Love You a Latke

Chapter 19

19

I woke up flushed and sweaty, all tangled in the blanket with my forehead cool against the wall, throbbing between my legs from a dream-slash-nightmare that had started with Seth’s head between them and ended with him trying to eat me. Literally, with big gnashing teeth and everything. There was probably meaning there, but if I thought too hard about it, I’d never make it out of bed.

Seth already had, I noticed as I rolled over. I wondered when I’d tangled myself in the blanket. Had he let me steal the whole thing and gone cold himself? Or had I wrapped myself in it after he’d gotten up, surrounding myself in his smell?

I didn’t know how I’d be able to face him today. I really didn’t.

So I stalled while getting ready, brushing my teeth for a full two minutes and then a minute more for good measure, shaving my legs in the shower even though they’d be covered up by my weather-appropriate clothing, making the bed neatly. Which was all for naught when I made it out into the main apartment to find it totally empty. Panic fluttered in my chest for a moment. Maybe they’d all abandoned me. Maybe Seth was out telling them the truth this very second because he couldn’t bear the thought of spending one more night with me after The Kiss, and they’d come home stony-faced and annoyed, ready to kick me out. Should I pack my bag? Should I—

A note fluttered on the kitchen table, held down by a granola bar.

Went for a walk. Be back soon. —Seth

He wouldn’t put a heart there if he was off telling his parents the truth, right?

I sat down and tried to calm myself. Coffee did not help.

Though it did help me become less jittery to the point where, when they finally did open the door and enter the apartment, I was able to fake what I thought was a pretty decent smile. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Seth said with an easy smile, touching me gently on the shoulder as he walked by. It was enough to almost make me think I’d imagined everything that went down last night. The hurt on his face. The way he curled up on the edge of the bed, trying to get as far from me as possible. “You slept late today.”

“Lucky her.” Benjamin looked so ravaged that I had to hold back a laugh. It was kind of like he’d spent the night fighting off a swarm of locusts.

Bev looked like she’d been battling beside him, heroically waving her frying pan at the invaders. “Did you already have your coffee, dear?”

I responded by holding up my mug, as if in a toast. “I made some extra for you.”

She sighed melodramatically. “Having the Keurig this morning felt like such a step down. I don’t know what I’m going to do when you leave. You’ll have to come back soon.”

That squeeze in my heart again, except this time it felt like she’d physically shoved her arm through my ribs and tried to pulp it herself. My fake smile turned into what I was now positive looked like a grimace. “Or you’ll have to come visit us in Vermont.”

Only two more nights of lying. I could do this. No matter how shitty it made me feel.

I turned to Seth, ready for a distraction from lying to these lovely people. “What’s on the agenda today?”

“My friends are doing this thing if you’re feeling up to it,” he said. “No worries if you’re not. I know last night was kind of a lot, so if you just want to lie in bed all day, no one will fault you.”

I cocked my head, trying to read in his face if he wanted to ditch me and hang out with his friends. But for all he’d said about himself being an open book, I couldn’t catch anything in his flat mouth and blank eyes.

Well. Guess I had to fall back on what a Good Fake Girlfriend would do. “I think I slept long enough where I outran the hangover,” I said brightly. “So let’s do this thing with your friends. Whatever it is.”

His expression didn’t change. Hopefully, that was a good thing. “It’s a scavenger hunt around the city. Well, not really a scavenger hunt, because that would involve someone being clever enough to write those kitschy rhymes and dedicated enough to wake up early and go hide clues in places other people won’t disturb them. So it’s a photo hunt—you’re given a list of things to take selfies with. First one to complete the list wins.”

“Wins what?”

“Honor. Glory. Pride. A seasonal goodie bag.”

Given my loss yesterday with the cookie decorating process, my blood was already beginning to pump hot with the competition. “I’m in.”

“Don’t worry about us,” Benjamin said, collapsing with the groan of a dying car on the couch. “We’ll be fine.”

We weren’t due to leave for a couple hours, so I excused myself to Seth’s room to deal with café stuff and festival stuff. As in, literally used it as an excuse. I mean, I did have to do stuff in that regard, but mostly it was an excuse to avoid talking to my fake boyfriend and his real, loving parents.

