Chapter Nineteen
“Caleb,” I say, my eyes flying open. He glances away as if he’s embarrassed to be caught staring at me. “Where are you happiest?”
“In the boxing ring.”
I grimace. Maybe I didn’t phrase the question right. “Is there an activity that relaxes you?”
“My morning run. Lifting weights.” His lips wrap around the spoon and for some reason, I can’t look away.
“So, uh, physical things?”
“Mmm hmm.” His tongue licks at a corner of his mouth where a dab of mousse landed. “Want some?” he offers, holding his spoon out.
“I . . .” My cheeks heat up. Aaarrgghh—stop it with the blushing! It’s not like he offered to put the dessert on interesting parts of your body and then lick it off.
“Do you feel okay?” Caleb asks. “You look flushed.”
“I’m fine,” I say brusquely. I try to focus on what I’d been saying. “Is there anything besides punishing your body that brings you joy?”
“I can think of a few things,” he says in a husky voice, then swirls his tongue against the spoon. The things he’s doing to that spoon is obscene. Borderline illegal.
“Do you mind?” I say.
“What?”
“I’m trying to have a conversation, and meanwhile you’re . . .” I stop and make hand gestures at him.
“Eating?”
I cross my arms. “I’ve never seen anyone eat like that before.”
He flashes a crooked smile. “Are you blushing, Tinsel?”
Okay, I’ve had enough. I push my red velvet cake at him and then steal his mousse. I don’t even like lemon-flavored desserts, but I can’t continue to let him distract me.
“I wanted that,” he says, gazing at the spoonful of mousse in my hand.
“The cake is delicious,” I say. “Try it.” I tentatively take a lick of the dessert, expecting to hate it, but an explosion of flavors burst on my tongue causing it to tingle.
“Ohch my gawd,” I moan. “It tashes shooo good!”
Caleb’s eyes skitter across my face, and he clears his throat. “Yes. I know.”
“Wow.” I didn’t know that food could make your tongue tickle. Is there such a thing as a mouthgasm? Because I think I just had one. “How’s the cake?” I ask.
“Not as good as the mousse.”
“I completely agree.” I take another huge spoonful. “Anyway,” I say, returning back to the topic at hand. “Besides the gym, where else makes you happy?”
He finishes chewing and wipes his mouth with his napkin. “Work.”
Work. I shake my head. What is wrong with this man? I was hoping he’d say relaxing after work with a drink or hiking in a forest or something. It makes me scared to ask what his other favorite places are.
But I suppose work could do. It’s definitely a step up from the boxing ring, that’s for sure.
“So, Caleb,” I say, and he puts down his spoon and gazes at me expectedly. “I don’t know if you know this, but as a matchmaker, I also provide coaching lessons to my . . . special clients.”
“I see.”
“And you are very, very special.”
The corners of his eyes twinkle with amusement. He lifts up his glass of water and murmurs, “Do you think so?”
“Oh, I know so. Which is why,” I continue, “I think it would be a good idea to do a practice dating session at your work. You could pretend that I’m your date and give me a grand tour, and then give me some tips on self-defense, for example, how to kill someone like you with my bare hands.
And if at any point you have an impulse to start talking about Kristallnacht or getting a pet tarantula, I’ll coach you through it. ”
“I can’t teach you to take down someone who’s twice your size and a trained fighter. It’s not possible. And,” he adds, before I have time to protest, “there’s no concept of shomer in a self-defense class.”
“First of all,” I say, holding up a finger. “Just because I may not be able to make you unconscious, doesn’t mean that there aren’t tons of women out there who could.”
“Sure,” he acknowledges with a slight shoulder dip. “As long as they’re around six-foot-three, somewhere around the two-hundred-and-thirty-pound mark, and a trained fighter,” he adds. “Under those circumstances, I completely agree.”
“Yeah,” I say, leaning forward. “And they’re out there too. Lurking in the dark, waiting for the right moment to strike big, arrogant men.”
“I guess I’ll be sleeping with the light on tonight,” he says, looking relaxed and confident, and not at all like someone who understands the meaning of fear.
“You’re so annoying,” I say, causing him to laugh.
“I can’t believe Zevi never taught you self-defense,” he says, shaking his head.
“When would he have had time to? He was in London and when he came home, he was working nonstop on his film production company.”
“Didn’t he come home to visit?”
“The first year he did, but then he ran out of money.” I shake my head. “Back then, he barely had enough money to eat.”
“I didn’t realize,” he says after a pregnant pause.
