Chapter 36
36
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: And we’re BACK!
My friends,
It is with great excitement, joy, and RELIEF that I send this email: we are BACK IN BUSINESS!
After some of the most challenging months since the Center’s founding, I am overjoyed to let you all know that we have completed all renovations and passed all inspections, and have been cleared by the city to resume occupancy in our beloved building.
I have so much gratitude for each of you for continuing your commitment to our team and our mission during this time. Given the unexpected extension of the furlough period, we anticipated a significant number of staff resignations—yet so many of you, the vast majority of you, are still here. From the executive team, the Board of Directors, and the very bottom of my own heart: thank you.
We anticipate that staff will be able to return to the building as early as next week. Your supervisor will be in touch with you individually and by program team to determine next steps, but we wish to extend an invitation for an informal welcome-back gathering this Thursday evening. We’ll do a full tour of the renovated space, but our big focus will just be on reconnecting. We’ve missed you all!
Kelly will be emailing later this week with a full update on HR logistics, including plans to check in with each of you on your payroll information, benefits clarification, etc. If you have any urgent questions, you can reach out to her directly by email ([email protected]).
Let’s get back to work.
Warmly and with gratitude,
Ivy
Ivy Branwell
(she/her/hers) | link: what are pronouns?
President you just can’t vote. It’s a whole conflict of interest thing, but we drafted a policy for it. And I know Uncle Joe took himself out of the loop, but if you wanted to keep family involved, we could probably get him on board—”
“No pun intended,” Becca piped up, sitting next to Dad and holding his hand.
Aaron nodded. “So it would still be ours, in the ways that matter. In making sure that we can stay open, and do the work, and…” He trailed off, glancing at Ezra.
This was the part they worried about. Finding the balance between the head and the heart. “I think,” Ezra said, choosing his words carefully, “that Zayde would have cared more about the doors staying open than anything else.”
He could say it with certainty now. A steadiness he never expected to have. The years of anxiety, of flinching away from every movement in his peripheral vision, have been replaced with a surety of purpose—a psychic tingle at his shoulder, like a hovering hand, offering unspoken approval, warm despite the ever-present spectral chill. He sees Zayde less often, but each time he does, there’s a new acceptance in the man’s eyes. A growing contentment. Peace.
Ezra treasures those sightings in a way he never used to, never sure which one will be the last. It will be soon, he thinks, and the sadness never fails to surprise him. But it’s a good sadness.
Not all grieving has to hurt.
Dad looked down at the proposal they’d printed for him. Ezra held his breath, watching him flip through it, keenly aware of Aaron doing the same.
Then, at last, he sat back in his chair.
“We should call your mother,” he said, and if it wasn’t the most unexpected thing Ezra thought he’d say, it was close. “To look at the numbers. And maybe”—he hesitated, and then set his jaw—“to see if she’d take her job back.”
It took Aaron three false starts before he said, “Are you sure?”
Dad gave him a wry smile. “Zayde always liked her,” he said. “And I’m not above leveraging some guilt.”
“That’s the spirit,” Becca said, and took out her phone.
Within a week, they had their amended corporate structure. Ezra’s parents locked themselves in Dad’s office for nearly a full day, but never got loud enough for Ezra and Becca, lurking outside the door and attempting to eavesdrop, to hear anything over the sound of the white noise machine Dad normally used for client privacy. But they emerged at the end of it with matching red-rimmed eyes and an agreement that not only would Mom come back to work, but Judy would serve as both a founding board member and a fiduciary sponsor, offering a starting donation that made Ezra’s eyes water.
No wonder Judy’s mom could afford that house.
They also seemed unsurprised to find Ezra and Becca in the hallway—and even less surprised that Aaron, who had claimed that eavesdropping at the door was beneath him, had been in his own office next to Dad’s with a cup pressed to the wall, just as unsuccessful in hearing anything.
