Chapter Four
Chap-ter Four
T he next evening, Adam rode the train to Hobo-ken and fid-geted with his phone. Should he call Dina? She’d prob-a-bly know some ob-scure fact about trains. He started to smile. He had a feel-ing she wouldn’t ever un-der-stand his rules. Rule num-ber one be-ing no strings. Rule num-ber two be-ing if you start get-ting at-tached, reread rule num-ber one. He’d had a nice time with her last night, hell, more than a nice time. De-spite her sense of hu-mor, which was sub-tle like her, she had depth. He couldn’t af-ford that and he didn’t want to hurt her. Frus-trated, he shoved his phone back in his pocket and as the train stopped, dis-em-barked with the other pas-sen-gers. A short walk later, he en-tered the com-muter bar where he’d ar-ranged to meet Ja-cob.
His friend was seated at a ta-ble half-way back and raised his arm to flag Adam down.
“Hey, good to see you,” Ja-cob said, shak-ing his hand. “It’s been too long.”
“You too. Tell me what’s hap-pen-ing with you.” Adam lis-tened as Ja-cob filled him in on mar-ried life to Aviva and his job with a bou-tique law firm in Jer-sey City. Adam’s stom-ach clenched. The beer he’d been drink-ing turned sour. An-other one with a per-fect life.
“You’re usu-ally a lot more talk-a-tive, Adz. What’s go-ing on?”
Adam opened his mouth, about to brush him off with his usual flip an-swer. But this was Jake, the one per-son he opened up to, even if only a lit-tle bit. He gripped the neck of his beer tighter and rubbed the con-den-sa-tion away. “My life’s a mess.” He gave him a quick run-down about the de-ba-cle at work.
Ja-cob winced. “Oh man, that’s rough. Has your dad for-given you yet?”
“Nope, and in the mean-time, I’m do-ing scut work at the of-fice. I’m also benched so-cially. Sort of.”
“What’s ‘sort of’ mean?”
“It means that nor-mally I’d drown my sor-rows with some gor-geous babe, but I can’t since that only fu-els my dad’s fire. I need to keep my nose clean. Which, for the most part, I am.”
“For the most part?”
“There’s a woman but she’s to-tally not my type.”
Ja-cob raised his brows. Adam banged the back of his head against the wall. “She isn’t. She’s ev-ery-thing I don’t look for in a woman. Se-ri-ously, my fa-ther needs to for-give me so I can get back to my so-cial life and for-get about this.”
“Isn’t that what landed you in this mess to be-gin with?”
Adam shook his head. He took an-other swig of beer. “I was sure Ash-ley would take care of it, and Dina? I don’t see it hap-pen-ing.” He blocked out im-ages of her creamy skin, shak-ing his head and star-ing off into the dis-tance.
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “She’s not a ‘no-strings’ kind of woman.”
“You’re pos-i-tive you’re still a ‘no-strings’ kind of guy?”
Didn’t mat-ter what he wanted. She wouldn’t want him when she found out about him. His mom, the one woman who was sup-posed to love him no mat-ter what, hadn’t given him a sec-ond thought when she’d left and cut off all con-tact. “Please. Not all of us are bor-ing like you.”
Ja-cob laughed. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it. You know if you want, I can have my mother set you up.”
Adam pulled away from the ta-ble in hor-ror, his chair legs scrap-ing against the floor. “ Yenta Karen? You’d sic her on me? Are you kid-ding?”
“Yep. Just wanted to see you sweat.”
“I love your mother, but there’s no way I want her med-dling in my life.”
“I think you’re miss-ing out on a great op-por-tu-nity,” Ja-cob said with a wink. “I think you should re-con-sider Dina. Some-thing in the tone of your voice when you talk about her makes me think your feel-ings for her are dif-fer-ent.”
“There’s no point.”
Dina walked into tem-ple Fri-day night and let her wor-ries fade away. The peace-ful-ness of the sanc-tu-ary, with its stained glass win-dows de-pict-ing bib-li-cal scenes from the Torah, the or-nately carved ma-hogany doors of the Ark where the Torah scrolls were kept, and the dim light-ing calmed her. It was just the place she needed to be af-ter a week filled with such un-cer-tainty about Adam and her feel-ings to-ward him.
She sat in the pew to-ward the front and waited for the rabbi to be-gin her ser-vice. A rustling next to her brought her at-ten-tion to Re-becca, her hus-band, Aaron, and their three chil-dren slid-ing into her row. Scoot-ing over, she made room for them and handed prayer books down to them as they set-tled.
