So much for Kara’s plea of “let’s spend Hanukkah together, just the two of us.”
“Don’t be silly.” Her sister lay back against her nest of pillows and pressed the spoons to her under-eyes. Definitely not a Rosie regimen that Tzipi remembered.
“I still want to do all the things I said: spa day, shopping, the works. We fly to Hawaii Friday and will be back in time to light the last Hanukkah candle with you on Monday.”
You’ve got to go on Matzo Baller this year, Tizzy.
She had assumed Kara meant they’d go together. Not just her, as some second-rate stand-in, while Kara eloped.
She wondered if this was how Lorne felt as a body- and stunt-double. The no-name, subbing in for the big-name.
Hit your mark, Tizzy.
“Are you de-puffing?” Eyes still closed, her sister moved the spoons to her cheekbones. “And sculpting? I do this every day. Ah, so good.”
“You’re sure about this? And I’m not talking about the spoons.”
Kara sat up, abandoning her beauty hack. “Shel is about to leave on a six-month Doctors Without Borders mission. I’m crazy about him, Tizzy. And I want to be his wife before he’s deployed. Before the press madness of this movie. Yes, I’m sure.”
She had never been one to hold her sister back.
“Okay. I’ll do it. For you. And Shel.” For love.
Tzipi leaned back and applied her spoons, holding them in place as her sister assaulted her with a tight hug.
For the love of God, she was going to need a whole cutlery drawer of chilled utensils to get her busted face Baller-ready by Friday.
Fuck me.
For the first time in forever, Jonah woke up with sticky boxers. And he didn’t even have the afghan’t for cover-up.
He’d had a wet dream, at his age, about Rosie Bloom.
Fuck my life.
He blamed Asher’s newest holiday concoction, the Hanukkah Hammer. Some sort of rye whiskey/black cherry syrup nightmare, with a dash of cayenne that set his brain on fire. He was lit soon after the candles had been. How many had he had?
Enough to have danced his suit into a sweat-soaked mess when someone put “Can’t Touch This” on the digital jukebox in the corner of the bar. But the fact that he even had a vague recollection of that? Not nearly enough.
Despite looking like a heavyweight champion, Jonah was a lightweight when it came to booze. He’d known this early on, back when he would get stupid on Manischewitz by the second cup at Seder every Passover. As he grew older and brawnier, people assumed his tolerance had too. Bartenders always served him doubles without asking. Well, he was a good tipper, there was that.
Turned out only Talia and Asher were at the bar last night, so he’d still been the third wheel. Figured. Jay was balls-deep in Baller prep, no doubt, so he got a pass. But Nora and Beck were just plain lame. He hadn’t seen them since Friendsgiving last month. And Libby could’ve at least shown her face and bought him a drink for his epic Career Day save. Then again…
A Maccabee-sized mutiny was happening, starting in his gut and traveling up to his brain stem. Groaning, Jonah hoisted himself up from his low futon and lurched across his studio apartment. The boxers went straight into the trash, and he let the shower beat the hangover out of his body. He may have had the smallest apartment out of all his friends, in the most unhip neighborhood of Murray Hill, but he wouldn’t trade his water pressure for anything.
As he soaped his belly, his face burned with shame over the thought of losing it in his sleep to a sitcom character. Although in this dream, Rosie Bloom was a grown-ass woman and mythically gorgeous. Fuck, he was hard again.
Jonah cranked the shower knob around until ice needles pummeled him in punishment, solving that problem pretty quick.
With a thick towel around his waist and his tight curls dripping a trail across the kitchen floor, he palmed a metallic Nespresso pod and tossed it into the machine. All his mugs were dirty, so he jammed a cereal bowl underneath and held it there, growling at the Bianco Doppio as it took its sweet time brewing.
His laptop chirped from the kitchen table. Not the sound of a new email, but of a Teams meeting starting. It might’ve been the third day of Hanukkah, but to the rest of the world, it was Wednesday.
Double fucccccck. He splashed milk into the bowl and ferried it over to the table. Shirtless. Dripping. As the newest client of his boutique firm sat in the virtual lobby, waiting for someone on his team to kick off the hour-long Budgeting & Forecasting meeting. Doppio fuck with foam on top. Never drinking again.
Could he get away with leaving his camera off? His stomach gave a comically long growl. His mic muted, too? He dumped whatever was left at the bottom of the sugar bowl into his double espresso to jumpstart his brain.
By some miracle, he made it through the next forty-three minutes and two “let’s circle back on that” pivots. The caffeine had at least worked its way through his system by then.