“We should probably also tell you,” Dad said solemnly, as if the flat line of his mouth was enough to disguise the glint of amusement in his eyes, his shoulders more relaxed than Ezra could remember seeing them in years, “that we’re getting divorced.”
“I’m genuinely horrified that you felt like you had to announce that,” Becca said.
“We’re working on communication,” Mom said, dry but not mocking, her eyes flicking to Ezra’s. She didn’t say anything, but he heard the quiet apology in her tone. It was a start.
The rest of the summer goes by in a blur of paperwork and government application forms, meetings with lawyers and accountants, staff announcements, and community tours. Ezra finds himself, for once, on the edges of the whirlwind of activity, not in the eye of it. His parents—whether by spoken or unspoken agreement, Ezra isn’t sure—fall into determined sync, setting themselves to the project with organized focus. It reminds him of the way they planned his and his siblings’ bar and bat mitzvahs, organizing guest lists and logistics and Torah chant practices with the precision of a military operation, but without the tension and stress and sharpness he’d seen from them then.
They seem, against all the odds, to have come out of this as friends.
“Weirder things have happened,” Ollie commented, when Ezra came home in a bit of a daze after a spontaneous family dinner where Judy, of all people, had made an appearance that didn’t end in any yelling or thrown cutlery. “I mean, we’re still friends.”
“Wow, big false equivalence,” Lily said, moving over on the couch so Ezra could sit next to her. “Pretty sure you two didn’t split after thirty years and an affair, unless Ezra’s ESP comes with the best antiaging serum I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“God, can you imagine?” Ezra mumbled into the arm of the couch. “I’d look so good.”
“You look good anyway,” she told him, ruffling his hair. “How many days do you have left there, now that your mom’s back?”
He held up five fingers, feeling surprisingly conflicted about it. He’s going to be glad to get out of there—for all that he’s glad he’s been able to figure out how to help in a way that will last, and desperately relieved that he’s been able to pay his rent and his bills and keep Sappho in food and toys and vet care, he’s more than ready to go back to work that’s at least marginally less haunted. He’s had three new doula clients sign with him in the last month, and that’s put him over the top of what he’ll need to break even, especially with the news that the QCC is finally set to reopen.
“Are you nervous?” Jonathan asks him the morning of the staff welcome-back party, as he and Ezra sit at his kitchen table sharing a tin of cold leftover quiche. These days, he sleeps in Jonathan’s bed more often than his own. “To see it?”
“Kind of.” Ivy had sent weekly emails throughout the construction and renovations, sharing photos and 3D-rendered plans and the occasional staff input poll, but it’ll be different to be there in person. Ezra nudges the last mushroom toward Jonathan’s fork and gets a pleased smile in return. “More about feeling it. The old building was drenched in all this history, you know? You walked on the floor and you could just feel everyone who’d been there since it opened.”
Jonathan props his chin on his hand and gives him a wry look. “Wasn’t that part of the problem? Given that the floor was literally rotting away?”
“I think it was the foundation under the floor, not the actual floor,” Ezra says, but it isn’t much of a defense.
“Also the wiring in the walls being a huge fire hazard.”
“Also that,” Ezra allows.
“So you’re worried they stripped all the personality out of the place when they took out all the death traps?”
Ezra picks at a chip on the rim of his coffee mug. He’d knocked it into the counter a week ago when Jonathan had distracted him in the kitchen with a kiss, and the roughness of it under his thumb makes him grin, admittedly dopily, every time he sees it. “They were my emotional support death traps?” he tries.
Jonathan chuckles and gets to his feet. “Knowing you,” he says, “you’ll find new ones.”
The death traps are, Ezra determines when he and Nina go in for their first day of staff reorientation, definitely gone. But he recognizes more of the original hardwood floors than he expects, pulled up and replaced over the new foundation. There are new fixtures, obviously—touches of chrome, drywall dividers replaced with clear or frosted glass, more clusters of cozy gathering furniture, and coworking desks with built-in outlets. But the collages of old photos still have places of pride on the newly painted walls, the mural in the lobby painted by one of the teen affinity groups is still miraculously intact, and even the staff break room still has nearly all its caught-out-of-time mismatched seating and handmade décor.
