The Goy Next Door (Girl Meets Goy #2)

Chapter 13 Interview at the tavern

“I’m sorry,” Leah said as soon as they sat down at the small unstable wooden table at Stone Street Tavern. “I know you wanted the position. You probably would have been better than me.”

Brittany sighed and looked around. “Yeah, well, I guess Marnie didn’t want me.”

“Thanks for not holding it against me,” Leah said, remembering how much she had hated Brittany when she had first heard about the new Teen Club researcher. How jealous she had been. Leah felt slightly pathetic.

“It’s fine,” Brittany responded and ordered a martini when a waitress came around. Leah had never had a martini before, she’d always stuck with fruity cocktails or beer, but she held up two fingers to the waitress who nodded and turned away. Leah worried it might have been a mistake when her stomach grumbled. She hadn’t eaten since the morning.

“I literally don’t know what I am supposed to be doing,” Leah confessed as the martini was placed in front of her. “I’m sorry, do you want to order food? I’m starving, I don’t understand how nobody eats at Teen Club.”

“Some people eat. Some people eat at their desks or sneak food by the bathroom. Every once in a while some people go to lunch. I think I’ve even heard a few purging in the bathrooms afterwards. Exactly like when I was in high school.” Brittany giggled.

“You don’t…” Leah was afraid to ask what she wanted to know. She took a sip of her martini and almost gagged. This was a cocktail? It tasted like alcohol straight from the bottle. But worse if that was possible.

“Me?” Brittany laughed harder this time, sipping her drink. “I have a bag full of energy bars. And if I ever eat too much, I’ll just run it off.”

Leah nodded and ordered the spinach and artichoke dip. Like most teenage girls, there were times she’d obsessed over the imperfections of her body. But she’d never say she’d had a complex. She had listened to the advice she’d read in Teen Club. She had tried to love her body and dress to hide the parts she felt self-conscious about. And as she’d matured, she’d realized that she’d been blessed with a good metabolism and with a somewhat healthy diet, she was considered slim.

“How am I supposed to make myself useful? That woman in the headscarf today kept saying that. Who was that?”

“Arlo. She’s the office manager. Her job is basically to keep up morale and motivate people. Sometimes she plays music in the office or brings in treats that everyone eats and feels guilty about after. Or she brings in samples of products to try. Everyone loves that. Companies are always sending free stuff for reporters to test out and write about. Arlo takes care of all that.”

“And how do I make myself useful?” Leah was starting to feel like she was interviewing Brittany. She was in reporter mode, asking all her questions and then thinking of follow-ups without ever offering any information herself.

Brittany shrugged. “Come up with ideas, write stories for the senior reporters. My job is to research what our competitors are writing about. I read all the other teen mags and analyze trends or sometimes I scroll on forums or social media to see what people are talking about. Sometimes I pitch ideas, like a couple weeks ago I noticed that a lot of magazines publish ideas for how to caption posts on social media, so I pitched an article on captioning your spring break when all you did was stay home. It’s running in the next issue.”

“Congrats! Is that your first byline?” Leah was starting to feel optimistic. If researchers could write articles, maybe Teen Club was more inclusive than Club Business even.

“I’m not getting a byline. Only senior reporters get bylines. I just pitched the article and then wrote the first draft. Willa, the senior reporter with the nose ring, she edited the piece and gets the byline.”

So much for thinking Teen Club was more inclusive. The spinach and artichoke dip arrived and suddenly Leah wasn’t so hungry. Maybe that was the secret at Teen Club, the work made everyone so nauseous that no one needed to eat.

“Do junior reporters get bylines?” Leah asked forcing herself to take a bite.

“Sometimes. But a lot of times they just help the senior reporters.” Brittany picked up a pita chip with two fingers and dipped a corner into the dip. Leah watched as Brittany wiped most of the dip on the side of the dip’s bowl before bringing the chip to her mouth and nibbling.

“And what’s up with Marnie? Does she ever come out of her office?” Leah moved to her next batch of questions.

“Of course she does! But she doesn’t really talk to the reporters much. There are junior editors who bring the stories to her. But she’s like a genius, you know. Like, the reporters might spend weeks brainstorming the perfect headline and then she reads it and trashes it right away, coming up with the perfect headline that makes everyone wonder how they hadn’t thought of it.”

Leah absorbed the information. Marnie ran things differently than Tony did. Maybe it was for the best.

“OK, now it’s my turn to ask a few questions,” Brittany said before Leah could ask her next one. “Why did you want to leave Club Business? Everyone knew you were like the best reporter there.”

