*
Naomi was organizingpapers when her phone rang.
“What are you up to?”
Jason.There was something about the sound of his voice that relaxed her, even if being honest about what she was up to, was the source of her stress.
“Finalizing the arrangements for the caterer for the wedding,” she said.
“One of mine?”
“God forbid,” Ida had said, when Naomi had given her mentor the list of caterers that she and Jason had come up with, “your smooth hands make a mess of the wedding belonging to the organizer of Jacob Horowitz-Margareten’s Mitzvah Alliance Project.”
Then sometime later the woman, whose chignon was never out of place, had given her yet another laminated copy of her list of approved caterers from the file of them she kept in her office.“Now, here are the caterers that meet with my standards.Use one of them.”
Which meant there was no discussion, no conversation.Ida had made her choice, and it was up to Naomi to make the arrangements with the caterer on that list that was the closest to what Judith and Ash would want, using Ida’s preapproved contract.
But telling anybody including Jason,thatstory would invite the kind of critique she wasn’t in the mood for.Instead, she shared the sanitized version with Jason.“I submitted the list to Ida, who kept it on file.She chose a few of them and I chose from her list.”
Jason sighed.
She knew.Oh, she knew.But Ida was her boss, the only one who’d given her a chance to enter the event planning industry, and the woman still had a reputation.And a business that she’d once told Naomi would be hers.
“So,” Jason interjected, bringing her back to earth.“You fixed it, and she—”
“Helped,” she said, cutting him off.“But yes.I feel so much better.And I wouldn’t have made it through without you.”
“Despite the Ida of it all, do you want to celebrate?”
She nodded, then remembered this wasn’t a video call and he couldn’t see her.“Yes,” she said.“I’m really up for celebrating.”
“Good.I’ll bring dinner and wine.”
Which meant he was comingoverto celebrate.And she had to clean.
A few hours later, she’d thrown the last of her freshly washed laundry in the tiny dryer, hoping the kitchen floor was dry and that she’d removed all of the random towels and blankets from her living room couch, hoping there was no sign of the disaster that had been there hours before.
But this wasJason.
Jason who’d brought her chicken soup when she was sick, who’d called her upset about his inventory needs and who’d made her a cake to thank her when she introduced him to her favorite spreadsheet program and offered to make a bunch of them for him.Jason who liked popcorn with bits of seaweed, who found special joy in flavors, her confidant she met by chance at her cousin’s house five years before.
The man who she’d kissed on New Year’s Day after sobbing into his shirt.
The man who she wanted to kiss again.
But she wasn’t going to.She wasn’t going to…
Her phone made the notification someone was buzzing her door.She hit the right button and pulled herself together.He was here.He was…
She tried to take a breath, calm down, smell the candles she’d lit earlier before blowing them out…
The knock at the door brought her back to earth, and when she opened the door, she could fall into his eyes.
“Heeey,” he said.
She had to pull herself back to reality.He was her friend.Who she’d kissed.
And she hated herself for wanting to kiss him again.
