Love You a Latke

Chapter 11

11

Bev was glowing and triumphant when Seth and I met her and Benjamin outside the synagogue after the charity event. The building was a majestic beast, a massive stone structure with pointed towers and elegant scrollwork dating back to the late 1800s. “My rainbow cookies sold out much faster than Eva Hallac’s. Just more proof that she didn’t really win the Bake-Off.”

“That was last year, Mom,” Seth said. Their apartment was only fifteen blocks away from the synagogue, so the plan was to walk back and grab dinner somewhere on the way. “Don’t you think it might be time to let it go? For the good of the community?”

Bev bristled, clutching her padded MZ Wallace bag to her side. “Al Gore let it go for the good of the community, and just look at what happened.”

“Yes,” Seth said seriously, but he glanced at me with a spark in his eye. “The rainbow cookie Bake-Off is exactly like global warming.”

“Honestly, Seth, of course I didn’t mean that .”

This time I met Seth’s eyes with an amused look of my own, in on the joke. If I were a real girlfriend, this moment would become something we’d bring up to make each other laugh over the years. I can’t believe you ran out of whipped cream again. It’s basically global warming.

But I wasn’t a real girlfriend, and this whole thing would pop like a bubble as soon as Hanukkah ended. I looked away.

“Personally, I find it in poor taste to joke about global warming,” Benjamin said. “Haven’t you seen those very sad pictures of the polar bears going around the Internet? The ones trapped on melting ice caps? And that’s not even mentioning the millions of people who are going to lose their homes to rising sea levels.”

“Nobody was joking about melting ice caps or rising sea levels,” Seth said. We passed a normal sidewalk tree strung up with multicolored lights. A dog was peeing on the base. “We were joking that Mom thinks her Bake-Off is equivalent to the sad polar bears.” He exchanged another glance with me. “Abby, do you think we’re the only two who understand humor around here?”

Without having to speak, the other three turned left, taking us up a side street to Broadway. Unlike West End Avenue, where we’d been walking, Broadway was wide and commercial, bustling with fellow walkers bundled in winter wear. Stores and restaurants lined the four-lane avenue, everything from hipster-ish bars to restaurants from around the world to dog salons to human salons to salons that styled both humans and dogs. People poured in and out of them, each open door releasing a rush of warm air and a different interesting smell.

“I understand humor perfectly well,” said Benjamin, sounding a little insulted. “For example, a man slipping on a banana peel. Always funny.”

Ironically, at that exact moment, we passed a banana peel lying on the sidewalk. Somehow I didn’t think Benjamin would find it so funny if he’d slipped on it.

“Whatever you say,” Seth said.

“Seth?” The voice came from behind us. I glanced over to see one powder blue glove on Seth’s shoulder, as if keeping him from running away. We all turned around.

I didn’t even need to hear Seth say, “Freya,” because I knew immediately who she was—she looked exactly as she had in my head. Tall and willowy, with light blond hair, icy blue eyes, and a pale, narrow face. In addition to those powder blue gloves, she’d wrapped herself up in a slim-fitting powder blue coat and a woven hat that bounced with a shiny silver pom-pom.

Forget resembling a Viking. She looked like the Snow Queen from a fairy tale.

As if I were meeting the actual Snow Queen, I braced myself for a gust of cold air as she turned in my direction. Instead, I got mild curiosity. “I heard that you were bringing someone home for the holidays. You must be Abby?”

“I am Abby,” I said cautiously. Would she say something passive-aggressive? Look me up and down with derision? Freeze me out?

Instead, she smiled. And yeah, it was a little stiff, but it reached her eyes and everything. “Nice to meet you, Abby. Welcome to New York. I’m Freya.” She reached out a hand. I took it. Her handshake was delicate, like I might break her fingers if I returned my usual strong one.

“Nice to meet you, too,” I said, remembering too late that I probably had resting bitch face going on. I made myself smile in return.

She released my hand and turned back to Seth. “You haven’t said anything in the group chat about tonight. Are you coming?”

