AMANDA HADN’T SEEN Ben since the Chanukah party. Hadn’t heard from him. She’d thought about at least sending him a text or leaving a note on his door, but in the end decided against it. He knew how to find her, if he wanted, and she wasn’t sure he did.
This was the last night of Chanukah. Although she hadn’t been scheduled to work at the home, Amanda decided to go in anyway, to light the candles with Norma. She’d brought the elderly woman a fuzzy blanket wrapped in festive dancing dreidels paper, because one of Amanda’s favorite things about the holiday season was giving presents.
“So soft.” Norma ran a hand along the fabric and beamed at Amanda. “Where’s your young man?”
“Oh. He’s . . . well, I don’t think he’s my young man.”
Norma patted the blanket and settled it over her knees. “Are you sure? He looked very enamored of you.”
Amanda smiled. “I think he has a lot going on in his life, and I don’t think there’s room in it for me right now.”
“That sounds complicated.”
“Yeah.” Amanda paused, then let it all out. “His father showed up a couple days ago. They’ve had a falling out. Ben didn’t really tell me why or what, but his dad wanted him to come home.”
“Do you think he wants to go home?”
Amanda shrugged. “To be honest, Norma, I’m not sure what Ben wants. I thought he liked me . . .”
“He kissed you?”
“I kissed him.”
“And he kissed you back?”
Amanda nodded.
Norma smiled. “Then does it matter who did what first?”
“I think it does. I can’t explain why, except that I don’t think he would have. I think he went along with it, but I definitely pushed the issue. And I get the feeling he’s not into it. Or maybe not ready for it. Anyway, I haven’t heard from him since then, and,” Amanda lifted her chin, keeping her voice steady even though it felt like she might cry, “listen, I don’t need to put up with some hot and cold guy who doesn’t approve of me unless we’re making out. Or whatever. And then judges me for it. And then blows me off.”
“Or whatever,” Norma said gently, with a tilt of her head to eye Amanda up and down. “He was raised differently than you, no?”
“Yeah. A lot.”
Norma nodded. “It must be hard for him to break away from that.”
“Well . . . it’s not like I asked him to,” Amanda said. “And it’s not like I’m completely ignorant about what it means to be observant. It’s just . . .”
Norma waited quietly for a moment or so, then prompted, “It’s just what, dear?”
“Well, I’ve had a guy break it off with me because I was Jewish,” Amanda said in a hard voice, hating the memory, which even now felt like a knife in the gut. “But I’ve never had one break it off with me because I wasn’t Jewish enough!”
“And you think that’s why Ben doesn’t want to keep seeing you?”
“Maybe he didn’t like the way I kissed. Would that be easier to handle? I don’t know.” She’d tried to make a joke, but it came out sounding flat and hurt.
“Men. Love. All this meshugas, no? Craziness,” Norma added when Amanda looked confused. “All this craziness for the sake of love. It hurts, dolly. I know. I’m sorry.”
Amanda drew in a breath. “It’s fine. It’s not like we had something, really. Just a few dates, some kisses. I’ll be fine.”
She didn’t feel fine, though. That was a lie. She hadn’t felt anything close to being okay since she watched Ben walk away with his father without so much as a look back over his shoulder at her.
She stayed awhile longer with Norma before heading home. Hating herself for it, she drove slowly past Morningstar Mocha, but she couldn’t tell if Ben was working tonight or not. By the time she got to her parking spot, more snow had started falling. She stood on the street, looking at all the windows aglow with Christmas trees and a few menorahs here and there. The Festival of Lights, she thought. The time of miracles. Well, if she got herself inside and into a hot bath with a glass of white wine without letting herself burst into tears, that would be a miracle.
“Amanda.”
Of course it was Ben. Of course. Looking handsome in a dark peacoat over jeans, his head bare and covered in melting snow. His dark eyes intense. He’d shoved his hands deep into his pockets, shoulders hunched, and looked cold, as though he’d been walking for a while.
She didn’t answer him.
Not to play some sort of game, making him jump through hoops, but because she knew the moment she opened her mouth, she would either blurt out something embarrassing like “Why don’t you like me?” or she’d simply start to sob. Pain was pain, no matter how little you wanted to feel it, no matter how stupid you told yourself the reason was for letting yourself hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Ben said.
She could manage an answer to that. “For what?”
“For walking away from you like that, not telling you what was going on. For not calling you since.”
