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“It’s Hanukkah,” Seth said. “Eating doughnuts is a good deed.”

You really can’t go wrong with the food at any Jewish holiday. Well, with the exception of Passover, because matzah is terrible and eight days of no carbs but matzah and potatoes can have you crying for pizza by the end. But think bagels and lox to break the Yom Kippur fast. All sorts of exotic fruits on Tu B’Shevat. Brisket and tzimmes and noodle kugel for pretty much any occasion. And that’s only the Ashkenazi food; I’d been treated to Sephardic and Mizrahi food occasionally at friends’ houses growing up, and I remembered fish cooked in spicy tomato sauce, tagines with chickpeas and saffron, Yemenite braided bread with whole eggs hidden in the twists.

But Hanukkah food? Because Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the oil, it’s basically a mitzvah to eat fried foods for the holiday. And doing a good deed by eating French fries or doughnuts is the absolute best way to do a good deed.

So he was technically right. We joined the long line, which had wound all around itself to avoid subjecting anyone to the cold outside. The space was otherwise pretty spare, with a wooden counter, a chalk menu board hanging above it, and some tables and chairs pushed up against the walls.

I examined the menu as we inched closer. “What are the odds that Manischewitz grape filling will be good?”

“I never got the Manischewitz hate,” Seth said. “Manischewitz is delicious. It’s like drinking grape juice.”

I glanced at him with dismay. “If you want grape juice, drink grape juice. Manischewitz is supposed to be wine.”

“Maybe I like my wine tasting like grape juice.”

“I knew you had terrible taste.”

We moved forward in line. The guys in front of us stepped up to the counter, leaving us craning our necks at the menu board. “We have to decide what we’re going to get. Are you okay with sharing?”

“I love sharing,” Seth said. Of course he did.

Ten minutes later, we were huddled at a corner table that had miraculously opened up just as we were receiving our cardboard containers full of doughnuts. We’d left a trail of powdered sugar behind us as we elbowed our way through the crowd, like Hansel and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs in case they needed to find their way out.

Seth was even more smug after we sawed the Manischewitz grape jelly–filled doughnut in half with a plastic knife. “This is amazing,” he said around the half-chewed glob of dough and jelly in his mouth.

Like a civilized human being, I took the time to finish chewing before responding, which gave me time to think about how right he was. The wine—sorry, “wine”—really worked as a doughnut filling, the jelly tart and sweet and smooth with the ever so slight bitterness of alcohol, which perfectly complemented the rich, plush, not-too-sweet dough. The powdered sugar on the outside coated my lips with sweetness as I swallowed. “It’s good.”

The other two doughnuts we’d gotten—a chocolate gelt one that was basically just a glazed doughnut with chocolate filling and a gelt garnish on top, and a chunky apple pie one—were good, too. I grabbed their business card on the way out, though I did say to Seth as we exited the store into the cold air, “I’m not sure if I’ll call them.”

“Why not? The doughnuts were fantastic.”

“We can find doughnut vendors locally in Vermont that make doughnuts just as good, and they can give their doughnuts fun Hanukkah names,” I said. “That way we can save the budget for things we can’t find in Vermont, like kosher food and exclusive Hanukkah specialties.”

Like latkes. The next place had popped up to sell the fried potato pancakes with toppings ranging from the standard applesauce and sour cream to kimchi and trout roe. This one had a window to order outside, so we took up our positions in line while stomping from foot to foot to keep warm.

“Anyway,” Seth said. This line was moving more slowly than the doughnut line. “I’m not idealistic.”

“What?” I had no idea where that had come from.

“Earlier,” he said. “That’s what you said about me. That I was being idealistic when I told you I knew you wouldn’t just take the info I’d gathered for you and run.”

“It is so idealistic,” I said. “Maybe I’ll take it and run right now.”

“Go ahead. I won’t be upset.”

I stared at him. He stared back at me. My hand, holding the phone with access to his Google Doc, twitched. Why not just take it and leave? It wasn’t like I cared about what he thought of me.

Except…maybe I did.

A tiny, little bit.

“I’m not going to do that,” I said. A beat. “Did you really think I would?”

“No,” he said immediately, firmly. But his face didn’t match the vehemence of his tone. He actually looked a little…relieved?

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “You didn’t totally know. You wanted to make sure I wouldn’t just ditch you.”

I would’ve thought him thinking of me that way would hurt my feelings. It didn’t, though. Somehow it made me actually feel better. Because he wasn’t cartoonishly sunny after all. “You’re right, I guess,” I told him. “You’re not that idealistic.”