“I cannot believe they kept that horrible thing,” Nina says in mild horror as Ezra flops gleefully into the battered old recliner, greeting its squashy, slightly smelly leather like an old friend. “That’s a health hazard in and of itself.”
“You just hate comfort,” he tells her.
“You don’t, though,” she teases. “Or am I imagining the way your Instagram account is ninety percent pictures of your boyfriend’s cozy bed?”
He doesn’t deny it. There isn’t really any point.
Boyfriend is still new. New and still a bit strange—not because Ezra doesn’t want them to be something official, something recognized on family email chains and social media and a terrifying looming visit by Jonathan’s mother to meet her in person, but because sometimes it feels like a word that’s not big enough to hold the size of his feelings. Jonathan’s nearly always the first thing he sees in the morning and the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes at night. He knows Jonathan’s body now almost as well as he knows his own, knows his smiles and his nervous habits and the particular way he rolls his eyes when he figures out the trick in a crossword puzzle and finds it wanting.
“At least it’s mostly pictures of my dog in my boyfriend’s cozy bed,” he says, the closest thing to a defense he can muster. “I mean, it could be a lot mushier.”
The look Nina gives him speaks volumes of knowledge of just how many pictures do not make it onto the internet and instead live safe and sound on his camera roll, for him to flip through on the now rare nights he spends in his own bed.
He spends the morning before the QCC officially reopens with Nina, setting up the office they’ll be sharing with two other program managers, and then bullying her into helping him put the finishing touches on the newly refurbished studio space. It’s not just his—there are several other yoga instructors who come in to teach, plus the dance and theater and music programs that are run out of the same room. But it feels like his all the same as he unpacks boxes of blocks and blankets and mats into the closet and tests out his phone’s connection to the sound system and hangs new art prints on the painted walls.
“It looks good,” Nina says when they’re done, slinging an arm around his shoulders and giving him a fond little shake.
His first instinct is to brush off the compliment. But he’s trying to be better about letting people tell him when he’s done something worth doing without squirming away from it. It’s an uphill battle, but he’s working on it.
And it does look good. The space is fresh and clean and bright, the floors still shining, sunlight streaming through the high windows. The scents of pine and rosemary still trace their way through the air, the last of the incense Ezra lit earlier slowly burning away.
New and gleaming, and not a single ghost to be found.
Ezra leans into Nina’s arm. “It does, doesn’t it?”
Nina ruffles his hair and lets him go. “You know I don’t believe in fake praise.”
“You flirted with our barista at Starbucks for five full minutes the other day for a free shot of espresso,” he reminds her.
“And every one of those compliments was genuine—her eyeliner was incredible .” She winks, her eye makeup still flawless despite a full day of moving furniture. “Are you going to be home for dinner on Friday? Max said she wants to do movie night.”
“Oh, did she?”
Nina glares at him, clearly daring him to tease her. She and Max have been circling each other for weeks now. Ezra has no idea why they’re playing chicken, but it’s simultaneously infuriating and adorable. He wonders if this is how she and his roommates used to feel watching him and Jonathan.
Speaking of. “No,” he says. “Jonathan and I are doing Shabbat dinner at my dad’s.”
“Ooh.” She raises her eyebrows, all Max-related defensiveness apparently evaporating. “Drama?”
“I…think maybe not?” He nods toward the open door, and she flicks the lights off and follows him out. He locks the door behind them, and the key turns without needing to have the hinges propped up by a second person to realign the doorknob. “Everyone’s going to be there, but I think it’s going to be okay. Things have been good.”
Nina eyes him skeptically as they head back to their office. “If you say so,” she says. “Should I have some wine ready for you in case it all goes to hell, or is Jonathan gonna bundle you home and make sure you decompress ?”