He sounded sincere, and it was more of an apology than many men had given her in the past. She tipped her face to let some soft snow fall on her closed eyes while she thought how to answer. It wasn’t okay, and saying so wouldn’t make it.
“I thought we had the start of something,” she said at last, still not looking at him. “I was willing to see where it went. I guess I was moving too fast.”
His self-conscious laugh made her open her eyes. Ben was shaking his head, looking embarrassed. “I . . . it’s just . . . Amanda, I have so many things to tell you, and I’m not sure where to start. But maybe we can talk about them inside? It’s cold out here, and I just got off shift and walked home. My feet are soaked.”
“I can make cocoa,” she told him. “With marshmallows, even.”
His grin warmed her, even though she was wary and didn’t want to let it. Upstairs, she heated some soy milk and cocoa powder, added some sugar, and pulled out a bag of kosher marshmallows from the cupboard—kosher not because she kept the dietary laws, specifically, but because they were also vegan. Together, they sat across from each other at the dining room table, steaming mugs in their hands. She watched him blow to cool the cocoa; he looked up and caught her looking. She didn’t care.
“I have some things to explain to you,” Ben began, but stopped. She waited. He sighed. “It’s a bunch of stuff.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Her name was Galya,” he said. “We’d known each other since we were kids. Her parents and mine were friends. They lived just a few houses down the street. They’d come over for Shabbos or we’d go there, and it just grew into something else over time. Everyone assumed we’d be together. They all wanted it. And I didn’t think I had another choice, really. It was what would’ve made everyone else happy. So, I asked her to marry me.”
Amanda’s stomach sank, but she tried not to let it show. Her fingers tightened on the mug, though. Ben noticed.
“I loved her, Amanda, but the truth was, I think it was because she was all I really knew. She was safe. My family loved her. She knew how to keep a kosher house, so she would’ve happily moved into the position of observant wife. She wanted me to work for my dad so she could stay home and raise our kids. She wanted to walk to synagogue and live in Brooklyn her entire life, blocks away from the house where she grew up.”
“But . . . ?”
“Those were all the things she wanted,” Ben said. “It confused her and hurt her feelings when I started talking about wanting to do more than that. I wanted to travel, see the world.”
“And you wouldn’t have been allowed?”
“Being frum doesn’t restrict you from seeing the world or learning new things,” Ben explained, “But it does make it complicated to travel, if you’re trying to keep strictly kosher or observe the Sabbath and holidays. Living an observant Jewish life means a lot of rules, structure, guidelines. There are always times when you can bend the rules, I think, let’s say by eating vegetarian in restaurants that aren’t kosher. But there are a lot of observant people who won’t do even that, because even if they’re not eating meat, without a rabbi’s approval they can’t be sure that something unkosher had never touched their plate. That sort of thing. I was willing to make compromises to the rules, and I didn’t feel like it compromised who I was or what I believed. Galya wasn’t. It didn’t occur to her that you could love Ha-Shem and want to be a good Jew and still, every once in a while, watch some TV on a Saturday afternoon.”
Amanda sipped her cocoa, not sure what to say. “So . . . what happened?”
“She fell in love with my best friend, Levi. He’d also grown up with us. He’s really committed to being observant and Orthodox. He talks about making aliyah one day. He loves her. I think he always has. More than I did.”
“And . . . she loves him?”
“Yes.”
“When did that happen?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere along the way she and I grew apart, and it became her and him. I never asked them, exactly. I just knew,” Ben said. “And she’d have married me even though she loved another man, because she’d promised. Because our families and friends expected it. She’d have shackled herself to me and been miserable for the rest of her life. Both of us would’ve been. I couldn’t do that to her. I made it like I broke it off with her, so nobody would blame her for anything, nobody would think she and Levi had done anything wrong. Then I moved here. And I met you.”
“You met me,” she agreed.
“And here we are.”
The cocoa had gone cold, so she pushed it aside to link her fingers together. “I grew up Reform. I became Conservative when I left home to move here, because I liked the Conservative synagogue better. I hardly ever go to services except for the High Holidays, but there are times I’ll go for a Friday night service because it’s close enough that I can walk, and I like the fact they always have a really nice bunch of desserts for the kiddish. I’ve taken a few classes there, and sometimes in the summer I help out with the camp programs for kids, doing the crafts. I’m a vegetarian and have been for years, and you want to know something? One of the reasons was because being a vegetarian means I’m kosher by default. No worries about mixing meat and dairy if you don’t eat meat. But do I worry about if the plate I’m eating off once had meat on it? Not unless it clearly hasn’t been washed, and that’s more of a yuck factor than anything religious.”