I sat myself at the desk, facing the window that looked out onto a brick wall. It was because I wanted a view of the outside. Not because I wanted to avoid looking at the bed. The bed where we’d—

Wow. Look at that beautiful brick wall striped with pigeon shit.

My first call was to Maggie at the café. It was late enough in the morning where she should hopefully be between the early pre-work rush and the lunch rush. Sure enough, she picked up on the third ring. I wasn’t sure I’d ever picked up on the third ring on the café phone in my life. “Good Coffee, how can I help you?”

“Hi, Maggie, it’s Abby,” I said. “Is this a good time to chat?”

“Oh, hi, Abby!” Maggie said brightly. “Everything is going well. We’re selling a lot of holiday specials. People really seem to love your gingerbread lattes.”

Take that, beet-faced flannel man. “That’s great,” I said, then hesitated. Maggie was really chill about it—no constantly telling me that I should find Jesus so that I wouldn’t go to hell, for example—but she went to church every Sunday, not just on Christmas and Easter, and she said things like, I’ll pray for you when things seemed to be going badly. “Maggie, what do you think about Hanukkah specials at the café in addition to Christmas specials? If you saw a sufganiyot latte—that’s doughnut themed—or a gelt mochaccino—that’s chocolate—would you try it out?”

“Of course, why not?” was her immediate response. “You might have to explain what it is, since I’m not familiar with those terms, but you did a pretty good job of it just now.” She paused, as if reading my thoughts. “It’s just coffee, Abby. It’s not like drinking one is asking me to convert.”

True. Maybe it hadn’t been fair to assume that the people who patronized my coffee shop wouldn’t be willing to give such things a try. Or to assume that they wouldn’t be interested in checking out a Hanukkah festival.

We spent the next ten minutes or so going over business things, what we’d taken in over the course of the week and what unexpected expenses she’d had (somehow she’d run out of whipped cream again ). It went about as well as could be expected—she hadn’t magically turned the place around, but sales also hadn’t plummeted in my absence—and I hung up feeling a little more at ease.

It would be so nice if I could afford to hire her again for real, and I could have some occasional time off to go places and do things and let my creativity well refill. Hopefully, the Hanukkah festival would help me do that.

It was with that attitude in mind that I called Lorna next. “Abby, hello,” she greeted me. “How is everything going?”

I took a deep breath. “I’m excited about how the festival is turning out,” I said. “I’ve seen a lot of things here that I think we can replicate. For one, I’m thinking about a cookie decorating booth.”

That made me think of the lurch of panic in my chest, the flush of shame I’d felt upon seeing Mrs. Landskroner.

But then that was replaced by the vision of Seth finding me, of soothing me, of helping me get through it.

I pushed all those visions away, narrowing my eyes at the brick wall. “I think kids will love it. We can order a big batch of plain sugar cookies in various Hanukkah shapes and stock a bunch of different colored frostings in piping bags with all sorts of sprinkles and edible glitter and other fun things to decorate.”

Lorna was silent on the other end for a moment. “I like the idea,” she said finally. “But do we need to purchase cookies in specific Hanukkah shapes? What if we got an assortment of generic shapes like squares and circles and then people can draw menorahs or whatever they want on them.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. “I think that would give the booth a wider appeal to the maximum number of visitors.”

I wondered if she could hear the grinding of my teeth on the other end of the phone. I’d spent enough of my childhood drawing random things in cutouts of Santa faces or trying to origami a paper Christmas tree into a menorah to know what she really meant. I didn’t even have to say it.

But I did anyway. I tried to keep my voice as calm and level as possible. “Lorna, what it seems like to me is that you’re trying to make this Hanukkah festival a Christmas festival in all but name.”

She was not calm in her response. She squawked, “That’s absurd!”

It was unfair that she got to raise her voice, but I didn’t. Because if I did, I’d get deemed hysterical or told that I was taking things too personally. So I kept it level as I said, “Every time I’ve pushed for making things more specific to the holiday the festival is supposed to be celebrating, you’ve pushed for making them more like Christmas or more ‘neutral’ so that people can read Christmas into them if they want to.”