Seth shifted from boot to boot, his hands tucked away in his pockets like he was afraid she might try to shake his, too. “Oh, I don’t know. We’re pretty busy. We’re on our way to dinner.”

I furrowed my brow, my forced smile sliding away. Here he was, doing his avoidance thing again. Trying to hide from his fears. Should I say something? Try to prod him toward what I thought was the right decision?

“Nonsense,” Benjamin said. Bev was looking at Freya with a sort of pained smile, as if the situation was too awkward for her tastes. “We have plenty of nights to have dinner together.” For just a moment, his eyes glinted with a sort of vicious glee. “Maybe I don’t understand humor, but I do understand how important it is to spend time with your friends.”

Shots fired . I coughed to cover up a smirk.

“See?” Freya said. She touched Seth’s upper arm, then, as if realizing they weren’t dating and shouldn’t be touching anymore, sharply pulled it away. “Everybody misses you. Come on. We’re going on an ugly sweater bar crawl to the Tree. You always had the ugliest sweaters. You can’t miss it.”

Seth glanced over at me, eyes helpless. “Abby?”

“I’ll need to borrow an ugly sweater,” I said, and that was that. Seth gave up.

“Okay. We’ll come.”

Freya’s smile was gleaming and pearl white. “Excellent.”

An hour later, Seth and I were emerging from the subway near Herald Square, both of us decked out in the ugliest sweaters I’d ever seen. When I’d heard “ugly sweater bar crawl to the Tree,” I’d of course pictured traditional ugly Christmas sweaters: blinking red lights adorning a deformed knitted Rudolph; leering elves circling an unintentionally demonic Santa.

So when Seth produced a collection of ugly Hanukkah sweaters from the back of his closet, I’d been pleasantly surprised. And immediately claimed the one with the light-up menorah on the front, leaving him with a blue-and-white monstrosity covered in dreidels. Both were itchy. I didn’t care.

“Is there anything else I should know before meeting all your friends?” I asked him as we pushed through crowds. We were getting some stares. Admiring ones, I chose to believe.

Seth shrugged. “I’ve already told you about them. They’re just normal people.”

“Where did you meet? Did you all go to school together?”

“No, not all of us,” Seth said. “I met some of them when I went to college up in Boston, then added Freya and some more after college when we were working up there. A bunch of us moved to New York over the next few years, including Freya and me, and we grew a little here. It’s more of an amorphous blob than a tight group.”

If they weren’t all tied to a specific place or point in time, maybe that left room for people to still join. Like me.

No. I almost laughed at the absurdity of thinking that. I’d probably never see them again after this. Unless I happened to be in New York and Seth invited me out. After all, we were friends now. It wouldn’t be absurd to become friends with a friend’s friends. “Are you feeling any better about seeing them? Any less nervous?” I asked. “Since Freya didn’t seem to be mad at you, and if anyone was going to be mad at you, you would think—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Seth snapped, then looked surprised at himself. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have bitten your head off like that.”

“No, it’s fine.” After all, I was just the fake girlfriend. An accessory. It wasn’t for me to ask personal questions, like how he was feeling or what was going on in his head. Even if our outing to the museum, the light touches of our hands, and the slip of vulnerability he showed in telling me he was nervous about seeing his friends had given me the illusion that maybe there was more to it than that.

Frigid bitch.

I shivered at the echo of Connor’s parting words. It wasn’t that I was frigid. I just knew my place. Besides, if I started asking Seth personal questions, he’d start thinking he could ask me personal questions in response. And I wasn’t having that.

The first bar in our bar crawl was a stereotypical Irish pub, all dark wood walls and sticky floors and torn green cushions. As we stepped inside, I was hit immediately by a wall of sound and beer smell. The place was packed. Almost by instinct, I reached for Seth’s arm so that we wouldn’t get separated as we pushed our way through.

And stopped myself just in time. So what if we got separated? I’d find him eventually. I didn’t want him thinking I was nervous to get stranded in this crowd or something.

