Page 33

I held out his coffee mug like an offering. “It’s pumpkin spice–ish,” I said. My heart fluttered. There was clearly something wrong with my body today. Maybe I’d drunk too much caffeine. “Hope you like it.”

“I know I’ll like it.” He took it from me, then focused on my face. “Oh. Your hair looks nice.”

My heart fluttered again. Two people had told me my “unkempt” hair looked nice. “Thanks.”

Maybe because Seth was still hungover and we’d had a lot of activities the last few days, maybe because we were both exhausted from the stress of the morning, we decided to take it easy this morning and afternoon, then light the fourth night of candles with his parents at sundown. “Let’s go walk in Riverside Park,” he said, already by the door wrapping his scarf around his shoulders. “I want to show you the gardens.”

I waited until we were out in the hallway, the door shut behind us, before saying, “It’s winter. Aren’t the gardens all dead?”

“Hush, you,” Seth said lightly. The elevator stopped on our floor with a ding. We stepped inside, where I was given the privilege of staring at my makeup-less, wild-haired self in the unflattering overhead light above the elevator mirror. “I need a slap of cold, fresh air in the face if I’m going to make it through the day.”

“Fine, let’s go look at dead flowers.” I paused. “I’m really sorry, by the way. You know. For walking in on you getting dressed? I didn’t mean to. I—”

“It’s really okay,” Seth said. The elevator jounced to a stop. The building should probably get that checked. “It happens. You didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Right.”

We waved to the doorman as we passed by. Outside, the air was indeed a cold, fresh slap of air in the face. “You know, I could’ve done without the slap,” I said. “Considering I was a responsible adult last night who stopped after two drinks and all.”

“It feels like you have something you want to say.”

I gave an exaggerated shrug. “Is your fake girlfriend not allowed to look out for your health?”

If I’d ever been to Riverside Park, I couldn’t remember it. The long, narrow strip of green parkland snaked its way between the Upper West Side and the Hudson River, across which the buildings of New Jersey stood, looking sad and inferior (hey, as a born and bred New Yorker, it was my right to bash New Jersey as much as I wanted). It was hilly and crowded with monuments and statues. I stopped to check out the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, which rose up high and domed into the grayish sky, surrounded by cannons aimed at a playground below. Hopefully, they didn’t actually work.

“So,” Seth said, hands in his pockets as we strolled down a grassy incline and into the park proper, where the sound of the slate gray river was covered up by the traffic of the highway next to it. “I wanted to check in with you now that we’re almost halfway through. Is everything going okay with you so far?”

That phrase stuck in my head. Halfway through. Tonight would be four nights, the official halfway point to returning home. When I’d go back to being the single owner of a failing café who barely remembered her Hebrew.

That wasn’t totally true, at least. I’d discovered that over this trip. I guess I’d said those blessings over and over so many times growing up that it was like riding a bicycle. Which I also barely remembered how to do, but if Seth sprang a bike-riding outing on me, I could probably wobble my way through it. “Yeah,” I said, clearing my throat over a lump that had suddenly risen up there. “It seems like it’s all going well for me. I got so many leads for the festival. It’s going to be amazing.”

I let it sprawl out in my head. The wintry fairgrounds, spiky grass dusted with snow, the big lights overhead making it all glitter. The sound of a live band performing Hanukkah songs, but also other Jewish and Hebrew songs, just to break it up. Maybe even a klezmer band if their rates weren’t absurd and the tourism board wouldn’t laugh me out of town when I told them about the accordion. The winding rows of tents with their rising smells of frying oil and powdered sugar, the booming sound of voices reenacting the Hanukkah story, the shining lights of the big brass menorah reaching into the sky…

It was stunning. And it was all thanks to this deal I’d made. It was only fair that Seth feel like he’d gotten as much out of it as I had. “How about you? Anything I should work on or change for the second half of the trip?” I cracked a wry smile. “Besides maybe learning how to knock?”

His nose was ruby red from the cold, almost matching his wool scarf. “No, not at all. Like you said, it’s been great. Everybody loves you, you know. They’re going to be so sad when…”

He didn’t need to say it. They were going to be so sad when we “broke up.” Hopefully, Bev wouldn’t be one of those weird moms who came after the ex to ask why. I had a friend back in college who’d broken up with her boyfriend and ended up having to block his relentless mother on Instagram because she wouldn’t stop DMing her GIFs of sad baby animals.

I swallowed hard. Time to change the subject. As long as I was careful about it, I could broach the subject without betraying Freya’s confidence. “You know, Freya told me a little bit about your breakup last night. If I were her, I would be pretty angry with you.”

I watched him carefully to see how he’d react to that. If his eyes would narrow, or roll with annoyance of me butting into his business.

But his expression gave no indication of whatever he was feeling beneath. “Oh.”

I gave him a second to elaborate on that “oh,” but nothing came. I said, “She told me that you’d basically ghosted her after more than two years. Her and your friends, too. Is that why you were so weird about going to see them?”

That got a grudging response. Well, half response. “I didn’t ghost her. I broke up with her because I was moving to Vermont.”

“Why the big move? It wasn’t for work, right? Since you’re working for the same company, just remotely.”

A chilly breeze whipped through us, making me pull my arms in tighter. We were now walking by the gardens, which were, indeed, mostly brown and dead, but the wire frame of a cat suggested topiary in the summer months. I’d kind of like to see that, the topiary cat.

Seth sighed. I wondered if he liked cats, then wondered why it mattered. “I moved to Vermont because of Freya.”

“What?”

“I moved to Vermont because of Freya,” Seth said through clenched teeth. “Things were good between us. I liked her, loved her. I just…”