[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]

[No objections here! He turns and certainly seems to notice the transformation, his gaze wandering to the low cut of her shirt before meeting her eyes again, his smile a little sheepish.]

Hey. You look great.

[lowtohigh]

Right? [There's an amused laugh in her voice as she gives their hands a slight swing pointing them both toward the exit.] But honestly, it's not hard compared to the uniforms here.

[What with the uniforms being daytime respectable and all. So ridiculous.]

[immigrantpunk]

You make the uniform look good.

[He follows easily, threading his fingers in between hers.]

Where do you wanna go now?

[lowtohigh]

[He's got a very easy hand to hold. Her fingers are entirely content to settle comfortably in with his.]

Pretty sure you should take me to a fancy dinner.

[She's probably joking. Probably.]

[immigrantpunk]

[SHIT he hopes she's kidding. She's totally kidding, right? Even college students don't usually have much in their bank accounts. He tries to laugh it off, casting her a sly look.]

For what, seafood? Maybe some sushi?

[Totally appropriate after spending an afternoon at an aquarium.]

[lowtohigh]

[Welcome to the odd bubble of being associated with a trust fund kid, Jayden. It's an interesting disconnect to bump up against.

Thankfully, this isn't an actual bumping up for more than half a heartbeat. Her bright laugh probably makes that clear, even when underlined with her free hand coming to smack him lightly in the shoulder.]

Jerk. We should grab some burgers, though. It'll be a while before anywhere fun opens. Unless-- [She glances up at the buildings lining the street.] --is your dorm around here?

[immigrantpunk]

[Oh, the things they don't know about each other. Jayden has had wealthier friends, but he's not sure he's ever known a trust fund kid. Meanwhile, the biggest financial accomplishment in his family lately has been getting off food stamps.]

Burgers are good.

[Uh oh. Sweating intensifies.]

Uh. No, not really. You?

[lowtohigh]

Nah. [Her shoulders lift slightly, hand swinging his just a little as they stroll.] And I didn't ask for a ride today. Straight to burgers it is, I guess.

[Delaying the inevitable once again. Bullet dodging seemed to be Jayden's superpower today.]

[immigrantpunk]

Sweet. Let's do it.

[Yeah, he's lucky like that. The problem with trying to dodge bullets, though, is that it only takes one to ruin everything.]

What's good around here?

[lowtohigh]

I mean, there's an A&W just up a few blocks.

[Maybe there won't be any bullets. Maybe this is when the coasting starts.]

We can even have nice, sober conversation on the way.

[Or lots of bullets, maybe.]

[immigrantpunk]

[Ahahahahhahha. Ha.]

I can do sober conversations.

[They talked about fish for like ten minutes, he can totally do this.]

[lowtohigh]

[What could possibly go wrong? Nothing could possibly go wrong. Clearly nothing in the world could go wrong.]

Perfect. We'll start with embarrassing middle names and work up to secret hopes and dreams, yeah?

[immigrantpunk]

[Nothing at all. Jayden chuckles.]

Okay, fine. Pavlovich.

[He's pretty confident he wins this one.]

[lowtohigh]

Oh, that's mild to moderate. [Or maybe she's just got a high level of tolerance for embarrassment. Her aunt had been more than mortifying for the majority of her childhood.] Try living with 'Delyth.'

[Which might be less embarrassing in the middle of a Welsh name rather than her own. Maybe.]

[immigrantpunk]

[He snorts.]

I guess I'm cheating anyway. It's a Russian thing, everyone gets names after their fathers.

[It's a trick, using something that's normal in Russia to be strange in America. But hey, first-gen immigrants have to amuse themselves somehow.]

Okay, I'll bite. Why Delyth?

[lowtohigh]

[There's a faint bob of her head in consideration of patronymics. It's certainly cheating, after all, but apparently it's something she's willing to forgive.

Besides, she's got to sign about her own name.] Honestly? I think it was a place-filler. My dad wanted to give me my grandma's name, and my mom wanted it to be my Hebrew name. As far as I've ever been told, it was dragged out of a baby name book when labour started.

[immigrantpunk]

You too, huh? That's what my parents did when we moved to America.

[Perhaps unsurprisingly, there aren't that many Jaydens being born in Russia.]

They only ever did for my first name, though. They figured I'd have a hard enough time in American schools without being stuck with a foreign name.

[lowtohigh]

Oh-- do you spell it with a 'y,' then? [Part of her attention has to be distracted by digging out her phone preemptively. The drunken haze of adding numbers at the club had ended with 'Jadon' in her phone out of instinct.

Not that it stops the sober points of inquiry.]

Were you young when you moved, then?

[immigrantpunk]

Huh?

[He glances over at her phone and sees the misspelling, and snorts at it. Wouldn't be the first time. His parents went through all that trouble to change his name and people still don't get it right.]

Yeah. And an e, not an o.

[He looks over her shoulder, to make sure she gets it right.]

Yeah, I was like four. I don't remember too much before America. What about you? Did you say you were born in Israel?

[lowtohigh]

[Two birds with one stone, then; the way he leans means she can lean back even once she's fixed his name in her phone. More contact is always better, right? Right.]

No-- my brother was. We were still back and forth a lot when I was little, but I was born in Chicago. [Which, in her opinion, was the better end of the stick.] My mother was-- nervous, I guess, about me having been born here. Like the second passport was diluting my roots more, you know?

[immigrantpunk]

[Right. He smiles a bit dumbly at the prolonged contact.]

Ohhh, yeah. But hey, she should be happy you were born here. Getting citizenship is a huge pain.

[lowtohigh]

Sure seems that way. [Her elbow nudges slightly against his ribs as she glances at him properly.] Did you have to go through the whole-- screening and testing and shit when you were a kid? Or just your parents?

[immigrantpunk]

It was my parents more than me. There's this thing where if your parents get citizenship when you're a minor, you automatically do too. Which is good, 'cause otherwise I'd have to— [UH WAIT.] Would've had to wait till I was eighteen and apply and take the test and all that.

[That was close.]

[lowtohigh]

[Thankfully, it comes off as a tiny linguistic tic more than a slip of terrible lies. Her brother has lived in this country even longer than she's been alive, at this point, and he still has his moments of unconscious sliding, after all.]

Lucky break. You think you'll ever go back?

[immigrantpunk]

[Yes, let's go with that. It's an easy enough conclusion to come to, especially when every so often he'll hear a word he spit out and think it sounded way more Russian than it needed to be. The idiosyncrasies of bilingualism. The close call is almost immediately forgotten because this question never has the simple answer people want. He ends up doing black flips in his mind, trying to work with the little information he has and how no one from America is likely to know what he's talking about.]

Uh, I dunno. Maybe. Russia's, you know, Russia. And the part I'm from isn't so safe. At least the war's supposed to be over now, I guess.

[Ah, yes, what every girl wants to hear about on the first date: how you fled a war-torn region. He clears his throat.]

Like I said, I barely remember it.