“Hey.” Seth’s hand grabbed mine, wrapping it in warmth. I exhaled a deep breath that felt a little like relief. Good for him, keeping the ruse up and making sure we looked like a couple. Good for him.

Fortunately, his friends were clustered at a table by the window. I actually spotted them first, because, no joke, Freya was illuminated by a light from above that made her almost-white hair glow and the diamonds in her ears sparkle. She waved at us when she saw us coming, which made the rest of their group turn.

“Seth-man!” one of the guys bellowed. There were six of them in total, including Freya. “You made it! How long has it been?”

“Too long!” someone bellowed back, but nobody made it awkward beyond that. Between beery one-armed hugs and firm handshakes that made Seth let go of my hand, I was introduced to the four guys and two girls. Names were shouted at me over the noise, but, even after asking them to repeat themselves one or two or three times, I was left only reasonably certain that the guy with the scruffy brown hair was Dan and the girl who wasn’t Freya was named Kylie. The other three guys might have been named Mike.

I managed to settle myself on a rickety stool between Seth, Dan, and Kylie, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about names or having Freya twitch her finger and turn my heart into ice. I braced myself for answering a bunch of probing personal questions about where I grew up and what my hopes and dreams were, but nobody seemed particularly interested in that. They were more interested in our relationship. Well, our “relationship.” “So, Abby,” Dan hollered, blasting me in the face with a lungful of beer breath. “How did you and Seth meet?”

I glanced over at Seth, who was deep in conversation with one of the Mikes. No help there. Had he told them some fabricated romantic story about how I’d nearly slipped on an icy night and he’d caught me and noticed how the snowflakes sparkled in my eyelashes before making some crack about how he was falling for me, too? Or were we supposed to spin the same wacky water-crashing-through-my-ceiling tale we’d told Bev and Benjamin for the sake of consistency? Hopefully not. “He’s a frequent customer at the café I run,” I said. “Comes in every morning. We got to know each other like that. He’s very…cheerful early in the day.”

Dan laughed so wide I could see his molars. “You can say that again. We lived together in college and I swear I almost pushed the guy out a window a few times. It’s like he’s immune to hangovers.”

There it was: an immediate sense of kinship. I’d never particularly wanted to push Seth out a window before, but that was mainly because my café was on the first floor, so I hadn’t thought of it. “Clearly, you didn’t push him out a window, though.”

“Thank god for that, or you wouldn’t have such a great boyfriend,” Dan said, grinning again. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Probably he wasn’t. A real friend wouldn’t be an asshole about that. “I don’t know, something about the guy’s attitude was infectious. I never wanted to be told to ‘look on the bright side’ of losing out on the dorm we wanted or getting turned down by the guy in my history of immigration class, but I have to say, he was usually right. If we’d gotten that dorm, which was a lot nicer but less central, we wouldn’t have become the kings of the party scene. If that guy had gone out with me, I wouldn’t have met Mike S., who became one of our best friends.” He nodded at the guy across from him, who I assumed was Mike S. He nodded back.

“Yeah, totally, I get it.” I plastered a big smile on my face, the type of smile the girlfriend of a “look on the bright side” guy should have. “It’s like when my grandma died, and I was like, well, on the bright side, at least I still have my other grandma.”

Dan pinched his eyebrows. “Uh. Okay.”

I took a big gulp of my drink.

And another.

And another.

“Hey, guys, you’d better not be telling Abby any embarrassing stories about me.” Seth’s attention was suddenly back on me, his smile so blinding I had to squint a little. He draped an arm over my shoulder. Don’t people say that weighted blankets help with anxiety for some reason? I didn’t know why I was thinking that now, but I set my drink back down on the table.

Not soon enough to keep the effects from hitting me hard, though. The drink wasn’t even that good—the cranberry juice was too sugary, and the vodka was cheap, and they hadn’t even given me a maraschino cherry—but it got the job done. By the time we were flowing out of the Irish bar and on to our next stop, I felt like I was floating pleasantly above the sidewalk, tethered to the earth by Seth’s hand. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said dreamily.

