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“It’s in my car.”

“Okay.”

It was still frigid outside, but Shira was somehow warm as she scurried after Leo across the front lawn, her footsteps crunching in the layer of ice atop the sparse brown grass. Leo turned around halfway through and offered her his jacket, which she gladly accepted, not so much because she was cold but because she knew it would smell like him.

Leo was parked down the street, almost in front of his old house, which was blinking with multicolored Christmas lights. They tinted his face green and blue, red and white, as he unlocked his trunk and pulled it open. “Look at this,” he said, stepping aside.

“You’re not going to push me in there, are you?” Shira joked, but he only shook his head, eyes shadowed and intense, which made her even more curious. She leaned in, pulling aside a layer of tissue paper that crinkled like the crackling ice underfoot. She squinted at a sudden bright light, then realized Leo was shining his phone flashlight into the trunk to compensate for the dim streetlight down the block. “Oh, thanks.”

It took her a minute to realize what she was seeing inside the trunk. At first it was just light, shining bits of color reflecting back at her, but then the shining bits of color crystallized into petals, a bloom, a stem, rays of light gleaming pure white in a clear blue sky behind the flowers. “Oh,” she said, surprised. “Is that a stained glass window?”

He moved around her, brushing close enough that the heat of his body scalded her even through his coat, and lifted up the window so that the light of the phone could shine through it, making it come to life, dazzling and sparkling like the sun in all its glory was on the other side. Shira could only imagine how it looked when real sunlight was actually shining through: It must be magnificent. “To be exact, it’s a stained glass window from a 1929 Tudor house near Philadelphia that was demolished several years ago to make way for some ugly millennial gray box,” he said. The sound of laughter drifted from Shira’s house, ghostly in the winter air. “I found it in a salvage shop in South Jersey, where it was covered in grime and caked-on dust. It took ages to clean it without harming it.”

“It’s beautiful,” Shira said sincerely. Something tugged in her chest whenever she looked at it. If she believed in past lives, she’d think she’d once lived in that 1929 Tudor.

“It is,” agreed Leo. He wasn’t looking at her; he was gazing at the stained glass fondly, like it was his child or at least his beloved pet. “I have a whole stockpile of stained glass now. Because I put one window in every house I work on. It’s kind of become my signature.”

“Why?”

Now he looked at her, and his eyes were blazing like the sun was behind them too. “Because you said you wanted to live in a house with a stained glass window someday. All the homes I work on: They’re all for you.”

Something cracked in her chest just then, but not in a way that broke her. It was more like she’d broken open, and now the sun was shining through her too. “It sounds a little like you’re saying ‘I love you,’ ” she said like she was joking, but she knew she wasn’t joking, and from the intensity still in his gaze, she knew he knew she wasn’t joking, either.

“Your paintings sounded a little bit like you were saying ‘I love you,’ ” Leo said. Had his eyes always held that hint of green? So many years of knowing him, and still there were surprises. “Am I wrong?”

“No,” she said breathlessly. “No, you’re not wrong.”

Nothing had ever been more right, in fact, than the way their lips met. She didn’t kiss him, and he didn’t kiss her—this time it was a true meeting in the middle, both of them leaning in and crashing warm lips into warm lips. Warm turned to hot against the cold air, and somewhere deep in Shira’s mind she wondered if they were steaming or smoking or burning.

Let them burn. Let it all burn, if it meant being bundled in Leo’s arms like this. If it meant his eyelashes brushing against hers, his nose bumping against hers, the heat of his tongue tangled with hers. His heart beat against her chest, echoing her own, and they fell into each other’s rhythms, his hands in her hair, pulling her closer to him.

When she finally broke free, it wasn’t to go far, just to rest her forehead against his. “I love you,” she said. “I hope it’s not weird to say that and that it doesn’t scare you off. I don’t mean, like, in a romantic way. Not yet. But I love you, I’ve always loved you, and I want to love you more and more every day.”

“I love you, Shira Levinson, more than I love latkes,” he said, which made a giggle bubble in her throat. A giggle. When was the last time she’d giggled? “I don’t think I have a passion for work or for art in the way that some people do. I don’t think I’ll ever find my life’s meaning or my life’s purpose in a job.” He reached for her hand. It fit into his like it had been made for that one purpose, a key and a lock. “I think maybe my passion in life is you. I think maybe my life’s meaning and my life’s purpose is the family that we build together.”

She caught the flash of panic over his face when he had to be afraid he’d come on too strong; she wiped it away with another kiss, then rested her head against his shoulder. She was filled with such a pure, strident happiness that it made her almost afraid. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught another package in the back of the trunk. “What else do you have in there?”

“Oh, that?” Leo stepped back just far enough to move the box into the light. Shira was pleasantly surprised to see a standard brass menorah inside—one decorated with curling vines—along with a small pack of candles. “I found it at the same salvage shop where I found the stained glass window and couldn’t leave it behind. I thought maybe we could use it tonight, except then I got so nervous going in that I forgot.”

Shira glanced over her shoulder, at the lit-up house and the shadows of people moving past the windows inside. An idea sparked. “Let’s not go inside yet.” She grabbed the menorah and the candles, which meant leaving Leo’s immediate circle of warmth, but she was secure he wouldn’t be going far. “Do you have a lighter?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Then come on.”

She grabbed him by the hand and led him back behind his old house—nobody would notice; its current occupants were at the party—and into the woods. She was a little nervous until she laid eyes on it: the old swing set. She actually laughed out loud with relief. “It’s still here.”

“Of course it’s still here,” Leo said. “You know how deep my dad sank this thing in? I still remember my mom out here worrying that I’d swing too hard and uproot it, and each time she said something he’d dig it in deeper. It’s attached to the land by, like, tons of cement. That swing set is going to be here long after the houses are gone and we’re all dead.”

“A beautiful thought,” Shira said dryly. She placed the menorah in the little cabin right above the slide; she and Leo clustered next to the swings, with her tucked close against his side. “You ready?”

He flicked on the lighter. “Born ready.”

In the candlelight, his cheeks were pink, and she knew hers were rosy, too. Together, they set the candles into each arm of the menorah, before he picked up one last candle to serve as the shammash. Gently, he touched the flame to its wick and handed it to her before letting the lighter go out and tucking it back into his pocket. “You do the honors.”

As she opened her mouth and sang the blessings, he sang along with her, and she swore that their two distinct voices sounded like a chorus: a chorus of years, a chorus of loves, a chorus of all the people and all the things that had brought them finally, finally together. And then, as the nine tiny lights twinkled against the stars in the sky, it was like all the lights in all the universe were shining upon them.

From Shira Levinson’s sent-emails folder: