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“It’s always so lovely when the children bring guests for Shabbos, isn’t it, beloved?” Judah said.
“DAD!”
“I… forgot?”
* * *
“So did I pass?” Ilan asked, humor salting his voice.
Abi looked up at him from the shiny new coffee pot she hoped was bulletproof. She wasn’t sure she would survive if another one shattered on her without warning.
“Was there a test?” she said innocently as she measured out the grounds and filled the carafe. Ilan was in what she supposed was meant to be a breakfast nook, but she’d turned it into a sunporch of sorts, and Latke and Applesauce seemed to like having their cage over there. She wondered if it was normal for pet owners to plan to allow their pets to take over a specific part of the house or if she were an outlier.
“Abi,” Ilan said, he was definitely laughing now as he considered the guinea pigs.
“You’re the one who said you wanted to do things out in the open. I can’t think of more open than Shabbat dinner with mom and dad and Leah.”
“Fair,” Ilan opened the little door to the cage and reached inside, picking up a piece of carrot and offering it to Latke. Abi didn’t have to be close by to know the little creature was in heaven. “Please, tell me you’re planning to do something about this situation.”
“Are we still talking about Shabbat?” Abi said, brow furrowing. Ilan rolled his eyes, gesturing with his free hand to the cage. Abi shrugged, nodding to show she was aware of how sad the enclosure was. “It’s too small for them. When their brother comes home from the vet it’ll be really too small. I’ve been googling around to see what other people have done, and I have some ideas, but I’m not sure how to make it happen.”
“What are your ideas?” He gave Latke a little bit of a scritch between his eyes, then pat Applesauce on her rump before closing the cage door.
“They’re all in my planner, just notes. I don’t have a blueprint or anything,” she said, her shoulders tensing the smallest bit before she could help herself.
“So, show me your notes,” Ilan said, his tone reasonable, affable even.
“I don’t know if we’re at that stage in our relationship yet,” she said, deciding it was better to just be honest. Ilan laughed, then covered his mouth with his hand as though he realized this wasn’t a good time to be laughing in her face. Abi was just glad there was an entire counter between them. She could feel the blush pricking her cheeks, and she hated it.
“It’s interesting to me that you’re perfectly comfortable fucking me in your car, and introducing me to your parents, but you have a problem with showing me your day planner.” His smile was open, but there was nothing in his tone that was even close to judgment, so she wasn’t sure why her palms were sweating. She didn’t know how to describe the feeling of raw panic that was edging its way up her throat.
“See, the thing is,” she said, and then the coffee machine stopped burbling, and she used the opportunity to focus on that instead, pouring coffee into two mugs and adding sugar to her own. He’d taken his black at her parents’ house, so she figured it was a safe bet now.
“Chicken,” Ilan said, walking around the counter to accept the mug. Abi’s cheeks got hotter.
“You’re probably right,” she said, because there was no sense denying the obvious. She hated that she was this embarrassed. It wasn’t like her planner was some kind of dirty secret. Everybody knew she had one. It was practically ubiquitous.
And yet…
And yet nothing. Her planner was hers.Hers. It wasn’t digital. It only existed in one place. If it disappeared, just pfft, up in smoke, then she’d be lost. Her whole life was in that thing. Not just her daily schedule, though that was there certainly, but a running list of books she was reading, wanted to read, refused to read again. Things she needed to buy, projects she wanted to start, ideas she had for the school, doodles, phone numbers, quotes that struck her as interesting, elaborate menus for meals she would never have time to make.Everythingwas there. It was her life.
It was possibly more her life than the parts of her life he’d already seen, even if it only existed as paper.
Was it any wonder the idea of showing it to him made her break into a cold sweat?
She had bankers’ boxes lining the top shelves of the closet in her office down the hall full of the guts of planners from years past. Carefully held together with twine and neatly labeled by year. They went all the way back to her seventh-grade year—which wasn't the guts of an A4 binder because she hadn’t discovered those until college. Instead, during her middle school years, she was obsessed with a specific kind of spiral notebook with dark purple pages. She had to use pastel gel ink in order for the writing to show up. Back then her notes were all loopy bubble letters, and the pages that weren’t to do with homework assignments and school clubs were all about Leah. Doctors appointments and documenting her parents’ concerns. The conversations they had in whispers behind closed doors that Abi and Leah weren’t supposed to know about.
Pages and pages of meandering guilt about how they could be almost the same, but not actually anything alike at all in the ways that it counted. Just similar, not identical. Just unlucky, not betrayal. Still, every month, watching Leah writhe while Abi felt, at worst uncomfortable, was just… awful. And it wasn’t something she could ever admit out loud. Not when she already got off so easily.
So she didn’t. She only wrote it in her notebooks.
Notebooks became binders, which became planners.
And he just wanted her toshowhim. Like it was so easy. Like it was just a thing.
Oh, hey, check out this cool post on Instagram.
That’s not how this worked. That’s not how any of this worked.
