Chapter Twenty-Seven
“THIS IS crazy,” Tad mutters, glancing up to make sure no one’s close enough to hear him talking to himself. He shoves his hands in his pockets and hunches his shoulders against the cold wind cutting through him. West 43rd is like a fucking wind tunnel tonight, and it’s cold as balls.
Ugh, December . It snuck up on him, because Thanksgiving was so late, and now everything is CHRISTMAS! And it’s not that Tad doesn’t like Christmas, he actually loves it, but now all the cheeriness and lights and evergreen boughs and garland everywhere just reminds him that he’s going to have to face his parents after the trash fire of last week’s Almost-Thanksgiving, and that, that , is not something he loves.
He bounces in place, shivering. He’s early for the blind-friend-date Lewis set up between him and his friend Ava, because of course he is. Meeting new people shouldn’t be this scary.
Tad tugs at the collar of his coat with one hand and rubs the spot on his neck Lewis was sucking twenty minutes ago while they made out on his sofa. It’s tender. The whole side of his neck is tender, actually, but it’s stubble-burn everywhere else, whereas this is definitely a hickey.
“Tad?”
He whirls. A short, chubby woman is approaching. In the dark, it’s hard to see details, but she’s maybe the woman he vaguely remembers from Stacy’s bachelorette party?
Nerves are written all over her round face. “Um, hi, you’re Tad, right?”
You’re meeting your boyfriend’s friend. This is not a threat on your life. You can do this.
With a deep breath, he answers, “Yeah. I’m Tad. Ava?”
“Yeah!” A huge breath gusts from her. “I’ve been hovering across the street trying to figure out if you looked enough like the picture Lewis showed me to come over here and introduce myself. And I shouldn’t have even told you that. Ugh, I’m so awkward around new people.”
Tad laughs, surprising himself. “I am too.” His brain catches up to his mouth and he realizes he spoke to a stranger without picking it to death first. He’s not even drunk!
Ever since Lewis pointed out that Tad didn’t have a script for how a gay boy talked to girls, it’s been a revelation. He reminded himself all day that there’s no expectation for him to make a pass at Ava, and it’s… actually helping?
Weird.
They bundle themselves into the Japanese restaurant they’re eating at and are shown to their table. It’s a nice place but not too nice, one of those restaurants that has private tea rooms but tables in the main dining area.
The menu gives them both something to concentrate on for like, a solid three minutes. But. The whole point of this is to make a friend. So once they order—including hot sake to warm up—Tad asks, “So, um, you’re married, right?”
“Yup. The wife’s name is Elise.”
“Oh. Cool.” Yeah, cool. God. He clears his throat. “How’d you guys meet?”
“College.” She seems to realize he’s making an effort to start a conversation. “We met in an Akkadian class.”
“Akkadian…?”
“Ancient language. Like, you know the Sumerians and Babylonians?”
“Like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Babylonians?”
She cocks a finger gun at him. “Exactly! The Akkadians were another Mesopotamian culture. They came after the Babylonians. Anyway, we both took Akkadian—the language—as one of the language courses for our Ancient Civilizations major.”
“Oh, that’s cool.” Tad fiddles with the cloth napkin in his lap. “I think Lewis said you’re in grad school?”
“Yeah, ABD.” She glugs down some water. “All but dissertation. Sorry.”
“I knew that, believe it or not. The journal I work for publishes a lot of ABD grad students.”
“Oh, you work for a journal? That’s cool. I don’t suppose you’re looking for articles on mikva’ot in the mid-first century BCE?”
Tad shakes his head. “It’s a botany and gardening journal. The religious stuff has to be garden related.”
“Hm, yeah, not a lot of magnificent Jewish gardens. It’s kinda hard to garden in the ghetto.”
Oh no. Oh no. She sounds angry. Tad wants to crawl under the table. Words ricochet around his brain and crawl toward his mouth, climbing over each other, but his throat won’t open to let the air through, and his jaw feels wired shut. How did he manage to offend her already? Is his upbringing rearing its ugly head? Anyone who’s not a cis, straight, white, Christian person is outside his immediate experience, so he doesn’t even think about their existence as he’s bumbling through his cis white man world?
“You’re Jewish!” he manages to force out, which just makes him sound shocked, like he’s never met a Jewish person before.
“Yes?” She looks wary. “Is that noteworthy?”
“No—I mean, I—I said—but I didn’t mean—”
Her forehead wrinkles, and then her eyes widen. “Oh wait! Did you—you don’t think you offended me, do you?”
His legs feel trembly, like they might give out. But then maybe he’d just slither under the table, so that wouldn’t be so bad? “I think I did.”
She snorts. “You didn’t. Jews don’t have gardens. Well like, Jews have gardens , but not that like, English formal garden shit. I have a garden, actually. Er, I have a planter with some herbs. I’ll write a paper about it and submit it to your journal.”
Relief makes him say, “We don’t really publish articles about people’s hobby gardens.”
“Okay, well, I’ll write a paper called ‘Reclaiming the ghetto: the Jewish garden as worship.’”
A startled laugh hiccups out of Tad. The title is spot-on to all the capital A Academic stuff they get. “Did you just come up with that?”
“Elise and me like to play a game we call Put On Your Academia Glasses. It’s when you view everything through the lens of an academic trying to get a paper published.”