“That’s absurd,” she said again. “Name one time I’ve done that.”

I did better: I named all of them. I could practically hear her rolling her eyes through the phone, but, to give her the tiniest amount of credit, she didn’t interrupt me until I paused to take a breath. “I’m not trying to make the Hanukkah festival less…Hanukkah,” she said. Less Jewish , is what I heard. “I just want to make sure it’s as appealing as possible to the largest number of people.”

Less Hanukkah. Less Jewish. It always drove me a little crazy that, in media designed to portray Jews—especially Jewish women—as beautiful or appealing, it always seems like non-Jews are cast to represent us. But when the character is there for comic relief or to embody the more unpleasant Jewish stereotypes? Well. Then we get cast. Because it’s all about making sure each piece of media is “as appealing as possible to the largest number of people.” Meaning, a real-life Jewish woman wouldn’t be appealing enough to be the main character of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel or the movie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life, even though she, in real life, was as Jewish as we come.

So my hackles raised as I said, “I don’t think that maximizing the Hanukkah means that it won’t appeal to people. Maggie, you know Maggie, who took over at my café this week while I’m scouting here in New York, she’s not Jewish, but she was excited about the idea of new Hanukkah coffee specials. I think that people are eager to try new things, not just rehash the same old. If they want to go to a Christmas festival, there are plenty of Christmas festivals in the area for them to check out. They’re coming to a Hanukkah festival because they want Hanukkah.”

Lorna was silent on the other end. My hopes rose a bit, thinking maybe I’d finally gotten through to her, only to hear her bark, “No, the T-shirts go over there!”

Hope faded. She hadn’t even been listening. I’d been baring my guts and she hadn’t even been listening . “Hello?”

“Oh, Abby, are you still there?” She sounded disinterested. “I’m sorry, I’m in the middle of a store redesign. Well, a mini redesign. I’m trying to move all the most in-demand products to the back so that people are forced to go past everything else to find them. You know how it is.”

I knew how it was to want to scream. She continued, “Anyway, I have to go. Can we pick this up later? Great. Bye.” She hung up before I could say anything back.

I let out a pterodactyl screech and threw my phone at the wall.

No, I didn’t. But I wanted to.

Just then, a knock came at the door. Cue a frantic moment where I thought maybe my mind had betrayed me and I had indeed gone nuclear on my phone, only to have Seth poke his head in with a politely quizzical expression. “Hey, we have to leave soon if we’re going to make it on time,” he said. “My mom made some sandwiches for us to eat quickly before we leave. You ready?”

I could barely bring myself to look at him. I turned, focusing on that trusty brick wall. “Yeah.”

After lunch and a largely silent subway ride, we were climbing out at Lincoln Center to meet up with the friend group. The Lincoln Center Christmas tree rose up huge and imposing over the sparkling fountain, glittering white all over. I could only imagine how it would look at night, showcased against the lit-up arches of the massive building, maybe twinkling in tune with the music from inside.

Somehow the friend group had swelled even more since visiting Kylie’s booth at the holiday festival, maybe additional people having come home for the holidays. I didn’t even bother introducing myself this time. What did it matter, when I’d definitely never be seeing any of them again? But it wasn’t like I wanted to stick close to Seth’s side right now, either.

I greeted Dan and Kylie, then Freya. She gave me what seemed to be a genuinely happy smile.

As I smiled back at her, Dan trumpeted for everyone to be quiet. “Okay, everybody pair up and we’ll hand out the lists!” he shouted. “The first pair to upload all your pics to the shared album wins. I have a great prize for the winners, believe me.”

I considered asking Freya or Kylie or literally anyone else to pair up with me, but I knew that would be considered weird—why would I be pairing up with someone other than my boyfriend? Seth appeared just as enthusiastic to be paired with me, or so attested the grim line of his mouth. It seemed I’d finally done it: brought some rain clouds to that sunny attitude.

Somehow it didn’t make me feel good.