Ezra is absolutely not turning red, and if he is, it’s only because he doesn’t have her stamina for moving tables and organizing closet spaces. “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”
“I’m a delight and you adore me,” she says tartly, then catches his arm when he rolls his eyes and tries to slip past her down the hall. “No, but really—are you going to be okay? I know how those dinners can get.”
Ezra thinks about his family text thread, cheerful and teasing for the first time in months, about Becca calling him to tell him that she and Mom have been swapping recipes again, about catching Mom and Dad bickering in Dad’s office without a hint of animosity, neither of them wearing their wedding rings but both using coffee mugs Ezra made for them in elementary school, handprint patterned and sloppily painted.
“I know,” he says. “But I’m actually kind of looking forward to it.”
“Your funeral, I guess,” she says, and cackles when he groans.
—
The fire damage to the house had taken over a month to clean up and restore. They were, Ezra’s been told time and again, incredibly lucky—not just with Becca’s minor injuries, but in the overall lack of harm done to the interior of the house. Other than some smoke damage to the living room and stairwell, only the kitchen needed a gut renovation. They hadn’t even had to move out, though Aaron had spent plenty of time complaining about eating all their meals at the Chapel. Dad had, to everyone’s surprise, latched on to the project with a sort of fervent enthusiasm, recruiting Becca into touring sample kitchens at Lowe’s and dragging Ezra into his office to look at paint swatches.
It took Ezra far too long to realize that this was probably the first time in his life that Dad had the chance to make a space that was his .
If he’d closed Mom’s office door to give himself a five-minute cry about that, nobody needed to know.
The bottle of wine he picked up on the way over sweats in his grip, and he squashes the temptation to press it against his neck as he heads up the porch steps to his parents’ house. Just Dad’s house now, he reminds himself. August is in full swing, the New England humidity making his binder cling to his skin. Its days are numbered—there’s a surgery date circled in bright pink highlighter on the calendar in his apartment, a matching one on the fridge at Jonathan’s.
Six months and eighteen days to go, according to the countdown on his phone. A thrill of nervous anticipation goes through him every time he thinks about it, giddy and bright.
Jonathan opens the front door before Ezra can get his keys out, his grin easy and warm as Ezra abandons the search through his pocket. “You’re late,” he says, holding out a hand for the wine. “I was beginning to think you were making one last run for the hills.”
“I promised to stop doing that,” Ezra says, and leans up for the kiss he knows is coming. It’s still strange, expecting that easy affection, to know before it happens that Jonathan’s going to curl a hand over the back of his neck, to use his thumb against the hinge of Ezra’s jaw to tilt his face up for a better angle. “When did you get here?”
“ I got here on time,” Jonathan teases, stepping back to let Ezra pass him. “Don’t worry. Everyone’s been very nice to me.”
“Oh, I bet.” His parents’ fragile friendship isn’t perfect, but if there’s one thing they seem to be in agreement about, it’s their shared adoration of Jonathan. “How’s…” He gestures into the house, trying to encompass all that, and Jonathan’s mouth tilts into a grin.
“Let’s call it organized chaos,” he says. “But friendly organized chaos?”
“Yeah?” Ezra strains his ears, but he can’t actually hear anything threatening. “And that’s not because no one’s here yet?”
“No, you pessimist.” Jonathan slings an arm around him, steering him through the living room. After the fire, Dad and Aaron repainted the walls a cool, calm blue and replaced the squashy couches of Ezra’s childhood with a new sectional in supple brown leather. Other than the absence of Mom and Dad’s wedding photos, most of the pictures on the walls and propped on the sideboard are the same. But the room has a quietly masculine feel to it now, more a sophisticated bachelor’s den than a hand-me-down family home. It looks good, if still a little sterile. But he can see touches of his father’s personality starting to find their way into the room—a framed Judaica print on one wall that’s far more traditional in style than anything his mother would have allowed, a novelty Red Sox mug replacing the ceramic bowl that once held the television remotes. It makes Ezra smile to see it. To know it’s never too late to figure out how to make a place feel like your own. “Your mom and sister are bickering over oven temperatures, but Aaron keeps telling me that’s normal.”