“He wouldn’t have told you.” I shrug. “He tried not to tell me either, but as you know, I can be pushy when I want to be, so I harassed him until he confessed. He didn’t want me to worry, just like I didn’t want him to worry about how hard it was for me to take care of our mom.
” I blink. Whoa. Where did that come from?
A shadow crosses his eyes. “When did your mom get sick?”
I think back to the day when I found her collapsed on the kitchen floor. It was the scariest moment of my life, coming home from school to discover my mother’s unconscious body. I drag my finger down my cold glass of water. “I was fifteen.”
“Where was Leah?”
“Married and living in Israel.”
He slowly shakes his head. “Then, who took care of your mom?”
“I did.”
“But—” He looks perplexed. “You were a kid. You must’ve had help. A home nurse or something?”
I snort. “Do I look rich and famous to you?”
“But you were a kid,” he repeats. There’s a wrinkle between his brows that wasn’t there a moment ago. I glance down at my plate. I hate seeing the pity in his eyes.
“I grew up fast,” I say, twisting my napkin.
“It wasn’t easy, but I was lucky in a way,” I add.
“I packed a lifetime of amazing memories in those seven years with her. Some people can’t stand their mothers,” I add, thinking of Sissel’s relationship with her mom.
“Mine was my best friend. I like to think she still is—once in a while I talk to her,” I hear myself confess.
“I know she’s dead,” I add quickly. “I’m not one of those people that thinks Elvis Presley is still alive hiding out on some island somewhere.
It just makes me feel better to think that she’s nearby, and that she can hear me even though I can’t hear her.
“You probably think I’m pathetic,” I say, thinking aloud. OMFG. I’m a train veering off the tracks. Someone put a gag in my mouth and save me.
“Hey,” he says softly, and waits for me to look at him.
“I think you’re the strongest person I know.
” I start to scoff, but he cuts me off. “You are. You singlehandedly bore the burden of taking care of your mom. You were a child and you had no one. And,” he takes a deep breath, as though he’s trying to contain himself, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. ”
Aaaaah. Don’t you dare cry. Remember what Bubbe said: Keep the feelings in the attic. Rein it in, girl.
“It’s fine,” I say, forcing a cheery smile. “You were protecting our country with your super-secret spy skills.”
“Do you ever—” he abruptly stops.
“What? Do I ever what?”
“Think about your father? As in, hunting him down and killing him?”
I snort and some water goes up my nose. I cough and reach for my napkin. “Sometimes,” I confess. “But I’ve mostly made peace with the fact that he’s a dickwad. Did you know that he wrote my mom a letter about a decade after he left?”
He shakes his head. “No. I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah.” I swallow. “It was short and not so sweet. Something to the effect that he had gotten to the point where it was leaving us or killing himself.”
“No,” he breathes.
I nod. “My mom was all, ‘we can’t judge and bearing grudges is pointless’.” I shrug. “I disagree. I think bearing grudges is motivational. Like, me living my best life is the best kind of revenge on my dad. And Mrs. Schwartz,” I add.
“Hmm.”
I glance at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“It isn’t nothing. You made a hmm sound for a reason.”
“No, I mean—” He breaks off and shakes his head. “I see your point, and I agree that it is the best kind of revenge.”
“But?”
“But living your life in order to prove something to someone else might not be a recipe for happiness.”
I swallow, caught off guard by my emotions.
“How are we doing?” our waiter says, appearing at the table. We’re almost crying, thanks for asking. “Can I get you anything?”
Caleb glances at me, and I point to my mousse and say, “I’ll order one of these to go.”
“Very good. And anything for you, sir?”
“Just the check. Thanks.”
“I’ll be back with that in a moment,” the waiter says, then glides away.
I clear my throat, eager to change the subject. “Anyway, what’s the point of self-defense if I can only take on someone my own size?”
Luckily Caleb doesn’t insist we finish our last topic.
“The point of self-defense is to give you enough time to escape a bad situation, no matter the size of the person you’re fighting.
But killing someone twice your size with your bare hands isn’t realistic.
And as a general life rule, it’s better to escape someone than to kill them.
But,” he adds, “as far as teaching you, there’s still the issue of shomer. ”
“Can you teach it without touching?” I ask. “Do you have diagrams you could use instead, or mannequins?”
“Diagrams or mannequins,” he repeats under his breath, looking appalled.
I shrug. “A YouTube short?”
“That is not how this works, Ashira.” My eyebrows lift at him Ashira-ing me. “You need hand-to-hand practice with someone in order to build the muscle memory necessary—”
“Forget it,” I interrupt, waving my hand. “It’s too complicated. Let’s just have you give me a tour of the building, and then we can have a picnic in your office where we can roleplay.”