When we stopped in front of the next bar, my jaw dropped open. Dan slapped Seth on the back so loud it echoed. “This one’s for you, Seth-man!”

Seth looked stunned. “Is this…”

It was. A. Hanukkah bar.

Blue and white lights dazzled me as we stepped through the door and were met by the scents of apple and vanilla and fried potato, which—I couldn’t explain it—smelled just like Hanukkah. “Apple isn’t even a Hanukkah food,” I murmured.

“What?” asked Kylie, who was next to me.

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

Electric menorahs blazed all around the room from every surface, all lit up for the third night. Right. We’d passed sunset without lighting the candles. Had Seth’s parents lit them without us?

We nabbed a circular table so that everybody could hear one another when they talked, me settling in between Seth and Dan again. It would have been easier here even if we hadn’t; the music, currently a version of Adam Sandler’s classic Hanukkah song, was set pretty low. One of the electric menorahs sat in the middle of the table, along with a few extra-large dreidels. I picked one up to find a sheet of instructions beneath for a dreidel drinking game. Nun, nobody drank. Hay, you drank. Gimel, everybody drank. Shin, you got to choose someone else to drink. Simple. Elegant. Brilliant.

I didn’t realize I’d said that out loud until Seth started to laugh. “How much did you have to drink already?”

“Only two drinks!” I poked him hard in the chest for emphasis. A ragged nail got stuck in the weave of his sweater, and it took a second to extricate myself. “To be fair, they were strong.” It was probably a good thing that I’d stuck to one drink when I met up with Seth the first time.

“Clearly,” Seth said, a smile twitching at his lips.

“What, do you find this funny?”

“Yes,” he said. “You’re usually so buttoned-up. It’s funny to see you loosen up a little.”

There was nothing like somebody pointing out you’d loosened up to make you tighten right back in on yourself. I turned away from him, feeling like I’d accidentally flashed him or something. “Hey,” I said loudly, because I’d rather talk to anyone and everyone else right now. “It’s after sundown and we haven’t lit the candles yet, and we’ve got this great menorah right here.”

The table sprang into action as I ordered them around: Dan loosened the lit bulbs so that they went dark, and Seth pulled up English transliterations of the blessings on his phone for the non-Jews’ (about half of them—it seemed a couple of the Mikes were Jewish, but the rest of the group wasn’t) reference.

They were all too shy to start off the singing. Thanks to the vodka, I was not. “Baruch atah Adonai…”

Everybody else joined in, the people who didn’t know Hebrew butchering all the pronunciations enthusiastically. Understandable—if you didn’t know that the “ch” transliterated into a sound that could be described in English as clearing your throat, you’d naturally pronounce it like the beginning of “choo choo train.” But they were trying, and that was what mattered.

It mattered a lot, actually. It’s the vodka , I told myself, but my sinuses were stinging with how much I felt it. I was so used to blending in the opposite way—buying friends Christmas presents; going to Christmas parties and singing along to Christmas music; creating Christmas specials for my menu board—that welcoming people into my own traditions felt odd. Odd, but really nice.

Nice enough that, after we’d all ordered a round of Hanukkah-themed drinks (unable to resist my curiosity, I’d selected a latke-themed cocktail that was either going to be fantastic or terrible), I insisted we play the dreidel drinking game. “It’s part of the holiday,” I told them all. Their faces blurred just slightly as I spun around, enough where they could’ve been anybody—my childhood friends, my family, the tourism board. “When you’re a kid you play with gelt.”

As if the waitress had read my mind, she turned up not just with our drinks, but with a little mesh bag of the gold foil–wrapped chocolate coins for each of us, too, so I didn’t have to explain what gelt was. Before trying my cocktail, I ripped open the bag and tore apart one of those bad boys, popping the coin into my mouth. It took a few seconds for the cheap, plasticky chocolate to melt. Just like I remembered.

