“I’ve got my stuff coming,” Abe said.“I’ve been in touch with my helper, and he’s still good to go.”
His helper.
Jason.
She couldn’t let herself think about him now, couldn’t let herself think about what she was trying to say.
But she was a professional.“Thank you,” she managed.“Thank you.”
Abe nodded, as she watched Isaac remove the chuppah frame—made from what looked like large hockey sticks.
With help from Abe and Jacob, they placed those two large wooden hockey sticks, standing on the bimah area, where the chuppah would hang.
“Things are coming together.”
Naomi nodded.She could see the vision coming together.
All she had to do was figure out what to do about what would come afterwards.
*
Jason had leftSteven’s house early in the morning, driving the rental vehicle filled with equipment to the venue.No traffic, no congestion on the roads.Just the first lights of sunrise.
He needed to figure out how he was going to get through this wedding.This was Ash’s day, and like Lev had told him, this wasn’t the moment where he needed to figure out his own future.
But Lev and Artur were both right.He’d needed to figure out how to fix things with Naomi.And he’d actually managed to figure out what he wanted to give her.He’d even told his brother what he was going to offer right before the two of them went to bed.
Granted, his brother’s response was to look at him as if he had seven heads.“You want to propose what?!After all of that, you want to go back and propose that?”
“Why not?Isn’t that putting faith in the business, putting faith in her?Creating something so that she has a safety net if things don’t go well, or, go too well.Putting my reputation, or whatever it is, on the line?Also, she has to, you know, agree to the concept for it to take any effect.”
“But why would she?”
“What?”
“Agree to the concept?”
“Well,” Jason said after thinking for a bit.“I don’t know.But what I do know is that this is risking a lot.See, I think what she was trying to do was save me from myself, you know?Save the chef, save the knishes.”
His brother, predictably, shook his head.“I swear it’s not knishes you’re talking about.”
“Cannolis, the world.Doesn’t matter.The point is that she stuck her neck out, fell on her sword, to make things safe for me.But I stepped in the puddle anyway.I’m going to climb up the tower, you know, drop my coat on a puddle.All of those things.For her.”
“You’re going to propose an Events by Greenblatt’s division, give a right of first refusal to Naomi on her services, and in exchange, have the back-end booking for her events done by the people who work in that division—which gives her time to…”
“Plan?Whatever anybody does in their spare time.And also, it’s not people.It’s a dedicated person for her and a dedicated person for me, so that she’s not stuck doing the planning for me.Because that’s what started all of this in the first place.”
Eventually Steven agreed and thought that he’d come up with a brilliant plan.Now all he had to figure out how to offer it to her in a way that wouldn’t take the spotlight from Ash on his wedding day.
But as of then, he had work to do.He pulled the rental truck up to where he was being directed, and prepared for the start of what would be a very long day.
*
Only a fewhours before the wedding was supposed to start, most of the larger items had been organized and settled, and Leah was doing her final preparations.Which meant she meandered her way into the room where her sister and cousins were getting their makeup applied.
“You look gorgeous.”
And they did.The gorgeous blue bridesmaids’ dresses they wore fit their curves and their body types perfectly; they’d made a great choice with a designer who had a variation for each of them.Liv and Leah had made the perfect choices.
