Chapter Six
L eah had prepared for this meeting as if she was negotiating with a professional team on behalf of a client. List of needs, some basic information and direction of her armor.
And breakfast.
Which was the result of a quick text sent this morning.
You have coffee? I’ll bring bagels.
He didn’t take that long to respond, thankfully, so she still had enough time to stop off at Baums—the rideshare car arriving just in time for her to make a detour for bagels she didn’t want to take on the subway.
Even luckier for her, there was little traffic; the ride was fast and she could still smell the bagels when she got out onto the street in Queens. More importantly, Samuel’s building wasn’t the artist’s special she expected. The building’s large doors opened to reveal a smiling doorman who directed her to an elevator; the door creaked when she opened it, but the ride up to his floor was smooth.
Her shoes smacked against the tile floor as she headed down the hall to his apartment, which was all the way at the end of the hall; a small mat and a visible mezuzah the signs someone lived there. She hit the buzzer, knowing this was the point of no return.
“Thanks for coming,” he said as he opened the door, looking adorable in ways he shouldn’t. “I appreciate it.”
“Can’t stay for too long,” she replied, grounding herself in the certainty of her departure. And the scent of what had to be coffee.
“Come in?”
The sound of his voice wrapped around her and she fought against it. But not too hard. For now, for this moment, he wasn’t her enemy.
Yet.
But all she could manage was: “The bagels are getting cold.”
He put his hand out in front of her face, as if he was trying to show her something. What it actually did was yank her back to reality, and as she crossed over the threshold, she was reminded that there was no turning back.
*
As Leah stepped inside his apartment, Samuel felt as if he were upside down. “Do you have any questions?” he asked, deciding to just go with it.
“What’s this?”
She was pointing to a frame he’d stuck on his mantel; inside was a simple drawing. White blossoms on snow, encircled by braided branches. “A frame,” he said. “An untold story.”
She looked up at him as if he’d lost his mind. “What?”
He sighed, crossed the room to stand by her and took the frame off the mantel. “You know the blank space, in the middle,” he said, pointing to it.
“I see it.”
“That’s where the ketubah goes. The text,” he clarified. “I mean.”
“So why did you call it an untold story?”
“Because it is,” he said as he tried to figure out how to explain this to her without talking down to her. “Someone’s going to turn this into the frame that holds the story of their lives. Now, it’s just empty space. Not a ketubah, just a frame.”
There was a pause as he watched realization dawn on her face, her eyes focused. “An open playing field. Victory after crossing through the brambles and thorns.”
He looked closer; he hadn’t really thought about more than just the drawing; it never helped when he went into a ketubah session with an interpretation of his own after all, and this frame was eventually going to be a ketubah. But he didn’t tell her that. What he said was: “I could see that.”
She nodded, and so he took it as an invitation to continue interpreting with her. “Couple had bumpy moments in the past, figured them out and entered into this blank space where they had the freedom to choose their path, whatever that is.”
“Don’t say it.”
Her tone held a note of reprimand and he wasn’t sure where it came from. “What?”
“You need a better poker face. Because that isn’t us.” She pointed to the frame. “Going through the brambles requires emotional work I don’t have time for, and I’d imagine with everything going on—as a sofer and angling toward more comics work and all of the publicity you’re getting, you don’t have that kind of time either.”
He wanted to tell her that he had all the time in the world, but telling her that now, even as she’d just arrived, and was still holding the bagels she’d brought, was a horrible idea. Instead, he reached for the bagels and turned toward her. “How did you get into agenting?”
“What is this?” she said with a laugh that didn’t ring true. “Twenty questions? Then again, these are things you…we’re going to need to know for the contract, and the party tomorrow night.”
“Right,” he said, the words pulling him back down to earth, which meant he crossed the room into the kitchen, grabbed a knife and his cutting board. “Why contract though?”
Risky question with a knife in his hand to be sure, but he figured he’d ask it as she headed toward the coffee maker.
“Protection,” she began, removing the pot from the coffee maker and sounding as if she’d pre-rehearsed a speech. “Making sure we know what’s expected of us and for how long.”
He nodded, smelling the coffee as she poured herself a cup. “Is this going to have an expiration date or?”
“It’ll last as long as our list of appearances does, I guess,” she said, as if she needed to tick the mental boxes off the check list before opening her mouth. “I need a significant other to bring to tomorrow’s cocktail party.”