“I played strip dreidel once in college,” Dan offered, and the table laughed. He nudged Seth. “If I recall, you lost pretty bad. Didn’t your underwear end up pinned to the wall of the girls’ bathroom?” I snorted at Seth’s chagrined expression and took a sip of my latke and applesauce cocktail. It tasted mostly like apples and cinnamon, which was probably a good thing, though I did appreciate the salty potato chip garnish on the rim.

“If we do that tonight we’ll probably get arrested, so let’s stick to the drinking game,” Freya said dryly. She’d been pretty quiet most of the night, and I’d caught her, more than once, sneaking glimpses at me. Had she mispronounced her ch’s, or had she spent enough years with Seth where she knew how to properly clear her throat? I wasn’t sitting close enough to hear. “You go first, Dan.”

Dan anticlimactically spun a nun, so nobody drank. Fortunately for everybody who wanted to get drunk, the Mikes each spun gimel, so we all made it halfway through our cocktails.

And then it was Freya’s turn. She spun shin. Her eyes roamed around the table, pausing briefly on me before settling on Seth. “Drink.” She raised her glass to him. He raised his glass—a bright red concoction named after the blood of the rebellion, which was both gross and cool—and took a sip. Something I didn’t quite like simmered in my belly, but I pushed it away immediately. It had no right to be there. It must have been the potato vodka.

Eventually, drinking dreidel devolved into discussing the best Hanukkah or Christmas presents everyone at the table had received. “Back in high school, one of my guy friends came up to me with the most nervous expression on his face and was like, ‘I got you something for the holidays,’?” Kylie reminisced, stirring her bright blue drink with a toothpick that had once been stacked with pickled blueberries. “I opened it up and it was this absolutely gorgeous, absurdly expensive Tiffany bracelet. I totally panicked because I hadn’t gotten him anything and just grabbed this Scooby Doo ornament I’d bought as a gag gift for someone else and was like, here you go! I got this for you!”

The table cringe-laughed. Kylie shook her head and took a sip of her drink. Her teeth had been stained bright blue, too. “His face lit up when he heard what I said, then fell when he saw what was inside. Poor guy. I wore that bracelet every day through college, though.”

I thought for a second about volunteering my own standout Hanukkah gift. There was the year my mom had gotten me the exact dress I’d been eyeing online, only two sizes too small. She’d refused to return it, even when I showed her I could barely squeeze my bust in. “Maybe it’ll serve as motivation for you.” Or the year my parents had made a point of getting me a small, cheap Barbie toy while getting my cousins big expensive sets for them to open in front of me. They’d been punishing me for something. I couldn’t remember what it was now. Something about how I’d forgotten to close the cabinet doors when I was done with them.

The rest of the table was laughing at something Dan said. I joined in a moment too late, then startled as Seth touched my shoulder. I braced myself for him to ask if I was okay or tell me that I looked stressed, but he only said, “Let me know if you want to head out at any point. I know they can be a lot.”

I shook my head, whipping him in the cheek with my hair. “No. I’m having a good time.” I was almost surprised to realize it was true. I liked their raucous energy, my immediate welcome into the circle. The way they made me feel included and listened with interest when I spoke.

And I really liked this bar, too. I swirled my drink around, tilting my head at it in interest. I’d never done a Hanukkah special at my café before. I’d never thought there would be a market. But this bar was full, and not everybody in here could be Jewish—most of our group wasn’t. I could do a Hanukkah coffee special taking this cocktail as inspiration. Who didn’t love a latte with apple and cinnamon flavors? And a fun potato garnish?

“…so my grandma picked it up and shook it, and of course that’s when the box started to vibrate,” Freya finished, and the table burst into laughter. I didn’t even have to hear the beginning of the story to know it was funny. My own laugh was genuine.

As Freya finished, she tipped her drink toward Seth. “Tell them about the cactus.”

“Oh my god, the cactus.” Seth’s face lit up. “So you guys know I’m a responsible plant dad. Unlike some of us.” He shot a glance at Dan, who raised his glass in our direction.

“A toast to the many dearly departed basil plants I bought at the grocery store.”

