"Aaron dear, I think this customer's for you," Tova calls from the front of the shop. Aaron looks up from where he is carefully piping thick, sweet jelly into pastries, just in time for Hanukkah. James grins at him over the glass divide, the backpack over his shoulders stuffed to bursting. Aaron grins back.
"He only comes here for you, Tova," he says, setting down his piping bag carefully and wiping his hands on his apron. "You and your cookies."
"Well, he could stand to eat more," Tova says, casting a critical eye over James's lean frame. "Don't I send you home with enough leftovers?"
Aaron gives a groaning laugh. "You send us home with enough to feed an army. We'll be lucky if we can fit through our apartment door in a few months."
She'll never believe him, of course, as evidenced by the plate of pastries she presses upon him as he ducks under the swinging counter to reach James's side. She's basically been on a campaign to adopt Aaron since the day he came in and asked for a job application. Although he knows his family was German, there is something familiar and comforting about the tones of Tova's Israeli accent. When he sits down to Shabbat dinner with her and her husband Abraham, he finally knows what it feels like to be wanted, to be accepted. He finally knows what family feels like.
James's family has not been quite as welcoming, although James assures him that it's merely the fact that he's male, rather than any of Aaron's other attributes, to which they object.
Their shock at being introduced to James's boyfriend Aaron probably had something to do with it, Aaron figures, even as James told them they met at the café at which Aaron now works.
It's easier that way.
Nathan is the only one to whom they've told the truth. His acceptance into Columbia alongside James had been an unexpected blessing, and as Aaron had predicted, Nathan and James had become fast friends, spending long evenings with their noses buried in research that Aaron didn't even try to understand.
It's when James has spent too long hunched over books that Aaron takes over, dragging him out of the apartment and into the park, getting them lost in big fields and long grasses, the trees and the sky and the open air always reminding him of their shared childhood, of the years that led them to where they are now.
Aaron slides into a chair across from James, reaching across the table to take his hand, tangling their fingers together with a smile.
"Alexis better hurry or we'll miss the show," he says, glancing at the clock on the wall.
"She'll be here," James assures him, with the fond smile he always wears when he speaks of his sister.
Aaron grins. They bear little resemblance to the two lonely boys who met in the cow pasture, so many years ago. And yet, then and now, what's important is that they have each other.
Fin