“It is normal,” Aaron says, coming in from the kitchen, two tumblers of something amber and probably expensive in his hands. Despite the whirlwind of the last few months, he looks better rested and lighter than Ezra’s seen him in years. Ezra hopes, probably in vain, that the new easy set to Aaron’s shoulders has more to do with the funeral home’s brightening future and less to do with the way he’d caught Caroline Lawrence sneaking out of Aaron’s office two days ago, hastily sweeping her hair back into its bun. Aaron looked like a deer in the headlights when he’d caught Ezra’s eye in the hallway, and had turned abruptly away to walk in the opposite direction.
Pointedly ignoring Ezra’s smirk now, Aaron clears his throat and passes one of the glasses to Jonathan. “Judy’s playing referee. She’s weirdly good at it.”
Jonathan’s smile falters, just slightly, and Ezra instinctively presses his fingers to the inside of his wrist. He hasn’t been in the room for any of the conversations Jonathan’s had with Judy about the strange web of relationships they’ve ended up in—“If you two get married,” Ollie asked once, curiously, “is she, like, a double mother-in-law?”—but he’s seen the aftermath, red-rimmed eyes and shaky smiles, the beginnings of forgiveness.
“She raised three type-A kids with crazy competitive streaks” is all Jonathan says, though he laces his fingers with Ezra’s and squeezes. “I’m just glad she and Becca are getting along.”
“I think having her crash with them after the fire helped,” Aaron says. “Apparently they watched a lot of reality TV.”
“Never underestimate the power of Bachelorette reruns as a bonding tool,” Ezra agrees, peering over Jonathan’s arm at the contents of his glass. “Is that bourbon?”
“Brandy.”
Ezra wrinkles his nose and leans away. “Since when do we stock that?”
“New bottle,” Aaron says. “Dad’s going full Mad Men .” At whatever look Ezra gives him, he adds, “He’s fine. He’s exploring, not, y’know, drinking to cope.”
Ezra believes it. Dad’s been happier lately. Calmer, more relaxed. Probably drinking less than usual, not more. “Where is he?”
“I left him in the dining room, setting the table.”
“I think he was considering place cards,” Jonathan says. He tips his glass toward Ezra, offering, and Ezra shakes his head with a grimace.
“Nope. Gross. I’ll grab something.” He plucks the damp bottle of wine out of Jonathan’s hand. “And put this in the kitchen.”
He doesn’t let himself feel a pang when he lets go of Jonathan’s hand, because that would be ridiculous. He definitely doesn’t let himself notice the knowing look Aaron sends him over the rim of his glass in response.
Mom scoops him into a bone-crushing hug when he steps into the kitchen, as if it’s been months since they last saw each other, not hours. “Ow,” he says, waving the wine bottle at Becca, who takes it from him with a coordinated flourish. “I literally saw you this morning.”
“You were working,” she says, pressing a kiss to his cheek and letting him go. She’d come—with his permission—to his sunrise yoga class, taking a spot at the back of the room and not once doing anything to act like his mom rather than a student. He’d drifted her way a few times, mostly to correct her posture, but otherwise hadn’t singled her out at all. She’d given him a small wave on her way out, her smile proud on her slightly sweaty face. “So I didn’t get to tell you how good a job you did.” She cups his face in her hands. “You’re a wonderful teacher, sweetheart.”
Ezra ducks his head to avoid the look on her face. “ Mom .”
“What? You are.” She makes a face. “Except for those side planks. Side planks at seven in the morning? I raised you better than that.”
Becca grins. “I told you the beginner classes are on Sundays.”
“She did,” Judy agrees, standing at the counter and assembling a salad. “And you said, and I quote, ‘I have birthed multiple children, I can handle a little abdominal pain.’?”
