Chapter Eleven
Judah lingered in Arielle’s apartment for a couple of hours more, wearing her baggiest shorts and T-shirt, both of which she immediately clocked as being bigger on him than on her. She’d refused to let him help with the laundry, but with all that time to kill, she’d had no choice but to let him in on her favorite nerdy hobby.
“How are there so many booklets?” he asked, bemused, as he took in the contents of the Lego kit spilled out on the dining room table. “I feel like I’m studying for my real estate license all over again.”
“You have a real estate license?” She pushed his hands out of the way and searched through the bags for the one emblazoned with a number one on it, then tore it open. The sound of the pieces pouring out onto the table was so satisfying.
“Shockingly, singing doesn’t make a whole lot right out of the gate.” He reached for the pile and began grouping the pieces by color, little heaps of white and gray and red. She knew a lot of people did that before they started building, but she’d always liked the chaos of having to sweep through the pile only to retrieve the hard-won buried treasure. There was something oddly compelling about watching his graceful hands move through the Legos, though, and she let him keep at it as he talked. “I lived at home for most of college to save money, gave guitar and bar mitzvah lessons, spent summers working as music staff at day camps, and worked part time for my aunt’s real estate business until I graduated, then shifted to full time afterward. I did that for three years around singing gigs while living with two other guys in a complete pit in Washington Heights.”
“I can’t picture you living in a complete pit.”
“Please don’t,” he said with a grin. “God, I worked and saved so hard those years, and I was still holding on to my bar mitzvah money with an iron fist. Then my aunt put me onto a studio on the Upper East Side, and I ended up buying it for myself. That was the last place I ever ‘sold,’ and I drained everything I had to do it. But by then I was getting more frequent gigs—bigger ones too. Thus I became the incredible superstar who stands before you today.”
“Absolutely incredible,” she agreed with a roll of her eyes. “But I’m confused as to why money was so tight. Weren’t you in Kol Sasson for, like, your entire adolescence?” For a moment, she wondered if she should be embarrassed to know that about him, but then decided it was common enough knowledge.
“You know that doesn’t pay, right? We had to get sponsors for everything, or at least I did. We couldn’t afford for me to fly all over the country.”
Arielle’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious? That’s so exploitative! Your albums must’ve sold tens of thousands of copies!”
“That they did, although they never told us anything about the sales.” He peered over her shoulder at the instruction manual and picked out the long gray bars. “But we got a lot out of it, don’t get me wrong. Mordy Jonas was an incredible director and composer. I don’t think I’d be able to sing in public or write my own music now if not for him. And it was an extremely cool experience and, for me, obviously worth it, though probably ninety-eight percent of the guys who come out of those singing groups are just completely done once puberty hits.”
“That’s so sad.”
“Honestly, some of them are grateful for the excuse to be finished; it’s a hectic schedule, and so consuming. But lots are crushed by it too. I definitely do not take my career for granted.”
“How’d you get into it?” she asked, isolating the flat red blocks and moving on to search for the pieces that snapped into them.
“I barely even remember a time before it. I was seven when I joined. My mom always says I was singing before I learned to talk, and I loved my toy guitar so much that I slept with it. My dad didn’t wanna ‘waste money’ on getting me lessons, though, so my Uncle Donny taught me the basics, and then I watched alotof YouTube. I used that and books to teach myself bass, piano, violin, and drums.”
She whistled. “Impressive.”
“My dad didn’t think so,” he said with a snort, handing over the small white pieces for the next step. “He told me not to bother since they wouldn’t be spending money on any more instruments.”
“So you’re saying it was a tough call which parent to stay with after the divorce, huh?” Ari said wryly, and Judah barked out a laugh.
“I keep forgetting how much you already know about my life from Akiva.” He shook his head and picked up a block, tapping it rhythmically against the table for a few beats before he realized what he was doing and dropped it. “My parents’ divorce is usually the thing I have to dance around on dates.”
“Why? What does your parents divorcing have to do with you?”
He shrugged. “Some people don’t like the idea of making a home with someone who comes from a broken one, I guess.”
“Well, that’s stupid. And I guess you can add ‘My dad died when I was nine’ to the list of reasons I’m a matchmaking nightmare.” She reached into his pile of blues and snatched one up. “Do I gain or lose points because my mother refused to remarry?”
As she pressed the pieces together and went searching for the next one, she glanced at him and saw that he was watching her as if he wanted to say something but was stopping himself. “Overshare?”
Judah shook his head emphatically. “Definitely not. I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Me too. He was pretty damn great.”
“I’ll bet.” He smiled ruefully. “You have sisters too, right? Those girls standing with you under the chuppah at Aleah’s wedding?”
“Yup. Dana’s older and lives with her dickbag boyfriend none of us like, who somehow convinced her that she no longer believes in marriage so that he doesn’t have to get a ring. Hannah is the most stereotypical ‘baby of the family’ you’ll ever meet. It’s… a lot of estrogen in one place when we’re all together. The Becker Girls,” she said with a tinge of a smile. They’d heard that so many times over the years, and no one loved it more than her mom.
“Inconceivable that there are two more of you. Your mother deserves a medal.”
“She does,” Ari said fondly as she plucked a handful of pieces from the pile of brown blocks, “but I’m sure you and Akiva were no picnic either.”
“Well, I was so busy touring and performing that Akiva ended up becoming kind of a latchkey kid. I really hope he finds someone who takes good care of him.”
