THE PACKAGE CONTAINED a small metal menorah and a box of Chanukah candles, along with a mesh bag of chocolate gelt and a wooden dreidel. His mother had also included a box of potato latke mix. He’d never known her to ever use such a thing—she’d always cooked the latkes from scratch. For a moment, his mouth watered at the memory of the crisp, oily potato pancakes slathered with applesauce. Then he pushed the memories aside, packed up the box, and put it away on the top shelf of the coat closet.
He wasn’t going to be celebrating this year.
Not with a menorah and latkes and a dreidel, anyway. He’d left all that behind, along with his friends, family, and the girl he’d been supposed to marry. The freedom he thought he’d find by fleeing everything he ever knew was a heavier burden than he’d expected it to be. Time would make it better, Ben thought. It had to. Or else he’d left everything behind for nothing.
Dark had fallen by the time he headed down the street to the Morningstar Mocha, where he’d taken the Friday night shift. On purpose. Tesla, the owner, had told all the employees that Friday and Saturday night shifts needed to be shared equally unless you could get someone to switch. For the past couple months since he’d started working there, it hadn’t been difficult for him to find someone who wanted Friday nights off.
Jogging a little because the December air was frigid here in central Pennsylvania, Ben blew out breath after frosty breath. He didn’t pause when he passed the synagogue, the lights bright and meant to welcome worshippers inside. Cars in the parking lot meant people had driven to services, something forbidden on the Sabbath in his former community. But then, so was working, and he’d gone out of his way to do that. It was supposed to make him feel like he’d broken even further away from what he’d left, but honestly, all it did was remind him how close it all remained.
“Hey, Ben. Thought you weren’t going to make it.” Tesla, her asymmetrical haircut dyed several shades of blond, waved him behind the counter as he entered.
“Sorry.”
She laughed. “No worries. Just glad you got here. I’m going to head out. Marisol’s in the back doing some prep for tomorrow. You feel okay handling everything out here?”
He did. The cash register was only a little different from the ones in his dad’s store, and he’d had hours of training on that. He liked being out front, talking to people, all kinds of people. People like his new neighbor, he thought, as the bell jangled over the shop’s front door and she walked in.
“Ben,” she said warmly.
“Amanda,” he replied. “Hi.”
“Haven’t seen you in forever,” Tesla said to her.
Amanda laughed. “Yeah, I know, I know. My bad. Been busy, that’s all.”
The women chatted for a moment longer while Ben rang up a customer’s order of coffee and a muffin to go, and then Tesla took her leave. Amanda turned to him with a smile that tugged one out of him—the way it had in her apartment, he remembered. She smiled, and he was helpless to resist returning it.
“Hi there, neighbor,” she said. “Good to see you again. How’s it going?”
“Fine.”
He’d been too abrupt, he thought, watching her smile fade the tiniest amount. She perused the glass case, biting her lower lip. She had thick, dark red hair that fell halfway down her back in curtains of silk. When she straightened and caught him staring, she didn’t look offended. If anything, something flashed in her dark brown eyes that made him want to tell her how pretty she looked.
Of course, he didn’t. That was the sort of thing that happened in the movies he’d been forbidden to watch but had snuck out as a teenager to see anyway. He was no romantic movie hero, that was for sure.
“Lemon scone,” he blurted, remembering that she’d said how much she liked them.
Her smile brightened again, and she tilted her head to study his face. “Yeah. My favorite. You remembered.”
“They are the best thing here,” he said. “Anything else?”
Again, too abrupt. Too formal or something. He’d somehow lost the knack of superficial conversation.
“Sure, I’d love a soy latte. Thanks.”
“I’ll bring it to you,” he told her. “If you want to go ahead and find a place to sit.”
There was usually a rush right before closing on a Friday night, but for Ben it seemed as though no matter how many people crowded into the coffee shop, whenever he looked up his eyes went straight to the table by the front window where Amanda sat with her book. Sometimes she chatted with the other regulars, but mostly she sipped her drink and nibbled at her lemon scone in silence.
Engrossed in what she was reading, she didn’t seem to notice as the shop emptied and the clock ticked several minutes past the closing hour.
“Oh, sorry,” she said when she looked up, with a faint, dreamy look in her eyes that sharpened at the sight of Ben switching the sign to CLOSED and locking the front door. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, too quickly, but at least this time he was rewarded with another of those slow, sweet smiles instead of a puzzled look and furrowed brow. “I mean . . . I just have a few things to take care of here, and then if you’re going to walk home, maybe we could walk together? Just so you don’t have to walk alone. For safety. That’s all.”