“Teen Club was my dream.” Leah took another chip and scooped dip into her mouth. She couldn’t help thinking about happy hours with Alex and Mark, when the three of them would order at least three appetizers and gobble them up before their second round.

“How did you apply for the job?”

“I didn’t,” Leah responded. “Tony approached me. He said Marnie suggested it and he was obligated to ask me.”

“He didn’t offer you a raise or anything to stay? You didn’t even think about staying?”

Leah shook her head. “I mean, no offer for a raise. And I thought about staying, but I don’t know, I wanted to be at Teen Club.” She thought about her mistake the previous week and decided not to mention it.

“Was it because of Alex? Did something happen with you two?” Brittany finally finished her first chip.

“What!? Me and Alex?” Leah laughed uncomfortably thinking of their kiss in the elevator. “I thought you had a thing with him!”

“We did,” Brittany said. “We hooked up after the holiday party and then, like, were hanging out a lot for that week. But then when we came back to work, he stopped responding so much. And stopped making plans. It sort of fizzled. I thought he was dating you for some reason.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know. You guys were always going to lunch together—"

“With Mark,” Leah butted in.

“You’re always laughing around him—”

“Uh, he’s a standup comedian.”

“I don’t know, something about it,” Brittany said, her eyes narrowing in on Leah. “I’m usually good at spotting these things. And something told me there was something going on.”

“I actually have a boyfriend,” Leah said, conscious of how many chips she had eaten before Brittany picked up her second. She wondered if Brittany had always been like this or if Teen Club had changed her. She remembered the first time they’d met at the holiday party when Brittany and Malcolm had bonded over their love of ceviche.

Is that ceviche? Oh my God, I lived on ceviche during my semester abroad in Spain!

Leah had hated Brittany at that moment. Now, she wasn’t sure how she felt about her—grateful? Affectionate? Pity?

“Right, right, right!” Brittany grabbed a chip and to Leah’s relief, scooped some of the dip onto it. “Alex told me! He had a funny nickname for him! What was it? Like…”

“Goyfriend,” Leah responded wondering how everything always seemed to go back to Gabe.

“Right! Oh my Gosh, that was so funny, it was because of his religion or something, right?”

“A goy is someone who isn’t Jewish,” Leah explained. “But he’s not my boyfriend anymore. I have a different boyfriend now.”

“A different goyfriend?” Brittany giggled and actually ate an entire chip while taking the last sip of her martini.

Leah shook her head. “Just a boyfriend this time.”

“So a Jewish one,” Brittany responded. “I dated a Jewish guy once, his mother hated me. I guess because I am a goy.”

“You’re a shiksa,” Leah laughed. The hard alcohol must have gotten to her head. “Shiksa is the word for a non-Jewish girl.”

“Ah,” Brittany nodded her head and waved her empty martini glass to the waitress. Leah finished her own martini and nodded for her second round too. “You know, when I was dating that guy, I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal that I wasn’t Jewish. Like, I’m not religious or anything. You Jews are just like an exclusive club or something.”

Leah felt the urge to explain herself or her religion, but the truth was, she didn’t want to ruin this happy hour with the burden of her tradition. She was enjoying herself with Brittany and didn’t think a lecture about marrying Jewish would be good for their blossoming friendship. She’d never had many non-Jewish friends. There had been lots of acquaintances in high school, but she’d stuck with her Jewish friends, the ones who understood her obsession with their youth group. And then at Brandeis, non-Jews were quite a novelty and the competition to be their friends was not something that interested Leah.

“It’s because we just don’t have much in common with them,” Leah’s mother had explained once when she had brought up the phenomenon. “It’s easier to connect with people like you.”

Leah had always taken this to be true and had never questioned why she wouldn’t have things in common with non-Jews. Look at her and Brittany, they both worked at Teen Club and liked spinach and artichoke dip and martinis enough to finish everything on their table. Was their differing religion that much more important?

Later that evening, Asher texted Leah to ask about her first day. I bet you got all the scoops!

Leah appreciated his effort even though the way he used the word scoop in a journalism context was off. She told him it was interesting, but that she was tired and she would tell him about it later. As she dozed off, she tried to think of all the things she and Asher had in common. They were Jewish, that was a given. They were in the same Jewish youth group in high school. They both lived in Manhattan. But she struggled to come up with anything else. They didn’t seem to like the same things other than going to happy hour. Even happy hours they didn’t always agree on—Asher had a couple bars with cheap beers he liked, while Leah preferred trying new things.

She wondered if having their Judaism in common was so strong that it usurped all the other things they didn’t have in common. Before she could come up with an answer, she was asleep.