Imaginary Lines

by Allison Parr

  But Abe was right.

  I made myself bring my chin away from my chest, to an approximate parallel path with the ground. “Not sort of. Yes. We’re dating. Surprise!” If my arms hadn’t been frozen, I might have done jazz hands.

  It was probably a really good thing my hands were frozen.

  “All right, nothing to see here.” Grandma Krasner started herding people away from us. “Leave the young ones alone.”

  Thank God. Thankgodthankgodthankgod. Maybe I could remember how to breathe now.

  One of the younger cousins, now out of sight, let out a confused whine. “But I thought they weren’t dating!”

  Grandma Krasner took my gaping mother’s arm, and then her gaping daughter-in-law’s arm, and then she closed the pantry doors again quite firmly.

  Oxygen in, oxygen out.

  “See?” Abe smiled down at me. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  I stared at him.

  He tapped my cheek. “Are you still in shock?”

  “What colors?”

  He frowned.

  “For the wedding,” I clarified. “Which our mothers are planning right now.”

  He grinned slowly. “Red, black, and gold.”

  That snapped me out of my shock enough to frown at him. “You can’t have the Leopards colors as your wedding theme.”

  He raised a brow. “Why not? You asked for my input. They’re my favorite colors.”

  I rolled my eyes again, because if I was regressing, I might as well do it one hundred percent. “We’re not actually planning a wedding, doofus.”

  “Aren’t we?” he asked lightly.

  Oh my God, what? What just happened there?

  He took my hand. “Come on. Let’s go see if there’s more pie.”

  Pie? How could he switch topics so easily? “Aren’t you full yet?” I asked helplessly.

  “Never,” he swore.

  “Are you ready to face them?”

  He looked thoughtful for a moment. “You know, I have no problem charging straight at a two-hundred-pound player and flying through the air, but facing our mothers is a little more daunting.”

  I laughed. “Good thing you have a good teammate.”

  He kissed me fiercely. “The best.”

  * * *

  For the most part, we got away without too much interrogation during dessert, but I was pretty sure that was because someone had made the universal declaration that we were to be left alone. Everyone kept sneaking peaks at us, though, especially the moms.

  And everyone definitely stared when we said good night. Abe brushed his lips over mine, I turned bright red, and everyone under fifteen started giggling.

  And a few over, too.

  As we walked the ten minutes home, Mom couldn’t restrain her dazed remarks. “You’re dating Abe.”

  “Yup.” I glanced over at my dad, who hadn’t said much about it, but who grinned widely.

  “You.” Mom still sounded floored. “And Abe.” Like she might float away, in fact. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Well. It’s happening. Why don’t you believe it?”

  She sounded far away. “You and Abe. Oh my God.” Then she snapped out of her daze and her voice intensified. “Are you going to get married?”

  “Mom!” I glared at her. I knew this would happen. “No, we’re not.”

  “You’re going to get married,” she said dreamily. “Sharon will be so excited.”

  “We’re just dating,” I said loudly, like there was the slightest possibility I could drown out her fantasies. “We’re relaxed. Taking it slow.”

  “Sharon and I used to talk about this when we were pregnant together and she found out she was having a boy and I was having a girl...”

  “Mom!” I danced in front of her and waved frantically. “Stop it! Snap out of it!”

  She raised her hands. “Snapped.” But then her face did that melty thing again. “You two look so good together. How did it happen?”

  I glanced at her. I didn’t usually talk about my romantic life with my mom, but she looked so happy that it seemed cruel to deny her a few details.

  So after we got home, we curled in the living room and I spent an hour talking to her about Abe. Dad graciously disappeared for most of it, but right before I headed to bed, he stopped me and asked in a gruff, almost embarrassed voice. “Are you happy?”

  He was sweet. I smiled at him. “I am.”

  When I finally said good night and ducked into my bedroom, I was only there ten minutes before I heard a tap on my window.

  I spun around. Abe stood outside.

