The Broken Hearts' Society of Suite 17C

by LeighAnn Kopans

  Okay. She could do this.

  She knew where the Jewish Student Center was, since mom had insisted on a tour of it when they’d visited, over a year ago now. She let her legs carry her there, commanding her shoulders, full of tension and nervous energy, to chill the fuck out.

  Hillel took up half a block on one of the streets bordering campus. It was made of white concrete and glass, and stood three floors high, dwarfing the church that sat to one side of it and the tattoo studio nestled beside it around the corner. Arielle sighed. Temple Beth Am back home was all brick and stained glass, carpet, dark corners, and musty prayer books. This didn’t look like a place she could pray, let alone feel at home.

  Behind the humungous window on the third floor, students stood in rows, holding prayerbooks. Apparently, services had already started. There was a whole community of Jewish kids here at Northern, doing their thing, praying, celebrating, eating, and forming a community on the Jewish New Year without her. Just like they were doing at home.

  The ache that had moved into her heart, making it leaden, in the week after Rachel had dumped her, came back and sat heavier than ever. She slumped down on one of the concrete stairs that led up into the monstrous building, and swallowed back what she knew was an inevitable onslaught of tears.

  You need to get your shit together, Duval. You have a whole life to live on your own. Be a grownup.

  A tear rolled down her cheek, and watching it plop onto her jeans only emphasized how pathetic she was. Arielle refused to let it get out of hand. She focused on a row of buildings just at the end of her line of sight—ironically enough, sorority row—and tried to blink clarity back into her eyes. The messy jumble of anger and sorrow surged through her chest, pushing a roar into her ears, but she wouldn’t let it show. If she had a nervous breakdown on the steps of Hillel…well, she couldn’t think of anything more pathetic than that.

  She wouldn’t have ever noticed someone sitting down beside her, if she hadn’t sucked her snot back in and smelled that perfume. Something flowery with a hint of fruit that was distinctly, irresistibly feminine.

  And there she was. Lauren, who she hadn’t breathed a word about Rosh HaShanah to when they’d smiled over sushi yesterday at lunch. But here she was, sitting beside Arielle at the saddest moment she’d had in weeks, watching her with kind eyes.

  “You’re Jewish,” Lauren said. Not a question, but an invitation to start a conversation.

  “Yeah. But they didn’t find me.”

  “Who?” Lauren asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “Hillel. The Jewish Student Center?” Arielle motioned over her shoulder at the imposing building, and Lauren nodded her understanding. “I just think it’s amazing they didn’t find me, with my first name and all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nobody from Hillel found me,” Arielle repeated. “Like, I didn’t get the auto-Jew email that I would have gotten if my last name was Cohen or Shapiro or Rosenbaum.”

  Lauren’s face twisted up, reflecting vaguely interested confusion.

  Arielle sighed, feeling that little point of emptiness inside her expanding. “The last names. They can tell who the Jews are because there are last names that are almost always Jewish.”

  “And you’re Jewish. But you don’t have one?”

  “My dad isn’t Jewish. He’s French.”

  Lauren’s eyebrows stayed suspended slightly higher than normal above her eyes as she watched Ari. “So …?”

  “So…it’s the New Year—Rosh HaShanah—but nobody invited me.”

  “Someone has to invite you? Doesn’t the holiday just sort of happen?”

  Arielle sighed, trying to mask her mild frustration. This is why her youth group friends said dating non-Jews could be frustrating. “Yeah, which is why I decided to walk by, I guess. But Jews are usually pretty decent at outreach—finding Jews and letting them know what other Jews are doing. Trying to guilt them into coming, I guess.”

  “Well, obviously you accomplished that for yourself. You’re here, aren’t you?” Lauren nudged Arielle’s shoulder with hers, and Ari looked up into her warm smile, teasing, but patient.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” Arielle grumbled, scuffing the toe of her shoe against the concrete stair.

  “But you’re not actually sitting in services.”

  Arielle shook her head. “This is going to sound stupid.”

  “You could never sound stupid.”