“Right. And I need to bring someone—” he wasn’t going to be specific and tell her his mentor had actually asked for her “—to a party my mentor is throwing. And I have both a comic con signing and a crowd control problem.”
“And you asked me about the Unicorns for info purposes, which means I can get you to a have a way of getting you first-hand knowledge and soft-launching you with my family.”
“How?”
“One of my clients is one of the founders, and my niece is taking part this year. So you’ll come to her trial practice.”
“Right.” This was dizzying. Suddenly there were events and a soft launch of their relationship?
Wow.
But he had to be neutral. “That’s four. Anything else?”
“Maybe we do Shabbat? One and one, making it an even six?”
“Six events—an option to renew?”
She looked at him, surprised. “I don’t know why we’d renew it.”
“If things go well,” he said, trying to be neutral, trying to keep calm. “I mean if we end up with more events, if we like how it’s going…”
“If it goes well, you and I are going to have less time,” she pointed out.
“Right,” he said, grabbing for something. “But ending this is going to take us really close to the wedding, and if we’re doing Shabbat at the end, there’s going to be talk.”
There was a long pause and he could see the moment she capitulated. “Fine. Option to renew.”
A victory, small as it was, but he’d take it.
“Do we need anything else?”
He laughed. “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”
“Neither have I,” she said. “I mean…no. I’ve read about it, watched movies about it, all of which show the agreement failing because the two people who fake-date don’t know each other.”
This was interesting. “So you think this will succeed for us because…we do know each other?”
She nodded, sure of herself. “We know each other enough to know how much of a bad idea we are.”
We know each other enough.
Right.
He was going to have his work cut out for himself if his goal was to fix things. But as he tried to process the information she was giving him, all he said was “Okay. What about…physical contact?”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
In that blink was a lot: anger, surprise. Shock. Did she think he was taking advantage of her? “I’m not getting that deep—don’t worry about it,” he said, trying to pull himself together.
“So explain yourself. Quickly.”
He nodded. “Right. Here’s the thing. We’re going to be in public, doing public things. Events with business contacts and with family who need to believe we’re doing this for real, right?”
The sword had been at least holstered, which was a good thing. “Okay?”
He continued. “We have to be clear about things between ourselves and vis-à-vis the outside world.”
“Keep talking. What do you mean?”
“Nobody is going to believe we’re doing this for real if you look at me as if you have an allergy to some specific part of my composition.”
“Not every couple that fake-dates discusses…touching.”
Did she study? Do research? Watch every single…piece of media that dealt with fake dating in some way? Did she read every book ever published that dealt with a dating agreement?
And then he remembered back to the earlier thread of their conversation. “You know we’re not like those couples.”
“How?”
Whether she hadn’t anticipated this part of the conversation or she’d forgotten she’d given him the tools to discuss it, he didn’t know. He forged ahead anyway. “We know each other. We have a history you don’t want to get into. Which means that we know each other well enough to talk consent, and other things so that you don’t act surprised when I touch you, or I glare at you when you touch me.”
“Okay,” she said. He was relieved; she was taking this seriously. Not treating it like some ridiculous attempt to get closer to her. The idea of making things clearer between them was his goal.
“So,” she said. “What do you mean?”
He started with the basics. “Hands touching are okay?”
He waited; he could explain more, but that had to be up to her.
“Yes. We can hold hands in public.”
He nodded, mentally going to the next places his hand would naturally want or be expected to go on her body if they were dating. “Put my arm around you, you put your arm around me?”
She nodded. “That works.”
And then he took the next step, wondering how she’d react.
“And kissing?”
*
Leah was about to lose her mind. Talking to Samuel, negotiating with him even, was a whirlwind of emotion and just…
She tried to pull herself together, focusing on the scratching of his pen on the paper. “Kissing?”
He nodded. “Yes. It might come up, it might…I don’t know. I want to be prepared and I want you to be prepared.”
Prepared. Right. Nothing would or could prepare her for what kissing Samuel would do to her emotionally. And even thinking about it made her take a long drink of the closest liquid available. Thankfully it was water. “Even though I think it’s a horrible idea, we need to have kissing in the contract. We need to…prepare each other though.”
He raised an eyebrow; if he’d said no, she’d have left or done something. But he didn’t. He was quizzical, curious, not dismissive. “You mean some kind of signal that we’re going to kiss?”
