Chapter Sixteen
“I had no idea you were a Kleinatic.”
Ari immediately darkened her phone and looked up at her little sister, who was smirking from the doorway to her bedroom.
Going home for the holidays was always an adjustment because, as nosy as Liana was, she had nothing on Hannah Becker.
Ari wasn’t sure her little sister even had an internal dialogue; she certainly didn’t seem to keep a single damn thought to herself.
“It came up as a suggestion on my page,” she lied.
“Twelve times in the last hour?” Hannah arched one of her naturally thin brows. “No judgment. Shira and Molly are both obsessed, which of course means I hate him. So actually, maybe some judgment.”
“I just like this song.”
“Mmmhmmm. Just admit you’re a huge cliché with a crush on the hot Jewish celeb of the hour.”
Ari snorted. “Unlike your roommates, I actually know the guy, and trust me, I do not have a crush on him.” She wanted to say more, to call him uptight and obnoxious and everything else she used to call him before that night at Akiva’s party.
But after everything he’d told her that week, airing his worst fears about himself felt like a betrayal.
Instead, she said, “He’s definitely not my type. ”
That part, at least, was true.
That he seemed to be an exception to every rule of hers was another story.
“And yet you’re watching him over and over when you could just listen to the track,” Hannah pointed out, tapping the dimple in her chin. “How curious.”
“How are you still this obnoxious?” Ari grabbed a stuffed panda from her bed and threw it at Hannah’s face. “Shira and Molly must despise living with you.”
“Shira and Molly love me, but Shira’s also moving to Chicago for grad school and Molly’s getting married in August, so this is pretty short-lived anyway.
Molly actually tried to get Judah for her wedding, but he was already booked.
She was literally gonna move her wedding for it, but I think her fiancé would’ve left her. I should’ve just come to you.”
Arielle snorted. “I do not have influence over Judah’s work schedule, and the wedding he’s booked for is probably Liana and Gideon’s. Sunday the fifth?”
“Sunday the fifth,” Hannah confirmed. “Damn. But hey, sounds like we’ll both need new roommates then. Whaddaya think? Your place is so much nicer than mine.”
“I think we did enough living together in this house,” Ari said wryly, though the question of what she would do after Liana moved out had definitely been plaguing her.
“Okay, but you’re missing out,” Hannah singsonged. “I make Shira and Molly pancakes on Sundays.”
“I don’t even like pancakes,” Ari lied.
“Ah, so I see this is the day for pretending you don’t like stuff that you actually totally like. Cool, cool.”
“As if we’re not both gonna be doing that later when Dana and Evan show up.”
Hannah snorted at the mention of their big sister’s insufferable boyfriend, and Ari was sure she’d finally distracted her from their original conversation until Hannah said, “Think about how much better a brother-in-law Judah Klein would be for me.”
Ari searched for something else to throw at her sister, landing on her pillow. “You are like a dog with a bone, you nut.” She hurled it, and Hannah’s laughter trailed behind her as she ran off. “Move on!”
As soon as the sound of Hannah’s mirth disappeared, Ari trudged over to the doorway to retrieve her stuff, trying not to let her sister’s words hit home.
The last thing she needed was to insert a mental picture of Judah by her side at the Seder, his warm hand on her thigh, his beautiful voice filling the room with each song, her mom and sisters getting starry-eyed …
She shook the image out of her head. What the hell was wrong with her?
Why was she suffering from delusions, and why, oh why, had she called him?
She’d meant it to be a quick check-in, a nice little gesture during what she knew was a tough time for him, but to her horror it had the terrible effect of making her miss him.
And now, her freaking sister, of all people, had caught her fangirling … God, what a mess she was. Two days away from phones and the internet had never been so welcome.
Half an hour into the Seder, Ari was already dying to get back to the city.
Instead of Judah’s warm hand on her thigh, she had Hannah’s sharp claws digging in every time Evan made an obnoxious move.
If they’d been taking a shot every time he rolled his eyes or yawned hugely or got a text or phone call at the table, they’d both be passed out on the floor by now.
Ari had always loved her big sister, but she felt as if she didn’t even know the woman sitting there with a fake smile on her face, pretending the “love of her life” wasn’t being an offensive asshole during one of the most important nights on the Jewish calendar.
“Is it so hard to just shut the fucking thing off?” Hannah muttered as Evan’s phone pinged with a text for what felt like the tenth time during “Dayenu.” It was usually one of the family’s favorite songs of the Seder, about all the things God did for the Jews in the desert that would’ve each been enough on their own, but Evan couldn’t stop making it known that he’d had enough.
And there was some added insult to injury in that he was the only man at the table, the person who would, under ordinary circumstances, probably be leading the whole thing.
The Becker Girls didn’t need a man at the table; they’d done just fine on their own for years, and Hannah would be the first to go on a rant about the patriarchal nature of Orthodoxy.
But none of them particularly enjoyed leading the Seder or possessed any singing talents, and it should’ve been nice finally having a new face at the ritualistic Passover dinner.
Of course, when they finally got one, his strongest attempt at engaging with the Haggadah was to make jokes about which Becker girl was which of the four sons.
(He settled on Ari being the wicked one, which she couldn’t really argue with.)
It was impossible not to compare Judah to Evan, to know that he’d make a beautiful, clear kiddush versus Evan’s rushed mumble of a blessing, and he certainly wouldn’t pop a piece of matzo in his mouth before he was supposed to or roll his eyes every time Hannah or their mom noted something in the story they hadn’t discussed before.
