“Because it’s what you say about someone who’s boring as fuck. Look, Ari’s a ‘nice’ girl, but you wouldn’t describe her that way.”
No, there were about a thousand ways he’d describe Arielle Becker before “nice” came to mind.
Irreverent.
Fascinating.
Mind-blowingly sexy.
All-consuming.
“Well maybe I should be with a girl Iwoulddescribe that way,” Judah challenged. “Mom would love a nice girl. A nice girl would keep my head on straight so I can focus on the things I should be focusing on.”
“That sounds exhilarating,” Akiva said dryly.
Judah sighed. “Kivi, I know Ari’s your friend, but there was never a future there. We don’t make sense.” He closed his eyes ashe thought about Benny and his stupid friends and their stupid comments, how he should’ve been the one to stand up for her, not Mira. But Mira did, because she was ni—kind, and she was clearly interested in him in a way Ari wasn’t and would never be. “I want to get married and have babies and do the whole family thing. I want to make you goofy Uncle Akiva. And Ari’s not… she’s not interested in any of that.”Not unless she gotdesperate. The word still rang in his ears. “So, get on board with me ‘moving on,’ okay? I need you to.”
The silence went on for so long that Judah was certain Akiva’d hung up, until finally, his brother said, “Okay. So tell me more about the girl.”
Chapter Eighteen
“If you don’t want to watch a movie, how about a spa night?”
Ari puffed out her bottom lip and expelled a frustrated breath. She knew she was being a brat, but she was in a bad mood, and she couldn’t help it. “I told you, I just want to relax in bed tonight, Mom.”
“Spa nightsarerelaxing,” Mrs. Becker argued. “You’ve been reading and doing Lego all yuntif. I just want to do something fun with my girls while I still have you. It’s bad enough Dana already left.”
Okay, now Ari felt bad. Her mother loved having her girls back home for the holidays, and she hadn’t missed the way her mother’s face had fallen when Dana had announced she and Evan would be leaving before the second Seder. There was no reason to take it out on her mom that a certain someone hadn’t called after yuntif the way she’d assumed he would and she was having surprising Feelings about it.
But before she could relent, Hannah spoke up.
“Ari’s just in a bad mood because her boyfriend’s got a new girlfriend.”
“I can’t even begin to count the number of things wrong with that sentence.” Ari rolled her eyes, but then her brain processed the content of Hannah’s words. “What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t seen the creepy stalker videos from the Pesach program he’s on? They’re kind of totally gross, but these girls are clearly obsessed with Judah Klein, and apparently he’s been hanging out with some girl there a ton.”
There was zero reason for that information to make Ariellewant to throw up, and yet. “Thatdoessound creepy stalkerish, and you should stop watching them,” she told Hannah, hoping that stating this out loud would stop her from looking at them later, though she knew it wouldn’t. “Let the guy have some privacy, for God’s sake.”
“In my defense, I know the girl.” Hannah handed over her phone, and Ari hated herself for taking it. “We went to camp together for a few summers. Mira Winkler. She was really nice.”
The video wasn’t scandalous or particularly interesting; it was literally just a voyeuristic shot of Judah and some girl in conversation in a hotel lobby, with the account owner giving a tearful heads-up to other Kleinatics that she’d asked her parents to go on this programspecificallyfor Judah Klein and then had to watch him flirt with this girl the whole time.
They weren’t touching in the picture, let alone kissing, but somehow that felt even worse. If he’d been kissing someone, she could’ve written him off as a horndog who’d moved from one girl to the next, maybe even convince herself he was just testing the very chemistry he’d asked her about.
But this? This looked like him bouncing back from her to find a girl who was exactly his speed. Who was wife material.
Twenty-five and skinny. Of fucking course.
Mira didn’t look like the kind of girl who got on her knees in a bar bathroom or showed up at her boyfriend’s apartment in nothing but a coat and lingerie. Mira looked like the perfect bride, a mother-in-law’s dream, the kind of woman who’d have one of those adorable little basketball-belly pregnancies and then promptly lose all the weight by the bris.
He’d gone for her exact opposite, and it felt like shit.
“Is Hannah right?” her mother asked, smoothing down the curls hanging in Ari’s face. “Are you upset about a boy?”
“I don’t think you can call someone in his thirties a ‘boy,’” she deflected.
“If he’s your generation, he’s a boy.”