It took me a second to hear Dan again over the sound of the crowd. “Okay, it looks like we have too many people for it to be pairs, actually,” he said. “Let’s try groups of three.”

Maybe Seth and I would be forced to split up and be thirds for two other pairs. If we could only stall long enough where—

“Hey, you guys need a third?” Kylie asked, appearing between me and Seth. Damn it.

Without context or on a dating app, this would be a very different conversation. “Sure,” Seth said before I could respond. “Why not?”

With everybody paired—well, tripled—up, Dan began his countdown up front. “Everything on this list can be found within walking distance, between here and Union Square. That’s where we’ll meet when we’re done,” he called. “Okay, three, two, one, here we go!”

I kind of expected everybody to start running for it, but that wouldn’t have made any sense, since we didn’t know what we were running for. Also, it might have started a mass panic. Kylie and I huddled around Seth’s phone, where he’d pulled up the list. It had ten items, all festive. “A skeleton dressed up like Santa, a giant gingerbread man,” I read. “Oh, ‘something Hanukkah.’ Way to be inclusive, Dan.”

Seth rolled his eyes. “Any ideas on where we should start?”

“Well, the guy dressed as a nutcracker is definitely going to be in Times Square, right?” Kylie asked. I had no idea. Seth shrugged. “Where else do people dress up in costumes? The Broadway snow globes will be there, too. I’ve seen them before. And the ice-skating rink is in Bryant Park. The holiday window display is around Saks and Macy’s. So we have a general route kind of sketched out. Hopefully, the other stuff will be on the way. Like, I have no idea where we’re going to find the holiday train.”

I was happy enough to let them take control and navigate, so I just nodded along. And Seth clearly didn’t feel like exercising his new conflict muscles without a real reason. So we let Kylie lead us east toward the big department stores, where there would surely be a “window display featuring actual diamond snowflakes.”

With Kylie up ahead, Seth drew close to me. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” I said automatically, because that’s what I always said when asked the question, fine or not. My mouth opened, ready to ask him the same question, but it closed before I could push the words out. I kind of didn’t want to know the answer.

Instead, I said, “Things aren’t going to be weird or anything now, right?”

“Weird? Why would they be weird?” He sounded almost offended, which made me tense. “We’re friends, Abby. It won’t be weird.”

The grin rising in his voice offended me more than the offense had. Had our kiss really meant so little to him?

That was a good thing, I reminded myself. It would be nice if we could stay friends after this charade ended. Friends could be casual, someone you met for a drink every so often or chatted with over your morning coffee. It wasn’t like you had to share all of your secrets with all of your friends.

He was still staring at me, his grin now beginning to falter at my silence. I’d waited too long to respond. “Good,” I said, or squeaked, rather, which was unfortunate. “I’m glad we can still be friends.”

“Of course,” he said, and then Kylie turned around.

“You guys are so slow . Seth, it’s like you’re not even a New Yorker anymore.”

“We walk slowly in Vermont,” he said, hustling to catch up to her. “We need to save our energy to run from bears.”

As we kept walking, I learned more about Kylie. In addition to her crafty ornament-making side business, her main job was in human resources at a big tech company. “Working there is great,” she said. “I barely have to buy food because I just steal everything from the snack fridge. And I exclusively sleep in company gear. The free T-shirts they have lying around for every single event they put on are supersoft.”

Plus her health insurance was probably really good. And I bet she had dental insurance. Sometimes I had dreams about being able to go in for a teeth cleaning.

As it turned out, work was how she’d joined the friend group in the first place. She and Seth had been coworkers at a past tech company in Boston, when they were both in-office, and had discovered a mutual love of the local Japanese grocery store before they were both transferred to the New York location. “We’d grab lunch from there every day and made a habit of checking out the fun new snacks,” she said. “They had all the stuff my grandparents would bring me from Japan when they visited. Ooh, there’s a giant candy cane. Do you guys want to be in the pic?”

“What are the rules again?”

“At least two of us have to be in the picture,” Kylie said. “Or it can be a selfie with all three of us, but I think that’ll be hard in this case. None of our stubby arms will be able to get in that whole candy cane.”