“Traitor,” Mom tells her.
Judy winks at her, then gives Ezra a warm smile. “Hi, Ezra. How’s the reopening going?”
“Really well. Thanks.” They’re not quite at the hugging stage yet, but the way she’s thrown herself into supporting the Chapel and helping Mom start to repair the damage the two of them did to Dad has made it easier to relax around her, to at least start to think of her as something like family. Her two daughters—Ben’s sisters—followed Ezra and his siblings on social media last month. Ezra’s pretty sure that the oldest is gearing up to give him a shovel talk about his intentions toward Jonathan. When he mentioned that to Jonathan, he’d looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be embarrassed or touched.
“That’s family, I guess,” he’d said, cheeks tinged with pink.
Maybe it was.
The renovated kitchen barely resembles the old one. The Formica countertops have been replaced with granite, open shelving and smooth dark wood instead of the old cherry cabinets. It’s clean and modern, but Becca’s already making it her own. Glass storage jars of flour and sugar and coffee labeled with chalkboard paint in her sweeping calligraphy—passed down from Mom, who learned it from Bubbe—sit on a floating shelf along the back wall. There are fresh herbs thriving in a box by the window behind the sink, the plain dish towels Ezra watched Dad order to match the newly painted walls already swapped out for novelty ones patterned with teacups and leaves.
Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the slightest movement, and turns just in time to see Bubbe watching the bustle of the room with a small, satisfied smile, as if nothing could please her more than to see her old kitchen turning into something new. She catches his eye, winks, and blows him a kiss before flickering out of sight. Smiling, Ezra opens the wine and pours himself a glass, watching Becca peer into the oven while stirring a saucepan of something that smells absolutely incredible. He’s never seen her at her internships, but he wonders if this is what she’s like there, too: calm and confident and efficiently at ease, checking on dishes with an almost graceful sense of the space around her.
She closes the oven and turns to scribble something on a Post-it note stuck to the counter, then glances up at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” he says, but he knows he’s smiling. “Just excited for your cooking. I’ve been eating takeout all week.”
“I heard,” she says, giving him a look like she knows exactly how sentimental he’s trying not to be. “Jonathan told me he’s worried you’re going to turn into a spring roll.”
Ezra shrugs. “He should stop buying me spring rolls, then.”
Becca finishes whatever updates she’s making to her recipe with a flourish, then sticks her pencil into the headband attempting to contain the flyaways already escaping her messy bun. “Sure,” she says, her look caught somewhere between a grin and a leer. “Because everything we know about Jonathan definitely says he’s going to stop keeping you fed and cared for.”
“Stop teasing your brother, Rebecca,” Mom chides, winking at Ezra as she squeezes Judy’s shoulder on her way to bring the bowl of salad out to the dining room.
Judy shakes her head, but the laugh lines around her eyes are deep as she smiles. “He’s always been like that,” she tells Ezra. “Ben used to complain that he couldn’t keep up with the other med students competing for the worst food stories because Jonathan kept sneaking him lunches.”
“A terrible person, truly,” Ezra says.
The lingering grief in Judy’s eyes is softened by the warmth on her face. “Your problem now,” she teases, and he can’t help returning her smile.
He still looks for Ben from time to time. He never appears, though Ezra knows he won’t. Ezra thinks he still feels him, but in the simple, everyday ways he thinks that everyone still feels the touches of the dead—in the wistful curve of Jonathan’s mouth when he pulls a well-loved Tufts sweatshirt out of his bottom drawer or when the clear, sweet opening notes of “Your Song” come up on the playlist he puts on when he’s coaxing Ezra into a slow dance in the kitchen; in the still-fading tan line on Jonathan’s left ring finger and the slim chain around his neck where his wedding band now hangs; the way the cool metal pools against Ezra’s collarbone when they kiss; in the way Jonathan’s eyes crinkle at the edges when Ezra makes him a too-sweet cup of that apple-cinnamon tea.
