Love You a Latke

Chapter 21

21

The morning of the ball dawned bright and clear, which was a relief. No matter what I did with my hair, any rain or snow would’ve introduced an element of unpredictability. And frizz. Always frizz.

Though it seemed Bev didn’t want to leave anything unpredictable. “I made us a hair appointment at my salon for blowouts, if you’re up for it. It’s at three thirty.”

My mouth opened, ready to instinctively agree with her, but what came out was, “I was thinking I might actually wear it curly. Could they help me with that?”

She smiled. “I’m sure they could.”

Even though I’d slept in well past Seth, whose floor nest had been cleaned up and folded neatly by the time I cracked my eyes, three thirty was still an interminable number of hours away. Hours I had to fill. Later on, I’d be spending more than enough time in close and awkward proximity to my fake boyfriend who I’d real kissed—time for an excuse. “I think I’m going to go for a run,” I said, craning my neck to see past her into the kitchen, where I assumed Seth was.

“That’s wonderful, dear. I’ve never been much of a runner myself,” she said. As if she’d finally caught on to the awkward neck-craning, she added, “Seth and Benjamin went out to play pickleball. They had to go early to snag a court.”

My shoulders sagged a little with relief, knowing I wouldn’t have to see him first thing, then felt bad for it, because he was my friend. Awkwardness or not, I shouldn’t be relieved about not seeing him.

Then it occurred to me that his absence meant I didn’t necessarily have to be absent. Though I’d already told Bev I was going running. Going back on that now would probably be weird. “I’ve never played pickleball.”

“Oh, Benjamin loves it,” Bev said. “He used to play tennis, but when he realized there was a sport like tennis without all the running he was delighted. He’s not much of a runner, either.”

To be quite honest, I was also not much of a runner. Other people liked to say that running cleared their mind. Running did indeed clear my mind, but it replaced all those cleared thoughts with a drumbeat of I hate running I hate running . But maybe this time, when I really needed a clear head, things would be different.

They were not. Once I’d squeezed myself into the slightly too small exercise clothes I’d packed with me just in case and hauled myself out to Riverside Park, my feet hitting the pavement reminded me exactly how much I hated them hitting the pavement.

At least the scenery was beautiful. Bev had recommended I run on the path beside the river, which was crowded this early on a weekend but not too crowded, probably because it was even colder beside the water than not. I ran north, various sports-like installations and a busy highway on my right and the sparkling slate gray waters of the Hudson on my left. Bikers zoomed past me on the narrow path, many of them delivery guys lugging bags over their handlebars. The air was so cold it hurt my teeth going in and my lungs going out.

I ran—well, jogged—well, jogged slowly—for what felt like an hour or two, then turned that slow jog into a slow walk and checked my phone. It had been eleven minutes. I hate running. The thought of continuing filled me with dread, but it wasn’t like Bev would check my pedometer, right? I had technically gone for a run, and now I could walk back. Nobody could stop me.

As I’d run north, I’d passed what seemed to be an adult playground with rings, volleyball courts, a soccer field. Now that I’d slowed, I could hear ping-pongy noises from the courts beside me. Pickleball?

I was curious to see Seth and Benjamin play, but I didn’t want them to see me and, god forbid, try to make me play with them. I crept up beside the courts, my body hidden by a thick grove of shrubs, and squinted at the players. None were Seth or Benjamin. I stood for a moment, oddly transfixed by the repetitive movement of the ball—was it possible to get hypnotized like this?—and then turned to go.

But not before I heard a familiar voice. “You’re better than I remember you being.” It was Seth, speaking, presumably, to Benjamin. I turned back toward the courts, realizing now that there were benches set up alongside them for people to sit while, I guessed, they were in between games waiting to rotate back in. “I can’t believe we beat that guy with the toupee.”

Benjamin snorted. “He talks a big game, but his knees are too old for it. He should take his toupee back to the beginner courts.”

“Ouch,” Seth said, whistling.

“I say it as I see it,” Benjamin said. “So I’ll also say, when are you going to ask that girl to marry you? Your mother’s already started planning the wedding.”