  Arielle’s cheeks flushed at Lauren’s words, at the velvet softness of her voice when she said them. “I hate the prayers. I don’t understand the words—most Jews don’t, actually. But when we pray in English, it feels lame. It’s a no-win. I can’t stand to be in there.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth. She’d hated services at home, too, but the fact hadn’t ever prevented her from attending. Everything else about being home made that one annoyance bearable.

  “But you would have gone to prayers, or whatever, at home?”

  Holy shit. Was this girl reading her mind?

  “Yeah,” she smiled at her shoes. “Home is apple cake, getting my hair fussed over by my mom, and playing rock paper scissors with my little brother behind the prayer book during the fourth hour of services. Home is…home. This isn’t home, so it’s not Rosh HaShanah.” Arielle searched Lauren’s eyes, begging her to accept the weird logic of her brain’s war with Jewish guilt. Lauren nodded.

  “And you can’t go home.” Not a question, but a statement. A challenge.

  “I…have a midterm.”

  “No you don’t,” Lauren said calmly, as though she was observing the shape of a passing cloud. “Professors aren’t allowed to give midterms until next week.”

  Embarrassment bloomed in Ari’s chest for having been caught in the lie, though it made absolutely no sense that she should even care what Lauren thought. “What the hell? Did you memorize the academic calendar?”

  “Yes I did.”

  She was serious. “Are you insane?”

  A hearty laugh boomed out of Lauren. “Possibly? But if I’m going to be a pre-med major, I have to get used to a very regimented study schedule. I mapped it all out before I got here.”

  Now it was Arielle’s turn to look at Lauren like she’d just spoken Martian.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to sign up for the classes if I didn’t know I could handle them!” Lauren laughed. “I don’t do anything without a plan,” she said, her smile falling, her tone going softer. It sounded more like admission than pride in her voice, and looked that way too, from the way she stared down at her hands now. Her long fingers ending in smooth, neatly curved and painted nails danced around each other, cracked the knuckles on the opposite hand.

  Arielle could understand that—needing to be prepared. Needing to have a plan for every possibility. So why hadn’t she thought about what would happen if Rachel dumped her? Especially when Rosh HaShanah came?

  Arielle stared off into the distance, fighting back tears when the reason came to her. Because Rachel dumping her was never a possibility. They couldn’t have been more perfect for each other.

  “I’m trying to change that, though,” Lauren said. Arielle looked up and their eyes met, Lauren’s dancing with light like they had the day they’d first met.

  Arielle pressed her lips tight and managed a smile. “Maybe I should, too.”

  “So are you going to go in, or not?” Lauren’s words pulled Arielle out of the pit of self-pity quicksand. It was a genuine question, and for a second Arielle got lost in her deep brown eyes that somehow caught the light in the way she’d never really seen. They held a challenge, but a gentle one.

  It totally sucked that she couldn’t even manage to walk into a stupid building.

  “I…no. I don’t think so. No.”

  “You don’t want to, or you can’t? Or you won’t?”

  Now anger flared through Arielle, just for a second. She didn’t need one more person guilting her, especially a person who wasn’t even Jewish. But she he
ard the real question behind Lauren’s soft words and patient eyes. She was asking whether Arielle was willing to be in charge of herself.

  “I want to,” Arielle said slowly. “I think. I want to do something. It’s, like, the most important holiday of the year. For my family, anyway. For me. It’s a new beginning, you know? A fresh start. I’ve always loved that.”

  “But?”

  “But I can’t go in there.”

  “No fresh starts for you this year?” Lauren asked, her eyes searching Arielle’s. Ari hadn’t told her anything about Rachel, but the way Lauren looked at her right now…it was like she could tell Arielle had lost something.

  Arielle smiled sadly, and shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope there will be, I guess. Maybe.”

  “Well then,” Lauren said, standing up and dusting off her butt. Two seconds of ogling later, Arielle pried her eyes away from its perfect muscular roundness. Her cheeks flushed red, but a sinking feeling in her stomach edged out the terror of saying something. Now that Lauren had found her here and challenged her, she didn’t want Lauren to leave, and the feeling was so fierce that it forced her to stand, too.