A thousand touches, but none of them haunting. Not anymore.
Becca pronounces the roast chicken ready just as Dad pokes his head in from the dining room to remind them that they have ten minutes until sunset.
“Doing okay?” he asks, clapping Ezra’s shoulder while they wait for Becca to turn off the oven and Aaron and Jonathan to make their way in from the living room. “Been a busy few days.”
“I’m good.” After the constant exposure of the spring and the whirlwind work of most of the summer, the last few weeks of catching Dad only through quick text exchanges has been strange. The longest time they’ve spent together since Mom came back to work was a shared coffee break in Dad’s office after Ezra finished a taharah. It had surprised him, how comfortable it was to sit with him and talk, the quiet that had come after the weeks of chaos and change. “Heard anything back on the paperwork?”
Dad shakes his head. “Not just yet. Soon, I hope.” He lets Ezra go when Jonathan comes in, giving him a wink that’s alarmingly close to the one he got from Mom a few minutes ago as Jonathan sets his drink down next to Ezra’s wineglass and comes around the table to join them. Ezra leans into the arm Jonathan slips around his waist.
“Your brother’s a menace,” Jonathan murmurs against the side of Ezra’s head, half disguised as a kiss to his temple.
Ezra tilts his head into the touch. “Yeah?”
“Something about taking me out for a Friendly Chat.”
“Ooh, I heard those capital letters.”
“He used air quotes and everything.”
Ezra bites back a grin. “I think that’s a compliment. He didn’t try to get Ollie to ‘go out for a friendly drink’ till we’d been together almost a year.” He catches Aaron’s eye across the room and pointedly ignores the waggling eyebrows he gets in response. “He only puts on the scare tactics when he thinks someone’s going to stick around.”
Jonathan huffs a laugh into the top of Ezra’s head, his hand slipping down from Ezra’s waist to tuck into his back pocket. “Then I’m flattered.”
“Okay,” Becca announces, bustling into the room with a box of kitchen matches in hand. “I’m here, we’re on time, let’s light candles. The first person who makes a comment about fire insurance owes me twenty bucks in emotional damages.” She shoots Aaron a warning look, and he grins, holding his hands up in defeat. “Good.” She rolls her shoulders, then her neck, then looks around the room one more time. “Everyone ready? No last-minute announcements? World-shaking revelations? Dramatic declarations?”
Dad chuckles as Mom drops her face into her hands and Judy lets out a shocked, breathless “oh!” of a laugh that makes it clear she’s still getting used to Becca’s particular brand of humor. Becca blows Mom an exaggerated kiss, dodges Aaron’s chiding swat at her arm, and then cocks one eyebrow at Ezra. A teasing question, but a question all the same.
He shifts so that he can nudge Jonathan’s hand out of his pocket and shrug Jonathan’s arm around his shoulders instead, reaching up to tangle their fingers together, his right hand to Jonathan’s left. It’s still a little strange to feel bare skin under his touch where he’s used to smooth-worn platinum.
There’s a part of him that shies away from how badly he wants to put a ring back on that finger, this soon and with this much intensity. There’s another part that wants to dive in, fully clothed and headfirst, and let the rush of his wanting carry him away.
Becca’s still looking at him, brow lifted and expectant, a glint in her eyes. She reads him better than anyone. Ezra loves her so much it hurts.
“Nothing new,” Ezra says. Nothing yet.
Becca grins, her eyes darting to his hand in Jonathan’s, but there’s only warmth in her smile as she strikes a match. She lights the candles then blows out the match. Ezra closes his eyes.
Jonathan squeezes his hand.
Without opening his eyes, Ezra squeezes back. Steady and sure.
Becca’s voice washes over him, words of blessing as familiar as his own pulse. Ezra turns his face toward the warmth of the candlelight, the dancing life of it bright even through his eyelids, and he lets himself, finally, breathe.