's—”
He cuts off with a groan. His forehead meets her slick shoulder, she’s gasping as he fills her. Abbot thinks he just might die like this. Coming so hard and for so long, with her breasts pressed against him, that he almost starts laughing from how sensitive he is.
He rolls her onto her back before he pulls out with a curse. Her hair is an appropriate mess of a halo around her head. She looks up at him, glassy-eyed.
“Is this where you call me from?” she says, still breathless.
“Sometimes.”
“Did you ever touch yourself when we were on the phone?”
He raises a brow. “No.”
“Oh.” She turns her face, her knees closing together like she’s suddenly ashamed that her cunt is leaking him.
“Fucking hell, Mohan. When,” he demands.
“Not every time,” she protests. She curls up on her side, but he moves to where she moves. Lays down next to her, his hand at her neck. Her pulse is hammering against his palm. “Not too many times.”
“When, baby.”
“Just when you sounded extra sleepy,” she says in a rush. He wants to laugh, but wants to keep hearing about this more. She tries to bury her face in the sheets, but he gets his thumb under her jaw and keeps her with him.
“It’s fine. I like that.”
“Your voice does this thing,” she mumbles.
“What does it do?”
“I don’t know. It’s just quiet.”
He kisses her forehead. “Mhmm.”
“It cracks,” she blurts out. “I love it, Jack.”
Abbot pulls her to his chest, letting her hide. They need to clean up. Their skin is tacky, spit-slick and cum-smearing, but it doesn’t particularly bother him at the moment.
“You're so easy to love, Samira.” He lets it be slow, the way he tucks her hair behind her ear, so his words can seep in. “It was so fucking easy.”
“You have tomorrow off, right?”
He stopped spraying Windex. Leaned against his kitchen counter. The coolness of the granite was welcome in the trickling heat. “Yeah.”
“I realized I never thanked you.”
He didn't know what she was referring to. Her cell phone? “I'm sure you did.”
“No, I'm pretty sure I didn't. I lost you, at the hospital.”
He half-heartedly wiped at the window. She was referring to the day of the shooting. The beginning. It didn't escape his notice that in order to lose him, she had to look for him.
“I'll pick you up tomorrow. The usual time. Take you out.”
The usual time. He was a habit for her. He fucking enjoyed that thought.
“Fine. I'll allow it,” he said.
“Great.” He swore he knew what her voice sounded like through a smile. “Look out your window for a blue Corolla.”