I stopped, rigid, behind the shrubs so that they wouldn’t catch a flicker of movement out of the corners of their eyes. I should leave, I told myself. Listening to this conversation would be wrong. I was literally hiding behind shrubs, for heaven’s sake.

And yet I didn’t move.

Seth snorted identically to his father. “If Mom’s already started planning, shouldn’t she know when it is?”

“The date’s the one missing piece,” Benjamin said. “You’ve been dating for how many months?”

“Is there a standard for when you’re supposed to get married?”

“Well, you’re getting up there in age,” Benjamin said. “It’s one thing if you’re twenty-one or twenty-two. It’s another thing when you’re almost thirty. Have the two of you discussed it?”

“So you’re saying I need to make an honest woman out of her?” said Seth. “What year is this again?”

“You don’t have to get so defensive. You know this is nothing compared to the interrogation your mother will give you the next time you’re alone.”

“I know.” Seth was silent for a minute. I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for him right now. It was one thing for me to lie with my presence. It was another thing for a son to straight-up lie to his father about marriage and give him false hope.

Though it was kind of funny that Benjamin thought I needed to be made an honest woman. If only he knew how honest I really was.

Seth finally said, “I’m not sure she feels the same way about me as I feel about her.”

Smart. Lay the seeds for our “breakup” now so that it wouldn’t come as a shock later. I tried to ignore how those seeds made my stomach kind of lurch.

“I doubt that,” said Benjamin. “I see the way the two of you look at each other. It’s clear there’s love there.”

I had to hold back a snort of my own. I certainly didn’t look at Seth like I loved him, because I didn’t love him. The mere idea of it was absurd.

Right?

I could imagine Seth’s mouth twitching in a wry smile, as aware of the irony as I was. The whole thing was hilarious. I wasn’t smiling, but that was just due to the ever-present resting bitch face.

But Seth sighed. It didn’t sound like he was smiling, either. “There’s love on my side,” he said. “The other night we kissed and I just…I fell so hard, and she pulled away.”

My stomach lurched unpleasantly. This is all part of the fake relationship , I told myself, but…was it? Because we had kissed the other night, and I had pulled away, and…

“She wouldn’t be here with you if she wasn’t all in,” Benjamin said. “Eight nights staying in a small apartment with you and your parents? Why would she have come otherwise?”

Seth was silent for what felt like a very long while. He wasn’t going to tell Benjamin the truth, was he? My stomach lurched again. I wasn’t sure which option I wanted less. Him going back to the lie would show that he had indeed just been fabricating something for his father, which should have made me happy, but instead the thought made me nauseous. And him telling the truth, meaning he’d been telling the truth about his feelings?

Well. That left me feeling shaky. Terrified. Like an earthquake had suddenly struck here in Riverside Park and the world was shuddering around me and pickleball players were screaming and losing their toupees and I no longer knew how to stand up.

If that was the case, though, Seth would catch me. He would help me stand.

He was speaking. “I think she’s afraid,” he said, and even though I’d just acknowledged the accuracy of that statement, outrage couldn’t help but swell in my chest anyway. “I think she’s afraid of her feelings and of being really open in a relationship. When I reach out to her, she pulls away. I don’t know what to do.”

“You can’t solve something like that by loving her,” Benjamin said gravely. “She has to be the one to take that step. She has to love herself.”

This whole conversation was ridiculous. Offensive, actually. I should bound out of my hiding place right now and confront them with the truth. Tell Benjamin all about our scheme so that I could stop this infernal wondering that was making my stomach all soupy and gross.

Because it had to be that this was all fake, just like our dating scheme. Because if it was real, true, then I had to look inward. I had to open up my chest just enough to peer inside and read what exactly my heart was trying to tell me.

I took a deep breath. Before I could make any decisions, a gruff voice by the bench said, “You’re up.”

Creaking noises as people stood. “Great,” Seth said. “Dad, do you think I get bonus points if I knock the toupee off his head?”

Obviously, I couldn’t talk to them if they were hitting balls back and forth and at people’s heads. That left me to slink away, to ring the bell for Bev to let me in. “You look like you got a great workout,” she said brightly as I stepped inside the apartment. It was probably true: my cheeks were red from both the cold and Unwanted Feelings; my hair was all mussed from running my fingers through it over and over during my (long, slow) walk back. “How are you feeling?”