Af-ter the ser-vice, she fol-lowed Re-becca and her fam-ily into the So-cial Hall for the Oneg , where ev-ery-one so-cial-ized and ate dessert af-ter recit-ing brief prayers over the wine and the chal-lah .
“I love show-ing my chil-dren how many peo-ple come to ser-vices on Fri-day nights,” Re-becca said to Dina, as she watched them run over to the dessert ta-ble for cook-ies and juice.
“And I love com-ing here Fri-day nights,” Dina said. “It helps me set-tle af-ter a week of stress.”
Re-becca nod-ded. “We missed you last week.”
“I was out to din-ner and it ran late.”
Re-becca’s face lit up. “With any-one spe-cial?”
Dina sighed. She loved Re-becca. About ten years older than she was, Dina en-joyed hav-ing a friend at tem-ple to keep her com-pany and to talk to, but Re-becca was al-ways try-ing to fix her up. “I got a flat tire and this guy stopped to help me. I was a lit-tle rude to him and to apol-o-gize, I took him to the diner.”
“You in-vited a ran-dom stranger to the diner?” She cov-ered her mouth with one hand and gripped Dina’s shoul-der with the other. “Are you crazy?” When Dina rolled her eyes, Re-becca shook her head. “What’s he like?”
Dina pulled Re-becca off to the side, away from the other con-gre-gants. “Com-pletely dif-fer-ent from any-one I’ve ever dated, but that’s not say-ing much.”
“Dif-fer-ent how? You’re dat-ing him?”
“No, he’s flashy and seems con-cerned about his im-age and what other peo-ple think.” But he’s got depth. She’d heard it when they talked, usu-ally when he wasn’t aware he was re-veal-ing it. Re-becca’s look of con-cern made Dina hold out her hand. “Don’t worry, he’s not my type at all.”
Re-becca put her arm around her. “Well, I think I have some-one per-fect for you, so let me know and I can set you up with him.”
Did she want to be set up again? Maybe. “Who are you think-ing of?”
“He’s a re-ally sweet guy, a few years older than you. He’s a re-searcher in Aaron’s lab. Very smart. I think you two would be per-fect to-gether. He lives in Madi-son.”
He didn’t sound bad at all. “Okay, sure. Why not?”
“Great! I’ll give him your phone num-ber. His name is Zach Ep-stein.”
When Dina left fif-teen min-utes later, she promised to let Re-becca know about her plans with Zach. If he called.
The large en-ve-lope em-bossed with her high school logo made Dina’s palms sweat. As she pulled out the in-vi-ta-tion to her tenth high school re-union, vi-sions of the pop-u-lar girls whis-per-ing as she walked in the hall-ways clicked through her brain. She’d been too smart in high school to fit in with any-one. Even the nerdy kids hadn’t wanted to hang out with her—they’d gig-gled when she’d wanted to dis-cuss the themes in The Scar-let Let-ter and looked at her like she was a bug when she’d proved she could re-cite the Con-sti-tu-tion from mem-ory. The only thing that had got-ten her through those years were her teach-ers and books. Now she was in-vited to go back and re-unite with them? No way.
Mor-bid cu-rios-ity made her read the in-vi-ta-tion, rather than throw-ing it in the trash un-opened like she had the five-year one. She frowned. It was a din-ner dance on a Sat-ur-day night two months from now at a fancy ho-tel about an hour away in Prince-ton. The or-ga-niz-ers had gone all out. Shak-ing her head, she started to slide the in-vi-ta-tion back in-side the en-ve-lope when her phone rang. Toss-ing the in-vi-ta-tion on the ta-ble by her front door, she an-swered her phone as she walked fur-ther in-side her apart-ment.
“Hello, Dina? This is Zach Ep-stein. Re-becca and Aaron Kopf gave me your name.”
“Hi, Zach. Re-becca told me you might call.”
“Oh. Good. I was won-der-ing if you’d like to go out for a drink one night this week?”
She swal-lowed. No harm in see-ing what hap-pened. “Sure.”
“Oh. Good. How’s to-mor-row? There’s this neat place in Madi-son called The Game Set. It has board games. Do you like board games?”
Board games? “Sure, that sounds fun.”
Af-ter get-ting the ad-dress, she hung up. She’d never heard of the place, but it would be dif-fer-ent. And he sounded much more her type than Adam, who hadn’t called de-spite telling her he would. Even if in her head, Adam was the one she pic-tured on the date.