  My mouth fell open and I pulled open my window. I tried to whisper fiercely, though I couldn’t work up much indignation, and my lips tugged up. “What are you doing here?”

  He grinned. “But soft! What light?”

  Now I pushed the screen aside. “But seriously. This is ridiculous.”

  He touched my cheek. “Going for four days without you is ridiculous.”

  My lips twitched. “You’re not going to fit through my window.”

  But I’d underestimated him. Abe was strong and limber, and able to twist and slide with grace and power that my body couldn’t command. Soon, he was sitting on my bed, and I was trying to cover my fit of giggles. I’d checked three times to make sure my door was locked.

  He dragged me down onto the bed as soon as he’d finished closing the blinds. “Much better,” he murmured after he’d discarded his shirt and lifted off mine. I didn’t respond, just ran my hands over the planes of his chest.

  And then I remembered. “Oh. I called it.”

  He didn’t stop kissing me, and spoke softly against my skin. “Hmm?”

  “My mom asked if we were getting married.”

  He laughed silently. “Actually, I think I called it.”

  “What?”

  He just smiled at me, and then I stopped being able to think when his hands were making me crazy. “Do you promise to stay quiet? Otherwise I’m going to have to stop.”

  “I promise,” I said immediately.

  And I did. But it wasn’t easy.

  Chapter Twenty

  America turned into a giant Christmas mall after Thanksgiving.

  I liked Christmas. There were sparkly lights and festive trees and those ever-present carols. I liked carols, Rudolph and Frosty and chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

  Hanukkah, festival of lights and holiday of impossible transliteration, had songs more along the lines of being assailed by raging foes and terrible sacrifices. And suffering. Most of our holidays were about the suffering.

  Loved those songs.

  Still, I liked carols and Christmas too, and it never really bothered me unless I was trapped in a mall with the songs on repeat and the tinsel everywhere and the Christmas villages and the relentless advertising. Then I was like, Whoa, calm down, America. Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten to be consumers. We’re fabulous at consumerism. Wasn’t this a religious holiday once?

  I mean, I guess I’d prefer having people shove merchandise in my face rather than their religion, but still.

  I woke up one week after Thanksgiving to weird sounds and the faint smell of pine needles, and padded out of my room to see Lucy wrestling a small, round tree into the corner. There was some contraption at the bottom, and pine needles everywhere. She saw me looking and beamed. “I got us a tree!”

  Sabeen and Jaz also trailed out into the living room. Jaz lifted her brows. “Uh, you know Tamar’s Jewish and Sabeen’s Muslim, right?”

  Lucy’s face underwent a transformation from joy to surprise to crushed regret. “Oh.”

  Sabeen glanced at me with one of her lurking smiles. “I’m cool with a tree.”

  I shrugged, wondering if anyone had made coffee yet. “Me too.”

  The next day, however, I discreetly place the menorah my temple had mailed me one year at college in the windowsill.

  When Lucy noticed the new addition, she shook her head. “We are so
fucking multicultural.”

  I laughed. “Gold star, team.”

  Even the office was festive. Staff kept bringing in leftovers from holiday parties, and readers and advertisers and remote employees sent in gift baskets. The holiday party was scheduled for the seventeenth, by which point I was sure I’d have turned into a giant ball of packaged sweets and baked cookies.

  The first real snowfall of the year came the first week of December. My childhood had been filled with snow, men and angels and days, but ever since we moved to California it became a rarity. We went to Big Sur and Tahoe for skiing occasionally, but it was less a matter of weather and more a matter of travel. We didn’t wait for the snow; we went to it.

  Here, it was different. The light flurries brought an air of excitement from the skies. Everyone walked around with a faint smile on their faces as the flakes floated down from above. It was soft and light, fine and powdery, and though everyone said it had no staying power, it formed a dusting of white along the sidewalks. Children spun in circles with their tongues stuck out, and instead of pulling them along, their adults actually laughed.