I actually did indeed feel like I’d gotten a workout. My heart was still racing. “I don’t know,” I said, before I could think about it. “I don’t know how I’m feeling.”

How did you know if you loved someone? Was it when you felt safe around them? Wanted to share your news and excitement with them before anyone else? Felt comfortable sharing more with them than you’d shared with others maybe ever, even if you weren’t ready to crack open your chest and let them dive into the whole bloody mess? Wanted nothing more than to kiss them and touch them and feel the throb of their heart pulsing against yours?

Well, shit. Maybe I didn’t need to crack open my chest after all.

I snapped out of it when Bev cupped my forehead with her palm. “You don’t feel like you have a fever,” she said. “Is it your legs? Did you twist something?”

It occurred to me that she hadn’t been asking about my emotional state; she’d been making sure I hadn’t hurt myself. Which made me laugh. She looked at me like I was deranged, which maybe I was. “No, I’m great. All of my extremities are doing great.”

Seth and Benjamin got back sweaty and red-faced, too, and we had time for a nice lunch—Bev made some excellent spaghetti with a salad—before heading off to our hair appointment. It did not surprise me at all that Bev’s usual salon was way swankier than my usual salon, which, to be honest, was less a salon than me trimming my hair in the mirror whenever I got too many split ends. Mirrors covered the walls, multiplying us into infinite versions of ourselves; soothing music that sounded like it should be in a spa played through hidden speakers, and everything smelled like hair cream that cost more than a day of my café’s operating expenses.

Bev got her blowout on one side of the salon, and on the other, a hairdresser somehow defrizzed my natural curls and teased them into a half-up, half-down kind of thing with way too many bobby pins sticking into my scalp. Why did people get acupuncture when they could just go to the salon? Head pain or not, what greeted me in the mirror afterward was me, just prettier. The pulled-up part of my hair emphasized my strong jaw and the lines of my cheekbones, and the curly bits that hung free were striking against my pale skin and the elegant slope of my neck. I’d never thought of any part of myself as elegant before this trip, and now here I was doing it two days in a row.

I swallowed a lump in my throat. I’d always rolled my eyes at the makeover scenes in movies, because what really mattered was, of course, on the inside. But maybe it mattered a little bit to have the outside match the inside, at least sometimes.

“You look beautiful,” Bev said, making me jump. Somehow she’d snuck up behind me, which was quite a feat, considering I was looking into a mirror. “The two of you will make such a handsome couple. I can’t wait for all my friends to see you.”

This was our last day together, and after this I’d never see her again. “Bev, can I ask you something? Do you only like me because I’m Jewish?” Something confirming that I was making the right decision, because Seth could’ve brought home any Jewish girl and Bev would’ve been just as happy. That I personally didn’t matter. “Sorry if that’s a rude question, but I heard you didn’t like Freya, and Freya is great, so…”

Bev stared into my eyes in the mirror. One of her hands found its way to my shoulder and squeezed, fortunately not crushing any delicately hair-sprayed curls. “No, dear, of course that’s not the only reason I like you. Is that what Seth said?”

I shrugged. Bev rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to stand here and lie through my teeth; of course I’m happy that he’s finally brought home someone Jewish. I know that the world has changed. Just because he doesn’t have a Jewish wife or partner doesn’t mean he can’t be part of the community or that he can’t have Jewish children. But I want Jewish grandchildren, I want to light the candles with them and stand up on the bima at their b’nai mitzvot to sing an aliyah for them and teach them all our ways and laws, and I know that’s more likely if he’s with someone who’s also Jewish. I don’t want Seth to feel excluded from the community we’ve spent our entire lives weaving together. But above all else I want him to be happy.”

That was not clicking with what Seth had said, but neither had what he told Benjamin at the pickleball court compared to what he’d told me, that our kiss had been just a kiss, and her words rang true. Maybe because she was squeezing my shoulder now like she might crush it if I didn’t believe her.

“I didn’t dislike Freya as a person,” Bev continued. “I didn’t think she and Seth were a good fit. She was sweet and polite, but she was too passive. My son needs someone who won’t take his crap, who will stand up to him and challenge him. Benjamin and I have worked so well for so many years because our differences complement each other, and we challenge each other to turn us into better people. That didn’t happen with Seth and Freya.

