Love You a Latke

Chapter 10

10

The next day was a synagogue charity event, which Bev was very excited about. Over breakfast, she told me about all the people I would meet (or, in her words, all the people she would “get to show me off to”). Barbara Horowitz, who had a tendency to lie about how much money her son made. Helen Goldberg, whose botched boob job had given her a serious case of uniboob. Eva Hallac, who had cheated in order to win the rainbow cookie Bake-Off against Bev last year. (Over his newspaper, Benjamin, not looking up, said, “She didn’t cheat.” “Did so,” said Bev, which evolved into an argument that ended in Bev pettily drinking the rest of Benjamin’s coffee and then making a sour face at its lack of sugar.)

During the argument, Seth popped in, freshly showered, hair curling damp around his ears. “Oh, man,” he said as Bev was grimacing into the empty mug and Benjamin was smiling smugly behind his paper. “I’m really sad we’re going to have to miss it.”

“What?” Bev said with dismay. “But all of my friends are going to be so disappointed.”

“Sorry,” said Seth. He didn’t sound sorry at all. “But we have big plans.” He didn’t specify what those big plans were. I managed to hold back on asking until he’d reached a bargain with Bev that we’d miss the event but meet them for lunch afterward and I had to ask him how I should dress for said big plans.

“These plans had better be pretty damn great for me to miss out on seeing the uniboob,” I told him. “Your mom said you can see the one nipple poking through her shirt, like a Cyclops.”

“Trust me, I’ve seen it and it’s not nearly that impressive,” Seth said. “Just wear your regular clothes. Anything is fine.”

Clad in my jeans, a purple sweater, and my pea coat, I ventured out with Seth into the cold. Or coldish—today wasn’t all that bad. “So?” I said, once we were on the sidewalk. “Where are we going?”

He grinned at me. The green of his own sweater set off the green flecks in his eyes, made them sparkle above the dark brush of his beard. “No idea. Any thoughts?”

I gaped at him, thumping him lightly on the arm. Beneath the soft weave of his sweater, I could feel his muscle flex. I pulled my hand away before it could linger too long, try to figure out how many bicep curls he’d done in the last few weeks. “I thought we had big plans.”

“We do have a big plan,” Seth said. “And that big plan is not going to the synagogue charity event.”

“Why do you hate charity?”

That smile was still playing on his lips. “Doing good things for other people is the worst.”

I rolled my eyes. He went on. “Really, it’s probably for the best we aren’t going. My mom will feel so guilty that she RSVP’d yes for me and I didn’t show that she’ll donate twice as much to make up for it. Hey, want to go see dinosaurs?”

“That transition may have given me whiplash,” I said. “What do you mean, dinosaurs?”

By dinosaurs, he meant the Museum of Natural History. Having grown up in the general area, I’d of course been for a school trip back in middle school, but not since then. “Okay, sure,” I said. “Why not?”

The museum wasn’t a long walk from Bev and Benjamin’s apartment; I enjoyed passing all the old fancy buildings, some with lion statues flanking the entrance and others covered in crawling ivy. Fifteen minutes later, we were standing at the bottom of the museum’s majestic marble steps, which rose to meet an even more majestic marble building, round pillars flanking an arched entrance tall enough to admit giants.

Seth stopped at the bottom of the steps. “There. We’ve seen dinosaurs.”

I snorted. He was kind of right: an enormous topiary sculpture of a brontosaurus stood at each side of the door, their long, green, leafy necks creating a secondary arch for people to walk beneath. Giant red poinsettia wreaths ringed each one. “And to think we didn’t even have to pay the price of admission.”

“Great news: my parents are members, so we don’t have to pay the price of admission anyway.”

“Nice. I love a deal.”

Of course, we still had to wait in line and everything to get in, then check our coats. I swiped a map from a kiosk, unfolding it before me as we walked. “So obviously we have to visit the dinosaurs. You can’t come here and not get a selfie in front of a T. rex.”

“That would be blasphemy,” Seth agreed. “Hey, watch out.” He settled a hand on my shoulder, and my heart very nearly stopped. Because of the unexpected touch, I told myself, not because of how warm and strong his hand was even through the weave of my sweater as it guided me away from a trash can I was about to walk into.

I took a deep breath. The hand fell away. My shoulder felt cold for a moment. “I’ll be more careful.”

