The Goy Next Door (Girl Meets Goy #2)

Chapter 25 The last soup

Leah tried to call Asher. She had quietly excused herself from the table while her friends tasted their flight of martinis and debated the merits of vermouth. She dialed his number several times, but it rang once or twice and then went to voicemail.

Can we still meet for dinner? She texted him.

I’m sorry.

Ash, please, it’s my birthday.

The third text got a response: Enjoy your birthday. Let’s talk tomorrow.

She fiddled with the ring on her finger and knew she couldn’t wait until tomorrow. She certainly couldn’t enjoy her birthday. His apartment was only a few blocks and avenues away so she set off in her Manhattan-style walking pace. It was just a few minutes before she arrived at the beautiful midtown building with glass doors and a doorman.

She smiled politely at the doorman and pressed the call button for the elevator. Her heart pounded. What if he wouldn’t open the door for her? What if he wasn’t there? She rode the way up to his floor and zigzagged through the carpeted halls to his door. She knocked.

There was no answer, so she knocked again.

“Ash!” She yelled with her face to the door. “Please, let me in.” She pressed her ear to the white door hoping to hear something, a clue that he was on the other side listening. “Asher, I’m sorry, please, let’s talk. I…”

She thought about what she wanted to say to him because even though it felt imperative to her that they talk that instant, she realized she was at a turning point and it was time for her to decide what she wanted.

There are people who go through life flowing with whatever current pushes them fastest. They let the current decide where they go and at what pace. Up until this moment, that was Leah. She flowed. She flowed into Asher’s arms when she felt vulnerable after breaking her arm. She flowed into an engagement that felt like the right thing to do even if Leah never took the chance to decide if it was what she had really wanted. When the tides had changed, she flowed away from Gabe, even though the way she felt about him was unlike anything she had ever felt before.

But now, Leah decided she didn’t want to flow anymore. She wanted to paddle. She wanted to control her pace and direction even if that meant fighting the current that promised a leisurely path. She needed to tell Asher this in her first foray in fighting the current. What better way than to start her life as a 23-year-old.

“Asher, I think we’ve made a mistake,” she said quietly through the door. “I love you, but I don’t think I am in love with you anymore.” It wasn’t a lie. She did love him and she would love him forever because of who he was to her. He was her first love, her first kiss, her first boyfriend. They’d lost their virginities together before he had gone to college. He was such a huge part of her life in high school and college, but she had grown up since then and grew out of her firsts just like a toddler grows out of their first pair of shoes. Sure, there might always be feelings about those first pair of shoes—memories of first steps and triumphs and learning to fall down and get up, but they couldn’t wear those shoes forever. Leah couldn’t at least.

“Please just let me in so we can talk about this like adults,” she said and waited. Nothing. There was no movement, no sounds from inside, and then from down the hall, Leah heard the ping as the elevator arrived and burst open. She turned and then saw Asher turning the corner down the hall. He was carrying a brown bag, probably from the bodega downstairs, and the smell of matzah ball soup wafted in the air.

“I couldn’t help myself,” he said with a small smile when he noticed Leah eyeing the bag. But the smile quickly disappeared. “What are you doing here?”

“I want to talk,” she said. He was silent as he walked toward her and slipped his key in the lock. She followed him into his apartment where he set the brown bag down on his kitchen counter and sat down on the L-shaped sofa that wouldn’t have fit in Leah’s apartment unless it had been chopped up and stacked on top of itself.

“Leah, I don’t want to do this on your birthday,” he said.

“What difference does it make?” she responded. Her birthday, the day after, a week later, the conversation had to be had and the way Leah saw it, the sooner the better. She sat down on the other side of the couch.

He sighed. “I think we made a mistake,” he said. “I made a mistake. I thought if I proposed to you, it would change things for the better. You think I haven’t noticed how you’ve acted since we’ve gotten back together, but I know you better than anyone else. You’re acting exactly how you did before we broke up the last time. I thought a ring would fix it. That it would make you happy, but I see it hasn’t. And I think you don’t really want to marry me. And to be honest, I don’t want to marry someone who doesn’t want to marry me.” He was looking at his hands in his lap and then he looked up.