  Hanukkah came two weeks into the month, when the sun hit its lowest point and the wind howled through the city like a wolf that’d lost his mate. I shivered constantly, except when I lay beside Abe, whose heat stayed even the fiercest breeze.

  Rachael hosted a party on the first night, a Tuesday—convenient for the team. We arrived early, weighed down with four challahs I’d made from scratch and two bottles of wine.

  Abe picked me up at work again. The receptionist came around the corner, glee etched across his face. “Abe Krasner’s downstairs. He told security he’s here to see Tamar.” He looked at me.

  In fact, everyone looked at me.

  I cleared my throat. “I have mentioned to everyone by now that we’re friends, right? That we grew up together?”

  Tanya pinned me with her fierce glare. “Rosenfeld, I’m not an idiot.”

  Uh-oh. I’d better roll over and expose the underside of my neck. “Of course not.”

  The glare intensified. “Nor am I a rookie reporter.”

  Oh.

  “You hum,” Jin said unexpectedly.

  I looked at him.

  “Tunelessly,” Mduduzi added, which I did not find helpful.

  Tanya just cocked her head. “You’re seeing Krasner.”

  I thought about protesting that that was my personal life, but given the strange lines we were blurring, I gave it up for a lost cause. “Worse, I’m going to a holiday party at Ryan Carter’s tonight.”

  They all started choking on surprise, except for Tanya, who actually smiled and shook her head. “What am I going to do with you?”

  My dad sometimes asked that same question. The answer was usually, “Love me unconditionally and feed me, please.”

  With Tanya, I expected the answer was drastically different and not nearly as sweet.

  * * *

  Snow fell lightly as we left the subway and walked to Rachael and Ryan’s Central West apartment. I couldn’t get a handle on this weather; some days a bitter cold descended on the city, and on others everything seemed light and puffy, like winter in a Thomas Kinkade painting. Today the breeze almost qualified as balmy. Abe looked like he’d strolled right out of a winter photo shoot, with snow twinkling in his hair like diamonds on gold threads.

  Rachael opened the door, a flurry of energy wrapped in a blue dress. “Hi! Come in. We’re not totally together yet, but we’re getting there.”

  I glanced around the huge apartment as we entered. Rachael was Jewish but Ryan wasn’t, so it was no surprise to see a tree over by the wall of windows. But it made me smile to notice the Star of David perched atop it.

  The apartment smelled like sizzling oil. Ryan stood over a frying pan, flipping latkes. He raised the spatula in greeting. “Hey, guys.”

  I hefted one of the bags we’d brought with us. “Should we put these on the table?”

  Rachael nodded, and I followed her over into the dining area where we arranged the challah evenly throughout the table. She placed each loaf on a white plate and examined their golden brown sheen from the egg yolks brushed over the dough. “These look delicious.”

  Abe poked his head out of the kitchen. “Tamar made them.”

  Rachael raised her brows. “Impressive.”

  I smiled my gratitude. I actually did think challah was one of my more impressive recipes, because even if it wasn’t particularly difficult, it was time-consuming and contained more steps than most of my baked goods. “I find braiding dough very relaxing.”

  “Don’t most people say that about kneading dough?”

  I laughed. “I actually find kneading a pain in the ass.”

  The crowd that evening was small—I supposed because there weren’t actually that many Jews running around the NFL. “It’s really just an excuse to make latkes,” Rachael admitted.

  Abe smiled. “I noticed you weren’t the one making latkes.”

  She grinned guiltily.

  Ryan put his arm around her. “I am a superior latke flipper. It’s one of my many skills.”

  They’d strung up the apartment with decorations for both holidays, but they’d had us arrive early so we could light the menorah. “I used to host Shabbat dinners for the team—for Abe,” Rachael said, rolling her eyes at him, “but they quickly devolved into Friday night potlucks. I like that better. I don’t really like being the center of attention, and especially not reciting things in front of other people.”

  So it was just the four of us who sat there and lit the two candles, which was cozy and nice and familiar. Rachael’s melody was a smidgen different from Abe’s and mine, but that didn’t surprise me too much. I’d once gone to a temple and they sang all their songs with different melodies, which had been a baffling experience.