“You, on the other hand,” Bev went on. “I knew from the moment I met you and you ribbed my son in front of me that you would be good for him. You have the fire he needs, and I can already see that you challenge him. Is he just as good for you? I don’t know. I don’t know you well enough yet. But I think so, and I hope so. What was your question again? Oh. If I only like you because you’re Jewish. No, Abby. I like that you’re Jewish, but I like you mostly because I think you’re very good for my son.”

It was suddenly hard to breathe. The aerosol funk of the salon had crept into my lungs as a fog and was now choking my lungs of all air. Or maybe a lump had risen in my throat and was choking me because I was trying so hard not to cry. Either one.

“Turn around,” Bev said briskly. I couldn’t not obey her, so I did. And while she probably should have asked me first, she pulled me in for a hug. Her arms closed around my back, pulling me in. Trapping me.

Or that’s what hugs usually felt like to me, but somehow this one didn’t, even though I was already suffocating. If anything, it eased the pain in my chest. She held me long enough where I could breathe again, even if what I was breathing was her lavender and hair spray scent, and then pulled away. “You look beautiful,” she said. “Now let’s go home and get you dressed.”

I trailed after her into the cab, stomach simmering with unease.

—

An unease that persisted the rest of the afternoon, as Seth and I hung out and watched the Food Network from opposite ends of the couch, me doing my best not to move so that I didn’t ruin my hair. When the time started getting close to the ball, I applied some light makeup—anything else was beyond my capabilities—and, slowly and torturously, managed to shimmy out of my T-shirt without disturbing any bobby pins. I really deserved an award for that. From Seth, whose preparation for the ball consisted of combing his hair and putting on clothes. The differential here did not seem fair.

Still, it was worth it when I regarded myself in the mirror. I was no longer the princess of the night sky.

I was the queen .

“Oh, you’re just stunning,” Bev said, clasping her hands together. “Isn’t she, Seth?”

Seth, garbed in a black tuxedo that was somehow both slightly too long in the arms and the most dashing thing he could be wearing, had no words for me. He just nodded, an odd look I couldn’t quite read shimmering in those hazel eyes. I wanted to gaze into them. I wanted to drown in them.

I couldn’t handle the intensity. I looked away.

“Very pretty,” Benjamin said gruffly. From the way Bev sighed dreamily, I gathered that was the equivalent of a regular person throwing confetti and gushing out a thesaurus’s worth of synonyms for beautiful.

I wondered how they’d balanced each other out over the years. If before they’d met, Bev had been overly volatile and anxious; if Benjamin had been totally closed off and taciturn. If over the years they’d challenged each other, brought out the best in each other and smoothed out some of the rough edges, balanced each other in a way that made them both better, happier people.

Before my brain could push it away, I let myself wonder if that was true. If Bev had been right back in the salon when she’d told me she could see how Seth and I brought out the best in each other. Because hadn’t I been feeling happier, more comfortable, here with him than I had maybe ever before? I felt prouder in my Jewishness, too, and more open—okay, so I didn’t feel more open exactly, but I had opened up at least a little bit, and it hadn’t killed me. Yet. And Seth. Seth had been able to deal with conflict in a small, manageable way, true, but he’d still dealt with it in a way he hadn’t before. Was that us bringing out the best in each other?

Stop thinking about it , I tried to order myself, but I couldn’t help picturing me and Seth in ten years, twenty years, thirty years. Maybe Seth would never be entirely comfortable starting conflict or striding right into it. Maybe I’d never be an open book—which was fine, because who wanted everybody reading my insides anyway? But maybe we’d be able to bring out those parts of each other the same way Benjamin and Bev had. Maybe…

“The Uber’s here,” Seth said, snapping me back to reality. “You ready, Abby?”

I waited a second before turning to him just to make sure my eyes weren’t glittering with tears, then let him take my arm. I just had to get through tonight. Then I could figure out what all these confusing feelings meant. Or, better yet, I could not. I could just shove them away and pretend they didn’t exist.

Except that somehow the thought didn’t feel as appealing as it usually did.