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“Socks?” Miriam asked.
“No!” Levi shook his head, grinning. “Not a sock in sight.”
Miriam nodded. “There you go, then.” As if that settled it.
“I don’t even eat lobster; they’re not kosher,” Levi pointed out. “But also he has a yacht. And a few million dollars in a trust fund. And Hannah doesn’t hate him.”
“Did you just explain to me that shellfish are not kosher, LB?” Miriam cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Sorry, sorry, a function of having spent the last few years among the gentiles,” he apologized. “You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve had to explain kosher hot dogs.”
“It’s mostly the pants, though,” she told him. “I can’t overstate the pants.” She reached over to squeeze his hand, forcing him to meet her eyes.
“You and Cole are polar opposites,” Miriam told him once he was looking at her. “You met him. He’s bright and bubbling and all of his few, superficial emotions are on the surface of his skin at every moment. You’re all brooding jagged edges and keep all your cards close to your chest while you’re snarling at everyone. He’s a golden retriever. You’re an alley cat. If you were on a TV show together, people would ship you.”
“So you’ve all replaced me with the furthest thing you could get from me. Neat.” Levi showed his teeth.
“Oh, boohoo.” Miriam rolled her eyes. “People are capable of having emotional attachments to a variety of human beings. How did this middle-of-the-night conversation become about your loneliness and not mine?” Miriam asked him jokingly, waving a spatula.
“Our lonelinesses are best friends, too.” He scowled. “You used to let me whine.”
“You used to not be thirty-six years old,” she replied, but her tone was gentle. “I did miss your whining, if I’m being honest. I missed your face.” She touched his cheek with her free hand, and he teared up.
“If you’re going to sit here and eat my matzo brei, we should probably talk about why all you wanted all our lives was to leave this place, and you burned all your bridges as you left, but now you’re sad because you showed back up and everyone’s life went on without you.”She put her hands on her hips, the eggs on the end of her spatula bumping against her apron, and he tried not to smile at her tiny self with her giant hair telling him what to do.
“Ugh, crap, give me a cup of coffee if I’m going to be genuine about my feelings.” This was the problem with people loving you. He waited until she handed him a mug, then stared down into it. He took the plate she handed him and poured an ocean of maple syrup on top of his eggs. Plus some in his coffee. “I’m still so in love with her, Miriam. I still want a life with her, I always have. Every moment. But how I feel about Carrigan’s hasn’t changed, and neither has how Hannah feels about it.”
“Also you are a TV star now, which complicates things.”
“Yeah, I really loved the whole experience. I will tell you alllll about it when the NDA expires. We might be able to deal with all of that if she didn’t hate me. I have no idea what to do about any of it except leave again, but I fucking can’t because I’m a selfish asshole.”
“Oh, my love. My Blue.” She smiled sadly. “I hope that doesn’t explode on you both.” She refilled her own coffee. “I’m going to need more maple syrup for this.”
Chapter 6
Hannah
For all of her life, Hannah’s parents had stayed when she wanted them to leave and left when she wanted them to stay. Now was no different. They had originally been scheduled to stay through the entire week of Passover, but she was hoping she could convince them they weren’t needed.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, braiding and unbraiding the ponytail high on her head. “Now that the family is gone, we’ll be focused more on getting ready for the Davenport events, and you and Dad won’t have much to do.”
They were sitting in the dining room, which was mostly emptied out because the majority of the Rosensteins had left after the disastrous second seder, and now, on day five, Hannah both wanted time alone and would kill for leavened bread.
Rachel leveled a disbelieving look at her. “You’re not at all trying to get rid of us because you don’t want to talk about being married.”
Her dad pushed back from the table, balancing his chair on its back two legs. She stopped herself from telling him the chairs were vintage, and she couldn’t afford to replace one if he broke it sitting like a middle schooler.
“I don’t understand. If you were married, why you didn’t go with him?” Daniel said. “You’re an excellent travel manager, you know all the locations he was planning to go to, you would have been a great asset to him. And what a wonderful way to start your life together!”
Hannah let the braid she was fiddling with drop. She couldn’t decide if she was more shocked that her dad hadn’t asked her this years ago, when Levi first left, or that he’d asked at all.
“Daniel,” her mom said, rolling her eyes, “Hannah hates travel. And she has a life here. Why didn’t he stay here to take over the kitchen from his mother and start their lives together at Carrigan’s?”
Her dad shook his head. “Surely she’s gotten over that. As an adult, she must know we gave her a life no other child got to experience.”
“Yes, I think that was the problem. She wanted to stress about what she was wearing to her friends’ b’nai mitzvahs, not fix our budgets and spend hours on the phone trying to get us hotel reservations for the whole crew.”
Rachel was right, although Hannah wished they would remember she was sitting here, but this was kind of what her parents were like. And, while they always wanted what was best for her, it never seemed to occur to them to ask her what that might be.