Because, of course, he needed an excuse, so that nobody dared think he was offering for the mere pleasure of her company, he thought, giving himself a mental kick. Nobody around here was going to judge them for walking without a chaperone. If anything, that would be considered absurd.
It clearly didn’t occur to Amanda that she should modestly refuse him. She nodded, a finger holding her place in the book. “That would be great.”
“Give me a few more minutes?”
“Sure. I’ll finish this chapter.” She handed him the empty plate and mug.
Marisol had taken care of all the next day’s prep, and she would also close out the register and deal with putting the cash in the floor safe. All he had to do was get the dishwasher running and mop the back room. Tonight, Marisol was as eager to get out of there as he was.
“Hot date,” she told him with a wink and a glance across the front counter toward Amanda, still waiting. “You, too?”
“Me? Oh. No.” Ben shook his head, heat creeping up his throat at the thought of it. “She’s my neighbor.”
Marisol gave Amanda another look. “Uh-huh.”
In the two months Ben had been working here, Marisol had gone on dates with so many different men, he couldn’t see how she could keep track. She’d tried to set him up with a couple of her friends, though she’d given up when Ben consistently declined her invitations. He knew she thought he was weird. Well . . . he guessed that if she knew him—really knew his background and where he’d come from—he would seem strange.
Outside, Marisol gave them both a cheery wave and headed off in the opposite direction, leaving Amanda to blow out a breath of frost as she danced from foot to foot on the cracked pavement. Ben shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets. The temperature had dipped tremendously, stinging the inside of his nostrils and sparking a few tears of protest at the corners of his eyes.
“Smells like snow,” Amanda said.
“White Christmas,” Ben replied.
She laughed and nudged him with her elbow as they started walking toward the Valencia. “White Christmas, white Chanukah, whichever. I just love it when it snows. Chanukah starts in—”
“I know when it starts.”
This time he’d been deliberately abrupt. He didn’t want to talk about it. She would ask him if he were Jewish then, he thought. And what would he say? That he used to be? That he wasn’t sure what he was anymore?
But if she wondered about it, Amanda kept the question to herself. She chatted about other things as they walked. The neighborhood, mostly, pointing out some local sites of interest. About herself, too. A project she’d been working on with her job.
“So, it’s not so much that they are all crazy about doing arts and crafts,” she explained with a hop over a split in the sidewalk where a tree root had poked through. “But they don’t always have anything else to do, other than watch television. So I try to think of fun and easy things for them to keep busy doing. It’s a myth, you know. That all old people love Bingo and soap operas.”
Her foot hit a patch of ice and she slipped, arms flailing, and would’ve gone down hard if Ben hadn’t reached out and snagged her around the waist. His reaction pulled her close to him. She ended up in his arms, her face tilted to his, her mouth open in laughter.
“Sorry.” Ben let go of her abruptly. “I thought you were going to fall.”
“I totally was going to fall.” She didn’t move so much as a step away from him.
The shaft of light from the streetlamp lit her eyes in shades of amber and deep chocolate, the pupils gone wide and dark. That dark red and silky hair had tumbled over her shoulders, and this close, he could smell a faint perfume of vanilla and lavender. Ben cleared his throat and stepped backward to put some distance between them.
This time it was his foot that hit the patch of ice. This time Amanda was the one who held him up so he didn’t hit the ground. And this time the saving grip became an embrace.
“I caught you,” Amanda whispered.
Ben breathed in the scent of her. Then carefully but firmly, he let her go. Stepped back, avoiding the ice. He could feel her curious gaze on him, but he didn’t let himself look at her. She’d see his feelings all over his face, he knew it. She would see him looking like a fool.
They walked the rest of the way in silence. In the lobby of the Valencia, Ben paused in front of his door, key in hand, but didn’t put it in the lock. He shifted from foot to foot, wondering if she expected to be invited inside. He thought about how sparse and bare his apartment was; he didn’t even have anything to offer her to eat or drink.
“Well,” Amanda said after a moment of awkward silence. “Good night, Ben. Thanks for walking me home.”
“You’re welcome.”
She headed up the stairs, one hand gripping the wrought-iron railing. He unlocked his door and pushed it open. She paused at the landing to look down at him, giving a small wave with her fingers. He returned it after a second. Then she kept going, and he went inside.