“I’ll get the two of you,” I said hastily. “I don’t love being in pictures. Here, give me your phone.”

Kylie handed it over but shook her head. “Don’t even try to get out of being in all of them. You have to be in some. We’ll have a rotation.”

The absolute last thing I wanted to do was stand cheek to cheek with Seth, pretending to smile for the camera, but at least it would be quick. “Okay. But you guys go first.”

Seth and Kylie stepped closer to the giant candy cane, which stood erect and proud before one of the fancy Madison Ave office buildings. They posed before it, hands on hips and huge smiles on their faces. I snapped the pic feeling very, very alone.

As we continued on our way toward the window displays, the frosty air biting our noses and Christmas music jingling out the open doors of designer stores, we grabbed a picture of me and Kylie in front of a train of light-up reindeer decorating the facade of an apartment building. “I have no idea who could live in Midtown like this,” I said, shaking my head as Kylie deposited the picture in the shared album. “Surrounded at all times by tourists and a never-ending stream of traffic? My worst nightmare.”

“I don’t know, if I could afford it, I think the hustle and bustle might be nice,” said Kylie. “Just think of the energy.”

“Says the woman who lives in the hustle and bustle of Williamsburg,” Seth said. “I’m never happier to have moved to Vermont than when I’m back in Midtown. Times Square especially.”

“All the people and the lights give me hives,” I said. Just a confirmation that I’d also done the right thing in moving to Vermont. You really needed a certain kind of personality to live in the middle of nowhere like we did, a true love of quiet and trees and solitude, a tolerance for nosy neighbors and long drives for essentials and losing your power on days when a bad storm hits.

The streets grew busier as we neared the stores that hosted holiday window displays, slow-walking tourists crowding the sidewalk and gawking at the tall buildings high above them. I sidestepped them, simmering with impatience. One thing that hadn’t changed since my move: fast walking.

I did pause and tilt my head back when we neared Saks Fifth Avenue, though. The legendary and legendarily expensive department store was known for its holiday light shows, where its facade was covered in a cascade of multicolored lights that flashed in shapes and patterns along with a Christmasy song like “Carol of the Bells.” The actual show wouldn’t start up until sunset, but the lights themselves were still beautiful. This year they were shaped like a giant castle.

Seth stepped up next to me. “As much as I like Vermont, I could go for living in a castle like that.”

“It looks like Elsa’s ice castle from Frozen ,” I said. “You’d probably be very cold.”

“Guys, over here!” Kylie called, her fuzzy red glove waving high in the air. “This one’s perfect.”

It was hard to tell with our untrained eyes and inability to try to smash the diamonds whether they were real, but it was close enough. The skinny female mannequins in their white fur coats and muffs and neon-colored blocky boots were staring up at the ceiling of their window, from which diamond rings and earrings and bracelets glittered on the ends of nearly translucent strings. I said, “Great. How about you two pose?”

“No way,” said Kylie. “It’s your and Seth’s turn. Come on, get in there.”

We were friends, I told myself. And we weren’t making things weird.

But I still noticed the solid six inches of space left between the two of us as we smiled rictus grins in front of that window.

“Come on, you guys,” Kylie said. She bobbed to be seen between the members of a passing cluster of people in matching bright green sweatshirts. “You stand that far apart and you can’t even see the diamonds. Act like you like each other.” She grinned like she was joking, because she was.

It didn’t feel like a joke to me, though. Still, grudgingly, I stepped closer, the arm of my wool coat pressing against Seth’s. He took it upon himself to duck his head toward mine, and the end of a curl brushed my cheek. I closed my eyes for a second, taking a deep breath and fighting the urge to tangle my fingers in his hair again.

“Okay, got it,” Kylie called. Seth sprang away from me like I’d stung him. I tried not to be offended by that.

As we strolled downtown, we grabbed pictures of me and Kylie with a guy dressed as a nutcracker and Seth and Kylie in front of the Bryant Park skating rink. “That’s five,” Seth said, scanning through the shared album as he uploaded the last one. “Looks like we’re tied for first. Doing great, guys.” He raised his eyebrows hopefully. “Maybe great enough for an ice-skating break?”

