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“You really didn’t know? All of it?” Hannah asked, because she didn’t know how to focus on the rest of it.
“I knew Cass didn’t like him,” Noelle said, “but I assumed that meant he wasn’t likeable, not that Cass was wrong. Fuck. I hate misjudging people, and now I’m going to have to make amends to him. Can I go back to an hour ago when I didn’t know all of this?”
“Only if I can go back, too.”
Noelle looked over at her and winced. “You’ve been processing all of this without me, because I’ve been mad at you.”
Hannah nodded. “I have learned so much in the past month that’s changed everything I thought I knew, and I couldn’t bounce it off the person whose opinion I trust the most. But I’m keeping you forever, so you have a long time to be there for me.”
“I still think he probably sold you a sob story,” Noelle said, reaching over and weaving her fingers with Hannah’s, “but I’m sorry I reacted like an asshole to the whole marriage secret thing. I’m just scared for you.”
“I’m scared for me, too! Join the club.” Hannah laughed. “And you should ask him. About the sob story. Judge for yourself.”
Noelle scowled. “That would mean having a conversation with him.”
The show Levi was filming a pilot for was apparently calledLiving Bold, which was a really douchey name and made her heart hurt that he’d obviously purposefully chosen the initials LB. It was about bold new takes on traditional Jewish flavors, and that’s what he highlighted for the ADK Restaurant Week dinner. He made tiny shooters of richly flavored shakshouka with quail eggs, saffron rice with pomegranates, chicken cooked in sumac and wrapped in grape leaves, babka- and tahini-flavored ice creams.
Hannah talked to the guests about the differences in culinary tradition between her mother’s Sephardic background and the Rosensteins’ Ashkenazi background on her dad’s side. Mr. Matthews gave the longest speech she’d ever heard him make in her life, about the varieties of baklava.
Watching Levi with his dad charmed the hell out of her, because Ben Matthews was very high on her favorite-people-of-all-time list, and she didn’t want to be charmed.
She also didn’t want to feel guilty about keeping Mr. Matthews from seeing his son for the past four years, while she was being melodramatic about her breakup, but she did feel guilty. All the time, whenever she saw them together. She wanted to fix it. Wanted to take away the hurt she saw flash across Levi’s face when his dad walked more stiffly or mentioned something offhandedly that Levi had missed.
“Nan!” he said when the event was over, after shooing off the last of the Restaurant Week guests. (Did theyallhave to flirt with him? How were so many people watching an Australian cooking competition?) “Let’s go on a date tomorrow! I heard about a bowling alley in Lake Placid called Bowlwinkles that has mac-and-cheese wedges with ranch dipping sauce. We have to go. Pleaaaaase? You know you love to kick my ass at bowling.”
She did love to kick his ass at bowling, but she was currently having way too many Feelings to be alone in a bowling alley with him, with fried carbs and cheese. She would make out with him. It was inevitable.
“I can’t tomorrow,” she lied. “I have to go to trivia.”
When Miriam had learned that Elijah Green’s husband, Jason, ran a pub quiz at Ernie’s, the dive bar on Main Street, she had declared him her favorite person in Advent and immediately made herself a staple there. Every Tuesday night, weather permitting, every millennial in the area congregated in the tiny, wood-paneled bar. There were bitter rivalries established, but Miriam and Jason were an unstoppable force, always coming in top three. The bartender, Sawyer (also the president of the Chamber of Commerce, and recently the sole mayoral candidate), was the MC, and a secret tribunal made up the questions.
Hannah almost never went to trivia, because with Miriam and Noelle there, she felt someone needed to stay back at the inn to keep an eye on things. This Tuesday, however, she pleaded with Noelle to swap with her.
“Please, please, I know you’re mad at me but I’m trying to avoid my husband, and I need your help,” she begged, batting her eyelashes.
Noelle folded her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. “I notice you call that man your husband a lot, for someone who insists she’s not really married.”
“See? I need time away from him! He’s so hot when he’s feeding people and my defenses are getting low. Save me from myself.” She looked up at Noelle with big puppy dog eyes, designed to get Noelle to crack.
“Fine. Take my girlfriend on a date. But you owe me,” Noelle agreed, wandering off and mumbling about delaying an inevitable train wreck.
So Hannah took her cousin on a date to pub quiz to avoid a date with her husband. Miriam and Jason immediately retreated into an intense trivia bubble, and Hannah smiled at Elijah.
“I haven’t heard anything from you,” he said surreptitiously. “Are you…filing for divorce?”
“I mean…”She raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “There’s not a rush, right? He can’t leave until after the wedding, anyway.”
Elijah laughed, holding up a hand. “I’m sorry I asked. That’s more drama than I want to get into. Let’s pretend we never brought it up.”
Hannah looked between him and Jason. Jason was beautiful to a degree usually reserved for magazine covers and runways. He had a chiseled jaw, locs down his back, and dark skin with high cheekbones. Elijah, looking like an old-time accountant and also somehow improbably chic in his wire-rimmed glasses and bow tie, had a casual hand on his husband’s back, and they orbited the other without noticing. Jason was busy talking to Miriam, and they weren’t drowning in each other. They’d figured out, Hannah assumed over long years of practice, how to be together comfortably, without everything feeling like broken glass or fireworks all the time.
She wanted that. She’d found peace, sort of, without Levi, but now a part of her wanted to see if she could find itwithhim. More of her than she wanted to admit.
Sawyer sauntered over, a compact package of pure swagger with a giant handlebar mustache and a side shave. He set down a massive basket of fries.
“Where’s Chef Emo?” he asked, looking around as if they’d hidden Levi under a table.
“Not invited,” Hannah said, “although I wish he were so he could hear you call him that.”