  “I’m sorry,” Arielle blurted. Obviously she’d said something wrong, to make Lauren want to get away from her so quickly. She had to say something to get Lauren to stay here, to keep doing whatever she was doing that made Arielle feel grounded and just a little calmer than before.

  “For what?” Lauren said, dipping down to pick up her backpack, and turning to face Arielle. Her stomach started to flip at the soft, delicate, slightly sweaty feel of Lauren’s hand slipping into hers. Absolute heaven. “I was just going to say that I don’t know anything about the Jewish New Year, but I know every stupid thing there is to know about the Chinese New Year. At least the way white people in California with Chinese daughters do it. So, maybe I can help.”

  Arielle cocked her head at Lauren, narrowing her eyes, trying to figure out if she was serious or making fun of her. A girl who sat down with her outside a random ridiculous building, who asked her questions and listened patiently, wouldn’t be making fun of her. Would she?

  “I mean,” Lauren stammered, drawing her hand back and holding it awkwardly at her waist. “I know it’s not the same thing, I just thought…you look so lonely, and I know a good Chinese restaurant nearby…obviously that’s not a Jewish thing, but, you know …”

  She looked mortified, and Arielle pushed to her feet, wanting to be at eye level. “I would love to.”

  “Yeah?” A grin spread across Lauren’s face, even though she still kept her hand close.

  “Definitely,” Arielle said, her hand twitching with wanting to reach for Lauren’s. She wanted to feel those fingers brushing against hers again so badly. But there was one thing she wouldn’t be able to bear—messing up this tiny seed of whatever this was, too soon. Instead, she leaned in and nudged Lauren’s shoulder, then took the first step away from Hillel, and toward her first ever grown up, all-her-own Rosh HaShanah.

  Rion

  Rion had made it almost two weeks without seeing Crash.

  In her first two weeks working front desk at The Studio on High, he had shown up at some point during every single one of her shifts. Sometimes he tried talking to her, sometimes he just looked at her from across the room with an unreadable expression. He never tried to upset her, but his mere presence seemed to infuse something in Rion’s very being that made her jittery and off-center. Two things that she absolutely could not stand to be.

  So she’d sweet-talked Olivia into letting her see The Studio’s shift schedule. Then she’d snapped a grainy cell phone picture of it for reference. Olivia’s eyebrow had gone up, and Rion had felt herself starting to get flustered. “It’s just easier for me to see it next to my class schedule.”

  Olivia raised an eyebrow. “Don’t I already know your class schedule?”

  “Well, yeah, but…I might be changing it.”

  Olivia had lifted a doubtful eyebrow and handed the schedule over anyway. “Just let me know what changes.”

  Relief swept Rion at the opportunity, and she pored over the schedule. Crash tended to work late, so scheduling her shifts to end well before his started was tricky, especially with how much money she had to make to write that tuition check to Northern every month. Luckily, Olivia was patient enough to let her pull a two-hour shift and race to her 12:30 class, then come back afterward.

  Rion knew she was being a pussy and she hated herself for it. She certainly needed to learn to handle herself around guys like Crash, since they were abundant in the music industry. Which, by the way, the Studio just might contribute to. After a lunch break that just happened to coincide with Olivia’s, Rion had been given the job of picking and playing the music for the shop. Nobody would notice if she switched out the typical boring playlists for a couple hour-long mixes she’d spent every second of her free time working on.

  It was only six, but Crash was getting in at 7 tonight. Rion huffed in frustration as she pulled on her jacket and signed out of front desk computer. Having the schedule on hand had been useful, but also annoying, since it meant that she always knew when Crash was coming in and going out too. She called goodbye to Olivia and pushed out the heavy glass door, shivering with the blast of cold air. It was early October, and the air was already getting frigid with the sunset. She quickened her steps and reached down the back of her jacket, groping for the hood of her sweatshirt. “Dammit,” she muttered when it became clear she’d have to take off her jacket to make it happen, looking back over her shoulder.

