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Samira’s phone dies at 11:07 a.m. on a Tuesday, somewhere between the resort’s lobby fountain and the little desk that’s allegedly “Concierge Services” and is, in practice, a teenager in a horribly tacky printed shirt whose eyes are already glazed over.
It’s not like she’s asking hard questions. She’s asking perfectly valid questions, like where’s the nearest pharmacy? Which beach isn’t full of screaming children? And please, for the love of God, is there a decent cafe within walking distance that sells actual coffee and not the sad, pre-ground packets in her room?
“Ma’am,” the teenager says, with the sullen air of someone who has never been responsible for another living thing’s bodily integrity, “everything you need is right here. That’s kind of the point.”
The point, Samira wants to say, is that she isn’t even supposed to be here. The point is that if she had known her mother was going to sell her childhood home and leave the country with her new lover on a year long cruise, she would have arranged something more dignified than a forced sabbatical in a dinky little resort with all-you-can-drink wristbands. The point is that she’s spent the last decade doing everything on a schedule, down to the hour, and now there are empty days opening in front of her and she has no idea what to pour into them.
Instead she takes in a deep, calming breath. This is supposed to be what they mean when they say self-care. This is what people (see: her program director, her mother, and insultingly enough, Robby) told her she needed after residency, in the same voice her college roommate always used to tell her to just stay positive and hydrated. She’d had to fight the urge to tell them all to go fuck themselves, which is what she once again so desperately wants to say as she turns away from the concierge desk.
She’s reminding herself that the poor kid is probably working minimum wage and that she probably just needs to sit with her laptop on a beach chair for a little bit when she sees him.
Jack Abbot’s standing at the edge of the lobby with a paper cup of coffee that, somewhat predictably, isn’t from the resort. This is the first thing she registers, because her brain has chosen to prioritize the details that will allow her to feel normal and in control. The second thing she notices is his bare forearms, sun glinting off the hair on them. His freckles are more pronounced, neck and temples an appalling shade of pink. She wants to slather him in her Korean sunscreen. He’s in a tight-fitting white T-shirt that she’a almost positive she’s seen peeking out from under his scrubs before.
Their eyes meet almost instantly, and they both freeze for a moment like deer caught in blinding, tropical sunlight. Then Jack’s face practically lights up, expression shifting from neutral into amusement.
“Mohan,” he says wondrously. Her name in his mouth sounds the same as always, but it’s jarring to hear it here, where it’s warm and bright and airy, perfumed by coconut and citrus rather than antiseptic and blood.
“Dr. Abbot,” she replies out of habit. “Are you lost?”
“C’mon, call me Jack,” he pleads, the corner of his lips lifting in a half-smile. “And no, I’m not lost. Not this time, anyway.”
Samira crosses her arms over her chest. “So what brings you here, Jack?”
Jack sighs, shoulders rising and falling in a defeated breath. “Emery.”
“Emery,” Samira repeats, starting to connect the dots. “Dr. Walsh, trauma surgeon? That Emery?”
“One of the many bad decisions my sister-in-law has ever made in her life,” he says resignedly, “was buying a timeshare.”
Samira gapes at him. “Emery Walsh is your sister-in-law. And she bought a timeshare.”
“Well, the best decision she's ever made was to marry my baby sister,” Jack grins. “Anyways, she got pitched some ‘investment opportunity’ at a charity gala years ago. She called me afterward and told me she’d been ‘spontaneous.’ I should’ve known.”
“You should’ve staged an intervention,” Samira says, horrified.
“I tried,” Jack says, though fondness is threaded through his voice at the memory. “She threatened to send me pamphlets in the mail. Actual mail, with physical paper. I backed down. Also, please don’t ever tell her you know we’re related. She’s threatened bodily harm before.”
Samira makes a sound that might be a laugh if she lets it be. She can’t afford to laugh, because laughing would mean she’s actually relaxing, and relaxing would mean acknowledging the strange relief blooming under her ribs at the sight of him.
She glances around, some part of her still expecting the hospital to materialize from the palm trees, for Gloria to jump out from behind a couple of fronds and pester her about whether she would be interested in speaking to the media about her research. But thankfully, all she can see are tourists in flip-flops. Further down, there’s an elderly couple in matching straw hats, girls in bikinis laughing loudly, a lone bartender lazily slicing limes. No one is bleeding. No one is calling her name. No one needs her attention emergently. Jack follows her gaze, then looks back at her knowingly.
