Chapter Eleven
P ractice had been wonderful. Samuel had really enjoyed watching the excited little girls get their first taste of hockey, including the little babysitting with someone who’d been introduced as Leah’s client.
“What did you think?” Leah asked as they walked outside. There was expectancy in her eyes, as if she was looking for him to say something in particular.
“I can see letters dancing in my head,” he said before stopping and realizing she didn’t speak Samuel anymore. “I mean, it was amazing and inspiring and wonderful.”
Leah nodded. “I’m glad it was what you were looking for.”
“More than that,” he said, concerned she was thinking this solely had been an assignment. “I mean…” He shook his head in order to try to keep himself from gushing. “I understood why the program was getting an award before. I really understand now.”
“I’m glad,” she said, and if that wasn’t approval in her voice he’d eat his socks. He wanted her approval for many reasons, but more importantly, he wanted to make sure she knew he was a different person.
“Me too,” he said.
She laughed and then paused. “Now what? I mean when do you have to be there tomorrow? When do you need to leave?”
He blinked, then realized he had to give her an important update. “Can you drive?”
“I thought you were going to,” she said, “but I can.”
“Something happened,” he said, realizing he’d probably lost whatever point she’d given him. “I do owe you a ride back to the city or to Briarwood, but I can’t do it today.”
This time, her nod was of understanding; he still spoke Leah after all. “Okay. Do you need to get anything from your parents’ house or are we good to go?”
He shook his head, pointing to his messenger bag. “I have everything. Whatever I don’t have, either my brother can bring back when he comes to the city or I can get, or you know, buy.”
“Okay then,” she said as they headed to the car. And as she got in, organized herself in the driver’s seat she looked at him in a way that knocked his socks off. “What’s the story?”
“My brother,” he said as he settled into the passenger seat of Leah’s car. “He’d promised Tommy a nice weekend outing, only to be thwarted by his car.”
Leah nodded as she pulled out onto the main street. “You couldn’t stand in the way. Okay.”
He smiled back at her. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Not a problem.”
And as she pulled onto the highway that would take them back to the city, Leah rolled the windows down and turned up the music.
The song was…a cover, he was sure. The guitars were softer in the original, but the fun, pop punk cover suited them and their mood, and the road seemed to obey their whims; the highway was open, not as many cars as he’d expect on a Saturday night.
The irony, of course, was that the song was about a guy who couldn’t let an old love go. And he was singing it in the car with Leah.
“We haven’t done this in a long time,” she said.
Her expression was vulnerable, her words on the border of…something. Surrender to questions about their past? All he knew was that it was the most vulnerable he’d ever seen her, which was saying a lot for someone behind the wheel of a car and an expression he couldn’t fully see.
But even in a partial view, her smile did something to his insides. “It feels nice,” he said.
“It does.” She paused and he wondered what was going through her head. “I guess I’m glad your brother took your car?”
Right. Fortuitous circumstances brought on by…technical difficulties. “Me too,” he said.
“So,” she began as the music changed again. “What should I expect for tomorrow? Is it going to be like the expo where I show up with armor and a sword, ready to come to your aid?”
He laughed. “No,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not…there yet. Heck, I don’t know even if I’m there on the other side.”
“Stop doubting yourself,” she said. “You’re amazing at what you do. You’re picking up admirers—talented admirers—left and right. Carly’s husband. Didn’t he say that they got a mezuzah?”
He nodded. “Right.” Bryce had repeated himself at the end of practice, and his wife, Carly—Leah’s client—had said how much she loved the mezuzah.
Which was wonderful…such a great thing for him to hear. But this kind of professional validation wasn’t what he was expecting for tomorrow.
He wasn’t expecting hostility, per se, but… “This is different,” he said.
“How? Same convention center, same exhibit space…”
“Different crowd,” he replied. “It’s entirely possible people will come up to the table and tell me that I have no place mixing streams like I do. That either I’m too much of a Jewish artist for lettering or too much of a secular person to be a sofer.”
He couldn’t see her face in the mirror, but he wondered what she was thinking. “So I’ll need a sword and a history of comic books, then.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I didn’t forget everything I learned when we were together,” she said with a laugh. “I know about how integral Jews were to the comics industry in the US and how many allegories for the Jewish diaspora are in famous stories told in the comics.”
He nodded. “That’s history and it’s important, but there’s been a problem in the last few years.”
“What?”
She sounded genuinely concerned, as if he’d destroyed her idea of what comics were, and what the world he worked in was. “People are removing the Jewish heritage from those stories, and assuming Jews have no place in the industry.”
“That’s…” She shook her head. “It’s awful.”
“It is. Dejewification,” he said as she pulled into the parking garage near his building, “and it doesn’t have a solution, or it hasn’t yet, because it keeps happening. I mean there are notable exceptions, Sam Moskowitz and Shadow Squad is one of them.”
“This sounds sadly familiar,” she replied.
“How so?”
“From what I know,” Leah began after clearly thinking for a while, “Jewish athletes and artists are finding community as the industries they’re a part of widen their reach and begin to search for voices from marginalized communities. Heck,” she said with a laugh, “Melanie Gould herself can probably tell you what’s going on in the romance genre with Jewish writers. Which isn’t exactly the same as combatting what you’re calling dejewification, but it’s creating space in areas that hadn’t actually acknowledged Jewish contributions previously.”
He nodded. “I have heard of that,” he said. “I guess people in comics have to reclaim that space, you know?”
Leah nodded. “You do,” she said. “They’re claiming space in hockey. If you see Asher you should probably ask him about that.”
“Asher…?”
“Judith’s fiancé.”
He nodded. “Right.” The other party of the ketubah he was making, the whole reason they’d been brought back into each other’s orbits in the first place. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome.”
It was nice collecting moments like these with Leah, sitting in her car, the windows down.
“So tomorrow? What time do you need to be there?”
And then they were back to business, back to planning. “Right. My signing’s not till later, but I’ve found the doors are easier first thing.”
Leah blinked. “When they open? I mean when the con opens for the day?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird but that’s when security’s at its best.” He did not mention the added benefit of being able to possibly spend the day with her.
“That’s fine,” she said, taking his argument about security without question; after all, she was ostensibly helping with crowd control, whatever exactly that was. “So tomorrow morning?”
He nodded. “It’s Sunday so early will mean about ten, and my signing is about two? Three, toward the end.”
“Can I kiss you before you go?”
“Kiss goodnight?” he said.
And she leaned over; he felt her lips on his, her hands, following the path of his stubble. And when she broke the kiss, the balm on his cheeks was cold. “So…”
“See you?”
“See you,” he said as he left the car and headed upstairs, his head still spinning.
There was only one clear thought he could manage: Leah was amazing and if he didn’t convince her he was worth taking another chance on, he didn’t know what to do with himself.