She took the stairs two at a time and had a cold Corona and her feet up on the couch in less than a minute. “Perfect,” she said after taking a long drink. “Bless your soul.”
“Guessing your Pesach was about as good as mine,” Akiva said, cracking open his own bottle. “How many times did your mom ask if you’ve met anyone nice yet?”
Ari’s stomach twisted as she thought about the way-too-real conversation shedidhave with her mother about her romantic prospects. “I think she’s pretty much given up on us, actually. Given Dana’s choice of partner, I don’t think she even wants to see who Hannah or I would bring home.”
“Evan continues to be a charmer, huh?”
“I’d rather have had a Seder with Pharaoh himself,” she said sourly, turning the bottle around in her hands. “Sorry your mom was on your case, though. Guess this year wasn’t the grand Coming Out?”
“I thought about it.” He settled into one of the folding chairs around the dining table. “I don’t think she’s gonna turn me out for being gay or anything. I just don’t wanna hear all that ‘Now I’mreallynever gonna have grandchildren’ shit.”
“Nowthatis a concern our moms can commiserate about,” Ari said with a grim smile. “You want kids, you think?”
“I do, yeah.” Akiva rubbed a thumb around the ring of the bottle before taking another sip. “I think I’d be a decent dad.”
“I think you’d be a fucking great dad,” Ari said with a grin. “Plus, yours already set the bar so low.”
“L’chaim to that.” They gestured with their bottles as if clinking them in the air. “And speaking of procreating,” he added with aneyebrow waggle, “I hear my brother fucks. Thanks for that, because it made my whole damn year.”
Ari groaned. “Your brother and I did not do anything that leads to procreation, thank you very much.”Just, you know, pretty much everything else.
“Okay, well, whatever you did certainly loosened him up. This is the closest he and I have been to friends in… our whole lives, maybe? So I’m actually being kinda sincere.”
That shouldn’t have warmed her heart as much as it did, and she idly rubbed her chest as if she could loosen up the feeling. Her mom’s suggestion that she ask Judah out had been building its own tiny house in her brain, and who better to ask for advice than his own brother? “About that—”
“His new girlfriend does not fuck,” Akiva said with a roll of his eyes. “I can tell you that much. I swear to God, if he turns back into his uptight, boring-ass self…”
Ari was still stuck on “new girlfriend.” Painfully stuck, like the lump forming in her throat. “He told you about her, huh?” Ari asked casually, as if they were just two bros discussing a third bro.
“Yeah, he called after the first days. She sounds… nice.”
“Oh no, ‘nice’—the Akiva Klein kiss of death.”
“I mean, I’m sure she’s fine. Very wifely.” Ouch. “I know it doesn’t really make sense, but I’ll admit I was holding out a little hope you two weren’t just hooking up. Imagine if we were siblings-in-law! The world would probably implode.”
Arielle knew she was supposed to laugh along with him, but a weak smile was all she could manage through the feeling of being absolutely gutted. And Akiva was still going.
“Don’t worry—Judah already reminded me that was stupid and it wasn’t like that with you guys at all.”
“Good,” Ari said thickly, wondering which of the thousand paper cuts would be the one to bring her death. “Guess he just needed a last hurrah before settling down with a wifey.”
Akiva snorted. “Hope that works out better for him than it did for Danny.”
That, at least, succeeded in getting a laugh out of her; there was a whole lot more humor in being used as a final fling for someone who had to “take life seriously now” but was somehow failing at it even worse than you were. Anyway, it’d never bothered her before that no one saw her as their final destination, so why was it bugging her now?
You know why.
Shut up, brain. And Hannah. And Mom. And Liana, even though you have no idea, because I know what you’d say if you did.
“Do you think I should be taking life more seriously?” she asked Akiva, surprising herself.
He took another swig of his beer, narrowing his eyes as he assessed her. “How seriously are we talking? You’re gainfully employed. You have an apartment.”
“An apartment for which I need to find a new roommate,” she pointed out.
“Still counts. Besides, you and Liana didn’t need to find a new roommate to replace Bella, so you’re clearly doing pretty all right.”
“Yeah.” She looked down at the glass bottle, an inch of golden liquid remaining at the bottom. “I could be doing better. I should be, probably.” Squinching her eyes shut, she wondered why the hell she was telling Akiva this now, of all times. “There was an opening at work I should’ve gone for a few months ago. I didn’t because I like how things are with my favorite coworkers, and I didn’t wanna become their boss. But now we have a boss who’s a total d-bag, and those coworkers are unhappy enough to be casually browsing for other jobs, and I feel like I fucked up.”