“Anyway,” Seth went on. “This is back when I wasn’t working remotely and was in person at the office in Boston. For some reason, my boss decided that his holiday gift to all of us would be cacti. Did you know it’s actually harder to take care of a cactus than you’d think? People assume they’re these plants for dummies because they like sun and don’t need a ton of water, but you have to be careful about how much—”

“We don’t need the cactus instruction guide,” Dan said. “If anything, I need the basil plant instruction guide.”

Seth shook his head. “No way. You’ve been barred from ever buying a basil plant again. By PETA.”

Kylie snorted. “Does PETA have anything to do with plants?”

“They should,” Seth said. “They’re living things, aren’t they?”

I jumped in. “I read this article that said plants can cry and dream.”

“See?” Seth said. He slung an arm around the back of my chair. The warmth of his arm soaked into my shoulders. “No more basil plants for you, Dan. By PETA decree. Anyway, my coworkers started realizing that they were killing their cacti. I, the fool, told them I would adopt any ailing cacti in need. The first one appeared on my desk overnight. The next two popped up a few days later. Soon, my desk was a sea of cacti. I didn’t have time to do any work. All my time was taken by rotating them in and out of the sliver of sunlight my desk got each afternoon. My productivity reports began to fall. I started to panic.”

He shook his head solemnly. “And then the CEO, Prickly Joe, stopped by my desk.” He paused. “Of course, he was just the CEO, Joe, before he tripped.”

Everybody laughed, me with them, and kept on laughing as Seth described how, between the red face and the spluttering, Prickly Joe had resembled nothing more than a furious porcupine. The image tickled me; I leaned my head against Seth’s shoulder with a snort. His shoulder tensed for a moment under my ear, as if he were surprised, but then his arm tightened around me, drawing me closer, the way he would with a girlfriend.

Only I wasn’t a girlfriend.

I’d almost forgotten that. I’d almost let myself relax.

I pulled myself away, laugh stopping short. Seth’s arm dropped away. The table’s eyes found me, their laughs stalling.

I forced a smile. “Bathroom. Excuse me.”

The winding path to the bathroom through the crowded bar took me past not one but two large stuffed Hanukkah Harries (the secular Jewish child’s joking equivalent to Santa). It felt kind of like they were watching me the way Santa was supposed to. Catching what I’d done that was nice, catching what I’d done that was naughty, catching what I’d done that wasn’t right, like thinking for a moment that I was a real member of the group.

The bathroom was empty, which was a relief. I used it, because why not while I was already here, then stood at the sink and splashed some cold water on my face. Took a deep breath. Stared at myself in the mirror. Really, glared at myself in the mirror. What do you think you’re doing, Abby? This is all transactional. To save your café. You don’t even like him.

Except that wasn’t true anymore, was it? I considered him a friend. I didn’t know when my brain had made that switch, but it had. But you’re not a girlfriend. You don’t want to be his girlfriend. Chill the fuck out.

The bathroom door opened behind me as I realized I was mouthing the words into the mirror. Hopefully, I clamped my mouth shut before whoever came in noticed. I turned to go, because standing there talking to myself was weird, and found myself face-to-face with Freya.

The mirror crackled with a thin sheet of ice. The droplets of water on my face froze solid.

Not really. But that’s what it felt like.

“Sorry, sorry,” Freya was saying. “I wanted to wait until you got back, but I really, really had to pee, and you were taking forever…”

“Don’t worry about it!” I rushed to say. “No worries. Go pee.”

But she didn’t move toward the stalls. And I couldn’t move toward the door, since she was in the way. I was left staring at her ugly sweater, which wasn’t even that ugly—powder blue to match her eyes, covered in snowflakes laced in glimmering silver thread—until I realized that it probably looked more like I was staring at her boobs, which was so awkward I had to look her in the eye.

“Well, nice seeing you here,” I said awkwardly, willing her to move. She didn’t, maybe because it was on the list of the weirdest things to say to someone in the bathroom.