“Like, what was going on with you anyway? Kissing someone in the elevator at your work? You had a boyfriend who you just never mentioned to me and then he shows up at your birthday?” Asher said. “Like, am I your rebound? I am your safety for you to fall back on when things don’t work out? I love you always, Leah, but I know you don’t feel the same about me.” He looked up at her and she knew she needed to say something.

“You’re right, Ash,” she said. “And I am sorry. I haven’t been fair to you. You deserve someone who loves you the way you love her. Someone who appreciates you. I haven’t been doing that. And you’re right, we aren’t right for each other anymore.”

Her fingers gravitated to the ring on her finger, which felt tight and sweaty. She gently slipped it off, feeling relief once she held it in the palm of her hand instead of choking her finger. She took one last look at the ring, the beautiful, dainty diamond that symbolized the life she had always assumed would be hers. The perfect marriage with her high school sweetheart, a house in the suburbs, and beautiful Jewish babies who would grow up and celebrate Shabbat and go to Hebrew school and Jewish dances. The ring looked so much less intimidating off her finger. She held it out to him.

“It was a gift,” he said. “My parents always taught me that gifts are gifts no matter what happens after they’re given.”

She shook her head. “I’m not going to keep it.” She stood up and placed it on the counter next to the brown bag.

“Do you want some soup?” he asked and she turned around and smiled.

“Sure.” She opened the bag and found bowls in his kitchen. She plated the warm soup and brought him a bowl and sat on the couch next to him.

“Well, happy birthday,” he said. “I bet this will be one to remember. Our last time having matzah ball soup together.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” she said. “We could be friends.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to be your friend, Leah. Sorry if that is harsh. But I just don’t see any reason for us to be friends.”

She nodded and took a bite of the salty soup.

“Unless I might be the kind of friend you’ll kiss in an elevator someday,” he looked up at her with a smile and raised eyebrows.

The soup almost burst from her nose when she started laughing. “Ash, don’t even get me started!”

“Please, this is probably the last time we’re going to talk, so let’s just have fun with it,” he said. “It’s your birthday after all, so enlighten me. Tell me what the heck your jerk friend was talking about at the bar.”

“Ash, you don’t want to know, really,” she said.

“But I do,” he responded. “Sure, maybe it will hurt tomorrow, but today, I want to know. Who was that guy outside the bar?”

“He was this guy I was seeing.” Leah said carefully. Even with Asher’s reassurance, she wasn’t sure how much she should tell him, how much she wanted to tell him. There was a time in her life when she would have told him everything.

“What did the jerk call him? He had a weird name for him.”

“My goyfriend,” Leah responded.

“What the heck does that mean?”

“He isn’t Jewish,” Leah said and now it was Asher’s turn to snort soup from his nose.

“Leah Rosenberg dating a non-Jew! What about your Bubbe’s dishes!”

And before she could stop herself, she was spilling everything except the soup. She told him about Thanksgiving when Gabe asked if her mother had put butter on the turkey— You didn’t warn him about being kosher!? Asher exclaimed—and then she told him about her cousin’s wedding and her realization that her family would never accept her relationship with a goy.

“The number one thing is they want you to be happy,” Asher said when she finished her story and her soup.

“Would you ever date a non-Jewish girl?” she asked.

“No way! I just don’t see the point, you know? Like, Judaism is important to me and I couldn’t imagine being with someone who doesn’t share that. And besides, it’s easier for you because if you marry a goy, your kids are still Jewish. If I marry a shiksa , my kids technically aren’t Jewish.”

Leah nodded and yawned. It was now after midnight and she still had a long way up to her Upper East Side apartment.

“Well, thanks for the soup,” she said. “And Ash, I am sure you’ll find a nice Jewish girl who will make you happy. You’re a great guy and any girl would be lucky to have you.”

“Except you,” he said. “You didn’t feel lucky to have me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” he said. “Better now than waiting for us to have to split the house or figure out custody or any of those things. But this is goodbye, Leah.”

“Goodbye,” she said. He walked her to the door and she stood in front of him. Part of her wanted to hug and kiss him goodbye, but she also felt the barrier between them. She hesitated a moment, the part of her that wanted to keep flowing in the current told her to apologize and take everything back, but she was now 23 and this was the year she would guide her life.

When she finally let herself out, she was sure there were tears in Asher’s eyes. She too felt the sting of a sad goodbye, but for her, it was also a beginning. Things would be different for her now that she was officially 23. As she took the subway home, she started planning the route of her new life.