45 Boxes of Books

It’s not until Jack Abbot starts loving her without her realizing that she learns: the things that are constant, important, burdens to her are things that the right person will accept openly. So she works with him. They read together, they discuss case studies together. Practice and save lives and lose others and look at each other across open chests until she’s bursting with admiration of him. Of them. Of who they become together, what they are capable of together.

Samira never thought she’d be the type of person Jack Abbot would want to marry. When she harbors what she thinks is a one-sided, silly work crush for him, she expects she’ll arrive to work one day and find that he’s gotten with someone his own age, a teacher or zoologist or park ranger, who he could come home to and shed his armor in front of. Who understood him in a way that was separate from his job. She never thought he’d end up confessing that he needs — that he loves — someone whose entrenchment in the field was something he so respected, admired. Was in awe of. Someone who understands his dedication to his job and feels it themselves. Someone who’s a workaholic in the same way that he is. Someone he wants to turn off with, who he wants to be able to get out of her own head. 

Samira never thought she’d be the type of person to wear a pretty dress — or really, even care about one in the first place. To her graduation ceremonies she usually opted for slacks and the pair of heels she’d had since freshman year and a blazer. Her own armor is burnished, scrubbed to a shiny chrome she can see her reflection in, but she’s never looked too hard at it.

It’s not until Jack Abbot loves her, and she thinks she feels the same, that she feels beautiful. Because he tells her repeatedly, insistently. Honestly. Whispers it into her ear and against her skin, everywhere, all the time. Writes it on the coffee cup he leaves her at handoff — have a good day, beautiful, xox — and tacks up photos from their date nights he’s had printed on his fridge. Samira smiling at him over a third glass of wine, dim candlelight glowing on her cheekbones. Samira posing for him in front of the tulips at Phipps Conservatory, a hand on her hip and a coy smile aimed at the man behind the camera. Samira rolling her eyes fondly, one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand held up half in protest towards the lens as he’d taken a photo of the moment during their drive back from Baltimore when the sun was shining in just the right way to bring out the gold flecks in her irises he swears only come out in the sunlight.

Samira thinks she’d like to be the type of person Jack Abbot would want to marry. When he says he loves her, she says it back. When he tells her she’s it for him, she says it back. When he gets down on one knee in his living room that’s become theirs over the past year or so, she’s saying yes before he can get the words out, crying before the tears can spill from his own eyes.

Samira doesn’t think she’ll be the type of bride to feel the need to change into a second look for the reception — that is, until she’s dress shopping with Trinity and Victoria, the three of them plied with just-enough complimentary champagne by the bridal stylist, and they pull a slinky, crystalline thing off a rack and shove her towards the fitting rooms. When she takes in how the rosettes highlight the dip of her collarbone, how the deep neckline accentuates her chest, how the material hugs her hips and flares into a skirt perfect for flouncing on the dance floor — when she realizes how wild Jack will go over all these things — when she steps out from the dressing room curtain to see Trinity and Victoria’s dropped jaws, she considers the dress already hers.

“Got something fun today,” she tells Jack when she’s home, languidly lounging herself over the couch, the buzz from the champagne still pleasantly fizzing in her chest.

“Yeah? You gonna let me see?”

“Nope,” she grins. “Not until April 10th at approximately 7:30 pm. It’s a surprise.”

•••

Jack had waited for her for years. A couple more months ‘til the wedding is nothing in comparison. But when the day arrives and he has to wake up in bed alone, has to start getting ready without her, has to wait hours until he can see her, it feels like the seconds have never passed slower.

But then he sees Samira walking down the aisle to him, her mom and stepdad on either side of her, and the time decompresses into something oozing, warm. Her smile is radiance itself, the glow of a woman in love. And it’s aimed at him. She’s a vision in black scrubs, and she’s even more of one in white satin. She is everything. There’s tears in his eyes, dripping down onto his tux already, probably.

“Hi,” she whispers over at him when she’s finally beside him. He’s waited for her for years. She’s here beside him now. It’s completely beyond his belief.

“Hey, you.” He takes one of her hands, links his pinky with hers, a half-second gesture that’s been a habit now for some time. Something they do at handoff and in bed and on the roof and in the grocery store and as they’re wheeling in a trauma. An I see you, I’m here.

“You’re breathtaking,” he adds, not caring about the minutes he’s taking up to drink her in.

“Well, don’t stop breathing on me now, can’t have you fainting at the altar.” Her eyes shine with mirth.

“Nothing’s getting me away from this altar ‘til I’m married to you, sweetheart.”

Dana’s barely finished saying the words, “You may now share your first kiss as husband and wife” when he’s got his arms curled around her waist, pulling her into a dip, her elbow hooked around his neck. The cheers are rowdy; her lips are lush, her white-peach perfume intoxicating.

They are married. They are ecstatic.

Jack is so elated, grinning and waving at everyone, shaking hands and clapping old friends and new on the back, his other hand clasped tightly in Samira’s as she does the same on their way back down the aisle. He is absolutely beside himself with happiness — so much so that he forgets all about the surprise he’s been so looking forward to for months until Samira slips out of her dinner chair next to his and says, “Be right back,” with a smile he’s a little scared of.

He’s so happy he barely notices the time passing until she slinks back into her spot beside him, smooth satin swapped for tactile beads under his fingertips. He turns from where he’s talking to his sister, leaned over the table, who takes one look at Samira and practically sashays away with a quip of “I’ll leave you two to it.” When his eyes land on her — Samira Mohan, his wife, the woman whose husband he now is — his heart stutters in a genuinely worrisome way.

Where her dress of earlier was high-necked, modest in the front and low-cut in the back, what she’s wearing now is the opposite: revealing, tantalizing, shining, flirtatious. 

In other words, fucking trouble. The way she’s beaming at him, the twinkle of her smile reflected in the thousands of miniscule crystals that make up her party dress, confirms as much.

“Well?”

“Well,” he repeats wryly.

“What do you think?” She pops one shoulder up to her ear in a little pose.

“Sweetheart, if I told you what I was thinking right now, we’d have to elope from our own wedding party.”

“And if I told you there’s nothing on underneath?” He groans and bends his head to press a kiss to her shoulder, hides a bite at the juncture of her neck behind the sweeping waves of her hair. 

“Just the reaction I’d been hoping for.”

Jack dances with her. Watches her dance. Drinks with her. Shoves cake gently into her open mouth and lets her smear the frosting all over his. Cries at everyone’s toasts. (Only sneaks away with her one time so he can run his wet tongue over one of her nipples peaking through the gleaming mesh and then the other, so he can pull the clinging fabric back just a few centimeters — enough so he can suck a bruise into skin that won’t be seen when they return to their party, so he can hitch her skirt up with one hand and use the other to pull one self-indulgent orgasm from her cunt dripping over his fingers, so he can be stunningly surprised when she gasps for him to keep going and comes again just seconds after the first. They only sneak away just the one time.) 

Jack watches some more as Samira twirls around the dance floor with their friends, light and color dancing in prismatic rainbow all over the dress that looks like it was made molded to her body. Takes shots with her and his nieces, ignoring his sister’s look of reproach from a few yards away. Sheds his tux jacket, unbuttons his shirt buttons, grins when Samira tugs him in closer to her by his suspenders. Dances with her again and again. He kisses her as her husband, spins her between his palms. She kisses him as his wife. 

He’d waited so long for her but has never forgotten how to savor the time he’s got, so he savors it.

When they’re in the car on the way back to their hotel, her legs draped over his lap and his ring finger tracing a lazy circle on the bare skin of her thigh where her skirt’s ridden up, she reaches over to link her pinky with his.

I see you. I’m here.