“Don’t worry, that’s what I’m here for,” Seth said amiably. “So, what besides the dinosaurs? Obviously, we can’t see the whole museum in one morning.”

“Just the morning?” I said. “Didn’t you ever read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler as a kid? You know, where they ran away and lived in the Met? I always kind of wanted to do that.”

“The fun thing about being over eighteen is that we could be arrested for that,” Seth said. “I think it’s trespassing.”

“But think of how much fun it would be.”

“Getting arrested?”

“Yes, Seth, I think it would be tremendously fun to get arrested. I’ve always thought prison orange was my color.”

“Anyway,” he said, ignoring me, “how about the hall of gemstones? I haven’t been there in a while, and they’re stunning. Or there’s the new butterfly vivarium.”

Of course he would want to see gemstones and butterflies. “I think there’s an exhibit on sharks going on right now.”

“Okay,” he said. “We can see the sharks if we also see the butterflies.”

“Deal.”

But first, of course, came the dinosaurs. Seth and I maneuvered our way through throngs of lollygagging tourists toward the appropriate hall. It was almost like an obstacle course: dodge the harried dad swinging around a diaper bag; leap over the tantrumming toddler; zigzag between the couple who can’t decide whether they’d rather examine a glass cabinet of fish skeletons or make out. “This is one thing I don’t miss about the city,” I said, sighing.

“It’s not like we don’t have tourists up in Vermont, too.”

“Sure, but there’s a lot more space to get around them.”

I waited for him to tell me earnestly that he loved when tourists jostled him because it transferred some of their joy to him or whatever, but he just shrugged. “That’s true, I guess.” He was quiet for a moment. “I can’t be too hard on tourists, considering I was one the first time I went to Vermont.”

Right. He was a transplant as much as I was. “Why did you end up there anyway?” I asked, genuinely curious.

He avoided my eyes. “Hey.” He craned his neck. “There’s the T. rex.”

Sure enough, the empty eye sockets and massive sharp teeth of the legendary carnivore loomed ahead of us. It was cool, but not cool enough for me not to notice that he’d dodged the question. I opened my mouth to pursue it, then closed it. It wasn’t any of my business. No matter how curious I was. Instead, I said, “It must have been so trippy to be one of the first people to find a dinosaur bone. No wonder they believed in dragons.”

“That must have been so—” His eyes widened so much in surprise that for a second I wondered if the T. rex had come back to life and chomped down on one of the tourist couple (who’d decided pretty vigorously on making out over the fish skeleton. Maybe dinosaur bones were an aphrodisiac). “Bonnie! Hey!”

I turned to find a woman about our age approaching with purpose, a high dark ponytail swinging behind her and a wide friendly smile plastered on her lips. “Seth! Oh my god, how long has it been?”

He didn’t answer, just returned her hug. He then turned toward me with a weak smile of his own. “This is Abby. My girlfriend.”

“Oh my god, hi, Abby!” She came in and, before I could ward her off with crossed arms or maybe a knee to the stomach, she was hugging me, too. I stood there stiffly until it was over. “I’m Bonnie. Seth and I went to school together.”

I wondered if she was part of this fabled friend group. “Oh, wow. So you must have some good stories.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “We came here for a trip in elementary school and he got lost, I think? That was you, right, Seth? Except it turned out he wasn’t lost. He was hiding, because he wanted to see if the dinosaurs came alive at night.”

I shot him an amused look. So he did think it would be cool to sleep over at the museum. Even if he was blushing about it now. “Seems like a poorly thought-out plan, considering that if they did come alive at night, you’d probably get eaten.”

“I was a kid,” Seth defended. “And most of my exposure to dinosaurs had come from the book How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah? Where they were cuddly and friendly and giving one another Hanukkah presents.”

Another girl came up beside Bonnie. Bonnie pulled her close with an affectionate arm around the waist. “This is my girlfriend, Nora.”

“Nice to meet you,” Nora said, resting her head against Bonnie’s shoulder.

I was suddenly very aware of the two feet of space separating Seth and me. No hands being held, no shoulders being draped with arms, no cheeks pressed by lips. If we were an actual couple, wouldn’t we be more comfortable with each other?