Tad snorts with laughter again. Ava looks more relaxed, which makes Tad feel more relaxed too. Maybe he’s not fucking this up too much. “I do that sometimes with my friend. Well, my boss. But she’s my friend too.”
“Lewis said I’d like you.” Ava grins, then looks horrified. “Oh god, I said that out loud, didn’t I? Should I have pretended like Lewis didn’t talk to me about you?”
“Wait, stop, go back. Lewis talked about me to you?” Tad’s heart flutters.
Ava looks more appalled. “I’m not supposed to answer that question.”
The fluttering gets leaden. “Was it bad? Did he warn you about me?”
Their food and sake arrive, so Tad’s left to spiral about the possibility that Lewis said something bad about him, even though he can’t imagine why Ava would have agreed to meet him if Lewis was talking shit about him. Luckily, as soon as the waiter leaves, Ava says, “I can’t even imagine Lewis saying anything bad about you. That’s not a thing.”
A smile blooms across Tad’s face. “So he said good things?”
She pointedly tears her chopsticks open and shoves a piece of sushi in her mouth.
“He said good things,” Tad repeats, feeling like he might float away.
Ava looks nonplussed. When she swallows her sushi, she says, “I’m so glad I’m married to a woman. Men are so”—she waves a hand vaguely—“ this . I can sit here and think the cluelessness is cute because I’ll never have to deal with it again.”
“Ouch.”
“Are you going to argue?”
“Well. No.” He pauses. “But for the record, my cluelessness is very cute.”
She laughs. And—it’s not like he’s magically not anxious about being at a table alone with someone he doesn’t know, but minute by minute it recedes, like the tide going out, and it sneaks up on him while they’re eating—he’s having fun. He likes Ava a lot, finds her easy to talk to and funny.
Before he knows it, the meal is over. They split the check and hang out talking awhile, until Ava says with what sounds like real regret that she has to get home. “I always walk the dog at night,” she says. “And okay, legit I’m going to say this to you because you’re cool and I think you’ll get it, but I swore to Elise I’d do it tonight in case I needed a reason to get out of here if this wasn’t going well.”
Tad laughs. “That’s fair. Pet schedules are important. And so are excuses to flee awkward social situations.”
“Right?”
They grin at each other and Tad says, “I’m going to run to the bathroom before we go, but if you want to head out—”
“I’ll stay. Want to walk to the train together?”
“Sure!”
Tad’s beaming as he heads to the bathrooms. Does he now have two whole friends to his name? That is, objectively, pretty sad, but considering he’s only had one friends for years, he’ll take the W.
The bathrooms are down the hall past all the tea rooms. He’s still smiling about the fact that he and Ava hit it off when a flash of glitter and color on the floor catches his eye. Outside the last tea room are a pair of rainbow Chucks.
Tad stops dead and stares. Could they be—? Lewis lost his Pride Chucks….
No. Come on. There have to be a million pairs of rainbow Chuck Taylors in the world.
Tad’s eyes dart to the doorway. There’s a low murmur of conversation, punctuated by laughter, from the room. The curtain is closed. Tad tiptoes closer and silently picks up a rainbow shoe.
It’s the way Lewis described them—the block colors of the Pride flag on the canvas and the bottom sole. The pink glitter on the tongue. Gold eyelets.
Holy shit, is Lewis’s scummy ex on the other side of this curtain?
Tad stands there, frozen with indecision as he holds a stranger’s shoe. Or possibly not a stranger’s shoe. Possibly his boyfriend’s shoe? He really needs to find out if the ex is in there. What’s the ex’s name?
From the other side of the curtain, a man cackles, “Ewww, no , that’s Jonah’s!”
Jonah. That’s the guy.
Sidebar, hopefully they’re talking about food in there and not… honestly, anything else of Jonah’s that’s gross.
Tad looks at the shoe in his hand.
He snatches the other off the ground, clutches them to his chest, and strides back the way he came.
“We gotta go,” he says to Ava. “Like, now. Right now.”
Ava looks up from her phone. “We have time to make our trains—” Her eyes fall on the shoes he’s hugging to his midsection. “Oh my god, are those—?”
“Yes!”
“Holy shit, did you….” She glances toward the tea rooms and grins wickedly. “Oh, you did . Oh man, I like you, Tad.”
She doesn’t need to be told a second time to get out of there. Just as they get to the door, someone asks loudly, “Where are my shoes?”
“Run!” he hisses.
They shove through the door and out onto the sidewalk, then run like hell. They race three blocks down W 43rd, taking their lives in their hands at a crosswalk with a Don’t Walk signal, and skid to a stop outside a mini-storage place.
Ava puts her hands on her knees, winded. Hell, Tad’s breathing heavier too, and he’s in pretty good shape.
Then, he realizes Ava isn’t gasping for breath because she’s winded—well, that’s part of it, but mostly she’s laughing. “I can’t believe that just happened!” she finally gets out gleefully. “Damn, Tad, you know Lewis has always wanted a prince, but this is some straight-up fairy-tale shit!”
Tad blinks, then has to snort. “Oh no, that’s really on the nose.”
“If the shoe fits,” she cackles.
“Dad jokes! Okay, friends forever?”
Normally he’d be mortified by saying something like that. But he just stole a stranger’s shoes from a Japanese restaurant with this woman. They have a bond now.
“Definitely friends forever.”