“Don’t,” she says, too quickly.
He lifts an eyebrow. “Don’t what.”
“Don’t therapize me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were about to,” she insists.
Jack’s mouth twitches. “Okay,” he says, placating. “I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.”
Samira narrows her eyes. “That was not an agreement.”
“That was me being polite.”
“And are you usually this polite?”
Jack taps the rim of his coffee cup against his lower lip. “I can be,” he says. “On vacation.”
The word echoes in her ears. Vacation. It sounds silly and superficial, like it’s a choice they both wanted to make, something fun. A reward, even. As if Samira didn’t arrive here because the ground under her life shifted without warning and she felt her plans begin to slip through her fingers like the sand a few feet in front of her.
Her phone, dead in her hand, suddenly feels heavier. She curls her fingers around it until the edge digs into her palm. Jack wisely doesn’t comment on it, but he does ask, “Are you here alone?”
“Yes,” she says. “I mean, I sort of had a wrench thrown into my post-residency plans and now I’m just…figuring it out.”
Jack nods. “Yeah. I can see that.”
Samira shifts her weight, suddenly aware of how exposed she feels. Sweat glistens on her collarbones, pools in the dip between her breasts, makes her lower back hot and slippery. The oversized button down and shorts she’s wearing are supposed to be breathable, but she’s felt suffocated all day, trapped in what should be paradise with nothing but her own thoughts. And now, apparently Jack.
Jack glances toward the elevators, then back at her. “So,” he says, ever-so-casually, “what are the odds we pretend we don’t know each other?”
Samira’s lips part. Her tongue darts out to wet them, dimly registering that she needs chapstick and completely missing the way Jack follows the movement. “Why would we do that?”
“Because,” Jack says, and now there’s real humor in his voice, “if we acknowledge reality, the universe will remember we’re doctors and send something terrible to punish us.”
Samira snorts. The sudden movement surprises her; the ease with which it happens, even more so. She’s torn between being annoyed with him for pulling it out of her so easily and being grateful. She settles on neither, because choosing would mean feeling something fully, and she’s been skating around the edges of her own feelings for weeks.
“So let’s pretend,” Jack continues, “that we’re normal people.”
Samira cocks her head. “Normal people,” she repeats, testing the phrase out.
“Normal people,” Jack confirms. “Who do normal things. Eat meals at normal times. Sleep.”
His eyes flit over her again, lingering on her legs before blinking rapidly. “That last one may be hard for you.”
“Hey,” Samira warns, mock-offended.
He holds up a hand. “Right. Sorry. My bad.”
Samira takes a deep breath. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Jack echoes, and the space between them shifts minutely with this new agreement, fragile but oddly freeing. He gestures with his coffee cup toward the lobby doors. Outside, the air beyond the glass looks thick with sunlight, palm fronds moving in a steady breeze. The ocean flashes sapphire at the edge of the property.
“Okay, what’s our first normal-person activity?” he asks.
Samira thinks of her small, boring room. In it, she’d been alternating between mindlessly flipping through tv channels and staring at her mother’s last text message—Call me when you land!! Isn’t this exciting!! The nerve of her mother, to suddenly after years have the courage to fall madly in love again, to sell off Samira’s childhood home while avoiding all of Samira’s attempts to sit down and talk about it. Samira still hasn’t even properly met the guy she’s traveling with. She only knows a name: David Hart, who, after doing some extensive Google searching, admittedly has a nice smile.
She thinks of the way Jack has always been a person who makes choices in the moment and lives with the consequences afterward, which is part of why he both scares her and steadies her in equal measure. She’s sure he’d at least understand about her mother, being a widow and all. He usually can’t be seen without his wedding ring, though now that she’s looking for it, she notices a bright white strip of skin where it usually sits. Huh.
“Food,” she says hurriedly, throat suddenly dry. “I could eat.”
Jack nods. “I know a place.”
“You absolutely do not,” Samira says.
“I know of a place,” he corrects. “Which is basically the same thing.”
She smiles and shakes her head, but follows anyway. What does she have to lose?