This was probably something we should have discussed. He’d specifically told me his parents wouldn’t be expecting any PDA, but hadn’t told me anything about friends.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. I stepped closer to Seth, so that my hip rested against his thigh, and leaned my head against his shoulder. He still smelled like oranges and campfire, despite using his family’s lavender soap. “Nice to meet you, too.” There shouldn’t have been a pulse in his shoulder, but I swore I could feel the beating of his heart, fast and uncertain, against my ear.

Nora looked to Seth, as if waiting for him to say something. He did, a moment too late, stumbling over his words. “Nice to meet you.”

I steadied myself against the warm, solid bulk of him, leaning in a little so that my hair brushed the hollows of his neck, because that was what a girlfriend would do. And what a girlfriend would do was stay there after a few minutes of small talk, then for a minute after Bonnie and Nora had bid us goodbye and disappeared back into the crowd, because what if one of them circled back or looked over their shoulder at us? It was the good, responsible thing to do, and that was it, and it had nothing to do with the warmth.

Seth finally cleared his throat. I blinked and jumped back, feeling almost like I’d been woken from a sound sleep. “Thanks for improvising.”

“Of course. That’s what I’m here for,” I said. The words tasted a little sour. “Is Bonnie part of your friend group?”

He shook his head. “No, just an old classmate. So you really didn’t have to…” He waved his hand around, indicating the hug and the closeness and whatever else.

I forced a smile. “Sorry if you didn’t want—”

“No, it’s not that,” he said hastily. “I just…never mind.” He cleared his throat again. “Maybe we should discuss our parameters for being around other people I know. So that neither one of us gets uncomfortable.”

I couldn’t help but shrivel a little bit at that last word. So I’d made him uncomfortable. That was the last thing I’d wanted to do. But I’d already apologized, and I wasn’t going to make things awkward by apologizing again and again. “You know I’m not a super touchy person, but I don’t mind if we have to hold hands or hug to make this relationship look real.”

“Okay,” Seth said. “So it would be okay if, like, we ran into a friend and I put my arm around you?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

“Okay.” An awkward silence fell upon us, as thick and smothering as a wool blanket. I coughed to fill it. It did not help. Maybe more words would? “So now that we have the rules, do we have plans with your friends to use them?”

“I don’t know. Hey, want to move on to the sharks?”

It was getting awfully crowded around here, and I was pretty sure we’d been in the background of at least seventy pictures of people with the T. rex. “Sure.” Maybe my bones wouldn’t be the only thing that future people would see of me. In fifty years kids would ooh and aah over pictures of their grandparents with me and Seth holding each other in the background. What a cute couple , they might say, not knowing any differently.

The shark exhibit was full of bones and teeth and models hanging from the ceiling. We strolled through it, musing on which shark we’d most like to get eaten by. “I think the little shark would be best,” said Seth. “There’s at least a chance of me being able to fight it off.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It still looks pretty strong. And I’d rather just get devoured in one big gulp than chewed to death by a thousand tiny bites.”

It was kind of a depressing debate, and I wasn’t inclined to finish it. “Hey, before, you said you didn’t know if we’d be seeing your friends,” I said. I wasn’t prying; it was a legitimate question that applied to my job as a fake girlfriend. Right? It was only fair for me to know what the plans were for the rest of the trip. “I thought you said in the car that we would be? The group chat was buzzing.”

He grimaced, either at me or at the thought of how easily he’d fit through the jaws of a megalodon. “Yeah. The group chat’s still buzzing with plans. I don’t know, I just…I don’t know. I guess I’m kind of avoiding them.”

That didn’t seem like him. That seemed like me. “Why? You don’t miss them?”

“No, I do. I just…” He sighed. “I’m nervous. You know, Freya and I broke up, and then I disappeared without even saying goodbye. I’m kind of worried they’re mad at me.” He was quiet for a moment.

“There’s no way to know without seeing them,” I said. “And isn’t it better to just get it over with and find out for sure instead of spending all this time agonizing about it?”

He shrugged. “Or I could just never talk to them again.”

“A very adult way of dealing with your feelings.”

“Thank you.”

“Just to be clear, that was sarcasm.”

“What?” Seth cupped his hand over his ear. “Can’t hear you. Anyway, want to go see the butterflies?”

Again, it wasn’t my business to pry. I was a fake girlfriend, not a real one. But still, as we paused in the middle of the butterfly vivarium to marvel at a lacy scrap of bright blue that fluttered to a rest on Seth’s shoulder, our hands grazing each other with the movement, I figured that to the people around us we looked pretty real.