[for Jayden] cara mio addio

[lowtohigh]

She wakes up most mornings fully convinced of the fact that she's done with silly, stupid mistakes. She ends a statistically significant number of days having managed to maintain that in the most important arenas.

But it's not every day.

And it's certainly not every night. There are still nights when the idea of sitting at home and doing work drives her up a wall--when the idea of going to see her brother for a 'classy' evening of wasting money on something 'useful' like the arts feels just as terrible as sitting home alone. There are nights when she asks the driver to wait around the corner and pretend he doesn't know where she's going so she can actually breathe deep something other than the rigidity of the life she's been building since Elisha returned and got her back on track.

There can't be anything so wrong with it, surely. It rarely, if ever, bleeds back over into her days. She always drags herself out of bed in the morning, whether she'd fallen into it at 10pm or 4am the night before. She always sits through classes and shows up for work with the same fierce, determined smile. She barely ever thinks of what might have happened the night before once she's got herself set for forward motion again.

Admittedly, sometimes she gets texts at work from numbers she definitely hadn't gotten at the university or the lab or any of her brother's little get-togethers. Jayden's number certainly didn't come from any vetted point of contact. It surprises her, really, how easy it is to extend something of her daytime self to a nighttime number. It's not a line she's really ever blurred before.

But he's coming to the aquarium. She's invited him. Almost like sleepwalking, she's explained to her supervisor that she wants a floor shift out in the actual building rather than holed away doing research. Idly scanning the crowd at the building's tall cement entrance, she wonders vaguely if she's even recognizable like this--flat shoes, hair tied tightly back, barely a stitch of makeup on and her wits obviously about her.

It's entirely possible he'll just walk straight past her. There are large signs for the penguins near the door, after all.

Comments

[immigrantpunk]

[He sits across from her pulls their orders out of the bag. He slides hers over to her and unwraps his own burger.]

Uhhhh... hmm.

[He bites into his burger and chews, then laughs a little nervously.]

I didn't know the English word for "frying pan" until I was like twelve.

[lowtohigh]

[She shouldn't make fun of language learners. She knows deeply she shouldn't further impede confidence in second and third and so on languages.

So she manages not to laugh, but she can't quite hide the bright smile on her lips. Biting down on the lower one doesn't mitigate it much.] I mean-- It's not a super important word. How d'you say it in Russian?

[immigrantpunk]

[Yeah, he notices.]

It's okay, you can laugh. It's skovoroda.

[He navigates the syllables with native ease, then shrugs helplessly.]

It was just one of those things that never really came up when I was a kid, you know? Seems like such an easy thing to know, but I didn't even realize till I was at a friend's house and we needed one for something. I kept going, "Where's the skovoroda?" and my friend kept looking at me like I was crazy until I was finally like, "That's not English, is it?"

[He laughs again, because what is even going on with the bilingual brain, he doesn't know.]

[lowtohigh]

[It's a kinder laugh than not, at least, still half-masked by ducking her head for a moment.]

Skovoroda. [The repetition has an obvious accent to it, of course; just slightly not the accent her English-speaking voice has.] I guess it happens. Hell did you need a frying pan for, though?

[immigrantpunk]

[He grins at her attempt.]

Not bad. I don't even remember. I think we were hungry. You can't really mess up scrambled eggs at any age, right?

[He takes another bite of burger.]

Okay, your turn. Embarrassing fact.

[lowtohigh]

Ugh. [Of course, she had no one to blame but herself for getting into this conversation. It always made her laugh, but it always inevitably got turned back.

And it was so hard to pick when it took so much effort to embarrass her.]

I'm... hm. I'm still a little afraid of the dark. I don't-- sleep well unless I have-- this little lion my dad gave me when I was three in bed with me. It's-- I don't know about embarrassing? But definitely guys have gotten awkward about it.

[immigrantpunk]

[Guys, huh? Jayden deliberately keeps chewing like that isn't a big deal, but he's suddenly hyperaware of the fact that no girls have seen the state of his bedroom as of yet.]

I dunno, I think that would depend on how cute it is.

[lowtohigh]

[It would come with time. It would probably also come with not being a teenager in his parents' house. Probably.]

Thank you. [Clearly points are being racked up left and right here.] For the record, it's adorable.