When he didn’t speak, she went on.
“I grew up Jewish but went to public school. We had a menorah but my mom really loved coloring eggs, so that’s what we did for Passover. Being Jewish is a part of me, Ben. It’s not everything I am, but it’s a huge, important part, even if it’s not as rules observant as you were raised.”
“I can see that.” He looked toward the menorah in her window. “You didn’t light it tonight.”
“I went to the home to do it with Norma. I didn’t have a chance to do it here.”
He stood and went to it, looking over his shoulder. “You want to do it now? With me? It’s the last night.”
Together, they lit the candles. The glow was bright enough to reflect from the window glass back into the room, especially after she turned off the lights to enjoy it more. Side by side, they watched the flames.
“I always liked to watch from the window outside,” Amanda said after a few seconds. “Want to go out there with me?”
Ben smiled at her. “Amanda, I’m beginning to think that I’d like to go almost anyplace you’d like to take me.”
Laughing, she knuckled his arm. “That might be the smoothest line a guy ever gave me.”
“But it worked, right?” he asked her when they were downstairs on the sidewalk, looking up at the glow from her window. “My smooth line?”
Amanda wrapped her scarf closer around her throat and looked at him. “Yeah. It totally did.”
“Good.” His grin softened as he met her gaze.
Amanda didn’t move, not even when Ben reached to snag her sleeve and tug her closer. The wariness must’ve shown in her face, because though he didn’t let go, he didn’t keep pulling. He let his hand slide down her sleeve to take hers, and squeezed her fingers.
“I have a lot of stuff I need to get worked out. Things I want to do and see, things about myself I’m not sure I understand, but I’m trying to,” he said. “I’m a huge mess, if you want to know the truth.”
She squeezed back. “Who’s not?”
They both looked again up at the menorah, the candles burning low now but still casting out a strong yellow glow that made shadows on the snow.
“I mean . . . I’m not sure it would be fair of me to drag you into it, that’s all. I like you a lot, Amanda.”
“I like you, too,” she told him. “I’m not sure why you think you’d be dragging me into anything. To be honest, Ben, as long as you’re telling me what’s going on in your head instead of hiding your thoughts, I can probably roll with it.”
His brow furrowed. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to take on my stuff. I don’t know how long I want to stick around, what I want to do or go or where I want to live, or if I want to eat cheeseburgers or not, or anything like that. It’s a lot to ask of someone.”
“Not too much to ask of a friend.”
He smiled. “And if I think of you as more than a friend?”
“Oh, well, in that case,” she said, feigning a casual attitude she definitely didn’t feel, “then I guess we’ll have to have another sort of conversation.”
“I just don’t know what’s going to happen, Amanda. That’s all. And I’d hate for you to get pulled into something with me and then get hurt. Or disappointed.”
“You know the miracle of the oil?” she asked him. “How they only had enough for one night but it lasted all the eight nights until they could get more?”
“Of course. Sure.”
Still squeezing his hand, she faced him. “Well, I always figured that people were like that bottle of oil. You might think you only have enough for one night, but guess what. When it really comes down to it, you find you have enough to last eight. Hearts work that way. You might believe you can’t open up to anything but one small thing, and the next thing you know . . .”
“You’re burning?” he asked with a grin that lit his gaze, that intense gaze that sent shivers all through her.
She nodded. “Yes. Exactly.”
“Well,” he told her as he pulled her closer, and this time, she let him. “I’m hardly the guy to talk to about disproving miracles. Not when there’s one right in front of me.”
Her face had been tipping for his kiss, but that stopped her. “Huh?”
“Out of all the people I could’ve met here, I found you. And you’re amazing, and wonderful and smart and kind and generous and understanding.” Ben’s mouth brushed hers. “And I’m crazy about you. If you ask me, that’s a miracle right there.”
Amanda pushed up on her toes to kiss him a little harder. Just a little. “Happy Chanukah, Ben.”
“Happy Chanukah, Amanda.”
And maybe that was all the miracle anyone ever needed, she thought as his fingers linked in hers. Meeting the right person at the right time. Whatever else happened after that, well . . . they’d have to keep walking on that road.
Together.