And now that she’d had a private, in-person performance, she couldn’t stop thinking about how much more beautiful each one would be from Judah’s honeyed tongue, how much harmony he’d probably add to every song of Hallel, and how he’d be the only one at the table who could actually reach all the notes of her father’s favorite Pesach song, “Ani v’lo Malakh,” which they valiantly attempted every year, only for all of their voices to crack.
She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she missed the moment they finished “Dayenu” and moved on to what was technically the most important part of the Seder—discussing the three vital Pesach items on the table—until Hannah elbowed her to get her attention.
She straightened up and joined in just in time to glance at the roasted shank bone on the Seder plate, meant to symbolize the Pesach sacrifices of yore.
They went through the matzo and then the maror, complete with the generational joke they’d never been able to force themselves to shake off, pointing to their mother instead of the bitter herbs, despite its obvious misogynistic undertones.
Their father had simply thought it too hilarious when witnessing his own father-in-law doing it at Seders before any of the girls were even born.
Of course, once Evan got the joke, he laughed uproariously, which made Ari want to quit it for good.
Judah might’ve snorted, but he never would’ve taken it as an opening to be rude to her mother.
Stop. Fucking. Thinking about Judah.
But she couldn’t, because when the singing came a couple of paragraphs later, she couldn’t stop imagining him joining in.
And when they blessed and drank the second cup of wine, she wondered if he drank each cup all the way down to the dregs and what he was like when he got progressively inebriated.
“Thank God that’s over,” Evan muttered, standing up for Rachtzah, the next portion of the Seder, as the rest of them finished their wine. “Dayenu, am I right?” he joked to Dana with an elbow in her arm.
She giggled, and Ari and Hannah rolled their eyes at each other as they lined up for ritual handwashing at the sink.
At least there was a limit to how annoying Evan could be about washing his hands, though he did insist on talking to Dana between washing and blessing the matzo, when everyone else was silent.
Their mom’s sigh was so heavy as she got up to make the blessings that Ari could only assume she was as sick of Evan’s shit as they were, though she’d never say it.
No Jewish mother expected to have three unmarried daughters at their ages, and though, to her credit, she never pressured them about bringing a nice boy home or giving her grandbabies, Ari was sure she’d expected Sedarim to look very different at this point in her life.
It was at that moment, as they were chewing their cardboard-esque shmura matzo, that Evan surprised them all.
“Cindy, I’ll handle Maror and Korekh.” Her mom opened her mouth to thank him, but before she could get a word out, Evan managed to ruin his one kind deed of the entire night.
“Don’t worry, I’ll go very light on the maror.
I know you ladies have delicate palates. ”
If Ari didn’t love her big sister deep down, that was the point at which she would’ve stomped on Evan’s foot with a vengeance, and unlike her first meeting with Judah, it wouldn’t have been an accident. “Actually, I like a lot of maror—we all do. Thanks,” she bit out.
Next to her, Hannah smirked as Evan raised his eyebrows in surprise.
Still, he silently served heaps of grated horseradish on romaine lettuce, though he piled on way too much of the haroset Hannah and Ari had made earlier with wine, apples, and nuts, as if they needed excess sweetness to balance it out.
A zing of spicy bitterness shot straight to Ari’s nasal passages, but she chowed down like a champ, although she could feel her face turning red and see the same happening to Hannah’s.
(Dana got the tiniest scraping and an “Evan knows best,” even though she had the highest heat tolerance of any of them.) No matter—the pain felt good, and when she saw a wicked tilt to Evan’s smile as he assembled sandwiches for them out of the same ingredients between two pieces of matzo, she knew he was piling on even more, delighting in seeing her sweat.
“Next year,” Hannah murmured into her ear as they passed the sandwiches along until everyone had one, “I don’t care if we’re still single—I would sooner hire a date for this than have Evan be the man of the table again. You think Judah Klein will be available?”
Ari snorted. “I don’t think we could afford him, especially his Pesach rate.”
“Probably not,” Hannah conceded, wrapping a strand of pink hair around her finger. “How cool would that be, though?”
Now that she’d been given permission to imagine it again, Ari couldn’t resist, and she was grateful that her face was already flushed from the spicy horseradish.
It would certainly be something: To have him next to her, pouring her wine and making the korekh sandwiches for the whole family as thoughtfully as he made her dinner.
To have him knowledgeably and skillfully lead the Seder so her mother could take a break.
To have his gorgeous voice fill a room that hadn’t really felt full since her father died.
To hear him tell her she looked beautiful in her new flowered dress.
To crash into bed with him afterward, his arm curled around her waist the way it had been during the storm, keeping her safe and anchored.
To know he’d be there when she woke up in the morning, smiling into the back of her neck.
Crap. Crap. How did she get an actual crush on Judah Klein?
And why did she tell him they should hook up with other people?
There’s no way he will, she thought as Dana passed her the bowl of hard-boiled eggs they’d prepared earlier that day, their customary first course of Shulchan Orech.
She cracked the shell against the table and set to peeling it with her grass-green-painted fingernails.
Just because he jumped into bed with me doesn’t mean he’s suddenly the kind of guy who does that.
And he’d sounded happy that she’d called, hadn’t he?
Said it was nice? He certainly hadn’t been upset to hear from her.
Two more nights. In two nights, the first days of Pesach would be over and they’d be able to use phones again, and he would call.
He’d be thinking of her, and he would call, and then she would see how she felt, and maybe she would say something.
Or maybe he would say something. The point was, maybe something would be said, and they’d agree they weren’t quite finished with each other, because in her heart of hearts, Ari wasn’t ready to call “Dayenu” just yet.