[immigrantpunk]

[One can only hope. He snorts.]

I'll have to take your word for it.

[His smile is a little mischievous.]

[lowtohigh]

[There might be some mistaking the slight quirk of her brow as something other than salacious. There's much less capability to mistake the slight lick of her lips, likely.

But then it's all lost in another bite of her burger.] What about you? What're you scared of?

[immigrantpunk]

[...He is so distracted by her lips he nearly misses her next question.]

Oh, um. I dunno. I try not to stress about too much. [He makes a face.] That's not a good answer, is it?

[lowtohigh]

Literally the worst answer you could give.

[Which means she's just going to keep staring at him intently, tearing off little bites of her burger to munch on until he comes up with something better.]

[immigrantpunk]

[Sigh.]

Failure. I'm afraid of not living up to what my parents wanted for me.

[He raises his eyebrows. Satisfied?]

[lowtohigh]

[Huh. Clearly a much better answer.

She takes a moment chewing, studying his features with quiet curiosity for a moment before giving a light bob of her head.]

What's that like?

[Not the usual question about fears, perhaps, but an entirely natural impulse in this case.]

[immigrantpunk]

[That is definitely not the response he was expecting.]

You mean you've never felt that way?

[He's jealous.]

It's, uh, I dunno. The pressure kinda sucks sometimes, I guess.

[lowtohigh]

[Her shrug is noncommittal, although the shift of her fingers to clutch absently at the thin chain around her neck--likely the least expensive thing she has on--is moderately uncomfortable. First dates have never felt like such a good time to get 'into' the issue, despite the direction she's so definitively steered the conversation all on her own.]

But doesn't it... I don't know. Give you a sense of-- purpose? Direction?

[immigrantpunk]

I mean, sure. But what if I screw it up? My parents sacrificed everything to bring me here so I could have a better life. If I let them down, what's the point of any of it?

[His dad died here, even. And his mom, in her worse moments, would blame the country as a whole. Maybe that's why she wanted to leave.]

You really don't get anything like this at home?

[lowtohigh]

[She can relate to that intellectually, at least. The nod of her head is much more understanding this time.]

I mean-- it's different, I think, when it's an aunt and uncle. Whenever Aunt Debbie says they'd be disappointed, it's still-- removed.

[Thankfully, it had taken Debbie years to realize that invoking her brother's disappointment was a much more successful strategy.]

Yours have to be proud, though. Mr American Dream.

[immigrantpunk]

[His expression falters. He doesn't usually automatically think someone must have two present parents. He knows all sorts of blended families, not to mention his own. There was just something about her, a white girl clearly of some sort of privilege, that he went ahead and assumed.

He lowers his head and shrugs.]

I dunno. My dad died a few years ago. It's hard to tell what he'd think.

[lowtohigh]

[They've definitely fallen out of the 'safe early conversation' area. Jayden doesn't seem to be backing down from it, so she squares her shoulders slightly to push through.

She also doesn't stop her hand from spidering slightly across the table, palm upright in offering without actually taking his hand.] I'm-- sorry.

[immigrantpunk]

[Jayden shrugs, in an effort to show her it's no big deal.]

It's okay.

[His hand does reach out and find hers, though. He threads his fingers through hers, meeting her eyes.]

I guess your parents aren't around either?

[lowtohigh]

[Holding hands is easier. Physical connection makes the heaviness seem a little less overburdening.]

Not since I was five. [It's something to shrug through definitively.] But here we are.

[Both fairly upright.]

[immigrantpunk]

Yeah.

[He squeezes her hand.]

Can I— what happened?

[Might as well ask.]

[lowtohigh]

Oh. [He's got to get points for directness. She's probably going to lose points for suddenly not quite being able to make eye contact. How can she help it that the end of her burger is so fascinating to look at?] Car crash.

[It's not an end that discriminates particularly.]

That's-- the whole story.

[immigrantpunk]

[Jayden swallows. That would do it. He knows what it feels like when it's over quick. One minute life was one way, and the next, it's completely different.]

Heart attack.

[He can't ask for an explanation from her and then not offer his own. He rubs his thumb along the back of her palm and shrugs, a bit helplessly. He never knows what else to say.]