You definitely feel safe?Liana wrote back.
Ari glanced at Judah’s profile in the dark.Yeah. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.She switched the phone to Battery Saver and set it on the nightstand.
“Now can I assume you’re staying?” he asked, a trace of smugness creeping into his voice.
“Oh, shut up.” She might have had nowhere to be, and shemight have been safe, but blackouts always unsettled her. They made her feel so powerless—no pun intended.
“I was teasing. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just not a huge fan of power outages. Lemme guess—you love those too?”
He laughed. “I don’t mind them, really, which is good, because my building doesn’t have a generator. I’m not a big TV watcher, I hate being on my phone, I only use a computer for work, and I rarely keep much in my fridge. As long as I have a flashlight or candles, I’m okay. Speaking of which, lemme go find some.”
She wrapped herself tightly in the duvet as he felt his way over to the coat closet. It didn’t take long for him to procure a small lantern-style flashlight, which he set on the dining table. Then he dug into one of the kitchen drawers for tea lights and a lighter.
“You’re making this look painfully romantic,” she teased as he placed one of the small candles on the nightstand.
“I actually planned this entire blackout,” he cracked.
“So, what do you usually do in the evenings without power?” she asked, sitting up as she watched him put the lighter back in its place.
He shrugged. “Read. Compose. Practice yuntif davening or leining. Play guitar.”
“Would you play for me?”
“You really want me to?”
“You sound so surprised. Not to feed your ego, but you remember who you are, right?”
“I do,” he said with a quiet laugh. “You’ve just never seemed into that part.”
Was he kidding? He didn’t think she’d noticed the otherworldly beauty of his voice? The way his lashes swept his cheeks when he closed his eyes in concentration? The strong fingers she knew intimately that flew effortlessly over guitar strings and piano keys alike?
In retrospect, she supposed she’d never fawned over any of that, but it had always seemed implicit. He was Judah Klein. Who wasn’t absolutely smitten with his musical abilities?
Not that she was a fangirl, but it was weird to think he could imagine she wasn’t a fan, period.
Then again, all the better to keep his ego in check.
“If it’s not too much like making you work on a night off or something.”
“It’s definitely not that,” he said with a smile, retrieving the guitar from next to the couch and bringing it back to the armchair in the corner opposite the bed. “Any requests?”
“Musician’s choice.”
“Hebrew or English? At least give me that.”
“Nope. Just play me a song you like. Any song you like.”
She imagined he was rolling his eyes, but it was too dark in the room to see for sure. The faint glow of the lantern and candlelight was just enough to see the outline of the lean muscles in his biceps as he curled around the guitar, the edges of his boxer briefs peeking out from underneath the polished wood.
It wasn’t lost on her that no one else ever saw him like that.
It wasn’t lost on her that someday, someone else would.
All at once, she wanted to come up with the right song, the answer that’d sear that night in his mind forever. But she came up empty, and a few seconds later the unmistakable opening chords of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” filled the studio apartment, making her smile at the throwback to the night of their car ride.
She’d heard Judah sing a million times; it wasn’t exactly avoidable. But she’d never heard him like this—somehow both raw and smooth, sweet and devastating, strong and clear against the rain without overpowering it. She watched the candlelight flickering on his fingers, and in that moment, she was absolutely fucking gone.