  Even Ryan sang along, slower than the rest of us and completely skipping the guttural chet, but it made his girlfriend smile proudly and kiss him on the forehead.

  Briana and Malcolm showed up next, followed quickly by Mike O’Connor and Natalie Sullivan. Then people kept coming into the apartment, and the night was a mix of every holiday song I’d ever heard. We ate enough to be sick, and laughed until our stomachs hurt.

  Three days later, we went to my aunt Beth’s apartment for latkes and candle lighting. While Abe and I had outed ourselves to our entire family over Thanksgiving, this was technically the first time we were going anywhere as a couple, and I found myself unaccountably nervous.

  Besides, Aunt Beth and Shoshi could be a little more overpowering than the rest of our family.

  Abe noticed me fluttering around my apartment before we left, dragging clothes out of my closet and then throwing them back with a scowl. He’d brought his laptop this afternoon and had spent most of the day watching game tapes, but now he turned them off. “What’s wrong?”

  “My family.”

  “Hey.” He came over and cupped my face in his large hands. “It’s going to be okay.”

  I took a deep breath. “You’re right. Okay.”

  We arrived at their apartment at ten past six. The door swung open to reveal Aunt Beth, a tall, thin women who looked like my mom, if my mom had married a doctor with a grand to drop on appearances each week. “Why, hello there, darling. Oh, and Abraham. How nice to see you again.” She folded both of us in fleeting embraces, smelling of heady perfume.

  While Rachael and Ryan’s real estate probably cost more than my aunts, and while Abe and his entire team certainly had more money than Aunt Beth and Uncle George and their friends, my mother’s sister definitely felt much more imposing than any of the guys. Their apartment was furnished with old furniture and rich rugs, and everyone spoke in soft voices and felt vaguely claustrophobic.

  Shoshi snared us before we’d gone far and dragged us into her childhood room. “Thank God you’re here. I’ve just been listening to Dad’s business partner tell me about his new biomarker or whatever for like the third time
in a row. Hello, Abe. I’ve decided that if you’re going to stick around I’d like you to fix me up with one of your teammates.”

  Abe shot me a look, and then a similar one at my cousin. “You’re mad, you know that?”

  “Mad and bored. Look, we just have to get through the evening, and then Mom’ll give us all presents, and then we can escape. Here, I snagged some wine.” She poured us all glasses and then downed half right away. “God. Family.”

  I gave her an impulsive hug. “Some family’s all right.”

  She swatted me away. “Ew, you really are in love. I can’t stand lovey-dovey couples. Great.”

  I waved at Abe. “Except for my full roster of potential boyfriends.”

  She brightened. “Right. Okay.”

  Abe shook his head. “You’re both ridiculous.”

  After a protective glass of wine, the three of us headed out. It was actually a fun evening, to all three of our surprise. We played dreidel with some elderly friends of her parents, and then Abe schooled us all in a few rounds of poker. Shoshi ran interference on her parents, so Abe only had to answer a few prying questions. At the end Aunt Beth gave all of us designer coffee and chocolate.

  “You know what?” I told Abe as we walked back to his place. “It took a couple of months, but this place feels like home now.” I tugged my hat down a little more securely over my ears. “A little too cold, for sure. But I like it here.”

  Abe smiled down at me, and I impulsively stood on my tiptoes and kissed him. Then I slipped my hand in his. He was home. Everything else here was wonderful, and I loved my job and friends and roommates, but honestly, Abraham was home. He was happiness and magic and everything I’d ever wanted. I’d never really believed in miracles, but there he was. A miracle. My miracle.

  Better than long-lasting oil any day.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  That Sunday, the fifteenth game of the regular season, everyone in the press box chattered excitedly, even the reporters who didn’t usually talk. The Leopards game against the Bisons had been long anticipated; their rivalry was heated and legendary, and if the Leopards won this game, they’d clinch their shot at the playoffs.