Instead, she said, “I wanted to hate you so badly.” I blinked. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Through those long, thin fingers, she said, voice muffled, “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

“Been there,” I said, because I literally had been there just minutes ago. Please move , I willed at her with all the telepathic force I could muster. I cannot handle a drunk girl heart-to-heart right now. Or ever.

Alas, my telepathic force remained just as weak as when I’d spent a week in middle school attempting to bend spoons at the dinner table.

A single tear rolled slowly, glamorously, down Freya’s cheek. “I wanted to hate you, but I can’t. You’re really cool, and Seth really seems to like you. I want to be happy for you.”

I could see where this was going. I could wait for her to slowly and dramatically hiccup her drunk way there, or I could cut it off quickly and hope it surprised her enough that she’d let me goooo, damn it. “Do you still have feelings for him?” I said, trying to sound as gentle as possible.

I did not do gentle well. I was pretty sure I sounded like I’d asked her if her tires needed more air. Sure enough, she responded by bursting into tears. Not bursting into tears the way I did on the rare occasions I cried—red, snotty, messy, loud—but soundlessly welling over so that her eyes sparkled and her lashes glittered. Only the tip of her nose got a tiny bit red.

Okay, I felt like such an asshole right now. I couldn’t just leave. I stepped closer and, trying to channel Bev, gingerly put my arms around her. She was tall enough where her tears flowed into my hair. On the bright side, maybe the saltiness of her tears would have the same excellent effects as a beach day, which always turned my typically straightened hair into glamorous beach waves.

Freya sniffled above me. “No. I don’t. I swear I don’t.” I blinked, a little bit surprised, but also relieved. It made things a lot less awkward here. “Not romantic anyway. Like, I don’t want to get back together with him. I just…It’s just, our breakup came out of nowhere . Everything seemed to be going great and then suddenly he tells me he’s moving to Vermont. Alone. After two years. I still don’t know what happened. He didn’t even tell any of the friend group; he just disappeared. Dan thought he hated him for ages.”

I patted her awkwardly on the back. I was the worst possible person to be in this situation with her. If only I could switch places with someone warm and nurturing and comforting, someone who would know exactly the right thing to say.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She sniffled again. “It made me feel like absolute garbage. Like I wasn’t even worth breaking up with properly. Has he ever said anything about me? To you?”

If Seth and I actually were in a relationship that had lasted long enough for the two of us to come stay with his parents, he might have. But all he’d told me was that things ended badly. “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “That’s a shitty way to break up with someone. Just moving away? Come on. Use your words like a grown-up.”

Freya’s sniffle turned into an elegant snort. “Right? I don’t think it’s too much to ask for after two years.”

“Definitely not,” I said. It was probably safe to pull back now, right? I did, patting the damp spot on my head. No beach waves yet. “Did he ever apologize to you, at least?”

“Nope.”

Wow. “I’m impressed that you could come out and hang with him like this. Whenever I run into my ex, it’s the most awkward, uncomfortable thing ever.” Aside from this encounter, probably, but I didn’t say that.

Freya’s snort this time was decidedly less elegant, which made me like her more. “It feels awkward and uncomfortable. But I wasn’t going to get pushed out of the friend group just because he’d be around. And I wanted to show him how well I’m doing.” She rolled her eyes at herself. “So much for that.”

“I won’t tell him about any of this,” I said. Even if we actually had been dating, I wouldn’t share someone’s vulnerability with someone else. I wouldn’t want anyone else sharing mine. “So don’t worry about that.”

“You’re so sweet.” Freya pinched her nose and stared up at the ceiling, maybe trying to stop the tears. “Again, I really wish I could hate you. The ex’s new girlfriend, who his mom seems to loooove even though she never seemed to like me. I bet he wouldn’t just move away from you after years of a relationship.”

I had two excuses for what I said next, neither one of them particularly good. The first: alcohol. The second: I’d skated too close to the line earlier by putting my head on Seth’s shoulder and almost—almost—forgetting that this whole thing was fake, and part of me wanted to make sure that line stayed strong. “You don’t have to hate me,” I said, breath quickening. “Because Seth and I aren’t actually in a relationship.”