She nodded. “You were always a good kisser. That way leads to trouble if we’re not prepared.”
“Keeping our heads out of it, you mean?”
Glad he was on the same page, or at least didn’t dismiss her out of hand, she said, “Exactly.”
But this time he didn’t just take her words in; this time he seemed to think about them as he took a bite of a bagel. “Maybe we should work through it? Work up to it?”
She nodded, steeled herself. Shoved the suddenly appearing emotions down deep inside. “Yes. We should.”
Leah held her breath and reached for the hand he offered, grasping his fingers through the spaces he left her. It wasn’t that hard, she reminded herself.
She felt the calluses, which he’d built from hours of time spent at his craft, massaging her palms. She could wrap herself in the peaks and valleys of his hands, forget they were touching and just exist like that indefinitely.
“How are you?”
“I’m okay,” she managed.
But even he could tell she was lying. Because when she let his hand go, she flexed and then loosened her fingers, as if she was trying to slow down her pulse and her emotions.
This was dangerous.
“We’re done for the day?”
“We haven’t discussed the consideration,” she said, annoyed that she knew way too much about the law to neglect that when all she wanted to do was leave. “What I mean is we need to talk about what you’re going to want me to give you, you know, in exchange for this whole thing?”
“How about something easy?”
“What do you mean easy?” Because many different people had many different interpretations of easy. She didn’t know his. Not yet. And it could be the furthest thing from easy.
“One favor to be named later that is within your power to grant.”
Something that was within her power to grant was fine; it wasn’t her choice for the thing she was bargaining this contract with, but she’d take it. She needed this too much. “Okay,” she said. “Yes.”
Which meant the deal was done in all but the writing.
*
Samuel was exhausted and grabbed a bagel. As he took a bite, he realized that she’d run their conversation as tightly as a meeting, taking refuge in procedure when things got too emotionally hard. It wasn’t a fight, wasn’t combat, and yet…
Because the agenda he’d put together was there, laid bare by the end of hers. He swallowed. “Do you have time?”
“I should probably go,” she said. “You can draw it up from what we talked about and my notes?”
The notes. Of course. The rather large red binder that now sat on his kitchen counter. “Probably,” he said. “And if I have any questions I should…”
“Email,” she said, the word flying as she reached for her bag.
“If you want me to draw it up, you know, you have to sign it.”
“I do,” she said, probably knowing he was grasping for straws. “And we have to walk into my boss’s apartment together.”
“That we do, right.”
“So,” she continued as if he hadn’t said anything or at least stated anything that made an impact, “you’ll email me when you’ve finished and if you have any questions.”
“And you’ll email me as soon as you have the information. Maybe we can sign just before we go?”
She nodded. “I can do that.”
“But of course, feel free to contact me if you want to share your favorite gefilte fish defenses.”
He waited for her reaction; they’d bonded over a shared love of gefilte fish as kids in Sunday school.
“You only need one,” she said, her eyes sparkling in ways that warmed his toes. “Horseradish delivery vehicle. Why do people hate on the joy of gefilte when there are other fishy things in other cultures?”
He nodded. “Like kamaboko, those Japanese fish cakes with the pink outsides?”
“Those are good,” she said. “I love them. But why not gefilte?”
“I mean,” he said with a laugh. “So many reasons why not. But I’ll settle for the texture problem.”
“Kamaboko is gelatinous,” she said. “Gefilte is like…what’s that thing…I don’t know. What do they call it? It’s breaded or fried on the outside and has fish on the inside?”
He snorted. “You mean a fish cake? How can you compare gefilte to a fish cake ?”
“Gefilte is like the raw bar of fish cake , or like fish cake tartare .”
“Why would you eat a fish cake if it wasn’t fully cooked, or like smashed to oblivion and artfully arranged like tartare anyway?”
“Because people make all sorts of reasons to avoid gefilte or think it’s weird. But then eat a whole bunch of stuff that’s just as weird and say it’s more special or more relatable than gefilte depending on the context.” She shook her head and he could see the transformation in her. “Speaking of the context, I have to go. Leaving the bagels with you. Keep me posted, ’kay?”
He nodded, stood up and escorted her to the door. “I can do that.”
And for just a moment he wanted to close the space between them.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he let her go, let her leave. He had time.
All the time in the world to take them through the bumps and brambles and kiss her for real.