  And smacked dead into a tall, lean hunk of muscle in a leather jacket, dark jeans, and heavy black boots. Her heart dropped into her stomach. She knew it was him, mostly because of the smell of leather and aftershave that made her all fluttery inside. Only now the smell was slightly better—it was laced with the faint whiff of a cigarette.

  She raised her eyes, and there he was. There was no explanation for how badly she wanted to touch his thick hair. When he smiled, her gaze trailed down to his mouth, and dear God in heaven, that lip ring took her breath away every damn time.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but the gravelly-soft tone of his voice and that sexy smile told her something different. He flicked the lip ring with his tongue, and she couldn’t not stare. Couldn’t stop imagining what it would be like to flick her own tongue against it.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, willing her own voice to convey annoyance. Judging by his smirk, she didn’t think it worked.

  His eyes sparkled as the corners of his mouth pulled up even more. “You mean, why am I early? Because our schedules aren’t supposed to overlap?”

  Rion’s eyes flared and her heart hammered against her chest. “I…uh…I mean, how …”

  He shrugged, never breaking eye contact. “Olivia told me. We’ve been friends a few years, and she’s not afraid to ask me weird questions. Told me you asked to see the schedule, that you were obviously avoiding me. Wanted to know if I’d groped you or something.” He rolled his eyes and smiled at her again, and a small part of Rion’s brain wished that he would, in fact, grope her. Damn him. That look of his, dragging over her curves and connecting with her eyes like flint against steel, was going to melt her on the spot. “I’m coming in to reshuffle some of my shifts anyway. Stephanie’s husband was in a work accident, something involving a forklift. He can’t work, and she needs better shifts where she’ll get more tips.”

  “What about you? You need cash, too.”

  Crash shrugged. “I’m okay. I don’t have two little kids to take care of.”

  “Oh.” Not only was he not stalking her, he was here to do something nice for somebody else. All she’d tried to do was avoid Crash, and the part of her that wanted him to say he’d been looking for her screamed. She wanted to strangle it.

  “Plus, I was hoping to run into you. You’re not the only one who memorized the schedule.”

  Goddammit. Bright blue eyes, staring right into hers, waiting for a re
sponse. Shining lip ring forcing her to stare at his lips, and think about kissing him. Gravelly, low voice saying such beautiful words.

  “When did you quit wearing your nose ring?” He asked, just as casually as he might have wondered about the forecast for tomorrow.

  Her hand flew up to the spot on her nose where the hole had healed over, the one she’d convinced herself would be completely unnoticeable to anyone else.

  She’d had her nose pierced when she’d moved into the group home. She’d always wanted one, and reasoned that this would make her look like more of a badass anyway. One day, a swift punch to the septum from a girl down the hall when they fought over the shower had torn it so badly that she finally gave up on it. She missed it, though.

  No guy had ever spoken to her so straightforwardly. Sexy looks always progressed to a hookup instead of conversation, and in the past two years said hookup was either initiated while drunk or high. She always had tried to lose herself in the making out, to tell herself that the groping felt good, but could never shake her annoyance that the guy wouldn’t remember any of it in the morning.

  “So you did have one. Thought so. I bet it looked incredible.”

  “It did.” She let her hand move to touch the spot again. Jewelry wasn’t something that lasted long in the group home, and it was the one thing that had added a little sparkle to her face that couldn’t be ripped from her neck or traded for cigarettes.

  Crash nodded. “You should get it redone.” Then he blew out a cloud of smoke. Damn, that smelled incredible. Half of Rion ached for a long draw on the cigarette. The other half was proud of herself for kicking such a nasty habit to the curb.

  “So, are you waiting for Amy again?”

  “Who?” Damn, this guy was one annoying-ass question after another.

  He chuckled. “Your roommate? The one walked you home with Freckles the other night?”

  “Oh, right. No, I don’t think so. I didn’t ask.” She should have made Amy meet her. Begged her. Whatever it took to avoid standing alone in the dark with Crash and thinking thoughts she couldn’t afford to be thinking.