That made her choke on air or maybe spit. “What?”

I leaned in, as if there might be a listening device posted somewhere above the mirror. “I mean that we don’t even like each other that much; we’re just the two closest Jews in our area of Vermont. I needed his help creating a Hanukkah festival for the town, and he needed a Nice Jewish Girl to bring home to get his mom off his back. And our town is so small that we use a barter system.” I smiled to show that I was joking, but her face was deadly serious. “Anyway. So I have no idea why he broke up with you, but he didn’t do it for me, and you don’t have to stress about saying things about him to me.”

She shook her head, seemingly disbelieving. “Of course it’s for Bev,” she muttered. “I could never do anything right for that woman. Not Jewish enough. Didn’t have a prestigious enough career. What’s wrong with being a kindergarten teacher?”

“Nothing,” I assured her. Owning a café required way less schooling than becoming a kindergarten teacher, and, to be honest, at this point Freya probably made more money than me. “The youth need education.”

“The youth need education!” she shouted, pointing her finger up in the air as if to say THIS. “I wasn’t a good enough cook. I could go down the list forever.” She chewed the inside of her cheek, looking pensive. “Maybe his mom made him break up with me. I can’t see him standing up to her.”

“I don’t know,” I said, because it was true, I didn’t know. “I’ll try asking him and seeing what I can find out.”

Her face brightened. “You’d do that?”

“Sure,” I said. Why not?

She leaned in as if to hug me—oh no—but, a Hanukkah miracle: the door opened and in flowed a group of girls, eyes bright with alcohol and skirts tight and glittery. “Oh. My. God,” one said. “I love your sweaters. Like, I’m obsessed.”

“Oh my god, thank you,” Freya said. She clasped her hands under her chin like a Disney Princess. “I love your hair. I’ve always wished mine curled like that.”

“Well, I love your shoes,” another girl said back, and before I could get drawn into the drunk-girl-in-the-bathroom compliment circle, I slipped out.

Back at the table, Seth turned to me with a concerned smile. “You were in there for a while. Everything okay?”

Great. Just what I needed: everybody at the table thinking I was undergoing some kind of smelly gastrointestinal distress. “Fine, just had to fix my makeup,” I said breezily. I cast my eyes around the table, eager to find something else, literally anything else, I could use to change the subject. “People’s drinks are looking pretty empty. Are we moving on to the next place soon?”

Indeed we were. Once Freya came back, her face carefully composed, we went to a Christmas-themed bar, then to a gothic place that seemed right out of a Tim Burton movie. I was careful to stick with mocktails to keep my head clear and my body under control. Every time Seth smiled at me or draped his arm casually over my shoulders, I repeated the same mantra to myself. It’s not real. You wouldn’t want it to be real anyway. Do it for the café.

By the time our final stop rolled around, I was exhausted and sick of talking to myself. To make everything worse, Seth grabbed my hand on the way out of the gothic bar. He decidedly had not been limiting himself to mocktails, and his eyes were fuzzy, his words a little slurred. “I’m really glad you’re here with us,” he told me, squeezing my hand.

It’s not real. You wouldn’t want it to be real anyway. I painted on a smile. “Me too.”

“There it is!” Dan said.

There it was: the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. It rose tall as a building, wide and majestic, sparkling all over with red and green and blue lights. The star topper glowed gold.

A lump rose in my throat. I couldn’t speak, even if I wanted to.

“Group picture!” Kylie yelled, beckoning us all in. Crowds jostled around us as we tried to meld into one selfie-able blob. Seth held tight to my hand the whole time, making sure we wouldn’t be separated.

What did it matter? I pulled my hand away. “I can just take it,” I said, but Kylie waved me away.

“No way. You’re part of the group. Get in here!”

Later on, when she sent the picture to each of our phones, I was surprised to see I was smiling. I didn’t remember doing it.