Wearing uncomfortable knives on my feet while wobbling over an icy surface among people just as clueless about it as I was? No thanks.

Kylie was not as vehemently opposed. “Aw, that would be so cute. You guys hanging on to each other’s arms and everything.”

I glanced sidelong at Seth. “Actually, the last time we went ice skating together up in Vermont, I nearly decapitated him with my skate.”

Kylie’s eyebrows jumped to her hairline. “You what?”

“It’s not as gory as it sounds,” Seth said. “It didn’t even sever an artery.”

“Imagine how gross that would have been. Blood frozen all over the ice.”

“Fortunately, it only nicked me a little when she tripped head over heels and I lunged in to rescue her from breaking her neck,” Seth said innocently.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I feel like my blade wouldn’t have even come close to your head if you hadn’t also fallen head over heels.” We shared a small smile, and for a moment it was like we were back meeting his parents, wildly fabricating stories for the amusement of the crowd.

Except that, since then, we had real stories to tell people about. Real inside jokes we had together. So it was still fun, but…I don’t know, it felt a little emptier.

“Okay, so what I’m gathering is that we shouldn’t go ice-skating or risk losing a limb,” Kylie said.

Well, at least I’d won. “Or a head,” I told her. “Can’t really get a prosthetic head.”

The next stop was Times Square for one of the Broadway snow globes. Every year, many of the shows currently playing on Broadway would craft giant snow globes for the public showcasing a key scene; some even had music playing along with them. We passed Elphaba flying up into the snow on her broomstick, Rafiki holding Baby Simba out over a snowy gorge (not super accurate for the Kenyan savanna, I thought), Aladdin and Jasmine flying on their magic carpet.

Kylie stopped short in front of one I wasn’t familiar with. “Ooh, since it’s your turn and you’re a couple, you’ve got to do this one. It’ll be perfect.”

The show title in red and black spelled out Hadestown , and inside the globe, a young couple clutched at each other with angsty expressions like they were about to be torn apart. Well, I could definitely share the angst. “Whatever,” I said, eager to get this over with. Seth stepped up next to me and smiled.

But Kylie didn’t hold up her phone. “Aw, come on, you guys. Have a little fun.”

“Instructing someone to have fun isn’t usually how fun works,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. Lean into it a little! Come on, pose like them. It’ll be so cute. And if we end up tying later on, maybe it’ll win us some bonus points.”

I took another look at the couple in the snow globe. The girl stood facing me, her face tilting up; the guy—her boyfriend?—stood behind her, clutching her close, his mouth a hair’s breadth away from her forehead. Their arms twined together as if they were holding tight against some tremendous force.

If Seth and I were really dating, this wouldn’t even be a big deal. So that’s how I had to act. I swallowed hard. “Of course. No problem.” I tilted my head up at Seth in imitation of the girl in the globe. “Ready?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Are you sure?”

“You guys, come on!” Kylie sounded impatient, but I couldn’t turn to look at her, because I couldn’t tear my eyes from Seth. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

Maybe he wasn’t as chill as he was pretending to be.

But he didn’t argue. He stepped up behind me, his front against my back. I turned my cheek against the soft wool of his coat, looking up toward his chin, at the scrape of black stubble there, and lifted my arms like I was doing ballet. One tender forearm found its way against his cheek, the other around the back of his head. He wrapped his own arms around them, his fingers tangling with mine.

He looked down at me like if I said the wrong thing, every part of him would unravel. It was lucky we weren’t supposed to smile, because I didn’t think I could.

“Guys? Guys?” It took me maybe one minute and maybe an hour to realize that Kylie was trying to get our attention. “You did great. We’re done.”

I cleared my throat. “You can let me go now,” I whispered.

He wrinkled his brow at me, looking just as tortured as the guy inside the globe, and I imagined him saying, I never want to let you go.

But that was ridiculous. We were just friends, and better for it. His brow cleared and he pulled his arms from mine, letting them fall to his sides. I cleared my throat. “Okay,” I said. My voice came out a little rusty. “Where to next?”